Why I Stopped Doing Everything Manually in DevOps

There was a time when I believed manual work was the hallmark of a diligent engineer.

I’d SSH into servers one by one, typing the same commands repeatedly:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install nginx  

At first, it felt productive, like I was "in control." But over time, the cracks began to show. I was spending hours on tasks that should have been trivial.

Typos crept in, deployments became inconsistent, and solving the same problems over and over left me exhausted. It wasn’t progress, it was stagnation.

The Break Point

Manual processes are deceptively risky.

A misplaced command, a forgotten step, or a server accidentally overlooked could lead to downtime or security gaps.

I realized I wasn’t just wasting time;

I was introducing unnecessary human error into systems that demanded precision.

The Automation

Everything changed when I discovered automation tools like Ansible. Instead of manually configuring servers, I wrote a single playbook:

- name: Install and configure Nginx  
  hosts: webservers  
  tasks:  
    - apt:  
        name: nginx  
        state: present  
        update_cache: yes  

Suddenly,

What took hours was reduced to minutes. Servers were provisioned identically every time. Updates rolled out uniformly.

Best of all, I could step back and focus on higher-value work.

Three Shifts in My Engineering Mindset

This experience reshaped how I approach problems:

1. Automation First
   
   If a task is repetitive, it’s a candidate for automation. Whether it’s server setup, CI/CD pipelines, or monitoring, scripting eliminates drudgery and ensures consistency.

2. Minimize Manual Intervention
   
   Manual work should be the exception, not the rule. Tools like Terraform, Kubernetes, and even simple shell scripts reduce the “human touch” to critical decision points, not routine execution.

3. Design for Scale and Resilience
   
   Automated systems are easier to scale and audit. Need to deploy to 100 servers? A playbook handles it. Troubleshooting? Logs and version-controlled scripts provide clarity.

A Question to always Ask Yourself

If you’re still executing manual tasks in your DevOps or cloud workflows, pause and ask: “Can this be automated?” Start small—automate one script, one deployment, one backup process. The compounding savings in time, stress, and reliability will surprise you.

Finally

Automation isn’t about replacing human ingenuity, it’s about freeing it. By letting machines handle repetition, we gain space to solve harder problems, innovate, and build systems that last.

To those on a similar journey: How has automation changed your workflow?

Let’s share stories and learn from each other. The best engineering happens when we step back, think critically, and let automation do the heavy lifting.

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What’s your automation story? Share your experiences below.

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Comments

[Kelvin]

Welcome to "Eliminating Toil" -> sre.google/workbook/eliminating-toil/

[Dipu Singh]

Can you please explain me.. What is this..

[Kelvin]

This is the Chapter 6 of Google's book about Eliminating Toil, but maybe Chapter 5 is better related to this post (sre.google/sre-book/eliminating-toil/). Take a look on the links, it goes way more in detail and I really recommend it as a read for SRE purposes :)

A brief quote from it is this:

If a human operator needs to touch your system during normal operations, you have a bug. The definition of normal changes as your systems grow.

[Dipu Singh]

Yes, You are right.. Thanks for sharing..