DevOps Tools Introduction #01: Getting “Getting Started” Started

In November 2025, Linux Professional Institute (LPI) released version 2.0 of the Linux Professional Institute DevOps Tools Engineer certification. Covering a series of tools used to develop and deliver software in a collaborative manner, the content of this exam extends skills of both software developers and system administrators.

The V2.0 update of the DevOps Tools Engineer certification reflects a modernization of the exam structure and vision to better align with present-day DevOps practices. While the core domain — bridging software development and operations with open-source tools — remains the same, the V2.0 version reorganizes some objectives and is labelled as an “updated draft,” signaling that the curriculum may include amendments to keep pace with evolving tooling and methodologies.

The V2.0 release reorganized, updated, and modernized the exam from the ground up. While V1 was structured around the classic broad DevOps blocks—containers, configuration management, infrastructure, CI/CD, and monitoring—V2.0 introduces tracks that align much more closely with today’s real engineering workflows. The new structure emphasizes software engineering, containers, Kubernetes, security, and observability, reflecting the technologies and practices that modern DevOps teams rely on every day.

The new version embodies a clearer structure, refined topic boundaries, and updated tooling expectations, while maintaining the open-source focus central to LPI’s philosophy.

Overall, DevOps Tools Engineer V2.0 is not just a revision of content — it’s a recalibration of the certification to the realities of modern DevOps. It maintains conceptual continuity with V1 but evolves its scope, structure, and delivery to support professionals working in faster, more automated, and more collaborative environments.

The official Learning Materials for this certification are beautifully organized and already available on LPI’s Learning Portal. The book is an excellent resource for anyone who wants to dive deeper into the objectives, explore the tools hands-on, and prepare with clarity and confidence. You’ll find everything structured in a way that guides you step-by-step, making your journey toward certification much more enjoyable and achievable.

This posting is the first in a series of introductory postings on the LPI blog. Together we will take a tour through the LPI DevOps Tools Engineer’s objectives. For each topic I will summarize the most important tools and skills and will point you to documentation you might find helpful to get started.

To work through the upcoming postings and prepare yourself for the DevOps Tools Engineer exam, you should be equipped with a few tools:

• Print out the exam 2.0 objectives and get some color markers. It might sound silly, but keep in mind that the objectives ultimately describe what is relevant in the exam and what is not. Following the objectives makes sure you will spend your time efficiently. Work with the objectives, check what you already know, and color what you want to repeat.
• Get a place to keep notes. You should be prepared to be asked for commands or configuration options in the exam. They won’t be obscure hidden ones, but those you frequently need when working with these tools on an ongoing basis. Take notes of anything you consider relevant, give your notes some structure and remember that you will come back to these notes for repetition once your exam date gets closer.
• Prepare your computer to run some virtual machines. You’ll need a few gigabytes of disk space and some virtualization software. Some of the tools we cover use VirtualBox by default, so that might be a good choice to start. You can, of course, use any other virtualization software you like, although it might require some tweaks to the examples that are provided by documents this series refers to.
• Sign up for an account at an IaaS cloud provider. Most of the large providers should be fine, and some even offer you free access to small computing instances. This should be sufficient for your first experiments. If you already have access to a cloud computing platform, make sure you have some extra cash in your account to play around with some instances. In case you want to do all your learning in the cloud, without using local virtual machines, you’ll definitely need some more money for larger instances and the ability to use them concurrently.

This series of blog postings contains links to external Learning Materials. These are, of course, only recommendations. If you have another favorite source for a topic just stick to that. If you are already familiar with a topic, you’ll probably already know some of the content in the referenced documents. In either case, make sure you meet the requirements LPI outlines in the objectives. No matter how you prepare yourself, enjoy learning new tools and spend some time considering how you can benefit from these tools in your daily job.

Please feel encouraged to share your recommended learning resources in the comments. We will collect and review these links and add relevant choices along with the original blog postings to our wiki.

If you’d like to join our tour through the DevOps tools jungle, make sure you come back to our blog next week, when we’ll learn more about modern software development.