DevOps is a combination of practices, methodologies, and tools that aims to bridge the gap between software development and IT operations. The term “DevOps” is derived from the words “development” and “operations.”
The primary goal is to create a culture of collaboration and shared responsibility, where developers and operations teams work together throughout the entire software development lifecycle. This includes planning, coding, building, testing, releasing, deploying, and monitoring software applications.
The DevOps life cycle (7 Cs)
Popular DevOps Tools
| Version Control Systems | Git, SVN, Mercurial |
| Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD): | Jenkins, CircleCI, Travis CI, GitLab CI/CD |
| Configuration Management | Ansible, Chef, Puppet, SaltStack |
| Containerization | Terraform, CloudFormation |
| Infrastructure as Code (IaC): | Terraform, CloudFormation |
| Automated Testing | Selenium, JUnit, TestNG, Mocha, Jest |
| Monitoring and Logging: | Prometheus, Grafana, ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) |
| Collaboration and Communication | Slack, Microsoft Teams, Jira, Trello |
| Cloud Platforms: | Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) |
Key Principles and Practices of DevOps
- Continuous Integration (CI): Developers frequently integrate their code changes into a shared repository, allowing automated builds and tests to be executed. CI helps identify and resolve integration issues early in the development process.
- Continuous Delivery (CD): The ability to deliver software changes to production environments rapidly, reliably, and frequently. CD automates the release process, enabling faster time-to-market and reducing the risk of deployment errors.
- Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Managing infrastructure resources (such as servers, networks, and storage) through machine-readable configuration files, enabling automation, reproducibility, and version control.
- Automated Testing: Automated tests are performed throughout the development process to identify defects and ensure the software meets quality standards. This includes unit tests, integration tests, and end-to-end tests.
- Continuous Deployment: Automating the deployment of applications to production environments after passing all necessary tests and checks. This ensures a smooth and repeatable deployment process.
- Monitoring and Logging: Collecting and analyzing real-time data about the application’s performance, user behavior, and system health. Monitoring and logging help identify issues, measure performance, and improve the overall user experience.
DevOps is a culture, practice, and set of tools that aims to unify the development (Dev) and operations (Ops) of software applications. It enables teams to collaborate better, deliver faster, and improve quality and reliability of their products
Some of the key aspects are:
- Agile planning and tracking
- Continuous integration and delivery
- Cloud-based hosting and deployment
- Automated testing and monitoring
- Version control and code reviews
- Package management and artifact sharing
DevOps is not the same as Agile, but they are complementary. Agile is a software development framework that focuses on delivering value to customers in small increments. DevOps extends Agile principles to the entire application lifecycle, from planning to operation
Further Readings
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/cloud-computing-dictionary/what-is-devops/
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/devops/
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/devops/what-is-devops
11 DevOps Tools for 2023 | Coursera
DevOps Lifecycle: 7 Phases Explained in Detail with Examples (simform.com)
