Learning Plan Resources for DevOps

What is DevOps?

DevOps is the combination of development (dev) and operations (ops) - it’s the union of people, process, and technology to continually provide value to customers. Just as the assembly line transformed automobile production in the 1900s, DevOps is the critical foundation needed to standardize, automate and accelerate software development. Learn more DevOps fundamentals in the DevOps Resource Center.

What is Microsoft’s DevOps strategy?

Azure DevOps has empowered 1000s of enterprises for 15+ years with rich features to support developer innovation, standardization and automation. GitHub is the planet’s largest developer platform…home to 65+ million developers who build software collaboratively. GitHub brings an open source culture that improves communication, sharing of knowledge and code reuse. Our strategy is to bring the best of both products together into a single product experience - in GitHub - to provide the broadest set of software development capabilities that meet the needs of every developer and enterprise. Azure DevOps will continue to evolve with the industry, and we are committed to supporting and investing in Azure DevOps while we execute on our strategy.

GitHub or Azure DevOps?

When evaluating GitHub or Azure DevOps, we encourage you to:

Explore GitHub and its unique capabilities like GitHub Actions, Advanced Security, Codespaces.
Move/create your repo in GitHub - even if you plan to use Azure Boards or Pipelines - to take advantage of code & secret scanning, vulnerability alerts, Codespaces and innersourcing.
Integrate Azure Boards with GitHub and leverage Azure Artifacts and Test Plans in conjunction with GitHub as needed.
ISVs should consider creating GitHub Actions to provide integrations with GitHub. You can learn more in this GitHub for ISVs Tech Talk.
Review GitHub’s public roadmap to see/track upcoming features.

NOTE: Tools to migrate from Azure DevOps, Jenkins, Travis CI and Circle CI are coming soon. These tools will perform a best-effort attempt of a migration with a goal of converting 80% of the constructs of a pipeline. Stay tuned!

Deployment Options

GitHub provides the following deployment options:

GitHub Enterprise Cloud - cloud-based deployment with security and compliance features
GitHub Enterprise Server - self-hosted deployment with security and compliance features
GitHub AE - a fully managed service, hosted in a highly available architecture for customers who have stringent security and compliance requirements. Learn more about GitHub’s products and pricing.

GitHub Fundamentals

GitHub is much more than a code repository. Here are some recommended videos from GitHub Universe (GitHub’s annual conference) to bring you up to speed on GitHub’s latest capabilities:

GitHub’s latest features and capabilities - Nat Friedman, CEO @ GitHub
GitHub in the enterprise - Erica Brescia, COO @ GitHub
GitHub Enterprise overview - Maya Ross, Director of Product - Enterprise @ GitHub
Continuous delivery with GitHub Actions - Chris Patterson, Product Manager @ GitHub
Catching vulnerabilities early with GitHub - Maya Kaczorowski and William Bartholomew, Product Managers @ GitHub
Deep-dive into GitHub Codespaces Allison Weins, Product Manager @ GitHub
The new GitHub Issues preview - project tables that are built like spreadsheets, custom fields, a keyboard driven command palette, improved task lists, and issue forms. Learn more and sign up for the beta here.

Hands-on Learning

The GitHub Learning Lab helps you grow your skills by completing fun, realistic projects right inside of GitHub. Recommended courses:

Introduction to GitHub
DevOps with GitHub Actions
Continuous Delivery with Azure
Writing JavaScript Actions More hands-on resources:
GitHub What The Hack (Self-Paced, 16 Hours) - a light-weight challenge-based hack to learn GitHub by taking a sample application and building an end to end DevOps workflow.
Microsoft OpenHack - DevOps (Instructor Led, 16 Hours) - tackle a series of real-world challenges through hands-on experimentation. Participants work together in teams to complete challenges that increase in complexity.

Certifications

Microsoft offers AZ-400: Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps Solutions for certification in DevOps. Responsibilities for this role include designing and implementing strategies for collaboration, code, infrastructure, source control, security, compliance, continuous integration, testing, delivery, monitoring, and feedback. The exam has recently been updated to include topics related to GitHub. To obtain the DevOps Engineer Expert certification (AZ-400), you must pass at least one of the following prerequiste exams: Azure Administrator Associate or Azure Developer Associate.

Advanced Specialization

Validate your organization’s capabilities implementing secure software development practices using DevOps principles with the DevOps with GitHub on Microsoft Azure advanced specialization. Learn more here (scroll down to the DevOps with GitHub section).

Additional Resources

DevOps Self Assessment (Self-Paced) (25 Minutes)
DevOps solutions on Azure (Self-Paced) (8 Minutes)
Evolve Your DevOps Practice (Self-Paced) (2 Hours)
Introduction to Azure DevOps (Self-Paced) (1 Hour)
Learn Version Control (Self-Paced) (1 Hour)
Evolve Your DevOps Practices (Self-Paced) (2 Hours)
Build Applications with Azure DevOps (Self-Paced) (7 Hours)
Deploy Applications with Azure DevOps (Self-Paced) (9 Hours)
Automate Your Deployments with Azure DevOps (Self-Paced) (4 Hours)
DevOps Training Workshop (Self-Paced) (5 Hours)
Create Your first Pipeline (Online Instructor Led) (1 Hour)
Azure DevOps Extension Development Documentation, Official Repo, and Additional Information (Self-Paced)