DevOps Talk

A summary of key DevOps concepts and hands-on skills learned this year, including version control, containerization, Docker Compose, CI/CD, cloud services, and Linux fundamentals.

Mason Olson Mon Feb 23 2026 18:00:00 GMT-0600 (Central Standard Time)

DevOps Talk: Key Concepts and Hands-On Skills

In this post, I summarize the key DevOps concepts and hands-on skills I learned this year in my Web & Software Developer course. DevOps is all about bridging the gap between development and operations, ensuring fast, reliable, and maintainable software delivery.

Version Control

Version control is fundamental for collaboration and project management. Using Git, we learned how to:

• Track code changes with commits
• Branching and merging for feature development
• Pushing and pulling code from remote repositories (GitHub)

Example Git workflow:

# Clone a repository
git clone https://github.com/username/project.git

# Create a feature branch
git checkout -b feature/new-feature

# Add changes
git add .

# Commit changes
git commit -m "Add new feature"

# Push branch to remote
git push origin feature/new-feature

Containerization

Containerization allows applications to run consistently across environments using Docker. Each app runs in its own container with its dependencies isolated.

Dockerfile

FROM node:20
WORKDIR /app
COPY package*.json ./
RUN npm install
COPY . .
EXPOSE 3000
CMD ["node", "app.js"]

Webserver and Database Fundamentals

We explored:

• Hosting web applications using Nginx
• Connecting web apps to databases like MySQL or PostgreSQL
• Basic CRUD operations from web apps

Example

docker run --name mydb -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=secret -p 5432:5432 -d postgres

Used Docker Compose

Docker Compose lets us manage multi-container applications with a single YAML file.

version: "3"
services:
  web:
    build: .
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    volumes:
      - .:/app
    depends_on:
      - db
  db:
    image: postgres
    environment:
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: secret

docker-compose up

CI/CD

We implemented CI/CD pipelines to automate testing and deployment:

• Automated testing with Node.js scripts
• GitHub Actions to trigger builds on push
• Deploying applications automatically to servers or cloud environments

Example GitHub Actions workflow:

    name: Node.js CI

on:
  push:
    branches: [ main ]

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v3
        with:
          node-version: 20
      - run: npm install
      - run: npm test

CloudWork With AWS

We learned how to integrate cloud services:

• Store static assets in AWS S3 buckets
• Manage permissions and public access
• Deploy applications to cloud-hosted environments

aws s3 sync ./public s3://my-website-bucket --acl public-read

Basic Linux Fundamentals

• Navigating directories (cd, ls)
• Managing files (cp, mv, rm)
• Monitoring processes (top, ps)
• Installing packages (apt, yum)

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade -y
df -h