Hey everyone! I'm gearing up for a 4-5 month internship as a DevOps/Cloud Engineer, and I'll be working with GitLab, Terraform, and AWS. I already have some certifications under my belt—AWS Solutions Architect Associate and Terraform Associate, and I'm currently working on my Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA). I understand the concepts and theories, but I lack hands-on experience, and I'd love to get some advice from folks in the field before I start.
I'd like to know:
- What practical skills should I focus on for GitLab (like CI/CD pipelines, runners, YAML, etc.)?
- What should I dive into for Terraform (like state management, modules, best practices)?
- Which AWS services are crucial for someone at an intern level?
- Are there any common gaps that interns usually have, even if they have certifications?
- What's something you wish you had practiced before beginning your first DevOps/cloud role?
I'm just aiming to be useful from day one and not feel totally lost! Any tips on what to prioritize or what to overlook would be super helpful. Thanks in advance!
3 Answers
Quick question, how long did you study for your certifications? I'm trying to figure out which one to tackle next! Were they challenging or manageable?
Here's a tip: try purposefully deleting something in production during your internship. It might sound scary, but it's almost like a rite of passage in DevOps. It’ll teach you a lot about permissions and recovery!
And yes, working at a bigger company usually comes with tight restrictions, especially for interns, so you might not get the chance to make huge mistakes like that.
You've got a solid base with your certifications! I recommend building something from scratch before your first day. Try spinning up a Terraform project that actually deploys infrastructure to AWS, then create a GitLab CI/CD pipeline that automates the Terraform plan/apply process on commits. That's essentially 80% of what you'll be doing.
You'll quickly learn about the common issues that arise, like state file corruption or IAM permission problems, so don't worry about that right now—just focus on building something real!
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