The Best DevOps Blogs

karllhughes

Karl L. Hughes

Posted on November 19, 2020

The Best DevOps Blogs

DevOps is a term that has become more and more popular in job postings and with those looking to break into the industry, especially over the past few years. However, one of the most challenging aspects of DevOps is understanding exactly what it is and how it's applied in the industry. I’ve rounded up some of the best DevOps blogs and resources to help you learn about the practice and keep up with changes as they come.

Because it's a term that spans many different jobs and means something different to each organization, there has been a lot written about DevOps. I scored these blogs based on writing quality, consistency, longevity, technical depth, and usefulness. Based on those criteria, here are 30 of the best DevOps blogs I could find.

Arrested DevOps

While not strictly a blog, the Arrested DevOps podcast was one of the first that I listened to when I started getting interested in DevOps. They have had nearly every big name in the industry on as a guest at one point or another, and if there is a specific topic you want to learn about, you shouldn't have a problem finding at least one episode dedicated to that in the archives. If you prefer to learn by listening instead of by reading, definitely check out this podcast.

  • Writing Quality - 5
  • Consistency - 5
  • Longevity - 5
  • Technical Depth - 5
  • Broad Usefulness - 5

Total Score: 5

The Microsoft Azure Blog

As one of the three major cloud providers, the Azure blog doesn't focus exclusively on DevOps topics, but has a ton of news and information related to cloud computing in general and Azure services in particular. If you use Azure as your cloud provider, this is an especially good blog to follow and if it's not, it's always good to learn about what's possible on other platforms.

  • Writing Quality - 5
  • Consistency - 5
  • Longevity - 4
  • Technical Depth - 5
  • Broad Usefulness - 5

Total Score: 4.8

The Agile Admin

The Agile Admin is a blog focused on DevOps culture while not ignoring the technical deep dives that many are looking for in a DevOps blog. The standard blog posts are interspersed with technical talks in the form of YouTube videos as well as other kinds of content.

  • Writing Quality - 5
  • Consistency - 4
  • Longevity - 4
  • Technical Depth - 5
  • Broad Usefulness - 5

Total Score: 4.6

The Register

The Register DevOps Blog

If you're looking for more news than tutorials or documentation, The Register's DevOps blog is for you. It's heavily focused on industry news (with some of the snarkiest headlines I've ever seen) and has little in the way of tutorials. However, it is one of the best sites I’ve found for keeping up with what's going on in the industry from a broader business perspective.

  • Writing Quality - 5
  • Consistency - 5
  • Longevity - 5
  • Technical Depth - 3
  • Broad Usefulness - 5

Total Score: 4.6

DevOps'ish

DevOps'ish is a weekly roundup of some of the best posts and writings in the DevOps community. As someone who prefers this kind of format, I really enjoyed the content that I've seen from DevOps'ish. As of this writing, the lastest roundup is #186, so they've got a large back catalog to read if you want to delve into the archives.

  • Writing Quality - 4
  • Consistency - 5
  • Longevity - 5
  • Technical Depth - 4
  • Broad Usefulness - 5

Total Score: 4.6

Google DevOps and SRE Blog

As another of the big three cloud providers, it makes sense that Google also has a blog sharing their thoughts on DevOps. While many of the articles here are specific to Google Cloud services and offerings, they also have more general content and case studies like "Three months, 30x demand: How we scaled Google Meet during COVID-19".

  • Writing Quality - 5
  • Consistency - 4
  • Longevity - 4
  • Technical Depth - 4
  • Broad Usefulness - 5

Total Score: 4.4

DevOps.com

Besides having the canonical .com domain name, DevOps.com is a blog with extremely diverse content. With categories ranging from DevSecOps to Continuous Deliver to Leadership Suite to a DevOps-themed comic, there's something for everyone here.

  • Writing Quality - 3
  • Consistency - 5
  • Longevity - 5
  • Technical Depth - 4
  • Broad Usefulness - 5

Total Score: 4.4

The Puppet Blog

As one of the original DevOps tools and the publisher of the annual State of DevOps report, Puppet is uniquely positioned to comment on happenings and new development in DevOps. Their blog contains a wide range of content, from reports and case studies to webinars, all very well put together and detailed.

  • Writing Quality - 5
  • Consistency - 4
  • Longevity - 3
  • Technical Depth - 5
  • Broad Usefulness - 5

Total Score: 4.4

Code as Craft

The Etsy engineering blog, Code as Craft, has detailed posts about some of the challenges that the Etsy engineering team has had to take on as they scale as well as more general DevOps and engineering-focused articles. Because their articles are based on learnings that come out of running a large engineering team, they are an interesting look into how DevOps concepts are applied at a large and fast-moving organization.

  • Writing Quality - 5
  • Consistency - 4
  • Longevity - 4
  • Technical Depth - 5
  • Broad Usefulness - 4

Total Score: 4.4

DevOps Weekly

DevOps Weekly is an email newsletter rather than a blog. If you prefer to have a roundup of content delivered to your email inbox instead of reading many different blogs, definitely check this one out.

  • Writing Quality - 5
  • Consistency - 4
  • Longevity - 4
  • Technical Depth - 4
  • Broad Usefulness - 5

Total Score: 4.4

The Docker Blog

The Docker Blog

Docker was one of the early tools that inspired and even enabled much of the other DevOps tooling available today. Their blog has been published very consistently since 2013 and has some good technical deep dives on Docker tooling and use cases. There are posts about other topics on this blog as well, but because it is mostly Docker-specific, I took off a couple of points for broad usefulness. However, if you use Docker or any tools that are based on Docker (which is very likely), there's a lot to learn here.

  • Writing Quality - 4
  • Consistency - 5
  • Longevity - 5
  • Technical Depth - 4
  • Broad Usefulness - 3

Total Score: 4.2

The Atlassian DevOps Blog

Atlassian has been making developer and developer-adjacent tooling for years, and as part of that mission, has been shaping the industry. While many of the posts on their blog are Atlassian-specific, they do also have more general content such as their recent "The importance of traceability".

  • Writing Quality - 4
  • Consistency - 4
  • Longevity - 5
  • Technical Depth - 4
  • Broad Usefulness - 4

Total Score: 4.2

dev.to DevOps

Dev.to is another site where users can submit articles and content to the community who can react and comment. In that way, you're more likely to see personal stories and case studies here, but the content varies widely and you can sort by posts that the community has determined are the "top posts" or browse the latest content.

  • Writing Quality - 4
  • Consistency - 4
  • Longevity - 4
  • Technical Depth - 4
  • Broad Usefulness - 5

Total Score: 4.2

High Scalability Blog

This blog grew to prominence when they published some prominent case studies, but it also has a broad range of content specifically targeted towards running systems and projects at a huge scale. Many times, this knowledge is locked away behind NDAs and other restrictions, but the posts here are illuminating as to how some of the biggest companies in our industry manage that scale.

  • Writing Quality - 5
  • Consistency - 3
  • Longevity - 4
  • Technical Depth - 5
  • Broad Usefulness - 4

Total Score: 4.2

IT Revolution

IT Revolution was started by Gene Kim, author of The Phoenix Project and The Unicorn Project (great reads that didn't make the list because they're books instead of blogs). Far from the technical focus of most of the blogs on this list, IT Revolution focuses more on concepts like leadership and how to drive adoption of DevOps principles. These "soft skills" are just as important as the more technical concepts, and IT Revolution helps emphasize that.

  • Writing Quality - 4
  • Consistency - 4
  • Longevity - 5
  • Technical Depth - 3
  • Broad Usefulness - 5

Total Score: 4.2

DevOps Stack Exchange

DevOps Stack Exchange

The DevOps Stack Exchange is a Q&A site-specific to DevOps. However, the questions on the DevOps Stack Exchange tend to be more technical and more narrowly-scoped, such as dealing with specific error messages of a specific tool. If you have a question about a specific DevOps tool, it's likely your Google search would lead you here anyway, but browsing the site without a specific question can be a good way to find out what tools others are using and what problems they are struggling with.

  • Writing Quality - 3
  • Consistency - 5
  • Longevity - 4
  • Technical Depth - 5
  • Broad Usefulness - 4

Total Score: 4.2

DevOps Multireddit

If one subreddit about DevOps isn't enough for you, Reddit user obitechnobi has created a collection of 35 subreddits encompassing everything from r/devops to r/linux and r/serverless and plenty more in between, all collected in one place. As I said in our other Reddit entry on this list, because all of this content is user-submitted, quality can vary, but if you wanted the most variety of content from following just one of the links in our list, this one would be it.

  • Writing Quality - 3
  • Consistency - 5
  • Longevity - 5
  • Technical Depth - 3
  • Broad Usefulness - 5

Total Score: 4.2

Digital.ai

Digital.ai has a wide-ranging blog covering many different topics, but they have some great webinars and case studies specifically focused on DevOps. They initially got on my radar when they produced the Periodic Table of DevOps, which is "the industry's go-to resource for identifying best-of-breed tools across the software delivery lifecycle."

  • Writing Quality - 4
  • Consistency - 4
  • Longevity - 4
  • Technical Depth - 4
  • Broad Usefulness - 4

Total Score: 4

The VMWare Tanzu Blog

Tanzu is one of VMWare's Ops platforms, and as such, they have an entire blog dedicated to DevOps topics. One of the main differences between this blog and some of the others in this list is that there are many different content types including video, slides, podcasts, webinars, as well as the more traditional text blog post.

  • Writing Quality - 4
  • Consistency - 5
  • Longevity - 4
  • Technical Depth - 3
  • Broad Usefulness - 4

Total Score: 4

The Amazon Web Services (AWS) Blog

The Amazon Web Services (AWS) Blog

AWS is arguably the most prominent cloud platform in the industry today and its infrastructure powers many DevOps workflows in all sorts of industries. Similar to the Azure blog, many of the articles on their blog are AWS-specific. However, because there are so many AWS services, their blog content can be incredibly diverse even while still being AWS-focused.

  • Writing Quality - 4.5
  • Consistency - 5
  • Longevity - 4
  • Technical Depth - 4
  • Broad Usefulness - 3

Total Score: 4

The Cloudflare Blog

Cloudflare has become a last-mile infrastructure provider for many of the internet’s biggest web properties by providing caching, CDN, and other performance-enhancing offerings. Their blog is the best way to learn about the different technologies they're bringing to market (many of which are also supported by other providers).

  • Writing Quality - 4
  • Consistency - 4
  • Longevity - 4
  • Technical Depth - 5
  • Broad Usefulness - 3

Total Score: 4

The Accenture DevOps Blog

Many companies who don't maintain a developer team of the size they need in-house have turned to Accenture for consulting and support. As a result, they've taken some of what they've learned and have shared it on their blog. The articles here range from technical deep dives on Kubernetes to more general discussions of methodology around a DevOps transition.

  • Writing Quality - 5
  • Consistency - 3
  • Longevity - 3
  • Technical Depth - 4
  • Broad Usefulness - 5

Total Score: 4

DevOps Cube

This is probably the site with the most wide-ranging content, both in the diversity of topic selection and intended audience, from beginner to expert. It has only been around for a couple years, but has built up a large knowledge base that's a great reference when you start working with a new tool or a new concept.

  • Writing Quality - 4
  • Consistency - 5
  • Longevity - 3
  • Technical Depth - 3
  • Broad Usefulness - 5

Total Score: 4

DevOps Topic on Quora

Quora is a question and answer site where users can post questions, and anyone from another user on a site to a vetted expert can chime in with their opinion. Like Reddit and some of the other entries in this list, all the content here is user-generated, making it great to find out what people are talking about and wondering about in the industry.

  • Writing Quality - 3
  • Consistency - 3
  • Longevity - 4
  • Technical Depth - 4
  • Broad Usefulness - 5

Total Score: 3.8

Microsoft DevOps Blog

While this is the second entry from Microsoft, it's a bit more general than the Azure-specific blog mentioned earlier in the roundup. The posts here come from "the team building Azure DevOps," and they are a mix of news, best practices and some technical content, although it tends to be more general.

  • Writing Quality - 4
  • Consistency - 4
  • Longevity - 4
  • Technical Depth - 3
  • Broad Usefulness - 4

Total Score: 3.8

The Netflix Tech Blog

Similar to the Etsy blog mentioned above, Netflix also shares learnings from their Engineering team on their tech blog. The DevOps category is well-stocked and details everything from security to some of their open-source projects.

  • Writing Quality - 4
  • Consistency - 3
  • Longevity - 3
  • Technical Depth - 5
  • Broad Usefulness - 4

Total Score: 3.8

r/devops

There are subreddits for almost any technical specialization you can think of, and DevOps is no exception. On r/devops, you'll find a mix of blog articles, questions from other readers, and discussions about topics pertinent to the industry. The caveat here is that all the content on r/devops is user-submitted, and while that's great for getting real-world perspective, it also means that much of what's posted are opinions that should not always be taken as fact.

  • Writing Quality - 3
  • Consistency - 3
  • Longevity - 3
  • Technical Depth - 4
  • Broad Usefulness - 5

Total Score: 3.6

The All Day DevOps Blog

All Day DevOps is a yearly event (which has gone virtual in 2020). The site also has a blog that covers both some of the talks from the various incarnations of the event and articles submitted by members of the community. There are lots of interview posts here as well as some technical deep dives.

  • Writing Quality - 4
  • Consistency - 3
  • Longevity - 3
  • Technical Depth - 4
  • Broad Usefulness - 4

Total Score: 3.6

The DevOps Group Blog

The DevOps Group Blog

The DevOps Group has made DevOps their entire business, and they use their blog to educate potential customers and share their thoughts with others in the industry. This blog is a bit more general than some of the others covered in this list. However, for someone new to the sector, their site provides a great starting point on many topics.

  • Writing Quality - 3
  • Consistency - 3
  • Longevity - 5
  • Technical Depth - 3
  • Broad Usefulness - 4

Total Score: 3.6

Continuous Delivery Blog

The Continuous Delivery blog is definitely one of the most specific ones on this list. It's also not updated as frequently and hasn't had a new post since 2016. That said, there is a fair amount of evergreen content here if continuous delivery is something your organization is interested in.

  • Writing Quality - 4
  • Consistency - 2
  • Longevity - 3
  • Technical Depth - 4
  • Broad Usefulness - 3

Total Score: 3.2

As you can see, there is no shortage of people talking about DevOps and trying to keep up with the changes in the industry. Hopefully in the list above you've found a new resource or two that you'll refer back to in the future.

Do you have a favorite blog that I didn't include in this list? Submit your suggestions here!

💖 💪 🙅 🚩
karllhughes
Karl L. Hughes

Posted on November 19, 2020

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November 19, 2020