New to DevOps?

What is it?
In simple words, DevOps means the cross-department integration between Development (the department creating the code) and Operations (the department using that code). The “Dev” in DevOps refers to developers in particular, while “Ops” refers to System administrators, Systems engineers, Operations staff, Release engineers, DBAs, Network engineers, Security professionals, etc. Through a set of software development practices, it unifies (or rather links) development and operations to create a spectrum of activity in which everyone can participate set of software development practices.However, DevOps is not just simply combining Development & Operations teams, nor is it a tool, product or automation. It rather is a change in your organizational culture, a process of continuous learning and improvement, aimed to increase productivity and efficiency.

How it works?
The logo for DevOps is Infinity, which can be interpreted to mean ‘Never-ending’ or ‘Continuous’. To understand how it works we have to understand its life cycle which can be categorized into 5 different stages:

1.Continuous Development: This stage involves setting the vision in motion, by planning and coding of the application. There are a number of tools available for coding. The code can be written in any language but is maintained using version control tools such as Git, SVN(Subversion) and Jira, and tools like Ant, Maven, Gradle for building/ packaging the code into an executable file

2.Continuous Testing: The next step should rightly be testing the application for bugs and performance. Automation Testing would be a better choice rather than Manual Testing since they can help with saving on time and efforts. Tools like Selenium, TestNG, JUnit/ NUnit are used to automate the execution of test.

3.Continuous Integration: This stage plays a major role during the first release, Continuous integration tools play a major role in keeping the DevOps structure together; Jenkins, Bamboo and Hudson to name a few. Jenkins, however, is the most popular tool.

4.Continuous Deployment: At this stage, the code is deployed to the production environment. Here we come across Configuration management tools or containerization tools, without which DevOps would be incomplete. Most Popular Configuration Management tools are – Puppet, Chef, Ansible, and SaltStack and are responsible for releasing deployments and enabling consistent configurations across all servers. Most popular Containerization tool is Docker and is responsible for eliminating chances of errors and failures, and maintaining consistency across the environments.

5.Continuous Monitoring: This is a crucial stage aimed at improving the quality of the software by monitoring its performance and to detect any bugs that may have escaped the testing phase. Most popular monitoring tools are: Splunk, ELK Stack, Sensu, Nagios NewRelic and are used in Jenkins. Any major issues found could be reported to the development team so that it can be fixed. These DevOps stages are carried out on loop continuously until the desired product quality is achieved.



Benefits of DevOps
Faster Delivery: When the development and operations team work together applications can be created at a more faster rate. In a competitive business world, this is crucial since the success of a company is based on its ability to innovate and develop faster than its competitors.

Reduced Errors: The shorter development cycles incorporate frequent code releases which make it easier for the code and programming defects to be spotted. Rollbacks (returning to a known-good state in the deployment stage) is easier to manage. And the recovery time is shorter since both the development and operations team work together to fix the issue.

Better Team & Communication: In the DevOps software development culture, the focus is more on overall performance than on individual goals. It ensures that the development and operations team are not working in silos and are involved in working closely right from the planning phase. Cross-skilling and collaboration on projects helps in team bonding and personal growth.

Higher Efficiency: DevOps focuses on a number of tools for each of its stages to simplify work and also automate them, so that the work will be completed much faster resulting in Continuous software delivery, lesser complexity to manage, faster resolution of problems, and more time for innovation.

It would be reasonable to describe DevOps as a journey rather than a destination. Increasingly, large traditional enterprises are embracing DevOps culture to better address market needs and lead in the competition and achieve significant advantages as they adopt DevOps processes and tools. Automated tools that support DevOps continue to evolve and much has been accomplished since the inception of DevOps and we can expect to see even more in 2019 and in the years to come.