What is AWS DevOps?

May 31, 2024 Roberto Magalhães

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AWS DevOps is Amazon's approach to DevOps, which relies on the company's cloud infrastructure, tools, and services. In other words, this combination brings together Amazon's flexible services and DevOps practices to enable teams to quickly develop and deliver software products.

By leveraging AWS tools, Amazon's DevOps approach allows companies to easily manage infrastructure, deploy code, automate software releases, and monitor performance across the board. With AWS DevOps, developers can more easily implement continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) into their pipelines.

AWS DevOps Engineer Skills

Any company that wants to make the most of AWS DevOps will need engineers with the right skills to do so. While you might say that any cloud computing developer could do a decent job, the reality is that AWS DevOps requires specific expertise, including in-depth knowledge of the following:

Cloud Computing: AWS encompasses Amazon's cloud computing services, so it goes without saying that AWS DevOps engineers need to be cloud experts and specifically have in-depth knowledge of AWS services, tools, and best practices. The best AWS DevOps developers still have knowledge of other non-AWS services and tools.
Infrastructure as Code (IaC): IaC is about managing and provisioning data centers through machine-readable definition files, a process that includes physical equipment, virtual machines, and configuration resources. Therefore, AWS engineers need to know everything about IaC, including how to use tools like Terraform and the AWS Cloud Development Kit.
Continuous Delivery (CD): CD is the foundation of DevOps as it is an approach through which development teams build software in short cycles, ensuring reliable releases at any time. The goal of CD is to increase the speed and frequency of the build, test, and release phases of software development. That's why AWS engineers need to know everything about CD, its tools and systems, and its integration with other tools to create a more sophisticated delivery pipeline. This includes understanding AWS services such as AWS CodeBuild and AWS CodePipeline and non-AWS tools such as GitHub and Jenkins.
Operations: Given that this is in the name “DevOps”, this is another obvious skill that AWS engineers must have. In this case, operations refer to monitoring production systems to ensure their proper functioning. Furthermore, operations are about warning about problems and helping to resolve them as they happen. In certain pipelines, the AWS engineer may also need knowledge of database administration.
Containers: Modern deployment practices are adopting containers at rapid speed, making knowledge of containerization systems and orchestrators almost a must-have for AWS developers. This means these developers need to know Docker Engine, Docker Swarm, Kubernetes, container registries, and many other tools, applications, and services.
Collaboration: DevOps has always been about bridging gaps between teams, so it's natural that a role at AWS requires a knack for collaboration. Saying this implies that AWS engineers need to be skilled in fluid and direct communication with their colleagues as they will work side by side to ensure the continuous delivery of products and services.

Tools most used by AWS DevOps

AWS is a broad cloud computing environment that offers diverse services and tools for engineers of all types. When it comes to AWS DevOps, Amazon has a wide range of cloud-based applications for building and deploying software. While there may be too many to list, there are a few that are essential for engaging in AWS DevOps:

AWS Cloud Development Kit Open source development framework that supports a wide range of programming languages and serves as the foundation for modeling and provisioning cloud application assets.
AWS CodeBuild Fully managed continuous integration service that compiles source code and runs tests to produce packages ready for deployment. CodeBuild scales continuously and processes builds concurrently.
AWS CodeDeploy Service that allows engineers to automate deployments across a range of computing services, from AWS Lambda to on-premises servers. By automating this process, you reduce the potential risks associated with manual operations.
AWS Code Pipeline Service that automates release pipelines and ensures rapid application and infrastructure updates. CodePipeline can automatically build, test, and deploy your versions whenever there is a change to the code.
AWS CodeStar Platform that provides an environment suitable for rapid development, building, and deployment of applications on AWS. It promotes collaboration by allowing multiple owners, contributors, and viewers on any project.
AWS Device Farm Application testing service for web and mobile applications that provides resources for testing across browsers and devices. Device Farm can run concurrent tests and generate detailed logs to quickly identify issues.

How to Hire AWS DevOps Teams

Hiring DevOps can be complicated. As is often the case in the technology world, finding AWS professionals with the right skills and experience is a time-consuming task that requires you to know exactly what you're looking for and where to look. Furthermore, given the relevance of AWS DevOps in the current scenario, the process will make you compete for the same talent with other companies.

That's why it's important to define a search strategy to find the right AWD DevOps engineers. The resulting roadmap may include the following steps:

Define your role requirements: Consider your specific needs, your business objectives and the skills that make you an ideal candidate.
Browse different alternatives to find talent: Post job ads on social media and job portals, contact technology companies with AWS services, and reach out to freelancers.
Make a short list of candidates who might meet your needs: No matter where they come from, you'll vet them in the next step.
Analyze the pros and cons of each candidate before interviewing them: Here, you'll need to consider whether a specific type of engagement is best suited for you (freelance, outsourcing or direct hiring? Remote or in-house?).
Interview your candidates thoroughly Use a comprehensive questionnaire that covers technical aspects as well as interpersonal skills. You can find some essential questions in our Hiring Guide below.
Choose the candidate that best fits your needs: Ideally, you will have found the best candidate at this stage. Be aware that the best one doesn't necessarily fit your ideal candidate entirely, but given the talent shortage, this shouldn't be a problem.

The plan outlined above can serve as a guide for hiring internally or hiring a freelancer or outsourced company. However, each of these processes has specific aspects that you must consider. Use this template to inform your own research process rather than using it as is.

AWS DevOps Interview Questions

What is AWS DevOps?

It's a DevOps approach that uses Amazon Web Services products, tools, and platforms. It aims to automate tasks, help with deployments and deliveries, and ensure better collaboration between the development team and operations team through cloud computing.

What are the benefits of using AWS DevOps tools?

The main benefit of using AWS for DevOps is taking advantage of its wide range of robust cloud-based tools and services. This will prevent teams from having to create their own ecosystem, which can lead to integration issues. Additionally, using AWS ensures that the DevOps team has access to flexible, secure, and powerful tools that are readily available and ready to drive collaboration. What's more, AWS tools can provide fast, automated results to increase productivity and efficiency.

What does CI/CD look like in AWS DevOps?

AWS offers tools that automatically build, test, and deploy applications to a desired location (either on-premises or an AWS instance). By using a combination of CodePipeline to build CI/CD and CodeBuild and CodeDeploy services, an AWS DevOps engineer can ensure continuous integration, delivery, and deployment of software solutions.

How to implement AWS code in AWS DevOps?

Using CodeDeploy. This system is automatically deployed to any instance, whether on Amazon EC2 or a local server. This system is highly beneficial for DevOps as it helps development teams deploy new features easily and quickly, thus eliminating potential manual deployment errors.

Why would you use Amazon ECS in DevOps?

Amazon ECS is a system for managing containers that provides simplified integration with Docker. This allows AWS DevOps engineers to run applications on EC2 instances through a managed cluster.

AWS DevOps Profile

A great AWS DevOps developer is a professional who has in-depth knowledge in a multitude of cloud technologies, even beyond the AWS ecosystem. This is because there may be projects that require integration with non-AWS tools. That's why one of the first things that make up the ideal AWS DevOps candidate is technical knowledge of the most important tools in the AWS environment and some of their equivalents from competing vendors (mainly, Microsoft Azure).

Additionally, the AWS DevOps profile covers other equally important practices, such as inventory and configuration management, containerization and container orchestration, and implementing CI/CD practices in a cloud environment. Having familiarity with control systems is also a great advantage for AWS DevOps engineers, as systems such as Git and Mercurial help in developing applications in the most efficient way.

Finally, it's worth mentioning that there are soft skills that AWS DevOps engineers definitely need. Communication is particularly important as they will need to collaborate with other team members in orchestrating cloud-based efforts. Attention to detail and problem-solving skills are also essential, given the high-complexity nature of the many moving parts that make up an AWS DevOps environment.

AWS DevOps Certifications

While there are many certifications out there that can advance a DevOps engineer's career, anyone who wants to become a serious AWS DevOps needs the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional certification extended by Amazon.

This credential validates a professional's ability to automate testing and deployments of AWS infrastructure and applications. It also certifies that the holder has the essential skills to implement a wide range of cloud initiatives using the AWS ecosystem.

Other certifications that can help AWS DevOps engineers include the Continuous Delivery Ecosystem Foundation℠ certification and the DevOps Leader® certification, both from the DevOps institute. Although not related to AWS, both credentials certify that a professional has in-depth knowledge in some areas that are essential for DevOps as a whole.

If you liked this, be sure to check out our other DevOps articles.