DevOps & Cloud Portfolio Lab

A production-minded DevOps portfolio lab with 54 hands-on projects across Terraform, AWS, Azure, Kubernetes, CI/CD, DevSecOps, monitoring, serverless, and cloud-native application delivery.

This repository is designed to prove practical engineering judgment: infrastructure as code, secure defaults, repeatable validation, cost-aware cloud labs, documented runbooks, and portfolio-ready flagship case studies.

Site

The student portal is the best entry point for browsing, choosing, and safely running projects:

• Open the DevOps Projects Student Portal
• Pick a project
• Browse internal project guides
• Run projects safely with your own credentials
• Contribute improvements
• Ask for help without exposing secrets

The site is an Astro Starlight portal with internal pages for every project. It is static and privacy-first. It does not require accounts, forms, analytics, cookies, or shared credentials.

Start Here

If you are reviewing this repository for hiring, collaboration, or learning, start with the flagship projects below. They are the highest-signal examples and show the repository's strongest DevOps patterns.

Portfolio Story

This repository started as a broad DevOps learning collection and has been hardened into a structured portfolio lab. The latest modernization pass added:

• A machine-readable catalog for all 54 projects through project.yaml files.
• Root-level quality commands through make quality, make list-projects, and make validate-project.
• CI for changed-project validation and local quality gates.
• Updated Docker, GitHub Actions, Kubernetes, and Terraform baselines where safe.
• Security baselines for secrets, Dockerfiles, Terraform, Kubernetes, and CI/CD.
• Flagship runbooks for the strongest showcase projects.

Architecture Map

flowchart LR
    reviewer["Reviewer / Hiring Manager"] --> readme["Root README"]
    readme --> flagship["5 Flagship Case Studies"]
    readme --> catalog["54 Project Catalog"]
    readme --> docs["Astro Starlight Portal"]

    flagship --> app["Apps: Django, Node, AI Chatbot"]
    flagship --> infra["IaC: Terraform, EKS, ECS, VPC"]
    flagship --> delivery["Delivery: GitHub Actions, Jenkins, ArgoCD"]
    flagship --> security["Security: Trivy, SAST, Secret Hygiene"]
    flagship --> ops["Ops: Monitoring, Runbooks, Quality Gates"]

    catalog --> metadata["project.yaml Metadata"]
    docs --> baselines["Reusable Security Baselines"]
    docs --> runbooks["Portfolio Runbooks"]

Quick Start

1. Clone the repository: git clone https://github.com/DevCloudNinjas/DevOps-Projects.git
2. Install the local tooling: python3 -m pip install -r tools/requirements.txt
3. List projects: make list-projects
4. Validate the repository: make quality
5. Open a flagship project and follow its README/runbook

For Students: How to Use Any Project

Each project is meant to be replicated with your own local tools, cloud account, and credentials.

Use this workflow:

1. Read the project README from top to bottom.
2. Check project.yaml for cost risk, deployability, tools, estimated time, prerequisites, learning paths, badges, and validation command.
3. Install only the prerequisites listed for that project.
4. Copy example config files such as .env.example, terraform.tfvars.example, or *.template.yaml.
5. Add your own credentials locally. Never commit real credentials.
6. Run the validation or dry-run command before deploying.
7. Deploy to your own local cluster or cloud account.
8. Observe logs, dashboards, app URLs, or infrastructure outputs.
9. Run cleanup commands and confirm resources are deleted.
10. Write a short learning report about what worked, what failed, and what you fixed.

For the full checklist, see the Student Implementation Guide. For new projects, use the Project README Template.

Use LEARNING_TRACKER.md as a personal template for time planning, prerequisites, validation notes, cleanup, and portfolio evidence.

Learner Metadata Conventions

Projects may include an optional learning section in project.yaml:

learning:
  estimated_time: 4-6 hours
  prerequisites:
    - Docker basics
    - AWS account with budget alert
  learning_paths:
    - containers
    - ci-cd
  badges:
    - local-first
    - portfolio-ready

Learning paths: cloud-foundations, containers, ci-cd, infrastructure-as-code, kubernetes, devsecops, observability, serverless, platform-engineering, security.

Badges: beginner-friendly, local-first, free-tier-aware, cloud-cost-risk, portfolio-ready, team-workflow, security-focused, needs-cloud-account, cleanup-required, capstone.

Local Quality Gate

Run the fast repository checks before opening a pull request:

python3 -m pip install -r tools/requirements.txt
python3 -m pytest tools/tests/test_quality_gate.py -q
python3 -m tools.quality_gate .

The gate is intentionally local and cloud-independent. It checks for tracked files that are now ignored, common secret patterns outside intentional scanner fixtures, plain YAML syntax, shell syntax, Python syntax, and practical Node package lock metadata issues. CI runs the same commands in .github/workflows/local-quality-gate.yml.

Legend

Project Index

AWS Projects