Introduction
Are you a newbie to the world of software development? Or a curious mind who wants to explore more about technology? If yes, then we are sure you've probably come across a lot of terminology and phrases that might be confusing and even daunting, and DevOps is one such term that you might have heard before. But what exactly is DevOps? How does it benefit us? Here, in this blog, we will give you insights into what is DevOps and explain how it works.
What Does DevOps Mean?
DevOps is a term that combines two words: development and operations. DevOps is a method of managing the full application development life cycle, including development, testing, deployment, and operations, by a single team. The goal of DevOps is to shorten the development life cycle of a system while providing features, repairs, and updates on a regular basis that are closely aligned with business goals. DevOps is a software development process that allows for the rapid and reliable development of high-quality software. Continuous development, continuous integration, continuous testing, continuous deployment, and continuous monitoring are some of the steps.
Now that you know what is DevOps, let's have a look at why DevOps matters:
Why Is DevOps Important?
Customer satisfaction and faster delivery of value are at the core of DevOps. It not only helps overcome communication barriers and collaboration issues between IT and Development departments, but it also enhances corporate innovation and continuous improvement of the process.
Due to DevOps, the delivery of business values to its end customers becomes faster, better, and more secure. The highest levels of quality and security can be measured on the basis of how early a new product or feature has reached end-users. It can also be connected with how easily an issue is detected, fixed, and re-released.
System administrators played an important role in the development of DevOps. DevOps has grown to include some of the top enterprise systems management (ESM) methods since then. Essentials like automation and system monitoring are among these practices, which are just a few of the many elements that are necessary for successful software development.
Now, let us get into the various methods of DevOps.
DevOps Methods
Businesses can go for a few popular DevOps approaches to speed up product releases. The most popularly used DevOps methods are Scrum, Kanban, and Agile.
Scrum: Scrum outlines how teammates should merge to speed up growth and quality assurance projects. The procedures of Scrum include defined responsibilities, as well as critical routines and vocabulary (interval training, time boxes, scrum meetings).
Kanban: It was mainly developed as a result of Toyota's factory floor efficiencies. As per Kanban, the situation software project work in progress (WIP) should be measured on a Kanban board.
Agile: Earlier, DevOps tools were highly influenced by agile software development methods. It is incorporated into several DevOps approaches, such as Scrum and Kanban. For instance, Agile approaches such as documenting needs for user stories, organizing daily standups, and incorporating constant client feedback, are all linked to increased responsiveness to changing demands and requirements. Agile also recommends shorter software development lifecycles over the longer, older "waterfall" methodologies.
DevOps Toolchain
DevOps practitioners frequently include specific DevOps-friendly tools in DevOps "toolchain." The aim of these toolchains is to improve the workflow of software delivery. For this, it streamlines, shortens, and automates the various steps. The tools also support DevOps principles such as automating, coordination, and interaction between development and operations teams. Below are the different stages of the DevOps lifecycle wherein different tools of DevOps are utilized to make the process smooth, fast, and effective.
Plan: This stage aids in the definition of business value and requirements. Jira or Git are examples of programs that can be used to track known issues and manage projects.
Code: This phase calls for the generation of software code and the design of the software. GitHub, Stash, Bitbucket, GitLab, etc., are some examples of tools.
Build: At this stage, one needs to handle software builds and versions. Furthermore, automated tools are used to assemble and package code for the ultimate production release. Plus, source code or package repositories are used that also "package" the infrastructure required for product distribution. Ansible, Puppet, Docker, Chef, Maven, JFrog Artifactory, and Gradle are some examples of tools.
Test: Continuous testing (human or automated) is carried out throughout this phase to ensure the highest possible code quality. JUnit, Vagrant, Codeception, Selenium, TestNG, and BlazeMeter are some examples of test tools.
Deploy: Tools to organize, coordinate, schedule, and automate product releases into production can be included in this phase. OpenShift, OpenStack, Puppet, Jenkins, Kubernetes, Chef, Ansible, Docker, and Jira are some examples of tools.
Operate: During this stage, software management is done during the manufacturing process. Chef, Ansible, Salt, Puppet, PowerShell, and Otter are some examples of tools.
Monitor: During this stage, issues from a specific software release that is currently in use must be identified and information is gathered about it. New Relic, Datadog, Grafana, Wireshark, Splunk, Nagios, or Slack are a few examples of tools.
DevOps Practices
The concepts of automation and continual improvement are reflected in DevOps approaches. Many methods concentrate on one or more stages of the development cycle. These techniques consist of:
Continuous development:
The DevOps lifecycle's planning and coding phases are covered by this approach. There are high chance that version-control techniques are involved in it.
Continuous testing:
Automated, planned, and ongoing code testing is used in this procedure when application code is created or changed. The delivery of code to production can be accelerated by these tests.
Continuous integration (CI):
In order to measure how much of the code being produced is production-ready, this method combines configuration management (CM) technologies with additional test and development tools. To quickly find and fix code errors, it incorporates rapid feedback between testing and development.
Continuous delivery:
This procedure automates the delivery of code modifications to a preproduction or staging environment after the testing is done. Then, a member of staff can opt to push such code alterations into production.
Continuous deployment (CD):
This approach automates the release of new or updated code into production, same as continuous delivery. Code or feature updates may be released numerous times daily by a corporation using continuous deployment. By assisting in maintaining code consistency across many deployment platforms and environments, container technologies like Docker and Kubernetes can enable continuous deployment.
Infrastructure as code:
This method can be used to automatically provide the infrastructure needed for a software release during different DevOps phases. From within their current development tools, developers add infrastructure "code." For instance, Developers could use OpenShift, Kubernetes, or Docker to generate storage volumes on demand. Additionally, this procedure enables operations teams to keep track of changes, monitor environment configurations, and streamline configuration rollback.
DevOps Engineer looks after all these steps and ensures that all the processes are performed without any delay and challenges.
Benefits Of DevOps
DevOps practitioners offer a slew of business and technical advantages, many of which can lead to happy customers. DevOps has some advantages, such as:
- Improved and quicker product delivery
- Quicker problem resolution and less complexity
- Improved availability and scalability
- More reliable working conditions
- Improved use of resources
- Increased automation
- Greater transparency of system results
- Enhanced creativity
Closing Up
DevOps, is no doubt, one of the most in-demand skills same as Data Science. If you want to make a career in the most in-demand skills, Fingertips have the ideal training program that is tailored to your requirements. Through this training, your skills will help you meet the demands of the most recent market trends, thanks to our top-notch instructors. Live instructor-led training, industry use cases, and hands-on live projects are included in these courses. You also have access to Free Mock Interviews, Job and Certification Support from Certified Trainers, and more. A future-proof career is waiting for you; enroll now!
