DevOps is a set of best practices that combine both software development and IT operations in such a way as to shorten the development life cycle of applications. This practice also makes it possible to provide Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD).
What is CI/CD? It refers to a set of principles that enable development teams to deliver changes to code more frequently and reliably. CI/CD is often considered the heart of DevOps, as it allows teams to focus on better meeting demanding requirements, upping their code quality, and placing more focus on security.
Combined, DevOps and CI/CD make for a workflow/pipeline that is exponentially more efficient and reliable than the standard development models.
In this modern age of technology, however, it’s almost impossible to consider DevOps without adding Kubernetes into the mix.
What is Kubernetes?
Before we dive into how Kubernetes fits into your DevOps plans, we should first define this portion of the technology pipeline. Kubernetes is an open-source container management system that enables the automation of application deployment and scaling.
With Kubernetes, you can easily manage a cluster of nodes and manage the deployment of containers to those nodes. For those that aren’t familiar, a container is a self-contained application that can be deployed from any supporting platform, and a node is a machine to which a container can be deployed to. Kubernetes also helps to manage service discovery, load balancing, track resource allocation, scale based on utilization, monitor resource health, and enable the self-healing of deployed apps.
One very important aspect of Kubernetes is the ability to implement third-party applications (such as Helm and Flagger) to automate nearly every aspect of the building, deploying, and scaling of containers. It is that automation so many enterprises businesses covet.
By automating the CI/CD pipeline, your deployments run more efficiently. Although you might still depend on the outsourcing of quality assurance (such as the services offered by BairesDev), you’ll find those container deployments work incredibly well without interaction.
Fitting into DevOps
Now that you understand a bit about DevOps and Kubernetes, how do these two fit together? On the obvious level, developing an automated pipeline for deploying containers can’t be done by developers alone. Although developers are those who will be crafting the applications, they depend upon a solid IT infrastructure on which to deploy those applications.
Another aspect of container deployment that must be considered at every step is security. Because there are so many working parts to Kubernetes and CI/CD, it becomes easier for that pipeline to either break down or be vulnerable to security issues. To that end, both the IT operations and developers must work in concert to create a reliable and secure infrastructure on which to deploy those containers.
Kubernetes makes the management and automation of container deployment easy. But if the Ops portion of DevOps hasn’t delivered a solid pipeline, everything could fall apart. However, when the Dev and the Ops teams work in unison, Kubernetes can deliver a remarkable level of ease with application delivery and management.
By adding Kubernetes to DevOps, you create a simplified build/test/deploy pipeline. And by automating some of those processes, you take application reliability and efficiency to a level your DevOps team has probably never experienced.
With Kubernetes in your DevOps pipeline, you have:
– Developers who can build applications once that can run everywhere.
– Software QA that can more easily coordinate between test and production environments.
– Systems administrators who can configure once and run anytime.
– Ops teams that can create a single solution with the help of third-party automation tools for efficient building, shipping, and scaling of applications.
Without Kubernetes in the mix, this isn’t nearly as easy to pull off. With Kubernetes, you reduce:
– Redundancy likelihood
– Configuration variables
– Maintenance tasks
– Downtime of applications
– Speed of application deployment
When you examine Kubernetes and container orchestration as a whole, it becomes quite obvious how this technology not only fits into your DevOps plans but can practically define your DevOps structure.
Containers have become a game-changer for DevOps. Although containers aren’t required for DevOps, they certainly make it easier to implement these types of workflows. With containers, you write, test, and deploy on the same delivery chain. Because of this, collaboration between Dev and Ops is both critical (as without it the collaboration it would fail) and easier (as everyone is working within the same environment).
Conclusion
Remember, the goal of DevOps is to unify the application development and operations throughout the entire software dev cycle. From design, planning, coding, building, testing, deployment, and management, Kubernetes can make this entire collaboration process far simpler.
