In this article, First, we will understand DevOps and the demand for DevOps in the IT industry. We will discuss the importance of Docker in the world of DevOps, including some of the best online tutorials for learning Docker.
What is DevOps?
In the IT industry, the software is developed by the tech team, and this tech team has been subdivided between two sub-teams called the developer and the operation team. The job of the developer’s team is to develop an application using codes, once the coding is done, it needs to be handed over to the operation team, whose job is to deploy the application onto the server. It looks cool and so simple, right? But wait for a second; it isn’t that simple. Both teams usually conflict with issues such as design, testing, security, dependency, environment mismatch, and many more. Due to these problems, there was a lot of “to and fro” between the developer and operation teams. These were the primary problem, and these had to be solved, and these were solved using the concept of DevOps. The software industry usually treats DevOps as a combination of the developer and operation. A DevOps is an idea that acts as a bridge between the software development and operation team. Usually, a DevOps engineer collaborates, integrates, and communicates among the organization’s development and operations departments. The primary role of DevOps is constantly monitoring and automating every phase of the software development process. If we look at the lifecycle of DevOps, it resembles the infinity(∞) symbol. It is a continuous process that starts with Planning, Coding, Building, Testing, Releasing, Deploying, Operating, and ends at Monitoring. These lifecycle stages are usually achieved with the help of DevOps tools. Git, Jenkins, Splunk, Nagios, Chef, Puppet, Ansible, Docker, and Kubernetes are top trending DevOps tools.
Demand in the IT industry
All over the world, the DevOps approach has helped companies a lot in speeding up their development processes. It has been found that the companies that hired DevOps professionals have seen a massive boost in their deployment cycle with fewer or no failures. Due to overwhelming growth and, therefore, the adoption of DevOps culture, it has been predicted that by 2021, over 50% of the fortune companies would have a massive demand for DevOps professionals. The industry has already observed a fantastic growth of 75% from the last year in the demand for DevOps engineers. Since a niche skill-set is required for this profile, the compensation part for this role is also attractive. Click here to know the annual average DevOps salary in your country. The salary is usually higher for candidates with a rich knowledge of DevOps tools, and sometimes it also depends on your experience in the field. Overall, the career and salary aspect of DevOps engineers worldwide looks highly demanding. In the very first section, we learned that DevOps is a concept that reduces the conflicts between the developer and the operation team. This is done with some of the DevOps tools that a DevOps engineer usually uses. Each DevOps tool solves a problem associated with the software development lifecycle. If you take the problem of environmental mismatch, this can be solved with the help of Docker. Let’s first discuss the problem statement and the solution in detail.
The Problem
An application has been developed and built by the development team and has been sent for testing. Since the environment of development and testing machines are different and thus, the application doesn’t work. This problem is called environment mismatch. Now let’s discuss the solution.
The Solution
There are two solutions to this problem, the first is a virtual machine, and the very most important one is Docker. But the problem with the virtual machine is that it takes a lot of resources. So the left one is Docker, the best solution to this problem. You may read this to understand the difference between VM and Docker.
How does it solve?
The Docker is a lightweight container replicating the same environment across multiple systems. Now developers will develop the software inside this container, and they will hand over this container to the testing team. Since this container has the same environment; thus, the application will run without an issue, and the problem of environmental mismatch has been solved. So, Docker is a tool that is a perfect fit for the DevOps ecosystem.
Why is it essential to learn Docker?
The primary objective of Docker is to automate the application deployment process by allowing multiple containers to run on the same machine. Docker always guarantees that if an application is working well in the development environment, that will work in the staging and production environment. This helps get a higher level of control over all the modifications because they are made using the same Docker containers. This, in turn, helps in achieving high productivity, high ROI, and saving costs. Due to all these benefits, the companies have adopted Docker at a remarkable rate. Over 35 million applications have been shipped via Docker to date, Not only, but over 37 million Docker applications have been downloaded so far.
Online Platform to learn Docker
The followings mentioned are some of the best resources available on the web. One may try either of them based on the expertise level. I am sharing the links of both the text as well as video-based tutorials, which is eligible for all types of users, i.e., beginners to master level.
🧑💻 Video-based learning
For Beginner
This course is entitled to beginners by instructor Demetrius Johnson. It is a paid course on Udemy. All the lectures of this course are simple and easy to understand. The course comes with a demo and coding exercise, which helps us to practice Docker commands and learn quickly.
Docker Certified Associate
How about getting Docker certified? If you breathe Docker or your organization is going to adopt it soon, and you are asked to get involved, then it would make sense to get the proper training and become Docker certified. Whizlabs offers more than 6 hours of Docker training, everything you need to learn and get started. Once you are confident, you can try their practice test to evaluate yourself before writing an exam. The Docker certification exam contains the following.
OrchestrationNetworkingImage creation and managementInstallation and configurationSecuring DockerStorage and volumes
You can read this to learn how to install Docker on CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian, and Windows.
From Zero to Hero
This course is freely available on YouTube uploaded by Edureka. This course is ideal for beginners and professionals who want to master containerization through Docker.
Crash Course
Yet another paid one from Udemy; This Course starts with the fundamental concepts and gradually deep dives into the depth. As the title of the course reflects, the Ideal audience would be beginners as well as professionals.
Getting Started
Getting Started with Docker is instructed by Nigel from Pluralsight. This tutorial is ideal for beginners; it helps get a solid understanding of the fundamentals of Docker.
From Beginner to Advanced
The last one on the list is Comprehensive Docker: From Beginner to Advanced, a paid course by Experfy. As the name reflects, the ideal audience would be a beginner and a professional. It starts with fundamentals and covers all advanced features
📚 Text-based Resources
Docker for Developers
Docker for Developers is a paid course by Arnaud Weil from Educative. The tutorial is mainly intended for developers having prior knowledge in programming or scripting languages such as .NET Core, Java, Node.JS, PHP or Python, JavaScript, etc. It starts with very low-level details and touches to top-level without letting us get lost in any Jargon. This course is entitled to all levels of readers.
For absolute beginners
Docker Tutorial for absolute beginners is another text-based tutorial from Tutorials Point. It is freely available and explains all aspects of the Docker Container service. It also starts with basic installations and configuration of Dockers and gradually moves to advanced topics such as networking and registers.
For Java Developer
Docker Tutorial for Java Developer from Java Code Geeks is the most widely read tutorial among Java developers. It is written by Andrey Redko, an experienced software developer. With this tutorial, we can get our Docker-based application up and running in minimum time. Though it is entitled to Java developers, frankly speaking, all levels of readers can get benefitted from this tutorial.
Docker 101
This tutorial is from Docker itself. This course is ideal for both beginners as well as professionals. It is a self-paced, hands-on tutorial covering fundamentals to advanced topics such as image building, networking, etc.
Conclusion
In the end, I hope you better understand why DevOps professionals are necessary for companies who want to bring their software products to market faster and more reliably. You also have a pretty good idea of why it is important to learn Docker and where it fits in the world of DevOps.
