If you're a developer who hasn't done much work with operations, it can be quite confusing! After spending several days reading documentation and tutorials, I decided to write the overview I wish I'd been handed at the beginning. This guide starts with a simple example - running a Django app on your laptop - and works up to running automated deployments of multiple instances simultaneously on Amazon Web Services.
I learn by working with concrete examples, so this guide makes a lot of arbitrary technology choices as it goes. Obviously this guide will work best if you're familiar with Django and interested in AWS, but hopefully it's still somewhat useful for a Rails developer who wants to use Azure or what have you.
Of course, I may well be missing key concepts or have gotten something very wrong. Any comments, feedback, etc are appreciated.
Okay, let's get started.