A YouTube-first, hands-on DevOps & Cloud roadmap organized around the software delivery lifecycle — CODE → GIT → CI → BUILD → TEST → DOCKER → REGISTRY → TERRAFORM → CLOUD → KUBERNETES → DEPLOY → MONITOR → SECURE → TROUBLESHOOT → SCALE. It takes a beginner from Linux, networking, Git and Bash/Python through Docker, CI/CD with GitHub Actions, AWS, Terraform, Kubernetes, Helm and GitOps with Argo CD, observability with Prometheus/Grafana/Loki, DevSecOps and SRE — ending in a complete production-style platform capstone. Every stage pairs learning with hands-on labs, a break/fix loop and a documented deliverable.
Track your progress, earn XP, and pick up where you left off.
Understand DevOps before any tool: CI, CD, IaC, observability, reliability and DevSecOps, and how code flows Developer → Git → CI → Build → Test → Artifact → Deploy → Monitor. SRE vs DevOps.
What DevOps Is (and Why)
Dev vs Ops, CI/CD, continuous delivery vs deployment, automation, IaC, observability, DevSecOps, SRE vs DevOps.
~5h · 5 resources
Milestone 01 (Linux Foundations). The command line, filesystem, permissions, processes, services and logs.
Command Line, Permissions & Services
Distros, filesystem, terminal, users/groups/permissions, processes, services, packages, env vars, logs, SSH, cron, systemd.
~12h · 6 resources
Run and maintain a real server: SSH keys, firewall, services, resources, logs and backups.
Administering a Production Server
Users/sudo, SSH keys, UFW, package/service management, disk/memory/CPU, logs (journalctl), backups.
~8h · 3 resources
Milestone 02 (Networking + Git) begins. The networking every DevOps engineer needs — mapped to cloud constructs.
TCP/IP, DNS & Cloud Networking
OSI/TCP-IP, IP/subnetting/CIDR, DNS, DHCP, HTTP(S), TCP/UDP, ports, routing, NAT, firewalls, load balancing; VPC/subnets/route tables/security groups.
~8h · 5 resources
Milestone 02 continues. Version control and collaboration — the entry point of every pipeline.
Branches, PRs & Workflows
Repos, commits, branches, merge/rebase, PRs, tags/releases, remotes, code review; feature branch, GitFlow, trunk-based.
~6h · 4 resources
Milestone 03 (First Automation Script). Automate operational tasks with the shell.
Shell Scripting for Automation
Variables, arguments, conditions, loops, functions, exit codes, pipes/redirects, grep/awk/sed, curl, cron.
~8h · 2 resources
Use Python for automation beyond what Bash handles well: APIs, JSON/YAML and subprocess.
Python Automation Essentials
Basics, functions, files, JSON, YAML, APIs, requests, subprocess, automation.
~8h · 10 resources
Serve and route traffic with Nginx: static files, upstreams, load balancing and TLS termination.
Nginx as Reverse Proxy
Web server vs reverse proxy, static files, upstream servers, load balancing, TLS termination.
~6h · 4 resources
Milestone 04 (Docker). Containers, images, Dockerfiles, volumes and networks — with a break/fix loop.
Images, Containers & Dockerfiles
Containers, images, Dockerfile, layers, registries, volumes, networks, ports, env vars, lifecycle.
~10h · 9 resources
Define and run multi-service applications locally.
Multi-Service Apps with Compose
docker-compose.yml, services, networks, volumes, environment, dependencies, health checks.
~6h · 3 resources
Store and version images in Docker Hub and Amazon ECR.
Tagging, Versioning & Registries
Docker Hub, Amazon ECR, image tagging, versioning, lifecycle, private registries, authentication.
~4h · 3 resources
Milestone 05 (First CI/CD Pipeline) begins. The pipeline: CODE → BUILD → TEST → SCAN → PACKAGE → DEPLOY.
Pipelines, Environments & Rollback
CI, CD, pipeline stages, build/test/artifact, environments (staging/prod), approvals, rollback.
~5h · 3 resources
Milestone 05 evidence. Build the primary CI/CD pipeline: push → test → build → image → push → deploy.
Workflows, Secrets & Deployment
Workflows, jobs, steps, runners, actions, secrets, env vars, artifacts, caching, matrix builds, environments.
~8h · 5 resources
Awareness of Jenkins and other CI tools — GitHub Actions remains primary.
Jenkins Pipelines & Alternatives
Jenkins architecture, controller/agent, pipelines, Jenkinsfile, credentials, webhooks; GitLab CI, Azure DevOps, CircleCI awareness.
~6h · 4 resources
Milestone 06 (AWS Deployment) begins. The AWS core: regions/AZs, IAM, compute, storage, databases, networking.
AWS Core Services & IAM
Cloud computing, regions/AZs, global infrastructure, shared responsibility, IAM; EC2, S3, VPC, RDS, CloudWatch, ECR.
~10h · 5 resources
Build a secure multi-tier network: VPC, public/private subnets, gateways, security groups, load balancer.
VPC, Subnets & Load Balancing
VPC, public/private subnets, route tables, IGW, NAT gateway, security groups, NACLs, DNS, load balancer.
~8h · 4 resources
Run containers on EC2 using images from ECR; understand EBS, S3, auto scaling and load balancing.
EC2, S3, ECR & Scaling
EC2, AMI, EBS, S3, ECR, auto scaling concepts, load balancer.
~8h · 5 resources
Move state to managed RDS PostgreSQL with backups, snapshots and Multi-AZ.
Managed PostgreSQL with RDS
RDS, PostgreSQL, backups, snapshots, Multi-AZ concepts, parameter config, security groups.
~6h · 4 resources
Milestone 07 (Terraform Infrastructure). Provision AWS declaratively — plan, apply, drift and remote state.
Terraform Providers, State & Modules
Providers, resources, variables, outputs, modules, state, plan/apply/destroy, remote state, locking, workspaces, drift.
~12h · 6 resources
Configure servers idempotently with Ansible (not deep Puppet/Chef).
Playbooks, Roles & Idempotency
Configuration management, inventory, playbooks, roles, variables, idempotency.
~6h · 3 resources
Milestone 08 (Kubernetes Deployment) begins. Cluster, pods, deployments and services.
Pods, Deployments & Services
Architecture, cluster, control plane, node, pod, deployment, replica set, service, namespace, config map, secret.
~12h · 8 resources
Expose services and persist data: Services, Ingress, PVs/PVCs and storage classes.
Services, Ingress & Persistent Storage
ClusterIP/NodePort/LoadBalancer, Ingress, DNS, persistent volumes/claims, storage classes, ConfigMaps, Secrets.
~10h · 4 resources
Make deployments production-grade: limits, probes, autoscaling, rolling updates, RBAC and network policies.
Reliability, RBAC & Autoscaling
Resource requests/limits, liveness/readiness probes, autoscaling, rolling updates/rollback, namespaces, RBAC, network policies.
~10h · 6 resources
Milestone 10 (GitOps). Package with Helm and deploy declaratively with Argo CD from Git.
Helm Charts & Argo CD
Helm charts/templates/values/releases/repos; GitOps (Git as source of truth, declarative deploy, reconciliation) with Argo CD.
~10h · 5 resources
Milestone 09 (Observability). Metrics, logs, traces, dashboards and alerts with the Prometheus/Grafana stack.
Metrics, Dashboards & Alerts
Monitoring, metrics, logs, traces, alerts, dashboards; SLIs/SLOs/SLAs; Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, OpenTelemetry.
~10h · 7 resources
Centralize logs and troubleshoot across app, container, system and Kubernetes layers.
Centralized Logging & Correlation
Application/container/system/Kubernetes logs, centralized logging, log levels, structured logs, correlation IDs.
~6h · 5 resources
Milestone 11 (DevSecOps). Bake security into the pipeline: secrets, SAST, dependency and container scanning.
Secure CI/CD Pipeline
Secure CI/CD, secret management, dependency scanning, SAST, DAST, container scanning, IaC scanning, least privilege.
~8h · 5 resources
Reliability, SLIs/SLOs, error budgets, incident management and postmortems.
SLOs, Error Budgets & Incidents
Reliability, availability, scalability, latency, error budgets, SLIs/SLOs, incident management, postmortems, capacity planning, graceful degradation.
~8h · 2 resources
Design scalable, highly-available systems and practice scenario-based troubleshooting.
Architecture, Strategies & Troubleshooting
CI/CD/K8s/cloud architecture, HA, disaster recovery, observability architecture; rolling/blue-green/canary; scenario troubleshooting (e.g. a 502 through DNS→LB→proxy→service→container→app→DB).
~8h · 4 resources
Milestone 12 (Production Capstone). Build one complete production-style platform: Developer → GitHub → Actions → tests → security scan → Docker build → registry → Terraform → AWS → Kubernetes → Ingress → app → PostgreSQL → Prometheus/Grafana → logs → alerts. Document everything.
End-to-End Production Platform
Combine CI/CD, containers, registry, Terraform, AWS, Kubernetes, Helm, Argo CD, HTTPS, secrets, monitoring, logging, alerts, health checks, rollback and DR into one platform.
~45h · 7 resources