Introduction to DevOps

The term DevOps refers to a combination of two processes, i.e., development and operations, in a typical software company. DevOps has become an essential practice in software companies to improve their software delivery speed, reliability, and quality.

This blog covers the introduction to DevOps and its principles. It will also explore the tools and technologies used in DevOps, provide an understanding of continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD), and discuss the importance of monitoring and feedback in a typical DevOps environment.

The need for DevOps#

DevOps was developed as a result of problems that emerged from long-standing workplace practices of having siloed teams for development, testing, and operations in relation to any single product. For instance, in a company with conventional processes, the product code will be written by the engineering team, then handed off to the quality assurance (testing) team to check the product’s functionality, and finally, sent to the operations team so that they can deliver the software release to the client.

The problem with this technique is that each team's priorities, tasks, and timelines vary and don’t align with the surrounding teams, making this siloed structure less efficient. On the contrary, the main purpose of DevOps is to make the development cycle more cohesive. So, these separate teams are merged into a single team with the help of the DevOps approach. In particular, alongside product development, testing may occur automatically and frequently throughout the process, and long-term maintenance may involve all groups.

Compared to a siloed software delivery process, the DevOps lifecycle is more integrative. In particular, the deployment of products and updates occurs continuously as opposed to the traditional rigid, linear process. Since the engineering and operations teams all work as a single entityt, each member should be comfortable with every step of the process, from the initial conception to software quality evaluations to understanding user experience.

Furthermore, DevOps culture offers enhanced team efficiency, increased release speed, and better feedback mechanisms which will be discussed in detail later in this blog.

DevOps principles#

The core principlesPrinciples are good ideas or good values stated in a context-independent manner. at work in DevOps can be divided into the following:

Collaboration: To enhance communication, decrease friction, and promote shared responsibility for software delivery, DevOps lays emphasis on collaboration between development and operations teams.

Continuous improvement: Since DevOps is an iterative process, it requires continuous improvement to acquire better results. DevOps engineers emphasize identifying areas of improvement, testing new ideas, and measuring their impact on the software delivery pipeline.

Automation: DevOps emphasizes automating as much as possible to cut down time spent on repetitive and time-consuming tasks and speed up deployment. For instance, a DevOps team might automate testing processes to give developers early and frequent feedback.

DevOps practices#

The main practicesPractices are applications of these principles stated in a context-dependent way. which define DevOps are as follows:

Continuous integration (CI): Refers to the process of integrating fixes and feedback from stakeholders continually into a product. This might mean automating processes in which fixes are integrated and fostering a culture that encourages continuous integration.

Continuous delivery (CD): This is a process that automatically integrates changes into a product (mostly the code) to keep it in a constantly deployable state. Therefore, the code can be deployed in short time frames (daily, weekly, and so on.)

Once a product is launched, continuous deployment takes these practices one step further by adding a routine of real-time monitoring, testing, and updating.

Releasing smaller and more frequent product updates that are responsive to customer feedback is common in DevOps environments instead of labor-intensive, large-scale upgrades that siloed teams might deploy.

DevOps tools#

To automate different stages in a DevOps process, several tools are used. A few are mentioned below:

Conclusion#

We hope you have enjoyed reading this blog as much as we did in writing it.