WHAT IS DevOps? DevOps practices enable multiple teams (Development, Operations, IT, Quality & Security) to better coordinate their efforts to produce superior products, faster. We hope you find this article, DevOps – A Super Brief Introduction, interesting and helpful.
BENEFITS OF DevOps? DevOps practices enable High-Performing Teams to increase customer satisfaction & facilitate:
- Accelerated Time-to-Market
- Improved Adaptation to Market & Competition
- Maintenance of System Reliability
- Improved Mean Time of Recovery
DevOps APPLICATION LIFECYCLE
DevOps has four phases; PLAN, DEVELOP, DELIVER & OPERATE. Each phase is involved with & relies upon the others to some extent.
PLAN
During the Plan Phase, DevOps teams define & describe the applications & systems to be built. Progress is tracked at low & high levels of granularity – from single-products tasks to tasks that span portfolios of multiple products. Planning methods include creating backlogs, bug tracking, agile software dev with Scrum, dashboards, etc.
DEVELOP
During the Develop Phase, the DevOps team writes, tests, reviews & integrate the code. This includes building the code into build artifacts usable in multiple environments. To increase the pace of development, the DevOps teams use a variety of productivity & automation tools & practice continuous integration using automated testing.
DELIVER
Deploying applications into production environments in a consistent & reliable way is what makes DevOps so powerful. During the Deliver Phase, the DevOps team clearly defines the release management process, which include manual approval stages. Automation helps make these processes scalable, repeatable & controllable as the applications move between development phases.
OPERATE
During the Operate Phase, applications in production environments are maintained, monitored & troubleshot/diagnosed as necessary. By adopting DevOps, teams work to ensure high system reliability & availability while aiming to achieve zero downtime. DevOps teams endeavor to identify & mitigate issues before they affect the customer experience.
THE DevOps CULTURE
Cultivating a DevOps culture begins with the people within it. When organizations commit to DevOps they can create the opportunity for high-performing teams to develop, which enables automation & process optimization through technology.
DevOps PRACTICES
Real implementation of DevOps helps to accelerate, automate & improve specific practices during the application lifecycle.
CONTINUOUS INTEGRATION (CI) & CONTINUOUS DELIVERY (CD)
Configuration management tools help development teams roll out changes in a systematic, controlled fashion, which reduces the risk of system modification. These tools also enable dev teams to track system state & configuration drift. Practiced in conjunction with Infrastructure as Code (IaC), system definition & configuration are easily templated & automated.
DevOps & THE CLOUD
The adoption of The Cloud has transformed the way development teams build, deploy & operate applications. By adopting DevOps practices, development teams have a great opportunity to improve & better serve their customers.
Cloud Agility
Development teams can quickly configure & provision cloud environments & gain great agility in deployment of apps. No longer do teams have to buy, configure & maintain physical servers. Teams can very quickly create complex cloud environments & shut down when no longer needed.
Kubernetes
More applications are using containers & Kubernetes is viewed as the industry solution for containers at scale. Automating the process of building & deploying containers with CI/CD pipelines & monitoring these containers are essential practices in the age of Kubernetes.
Serverless Computing
Moving the management of infrastructure to the cloud provider enables development teams to focus on their apps. Serverless computing can run apps without the need to configure & maintain servers, while reducing the risk & complexity of deployment & operations.
STARTING THE DevOps JOURNEY
At first, DevOps can be a bit overwhelming. A key to success is to start small & to learn from the experiences of others. The Cloud App Developers teams have a enjoyed a great deal of success in building & deploying cloud apps & we are happy to guide & assist you in your business / digital transformation.
