As a DevOps or Cloud engineer, you work with many different technologies daily. Therefore, a good engineer needs a solid foundation in Linux, a lot of knowledge about your cloud solution, networking, CI/CD, at least one programming language, and many other topics.
Not only are there many of these categories, but within these categories, there are several alternatives. For example, in the category of infrastructure management, there is Ansible, Puppet, or Chef, each with its particular approach and configuration methods.
It can be challenging to keep everything memorized at all times. However, when I started my journey to become a DevOps engineer, I kept meticulous notes of everything I learned, and this practice has been highly beneficial so far. This blog is a result of the notes I keep every day.
Note-taking is an essential part of the DevOps engineer’s toolkit. It allows you to stay organized, track changes, document processes, and keep track of important information. Using a powerful note-taking app like Obsidian can streamline your note-taking process and work more efficiently.
Obsidian for DevOps engineers
Having a reliable and efficient system in place for managing your notes and documentation is crucial. That’s where Obsidian comes in. Obsidian is a powerful note-taking app that can help you organize and manage your notes more efficiently.
One of the main features of Obsidian is its use of “vaults.” A vault is a folder containing your notes as markdown text files. Your notes are stored on your machine rather than in the cloud. This gives you complete control over your data. You always have access to your local text files and can interact with them or back them up as you see fit.
Because your notes are stored as markdown files, you can use different tools to write or edit your notes. I mostly use neovim for editing, but I use the Obsidian application for making new links and visualization. Moreover, storing your notes as files allows you to run python scripts on your notes and customize your workflow as needed. This can be especially useful for automating tasks, streamlining your work, or making bulk updates.
Links and graph view
In addition to its local storage capabilities, Obsidian also offers several other valuable features for DevOps engineers. For example, you can use the “graph view” to visualize your notes and see how they’re related to one another. This can be particularly useful for understanding complex systems and tracking changes over time.
These relations between notes are created by “[[markdown links]]”. When a note receives many links, its dot size will increase on the graph view, and in this manner, it is easy to see which notes or topics are significant in your vault and play an important role in your life.
This is the local graph view, showing all the linked notes to my Linux note.
Conclusion
Many note-taking apps, such as Evernote, Notion, or Roam research, are available. I tried a few of these, but Obsidian was the best solution for me. Mainly because your notes are stored as markdown files on your machine and because they offer a syncing service with end-to-end encryption. Their graph view provides an interesting way to navigate your notes and discover unexpected connections.
Give it a try. It’s free.