20 DevOps Best Practices and Hacks You Can Use Today

The world of DevOps is dynamic, fast-paced, and ever-changing. DevOps engineers are busy with everything from CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure management to guaranteeing security, observability, and performance. The good news is that there are a ton of methods, resources, and best practices that may help you increase productivity, decrease burnout, and streamline your processes. We’ll examine 20 effective life hacks for DevOps engineers to enhance work-life balance and expedite processes in this extensive piece.

Whether you’re a seasoned pro or just starting in your DevOps journey, these tips will help you work smarter, not harder.

1. Automate Repetitive Tasks with Scripts

Manual tasks are prone to error and waste valuable time. Identify repetitive processes such as log rotation, server provisioning, or user account creation and automate them using shell scripts, Python, or configuration management tools like Ansible.

Code Example:

#!/bin/bash
# Automate Nginx restart
sudo systemctl restart nginx && echo "Nginx restarted successfully"

2. Use Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

Tools like Terraform and Pulumi allow you to define your infrastructure in code, making it easier to version, audit, and replicate environments.

Benefits:

• Consistency across environments
• Easy rollback and replication
• Supports CI/CD integration

3. Master Version Control with Git

Learn advanced Git techniques like rebasing, cherry-picking, and squashing to clean up commit history and handle complex merges.

Tip: Use aliases to speed up Git operations.

git config --global alias.co checkout
git config --global alias.br branch

Related Article: Git Best Practices Guide

4. Monitor Everything

Use modern monitoring and observability platforms like Prometheus, Grafana, or Datadog to gain real-time insights into your systems.

Pro Tip: Create dashboards for different teams — devs, ops, business.

5. Use Containers and Kubernetes Wisely

Containerize apps using Docker and orchestrate with Kubernetes to simplify deployment and scaling.

Command Example:

docker build -t myapp:latest .
kubectl apply -f deployment.yaml

Related Article: Deploying Jenkins on Kubernetes

6. Implement CI/CD Pipelines

Use tools like GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or Jenkins to create robust pipelines that automate testing, building, and deployment.

Sample YAML:

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Run tests
        run: npm test

7. Master the Terminal

Avoid GUI bloat and learn terminal shortcuts and tools like tmux, htop, and jq to boost productivity.

Learn More: 10 Terminal Tricks to Boost Your Productivity

8. Log Everything, Analyze What Matters

Centralize logs using ELK Stack, Fluentd, or Loggly, and use tags/metadata to categorize.

Bonus Tip: Set up log alerts to catch anomalies in real time.

9. Use Secrets Management Tools

Avoid hardcoding secrets. Use tools like HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, or Doppler.

10. Learn to Love Linters and Formatters

Automate code style checks with linters like shellcheck, pylint, or eslint to ensure quality and consistency.

11. Leverage Cloud Services Intelligently

Understand when to use managed services like AWS RDS, S3, or Lambda to offload operational burden.

Case Study: Migrating cron jobs to AWS Lambda saved one team 60% of costs.

12. Use Dotfiles for a Portable Dev Environment

Store your .bashrc, .vimrc, or .zshrc in a Git repo to quickly replicate your environment across systems.

13. Document Everything

From onboarding guides to runbooks, documentation helps your team stay informed and reduces on-call stress.

Tool Suggestion: Use MkDocs or Notion.

14. Embrace Chaos Engineering

Use tools like Gremlin or Chaos Monkey to test system resilience.

15. Learn the Business Context

Understanding your business KPIs can help prioritize engineering work and gain stakeholder trust.

16. Build Reusable Terraform Modules

Create modular, reusable Terraform code to manage infrastructure more efficiently across projects.

Reference: Understanding Terraform Drift Detection and Remediation

17. Set Up Alert Fatigue Management

Avoid noisy alerts. Set up severity levels and route alerts via PagerDuty or Opsgenie.

18. Use Pre-Commit Hooks

Prevent bad code from entering your repos with tools like pre-commit.

19. Contribute to Open Source

Stay updated and give back by contributing to tools you use. It also improves your resume and network.

20. Never Stop Learning

Subscribe to newsletters like DevOps Weekly, follow GitHub trends, and attend webinars.

Related Article: Why AI Won’t Replace DevOps Engineers

By implementing these 20 life hacks, you can enhance productivity, improve operational excellence, and make your daily work more rewarding. At Nile Bits, we believe in sharing practical, hands-on advice that empowers engineers to grow and lead. Stay tuned for more insightful content!

Feel free to share your favorite life hacks in the comments or connect with us if you’re interested in joining our engineering team!