What is DevOps?
DevOps is a methodology that helps both Software Development and Operation teams to work in collaboration and efficiently.
What all are important for DevOps?
DevOps Transformation includes People, Processes, Platform.
To add value to the goal of the customer, the stakeholders need to be identified. Highly motivated people with effective communication and collaboration skills are necessary. DevOps is all about improving processes that help improve value and delivery to the customers. There are many tools available for DevOps implementation, and the people involved need to choose suitable tools for the particular task. DevOps is not tools, but methodology.
The foundation hierarchy goes as below:
People > Process > Platform.
What is Automation?
Automation is minimizing manual work and digitizing the work and tasks with the help of tools. The main advantage of Automation is an increase in efficiency, saving time by automating repetitive tasks and decreasing errors.
What is Scaling?
Scaling is the ability of the systems to continue to function properly when changed in size and volume. One can opt for Upscaling or downscaling depending on the resource usage. Scalability helps in utilizing the resources efficiently which in turn reduces per-user cost.
What is Infrastructure?
IT Infrastructure also called Technology Infrastructure enables an organization to build and run applications. Traditional infrastructure includes hardware, data centers and servers that are manually configured and maintained. Cloud Infrastructure provides IT resources over the internet. There are many cloud service providers providing the innovations and advancements such as GCP, AWS, and Microsoft Azure.
IaC(Infrastructure as Code) and IaaS(Infrastructure as a Service) are choices when it comes to selecting a model for managing and deploying IT infrastructure.
IaC is a form of infrastructure management that commits an organization's infrastructure elements into text files within a version control system.
IaaS is a cloud-based infrastructure system, with servers, storage, compute and network systems all provided virtually over the internet.
DevOps Lifecycle
DevOps Lifecycle can be defined as the phases that involve the stages from planning to deploying and monitoring software.
DevOps lifecycle includes Continuous Development, Continuous Testing, Continuous Integration, Continuous Deployment and Continuous Monitoring.
Continuous Development: This phase involves the Planning and Coding of the software. No tools are required for planning, whereas there are several tools for maintaining the code such as Git, SVN etc. For packaging the code into executable file tools like Ant, Maven and Gradle are used.
Continuous Testing: The previously developed software is continuously tested for bugs. Automation testing tools like Selenium and TestNG are used for this phase of the lifecycle.
Continuous Integration: The most important phase of the lifecycle, where every new commit/change to the code is continuously integrated with existing code with the help of tools like Jenkins, Circle CI etc.
Continuous Deployment: The code is deployed to the production servers in this phase. Configuration Management(tools like Puppet, and Ansible) and Containerisation tools(tools like Docker and Vagrant) help in achieving CD.
Continuous Monitoring: In this phase, continuous monitoring of the performance of the application happens. If any errors are there with performance, the root cause is determined and helps in fixing the issue as soon as possible with the help of tools like Splunk, Nagios etc.
Why is DevOps important?
The usage of DevOps improves the SDLC to fasten the delivery to the customer. It increases efficiency and the team can be encouraged to innovate. Automation increases efficiency where previously the tasks that were time-consuming and repetitive, are now to be used with other important tasks that require attention.
With Iac and IaaS in action, the whole infrastructure can be managed as code. Continuous testing and integration which ensures faster development cycles ensure high reliability and scalability. Since DevOps has a customer-centric approach regular feedback and shortened time to market leads to fulfilling outcomes.