Remember the earlier days when your development and operations team used to be on a tug-off war to complete a project? Thanks to DevOps, a lot has changed since those days when the integration between the two teams ended up in project delays and sling matches.
While DevOps as a concept is great, the remarkable tools deployed at each stage bring results to the table. There are several DevOps automation tools today, and each has a particular job at different stages of the development process. Let's segregate them and explore them individually to understand their use case.
However, before that, here are some basics:
DevOps amalgamates development and operations, resulting in a more agile software development methodology. It provides a competitive advantage, a much-needed aspect for on-time and quality deliveries of applications and products.
In short, DevOps is a combination of software development and operations. Both these aspects co-exist and can create confusion if not working in harmony. Hence, combining them to form a streamlined process is the most innovative method of ensuring quality product delivery in a record time.
Applying an automotive feedback system and iterative improvement to conceive, create, and deliver quality software ducts is called DevOps automation and the tools used to do so are referred to as DevOps automation tools.
When you have two critical teams of a project working together in tandem, the goal is already within your reach. That's what DevOps does for your organization- making your targets a bit closer to achieving quality and timely deliveries.
To make it a bit more explicit, here are some of the benefits of DevOps automation:
.webp)
Since they bring many advantages to the table, DevOps has become indispensable to an organization looking to deliver quality products in record time. It's necessary, however, to deploy the right DevOps automation tools to make it work.
DevOps automation tools are a vital element of the DevOps methodology. They help companies implement DevOps practices and principles while rendering them more efficient. These solutions automate crucial parts of the software development lifecycle, facilitate collaboration between development and operations teams, and enhance the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the software delivery process.
Each stage in the Automated DevOps process employs a unique tool to ensure operational accuracy. Below is a list of devices based on their use-case at different stages of DevOps.
Source Code Management (SCM) or Version Control in software development is tracking and managing source code changes. It is an essential part of the software development lifecycle for backup, tracking, and recovery. Some of the DevOps automation tools used in it include:
Git: Git is the most famous and widely used distributed version control system. It allows multiple programmers to work on a project simultaneously and effectively tracks changes.
GitHub: GitHub is a web platform for storing Git repositories. It has tools for reviewing code, tracking problems, and working with other developers.
GitLab: GitLab is yet another web-based platform for Git repository hosting. It provides a complete DevOps platform, including CI/CD, project management, and a container registry.
Azure DevOps: Azure DevOps is a package of tools for source code management, CI/CD, and project planning. It supports Git repositories and integrates with Microsoft's development tools.
Bitbucket: Bitbucket is a Git and Mercurial repository hosting platform with code collaboration and CI/CD integration tools. Teams that require strong connections with other Atlassian technologies, such as Jira and Confluence, frequently use it.
AWS CodeCommit: AWS Code Commit is a fully managed source code control solution for hosting Git repositories. It connects to other AWS services and offers a secure and scalable source code management solution.
Some other tools, including Subversion (SVN), Mercurial, etc., are used in source code management.
Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Deployment (CD) are vital elements of the DevOps approach. They are essential in automating and optimizing the software development and delivery process, promoting collaboration, and assuring on-time release of the product. Some of the tools used in CI/CD include:
An open-source automation server extensively used for CI/CD, Jenkins allows for integrating a large variety of plugins and utilities.
CircleCI is a cloud-based CI/CD platform for developing, testing and delivering applications. It supports several languages and integrates seamlessly with popular version control systems.
It is a cloud-based CI/CD service noted for its simplicity and ease of use. CI Travis integrates seamlessly with GitHub repositories.
Bamboo is an Atlassian CI/CD tool that works effectively with other products. It helps with the development, testing, and deployment of code updates.
A product of JetBrains, the CI/CD server TeamCity allows for building, testing, and deployment. It provides strong support for .NET projects and other programming languages.
GitHub Activities is an integrated CI/CD operation within GitHub repositories. It allows for the automation of build, test, and deployment procedures.
Other CI/CD integration tools include Drone, Spinnaker, Concourse CI, etc.
A vital part of the DevOps methodology, continuous testing makes sure that software is tested thoroughly and continuously throughout the software development lifecycle (SDLC). It entails performing automated tests often and early in development to discover problems and verify the program satisfies quality and performance standards.
Some of the tools involved in continuous testing include:
JUnit is a popular Java testing framework for unit testing. It is extensively used for testing Java applications.
Selenium is an open-source tool for automated web browser testing. It supports several programming languages and browsers, making it popular for web application testing.
A behavior-driven development (BDD) tool, Cucumber allows tests to be written in a human-readable format. It is frequently used for acceptance testing and communication between technical and non-technical team members.
Appium is a free and open-source mobile app automation solution for iOS, Android, and Windows. It allows for cross-platform mobile testing.
JIRA:
While JIRA is primarily an issue-tracking and project management tool, it also provides powerful test management tools that help teams organize, plan, and manage testing efforts inside the development workflow.
NG Test is a testing framework inspired by JUnit but with extra capabilities such as parallel test execution, data-driven testing, and configurable test configurations.
Some other tools in the continuous testing segment include Apache JMeter, Sauce Labs, Test Complete, BrowserStack, and many more.
Continuous monitoring in DevOps involves real-time observation, measurement, and assessment of software applications and infrastructure's health, performance, security, and compliance. It provides constant insight and input into development, deployment, and operations, aligning with DevOps ideals. Below are some notable tools that help in continuous monitoring:
An open-source monitoring and alerting toolkit, Prometheus focuses on scalability and dependability. It collects metrics from many services and provides a query language for analysis.
ELK Stack [Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana]:
Elasticsearch is an analytics and search engine that stores and searches log data. The Logstash is a data pipeline that receives, processes, and transmits log data to Elasticsearch. Kibana, however, is a visualization tool that offers a web interface for analyzing and viewing log data.
Grafana is a frequently used open-source monitoring and observability platform. It connects to various data sources, such as Prometheus, InfluxDB, and Elasticsearch.
A cloud-based monitoring and observability platform, New Relic gives real-time insights into application performance and infrastructure. It also provides application and server monitoring and APM (Application Performance Monitoring).
Splunk is a tool for searching, monitoring, and analyzing machine-generated real-time data, including logs. Splunk has comprehensive log management and analysis capabilities.
Datadog is a cloud-based tool for monitoring and analytics and enables full-stack observability, such as infrastructure monitoring, log management, and APM.
While DevOps aids in efficient operations and accelerating corporate OKRs, selecting the right tools to support the endeavor is also critical. DevOps technologies must align with the organization's goals, necessitating careful analysis. The best way forward is to hire the top DevOps engineers and teams to ensure they select the best DevOps automation solutions to meet your objectives. Hiring competent programmers is the first step toward dependable and timely software delivery.
