DevOps brings together development and operations teams. In order to create a faster and more streamlined delivery system, tools, people, and processes work together under the DevOps umbrella.
Software tools and automation tools can increase productivity and efficiency by using agile workplace methods and continuous product development, testing, and delivery.
Choosing The Right DevOps Tools
The right DevOps tools can streamline your next app build. Don’t think about finding the tool. It is more likely building a tool set using a variety of integrated software solutions that can projects across your functional units throughout the production cycle.
The first step is about figuring out your needs. It helps to break the development cycle into its parts and look for solutions that will work best at each phase. Many solutions will work across phases or integrate with other software.
The Development Cycle
1. Plan
2. Build
3. Continuous Integration and Testing
4. Deployment
5. Operate
6. Feedback
7. Then it starts all over again
In the planning phase, team members have to be able to share ideas and create a framework for the common goal. The building phase includes the development of the code against virtual duplicates to speed up production. Continuous integration and testing provide consistent and immediate feedback as code is merged. With automatic testing tools, it can happen nearly continuously.
Deployment can also be automated. Reliable and frequent updates can speed the time it takes to get to market while integrating feedback for product improvements. The operating phase uses application and server performance monitoring to make sure everything runs smoothly. Continuous feedback determines what other improvements need to be made. Then, the cycle starts over again.
DevOps Tools To Streamline Your App Build
Here are some of the more widely used tools across the phases of the development cycle.
Git works efficiently in the collaboration and planning phase and is particularly useful for managing remote teams. It is used for tracking team progress against projects. It can save multiple version of source code which allows teams to develop “branching” versions of the code without compromising the bigger project.
Some DevOps teams use Slack or Basecamp to communicate and collaborate as well. Each allows for instant chat while providing a repository for sharing information.
Jenkins is an open-source DevOps automated tool. It is highly customizable and takes on many of the time-consuming and tedious tasks. This frees up staff time for other tasks and helps reduce manual errors. It allows for measurement at each stage of your automated pipeline to quickly identify problems.
Bamboo is a CI/CD server solution. It works from code development through to deployment delivery and accommodates continuous integration. You can run fixes and builds continuously. While similar to Jenkins, it takes less time to configure due to more pre-built functionalities.
JFrog Artifact Repository is the only repository manager that supports all major package formats, including Docker, Git, NPM, Gradle, Vagrant, Ruby, Python, and more. It talks to different technologies to increase productivity and promote the integration of automation.
Docker allows for agile operations and integrates container security. It works for both legacy applications and cloud-native apps. By automating app deployment, it makes for smoother distributed deployment. Docker containers are platform independent using virtual machine environments.
Puppet Enterprise is used by large-scale teams for configuration management. It automates your infrastructure management process and allows for management of multiple coding and asset teams. Puppet can be used for small teams to manage infrastructure as well.
The building tool Gradle can be used for coding in C++, Java, Python, and other languages. It is used by Google as Android Studio’s official build tool. It is a powerful build tool but has a somewhat steep learning curve for new users.
You may also need to deploy separate tools for feedback and issue tracking.
DevOps Integration Streamlines The Process
As you can see, some of these DevOps tools integrate with others. Some provide plug-ins that can help with integration. Ultimately, which tools you use depends on your team and your workflow.
Integrating DevOps approaches in software development can dramatically streamline the process. You will accelerate the timetable and get products to market faster. It provides the platform for more frequent releases and increased deployment speeds. That can help you be more responsive to customer feedback and evolve more quickly to market needs.
Agile DevOps teams also play a significant role in security. When a bug or security risk has been identified, agile DevOps systems have a fast way to patch a problem and push the solution out to end-users. This lessens vulnerabilities and limits risk.
