What is DevOps?
The DevOps methodology, a software and team management approach defined by the portmanteau of Development and Operations, was first coined in 2009 and has since become a buzzword concept in the IT field.
DevOps has come to mean many things to each individual who uses the term as DevOps is not a singularly defined standard, software, or process but more of a culture. Gartner defines DevOps as:
“DevOps represents a change in IT culture, focusing on rapid IT service delivery through the adoption of agile, lean practices in the context of a system-oriented approach. DevOps emphasizes people (and culture), and seeks to improve collaboration between operations and development teams. DevOps implementations utilize technology—especially automation tools that can leverage an increasingly programmable and dynamic infrastructure from a life cycle perspective.”
As you can see from the above definition, DevOps is a multi-faceted approach to the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), but its main underlying strength is how it leverages technology and software to streamline this process. So with the right approach to DevOps, notably adopting its philosophies of co-operation and implementing the right tools, your business can increase deployment frequency by a factor of 30 and lead times by a factor of 8000 over traditional methods, according to a CapGemini survey.
The Right Tools for the Job
This list is designed to be as comprehensive as possible. The article comprises both very well established tools for those who are new to the DevOps methodology and those tools that are more recent releases to the market—either way there is bound to be a tool on here that can be an asset for you and your business. For those who already live and breathe DevOps, we hope you find something that will assist you in your growing enterprise.
With such a litany of tools to choose from, there is no “right” answer to what tools you should adopt. No single tool will cover all your needs, and will be deployed across a variety of development and Operational teams, so let’s break down what you need to consider before choosing what tool might work for you.
- Plan and collaborate: Before you even begin the SDLC, your business needs to have a cohesive idea of what tools they’ll need to implement across your teams. There are even DevOps tools that can assist you with this first crucial step.
- Build: Here you want tools that create identically provisioned environments. The last you need is to hear “But it works for me on my computer”
- Automation: This has quickly become a given in DevOps, but automation will always drastically increase production over manual methods.
- Continuous Integration: Tools need to provide constant and immediate feedback, several times a day but not all integrations are implemented equally, will the tool you select be right for the job?
- Deployment: Deployments need to be kept predictable, smooth and reliable with minimal risks, automation will also play a big part in this process.
With all that in mind, I hope this selection of tools will aid you as your business continues to expand into the DevOps lifestyle.
Tools Categories List:
Continuous Integration and Delivery
Infrastructure As Code
**1. **AWS CloudFormation
AWS CloudFormation is an absolute must if you are currently working, or planning to work, in the AWS Cloud. CloudFormation allows you to model your AWS infrastructure and provision all your AWS resources swiftly and easily. All of this is done within a JSON or YAML template file and the service comes with a variety of automation features ensuring your deployments will be predictable, reliable, and manageable.
Link: https://aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/
**2. **Azure Resource Manager
Azure Resource Manager (ARM) is Microsoft’s answer to an all encompassing IAC tool. With its ARM templates, described within JSON files, Azure Resource Manager will provision your infrastructure, handle dependencies, and declare multiple resources via a single template.
Link: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/features/resource-manager/
**3. **Google Cloud Deployment Manager
Much like the tools mentioned above, Google Cloud Deployment Manager is Google’s IAC tool for the Google Cloud Platform. This tool utilizes YAML for its config files, and JINJA2 or PYTHON for its templates. Some of its notable features are synchronistic deployment and ‘preview’, allowing you an overhead view of changes before they are committed.
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