LFS162x - Introduction to Site Reliability

Engineering and DevOps

Course Overview
As Agile practices started revolutionizing software development, there has been an increasing
need to bridge the gap between faster development and traditional waterfall practices. With its
modern principles, practices and an array of state-of-the-art automation tools, DevOps provides
a path to bring your operations into the Agile era, ultimately resulting in faster software delivery,
without compromising on quality. The 2018 Open Source Jobs Report from Dice and the Linux
Foundation highlighted the strong popularity of DevOps practices, along with cloud and
container technologies. DevOps skills are in high demand, and DevOps jobs are among the
highest-paid tech jobs.

As DevOps processes mature, there is a growing need for professionals with expertise in key
practices and tools. DevOps has not only opened up new opportunities for Operations
personnel but also provides them with a logical career progression. There is also an emergence
of Site Reliability Engineering as a specific job description. This course has been designed as a
first step in the journey of transforming operations personnel into an all-round DevOps expert.

Created by Gourav Shah from the School of DevOps​, ​LFS162x is addressed to a wide
audience: from managers looking for guidelines on how to start transforming organizations and
understand where to start, to professionals looking to make a career in the world of Site

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Reliability/DevOps Engineering. Upon completion, students should have a good understanding
of the foundation, principles, and practices of DevOps and Site Reliability Engineering. Students
will gain an understanding of:

● How DevOps is influencing software delivery and why it is important for IT operations
personnel to skill up with DevOps practices.
● How Cloud Computing has enabled organizations to rapidly build and deploy products
and expand capacity.
● How the open container ecosystem, with Kubernetes in the lead, is truly revolutionizing
software delivery and what role an Operations Engineer plays in it.
● The why, what and how of writing Infrastructure as a Code.
● The role played by Continuous Integration in software delivery.
● What is Continuous Deployment and Continuous Delivery and how does a deployment
pipeline look like.
● The role played by Observability systems, what to observe and why.

This course is a great starting point for aspiring DevOps and Site Reliability professionals
looking to get the knowledge and skills to understand how to deploy software with confidence,
agility and high reliability using modern DevOps and SRE practices.

Course Instructors

Gourav Shah comes with more than 15 years worth of experience building, managing and
automating systems at scale. After turning his passing for open source into a profession, and
heading IT operations for a startup that is now part of Adobe, he started Initcron in 2012, a niche
DevOps consulting firm. As a DevOps Consultant, he has helped organizations of all sizes to
design and implement DevOps practices, including cloud computing, Infrastructure as a Code,
CI/CD and containers.

As a DevOps educator, Gourav has conducted hundreds of corporate workshops at many world
class organizations in India and abroad, including Adobe, Visa, Walmart Labs, Cisco, Mercedes,

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Dreamworks, Intuit, RBS, Accenture, Oracle, and so on. He has authored over 15 self-paced
video courses on DevOps topics, with over 40k students from around the world enrolled in them.

Audience
This course is a great starting point for aspiring DevOps and Site Reliability professionals
looking to get the knowledge and skills to understand how to deploy software with confidence,
agility and high reliability using modern DevOps and SRE practices.

Prerequisites
● Intermediate understanding of Linux systems
● Knowledge of networking concepts, utilities and troubleshooting
● Basic scripting knowledge
● Computer and network security concepts
● Virtualization concepts
● Systems administration and troubleshooting skills

Course Length
10-12 hours.

Course Learning Objectives

By the end of this course, you’ll know:

● How DevOps is influencing software delivery and why it is important for IT operations
personnel to skill up with DevOps practices.
● How Cloud Computing has enabled organizations to rapidly build and deploy products
and expand capacity.
● How the open container ecosystem, with Kubernetes in the lead, is truly revolutionizing
software delivery and what role an Operations Engineer plays in it.
● The why, what and how of writing Infrastructure as a Code.
● The role played by Continuous Integration in software delivery.
● What is Continuous Deployment and Continuous Delivery and how does a deployment
pipeline look like.
● The role played by Observability systems, what to observe and why.

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Course Outline
Chapter 1. Welcome!

Chapter 2. Introduction to DevOps and Site Reliability Engineering

Chapter 3. Cloud

Chapter 4. Containers

Chapter 5. Infrastructure as a Code

Chapter 6. Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery

Chapter 7. Observability

Final Exam ​(Verified Certificate track only)

edX Platform
If you are using edX for the first time, we strongly encourage you to start by taking a free 'how to
use edX' course that the team at edX has made available. In this course, you will learn how to
navigate the edX platform, how to connect with other edX learners, how to answer problems on
the edX platform, how grades work in edX courses, and how to complete your first course.

Click ​here​ to register for “​DemoX”​ and you will be on your way. You will find the edX platform
simple and intuitive.

Getting Help
For any technical issues with the edX platform (including login problems and issues with the
Verified Certificate), please use the ​Help​ icon located on the upper right side of your screen.

One great way to interact with peers taking this course and resolving any ​content-related
issues​ is via the ​Discussion Forums​. These forums can be used in the following ways:

● To discuss concepts, tools, and technologies presented in this course, or related to the
topics discussed in the course material.
● To ask questions about course content.
● To share resources and ideas related to DevOps and Site Reliability Engineering.

We strongly encourage you not only to ask questions, but to share with your peers opinions
about the course content, as well as valuable related resources. The Discussion Forums will be

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reviewed periodically by The Linux Foundation staff, but it is primarily a community resource, not
an 'ask the instructor' service.

To learn more tips on how to use them, read the following article: "​Getting the Most Out of the
edX Discussion Forums"​ .

Course Timing
This course is entirely self-paced; there is no fixed schedule for going through the material. You
can go through the course at your own pace, and you will always be returned to exactly where
you left off when you come back to start a new session. However, we still suggest you avoid
long breaks in between periods of work, as learning will be faster and content retention
improved.

The chapters in the course have been designed to build on one another. It is probably best to
work through them in sequence; if you skip or only skim some chapters quickly, you may find
there are topics being discussed you have not been exposed to yet. But this is all self-paced
and you can always go back, so you can thread your own path through the material.

Learning Aids
Besides simple exposition through text and figures, this course uses several additional methods
to present the learning material, including ​videos, external resources, references, glossary of
abbreviations ​and knowledge check questions ​(Verified Certificate track only)​.

Audit and Verified Tracks

You can enroll into an audit or a verified track. In an audit track, you will have access to all
ungraded course content: course readings, videos, and learning aids, but no certificates are
awarded when auditing. You will not be able to access any graded content (knowledge check
questions at the end of each chapter, and the final exam).

In order to receive a certificate, you will need to obtain a passing grade (please refer to the
“Grading” section below), verify your identity with edX, and pay a fee. Once all edX
requirements have been met, you can download your certificate from the Progress tab.

To learn more about audit and verified tracks, visit ​edX Help Center > Certificates​.

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Grading​ ​(Verified Certificate track only)
At the end of each chapter, you will have a set of graded ​knowledge check questions​, that are
meant to further check your understanding of the material presented. The grades obtained by
answering these knowledge check questions will represent ​20%​ of your final grade.

The remaining ​80%​ of your final grade is represented by the score obtained in the ​final exam​.
The final exam is located at the end of the course and it consists of 30 questions.

You will have a maximum of two attempts to answer each knowledge check and final exam
question (other than True/False questions, in which case, you have only one attempt). You are
free to reference your notes, screens from the course, etc., and there is no time limit on how
long you can spend on a question. You can always skip a question and come back to it later.

In order to complete this course with a passing grade, you must obtain a passing score
(knowledge check and final exam) of minimum 70%​.

Course Progress and Completion​ ​(Verified Certificate track only)

Once you complete the course (including knowledge check questions and final exam), you will
want to know if you have passed. You will be able to see your completion status using the
Progress​ tab at the top of your screen, which will clearly indicate whether or not you have
achieved a passing score.

Professional Certificate Program

Professional Certificate programs are a series of courses designed by industry leaders and top
universities to build and enhance critical professional skills needed to succeed in today's most
in-demand fields.

To learn more about our Professional Certificates, click ​here​.

About The Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation partners with the world's leading developers and companies to solve the
hardest technology problems and accelerate open technology development and commercial
adoption. The Linux Foundation makes it its mission to provide experience and expertise to any
initiative working to solve complex problems through open source collaboration, providing the
tools to scale open source projects: security best practices, governance, operations and
ecosystem development, training and certification, licensing, and promotion.

Linux is the world's largest and most pervasive open source software project in history. The
Linux Foundation is home to Linux creator Linus Torvalds and lead maintainer Greg

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Kroah-Hartman, and provides a neutral home where Linux kernel development can be protected
and accelerated for years to come. The success of Linux has catalyzed growth in the open
source community, demonstrating the commercial efficacy of open source and inspiring
countless new projects across all industries and levels of the technology stack.

The Linux Foundation's work today extends far beyond Linux, fostering innovation at every layer
of the software stack. The Linux Foundation is the umbrella organization for many critical open
source projects that power corporations today, spanning all industry sectors:

● Big data and analytics (​ODPi​, ​R Consortium​)

● Networking (​OpenDaylight​, ​ONAP​, ​OPNFV​)
● Embedded (​Dronecode​, ​Zephyr​)
● Web tools (​JS Foundation​, ​Node.js​)
● Cloud computing (​Cloud Foundry​, ​Cloud Native Computing Foundation​, ​Open Container
Initiative​)
● Automotive (​Automotive Grade Linux​)
● Security (​The Core Infrastructure Initiative​)
● Blockchain (​Hyperledger​)
● And many more.

To learn more about The Linux Foundation, click ​here​.

The Linux Foundation Events

The Linux Foundation hosts an increasing number of events each year, including:

● Open Source Summit North America, Europe, Japan and China

● Embedded Linux Conference + OpenIoT Summit North America and Europe
● Open Source Leadership Summit
● Open Networking Summit North America and Europe
● KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America, Europe and China
● Automotive Linux Summit
● KVM Forum
● Linux Storage Filesystem and Memory Management Summit
● Linux Security Summit North America and Europe
● Cloud Foundry Summit
● Hyperledger Global Forum
● And many more.

To learn more about The Linux Foundation events and to register, click ​here​.

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The Linux Foundation Training
The Linux Foundation offers several types of training:

● Classroom
● Online
● On-site
● Events-based.

To get more information about specific courses offered by The Linux Foundation, click ​here​.

The Linux Foundation Certifications

The Linux Foundation certifications give you a way to differentiate yourself in a job market that's
hungry for your skills. We've taken a new, innovative approach to open source certification that
allows you to showcase your skills in a way that other peers will respect and employers will
trust:

● You can take your certification from any computer, anywhere, at any time
● The certification exams are performance-based
● The exams are distribution-flexible
● The exams are up-to-date, testing knowledge and skills that actually matter in today’s IT
environment.

The Linux Foundation and its collaborative projects currently offer the following certifications:

● Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator​ (LFCS)

● Linux Foundation Certified Engineer​ (LFCE)
● Certified Kubernetes Administrator​ (CKA)
● Certified Kubernetes Application Developer​ (CKAD)
● Cloud Foundry Certified Developer​ (CFCD)
● Certified Hyperledger Fabric Administrator​ (CHFA)
● Certified Hyperledger Sawtooth Administrator​ (CHSA).

Open Source Guides for the Enterprise

The Linux Foundation in partnership with the TODO Group developed a set of guides leveraging
best practices for:

● Running an open source program office, or

● Managing an open source project in your organization.

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To learn more, you can visit the following webpage: “​Open Source Guides for the Enterprise”​ .

Copyright
This course is licensed under a ​Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License​.

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