DevOps Fundamentals
DevOps Fundamentals tests collaboration and automation across version control, continuous integration and delivery, infrastructure as code, and observability. The exam emphasizes repeatable pipelines and feedback over individual heroics.
Git and CI/CD
Git tracks changes as commits on branches. Pull requests review changes before merge. Continuous integration builds and tests every change; continuous delivery keeps artifacts deployable, while continuous deployment releases automatically. A pipeline typically checks out code, runs tests, builds an artifact, scans it, deploys to staging, and promotes after approval. Artifacts should be immutable and traceable to a commit.
Infrastructure as code and observability
Declarative IaC describes the desired state; the tool calculates changes and should be idempotent. State files and credentials require protection. Immutable infrastructure replaces instances rather than patching them in place. Observability uses metrics, logs, and traces to explain behavior; alerts should tie to user-facing symptoms and service objectives.
Worked example
A pipeline runs tests, then deploys directly to production, and a failing test reaches users. The ordering is the defect: deployment does not depend on test success. Reorder to checkout, install dependencies, test, build, scan, deploy staging, run smoke tests, require approval, then deploy production. Make each stage fail the pipeline on error and keep the prior artifact for rollback. The reasoning is to move quality gates before irreversible exposure and to produce evidence at each stage.
Traps
CI is not the same as continuous deployment. Storing secrets or state in a public repository exposes infrastructure. Long-lived cloud keys are riskier than short-lived workload identity. Manual “snowflake” servers break reproducibility. Deploying without rollback or smoke tests turns small errors into outages.