What is DevOps?
DevOps is a combination of two terms.
· Development
· Operations
It’s a collaboration between the development and IT operations to make the workflow most efficient. On a wider view, DevOps is responsible to provide a bridge between the development tasks such as designing, coding, implementation, and IT operation tasks such as managing the servers on which the application is deployed, carrying out all other tasks which keep up the execution of software development and deployment.
After this introduction to DevOps, we are good to go ahead to the next sections of the article to absorb more knowledge related to DevOps.The interesting fact to note about DevOps is that most of the aspects came from Agile methodology. It is intended to reduce the software development life cycle and provide continuous software releases and quality updates.
Different stages in DevOps
DevOps is broken down into seven stages which are described in this section. You may find a bit more or fewer stages but the general concepts remain the same.
1. Continuous Development
This phase comprises of planning and development of software. Out of these two, planning comes first and includes the vision of the project and feasibility, etc. Then comes the development or coding stage which required several tools to maintain the code. Although, the planning stage does not require any tool.
2. Continuous Integration
Most important and core stage of DevOps is continuous integration in which code changes are committed on regular intervals such as daily, weekly, or biweekly, etc.
Developers and operations team are not only responsible for merging the new changes with existing code but also performs unit testing, code review, packaging, and integration testing.
3. Continuous Testing
In this phase, some testing tools are used to perform automated testing as well as some sort of manual testing. Docker and containers are used to simulate the testing environment. Selenium, TestNG, and tools like Junit are used by the Quality Assurance team to test the functionality of software after pushing a new build. Automation testing saves a lot of time and manpower. Automation plays a vital role in DevOps, therefore, we have explained it later in the article.
4. Continuous Monitoring
As DevOps is a combination of multiple techies within the organizations so, continuous monitoring is also a stage of DevOps where the functionality of a software is monitored to identify the problematic area. It can be through documentation; data manipulation and memory logs are followed.
Availability of services and security aspects of the application are ensured in this stage of DevOps.
5. Continuous Feedback
With the more flow of continuous feedback between the operational team and developers, the result will be closer to the target. The continuous monitoring stage extends to this feedback stage and makes the software more bugs-free, precise (remove unnecessary items) and attract more users towards it.
6. Continuous Deployment
New code is pushed to the production and deployed to the servers continuously at this stage of DevOps. It is ensured that every production server of the application is containing the same build of the code. Several deployment tools are used in this stage. They will be discussed in the next sections.
7. Continuous Operations
The whole DevOps is summarized into this stage that is maintaining the continuity in the whole process of release so that the organization can pay heed towards more productive tasks rather than doing the release and operations tasks manually.
Tools used for DevOps and why they are needed
We have collected the best DevOps tools required by the Developers and operations team. They are manipulated in the following table with their description and use.
Tool Name | Description/Need |
Jenkins | Continuous integration server that automates the build cycle of software. Automatically commit code, run test cases, and fetch reports. |
Docker | Docker is the main component of containerization that runs the application irrespective of the environment. |
Phantom | Phantom is more about making the software secure from security threats using techniques such as device quarantine and file detonation. |
Nagios | Nagios is also like Phantom and it monitors the routers, servers, switches, and other network devices. Alert the user in case of failure. |
Vagrant | Used to manage and work with virtual machines in a single flow. Users can share the environment with other users in which the software is running. |
Ansible | Used to push new changes in the system and configure new devices. Chef and Puppet are its competitors but Ansible is far more simple and lightweight for CPU. |
Sentry | Error and bug detection tool. It scans lines of code and sends notifications. It also suggests the possible solution for the problem it identifies. |
Selenium | Selenium is a widely used testing tool for web applications without the need to learn and write scripts. It ensures cross-browser compatibility of the web application. |
TestNG | Automated testing tool, generates reports and allows to know about failed and passed test cases. |
Junit | Just like TestNG but it makes end-to-end testing easier. It uses annotations. |
GitHub | Just like GitHub but offers a private repository free of cost. Used to manage project code along with integrations like Trello, Jira, and CI/CD functionality. |
Tip: Containerization is a process of creating the same environment at the development and staging stages which is just like the production. It is carried out using containers and includes all the dependencies and packages as they are required in production. It helps to fully test the application at the development and staging phases and releasing a bug-free version on production.
