The Reality of Building CI/CD Pipelines (Real DevOps Life)
1️⃣ CI/CD is NOT just “Jenkins + Git + Docker”
People think pipeline means:
pipeline {
stages {
build
test
deploy
}
}
NO.
Real-world pipelines include:
Multiple repos
Multiple branches
Multiple environments
Secrets management
Rollback strategy
Compliance checks
Infrastructure provisioning
Quality gates
Security scans
Cost guardrails
A REAL pipeline = 20–35 steps, not 3 steps.
2️⃣ 90% of the Time Is Spent Fixing Issues, NOT Writing Pipelines
You will deal with:
Agent down
Disk full on runner
Token expired
Cache corrupted
Maven repo down
Docker registry unreachable
Kubernetes API throttling
SonarQube not responding
TLS certificate expired
Build stuck at 1% for 40 mins
Reality:
Pipeline success is the last chapter, not the whole story.
3️⃣ Security is everywhere — you can’t escape
Every pipeline MUST have:
SAST (Static Code Analysis)
SCA (Dependency Scan)
Container scan (Trivy, Anchore)
Secret detection
SBOM generation
Signing & verification
If you skip security → production rejects your build.
Today’s pipelines = DevSecOps pipelines.
4️⃣ You must be strong in Linux — no way around it
Without strong Linux basics:
you cannot debug runners
cannot fix permission issues
cannot handle secrets
cannot manage Docker
cannot troubleshoot scripts
90% of pipeline failures = Linux + permissions.
5️⃣ You must understand networking
Pipeline failures often involve:
DNS resolution failed
Proxy blocked
Wrong firewall rule
Service unreachable
Host not resolvable
VPC not connected
Port 443 blocked
DevOps ≠ tools
DevOps = systems thinking.
6️⃣ Docker knowledge is mandatory
Real pipelines need:
Multi-stage builds
Slim images
Non-root container users
Pull/push to ECR/GCR/ACR
Caching layers
Vulnerability scanning
Private registry authentication
99% of companies → container-based deployment.
7️⃣ Writing pipelines is the easy part — Designing pipelines is hard
You must think:
How many environments?
What is the release strategy?
Blue/Green or Rolling?
Canary or Feature Flags?
What needs approval gates?
How do we rollback?
Pipeline = architecture, not YAML.
8️⃣ CI/CD is NOT coding — it’s automation + orchestration
Skills required in reality:
Git
Bash
YAML
Terraform
Ansible
Docker
Kubernetes
Monitoring
Scripting
Debugging
Security
Infra as Code
Cloud (AWS/Azure/GCP)
DevOps pipeline = orchestrating 10+ moving parts.
9️⃣ Expect to fight with developers
Developers will say:
“It works on my machine”
“Your pipeline is the problem”
“Pipeline too slow”
“Why is this failing?”
“Why did you block my deployment?”
You must be patient + technical + diplomatic.
🔟 Final reality: You are responsible for “zero downtime”
If production is down → DevOps gets the first call.
Even if:
deployment was incorrect
infra had a bug
database failed
DNS failed
DevOps is blamed first.
Accept it.
It is part of the game.
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