DevOps is the combination of two terms Development and Operations. We can term it as group of process or activities that can integrate the Software Development and IT Operations in an automated way using several latest advanced tools. It will be more helpful to the fast growing IT organization that adopted Agile methodology that delivers the product to market in several chunks of pieces frequent to the market.
DevOps is also defined as combination of people, technology and process to deliver frequently to the end customers using the Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Deployment(CD) Approach.
Development Process:
- Plan
- Code
- Build
- Test
- Release
- Deploy
- Operate
- Monitor
How DevOps works?
DevOps use the approach of combining Development, Quality assurance, Security and IT Operation team activities to automated pipeline using technology and modern tools throughout the end to end to application development life cycle.
Traditional development and deployment process was very slow in release to market approach when the business or client is demanding frequent or dynamic change in new requirement or features. Due to this combination of development, security an Infra team process automated as single process it is referred as DevSecOps. Several tools on Infra, development and security used for achieving the automation to make adapt to Continuous integration agile environment.
Advantages of DevOps:
Delivery or Deployment Speed:
Continuous Integration and Continuous delivery term achieved using the CI-CD Pipelines help team to deploy the services or update of the software quickly using micro services. It helps customer for receiving the expected changes quickly to their product that serve their business operation to achieve business goals.
Real Time Reliability:
DevOps tools and modern techniques such as Monitoring with logs help us to ensure that the real-time performance not gets affected or impacted due to the quick delivery of features to the end users.
Repeatability:
DevOps helps the complex and frequently changing requirements gets implemented from development, testing and deployment through the concept of Infrastructure as service or code.
Collaboration along with Security:
Development and Infra or Operation activities are automated in pipeline using multi user collaboration and versioning control. It uses all the security policies, controls and configuration management. It saves the handoff time between the both teams using development code and infrastructure code.
Different DevOps Methodologies:
Incremental model groomed next level of development lifecycle under common umbrella termed as Agile. Below is list of SDLC that can effectively utilize DevOps process and tools achieve business goals.
Scrum Framework:
Scrum is widely used development philosophy that is more suitable for complex problems in adaptive way by release to market in small chunks of features that are in demand for business. Sprints are termed as iteration or release cycles that follows retrospective to understand process level improvements needed to achieve sprint goals in future.
Kanban Framework:
It is also continuous delivery model similar to scrum that helps team to work in collaborative way to achieve the business goals. It uses work flow that can be achieved through Kanban board, Kanban cards with help of pull system approach. Support and service kind of projects that needs quick attempt and dynamic tickets utilized this model using latest devops tools.
SAFe:
Scaled Agile Framework help us to manage not only the project level connect deliverables. It helps project level backlog items along to sync with Program and Portfolio level backlog items. It effectively uses the Scrum of Scrum’s in train model of same planning based on dependent complex deliverables.
Lean & Extreme Programing:
Extreme programing and Lean development model also improvisation of Agile to deliver the frequently changing requirements of customer in short iterative cycles. It uses the pair programing approach, Configuration, Deployment and Monitoring tools to achieve the quick release to the market in adaptive way. DevOps tools and process are the key factors to achieve this effectively.
Features of DevOps:
Microservices Approach:
DevOps deals with building application in multiple small unit’s using the service approach called Micro Services. Every individual Service has its own process and it can able to interact with other service that is independent as well as present in same server. It is light weight mechanism also deploy individually as well as group of services.
CI – CD Approach:
DevOps helps us to create the pipeline for developing, continuously integrating and deploying the application to customer environment. DevOps focus to do the CI-CD approach in rapid, reliable and safety way using the central repository, Automated build for development and QA CI approach.
Monitoring:
DevOps has different monitoring tools such as Splunk, Nagios etc. help us to understand all types of network issues, application infra issues and to help us to solve the issue permanently.
Top DevOps Tools & its features:
GIT:
GIT and GIT Hub is the widely used popular source code management software that helps us to maintain the shared code repository. It will be helpful for the team to sync while working in different locations. Two types of repository such as local and shared repository available.
Developers can create own separate branches in repository and can push or merge to the master branch. All the workflow integrated to the platform for the hosting is knowns as GitHub.
Jenkins:
Jenkins is open source automation tool that helps to achieve Continuous integration and deployment by build, test and deploy application using configured Jobs. It is very easy to learn and help to integrate the project changes of group of people. It supports various plugin’s, capability of integrating different testing tools and display the results in logs as well as in dashboard.
It supports various platform like Linux, windows and MacOS etc. In QA part, Majority of parallel test suite or compatibility will be executed in Jenkins using separate jobs executed in different Linux machines and results will be viewed in Job logs.
Docker:
.Docker is platform that used mainly in Micro services development, deployment and run the applications. Docker works in the concept of containerization it means application modules developed as individual containers (I.e.) package that consist of code, libraries and its dependent files that deployed and run in same servers but act as individual component. Docker file build into Docker image then it run to form the Docker containers contains the application.
We can manage Docker images in Docker hub that act as shared repository where we can use it to deploy in different servers as containers using push and pull docker commands.
Ansible:
Ansible is another Open Source tool for Configuration Management in deployment for Infrastructure as a code. It is automated way to do all the IT infra deployment for software or application, Intra services orchestration and Managing cloud effectively.
Ansible is following the mechanism called Agentless that helps to send the changes from one source to many remote other machines or sources without installing specific client agent software or component. Chef and Puppet are older software tools that follow master/slave or agent model where the individual machines or VM will have agent software’s.
Playbook and Inventory concept in the Ansible Management node helpful to deploy the application through configuration management version through ssh. We can also create “n” number of groups in Inventory with set of remote nodes. We can install certain application or software in certain group of nodes is possible.
Kubernetes:
Kubernetes is open source tool and it works on same concept of Docker containers only difference is it can manage, monitor, scale and deploy the containers. Docker swarm can manage the cluster of containers bur kubernetes helps to do the scaling in cluster effectively.
It is easy to understand the kubernetes architecture. Pods are basic elements of kubernetes that may consist of one container or multiple container cluster in each node. Nodes having Kube proxy will interact with Kubernetes master in achieving the management of pods effectively.
Terraform:
Terraform is open source tool and it will be useful for build and versioning the infrastructure effectively. It consists of configuration file part that helps you to give information about running the single application or group or even huge data center. This is similar to Ansible but differs in few parts.
Both are automation tool but Terraform behave as Orchestrator in versioning, provisioning and automation. It supports to work effectively with different platform or we can say hybrid platform.
DevOps Certification Path:
DevOps is based on combination of different tools, technologies and its process. So we can’t define single certification of DevOps. Find below the list of certification that are frequently done by the majority of DevOps candidates all over the world.
| Certification Exam | Exam Duration | Exam Fee | Type | Apply Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) | 3 Hours | $300 | 55 MCQs | https://www.cncf.io/certification/ckad/ |
| Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) | 2 Hours | $300 | Problem Solving | https://www.cncf.io/certification/ckad/ |
| Docker Certified Associate | 90 min | $195 | Problem Solving | https://www.docker.com/ |
| AWS Certified Engineer DevOps Engineer | 2 hours 50 min | $300 | 40-65 MCQs | https://aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-devops-engineer-professional/ |
| Azure DevOps Az-400 | 2 hours 50 min | $165 | 40-60 MCQs | https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/devops-engineer/ |
| Architect with GCP | Flexible | Free | Course | https://www.coursera.org/specializations/gcp-architecture?ranMID=40328&ranEAID=Vq5kdUDL6n8&ranSiteID=Vq5kdUDL6n8-WgNauoz9Z_Tgx4T7xUNSEQ&siteID=Vq5kdUDL6n8-WgNauoz9Z_Tgx4T7xUNSEQ&utm_content=10&utm_medium=partners&utm_source=linkshare&utm_campaign=Vq5kdUDL6n8 |
| Puppet Professional Certification | 90 min | $200 | 60 MCQs | https://puppet.com/learning-training/certification/ |
