Welcome to Production-Grade DevOps Challenges, a real-world knowledge base from my 10+ year journey as a Senior DevOps Engineer.
This repository is a structured collection of high-impact challenges, incidents, architecture designs, crisis responses, and technical case studies I’ve handled across enterprise, cloud-native, and academic-scale platforms. All content here is rooted in real scenarios, not simulations.
🧠 What You'll Find Here in Real-world challenges :
- 🔥 100+ Real DevOps Scenarios — Critical incidents, outages, cost spikes, security breaches, misconfigurations, migrations, performance issues, and more.
- 📊 Root Cause + Resolution — How I diagnosed, fixed, and prevented problems across CI/CD, Infrastructure, Cloud, Kubernetes, and Security.
- 🛠️ Tool-Specific Fixes — Jenkins, Terraform, GitHub Actions, Helm, Prometheus, Grafana, Azure DevOps, Kubernetes, and more.
- 🚀 Disaster Recovery & Incident Management Playbooks — Step-by-step responses used in production crises.
- 📈 Performance, Cost, and Security Metrics — Real numbers, real savings, and real system outcomes.
| 🔹 Domain | 🔧 Topics |
|---|---|
| CI/CD | Jenkins, GitHub Actions, Azure Pipelines, GitOps, rollback plans, approvals, parallelization |
| IaC | Terraform, Ansible, CloudFormation, modular design, remote state, drift detection |
| Containers & K8s | Docker, EKS, AKS, GKE, Helm, auto-scaling, blue-green, zero-downtime updates |
| Monitoring | Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, metrics & alerts, MTTR reduction |
| Security | Secret scanning, RBAC, IAM, Vault, OPA |
| Cost Optimization | FinOps, EC2 benchmarking, autoscaling, resource cleanup |
| Multi-cloud | AWS, Azure, hybrid cloud, failover, DNS routing, backup plans |
| Leadership | Mentoring teams, strategic thinking, cross-team DevOps advocacy |
All challenges are written using the STAR method: Situation → Task → Action → Result
This repository is perfect for:
- 🧑💻 DevOps Engineers & SREs preparing for senior interviews or handling production-scale systems.
- 📊 Tech Leads & Architects designing fault-tolerant, scalable, and secure infrastructures.
- 🧪 Junior Engineers who want to learn from real-world mistakes and patterns.
- 🤝 HR & Hiring Managers evaluating hands-on DevOps expertise, leadership, and outcomes.
✅ All stories are real — drawn from personal experience at KAUST, AIOps Vision, and high-scale platforms.
✅ Every scenario includes tools used, decisions made, and lessons learned.
✅ Combines technical + soft skills for full DevOps leadership readiness.
- 📜 eBook Version: "Real DevOps Challenges from the Field"
- 🎥 Video Series: Crisis handling & solution breakdowns
- 🧩 Templates: Terraform modules, Helm charts, CI/CD YAMLs
Wahba Hamdi Moussa
Senior DevOps Engineer | Azure DevOps Expert | Cloud Infrastructure | CI/CD Automation | DevSecOps
🔗 GitHub Profile • 📫 Contact: [[email protected]]
MIT License — use and share freely with credit.