What is DevOps?
DevOps is a culture which promotes collaboration between Development
and Operations Team to deploy code to production faster in an automated
& repeatable way. The word 'DevOps' is a combination of two words
'development' and 'operations.'
DevOps helps to increases an organization's speed to deliver
applications and services. It allows organizations to serve their
customers better and compete more strongly in the market.
In simple words, DevOps can be defined as an alignment of development
and IT operations with better communication and collaboration.
DevOps Model Defined
DevOps is the combination of cultural philosophies, practices,
and tools that increases an organization’s ability to deliver
applications and services at high velocity: evolving and improving
products at a faster pace than organizations using traditional
software development and infrastructure management processes. This
speed enables organizations to better serve their customers and
compete more effectively in the market.
Why is DevOps is Needed?
- Before DevOps, the development and operation team worked in complete isolation.
- Testing and Deployment were isolated activities done after design-build. Hence they consumed more time than actual build cycles.
- Without using DevOps, team members are spending a large amount of their time in testing, deploying, and designing instead of building the project.
- Manual code deployment leads to human errors in production
- Coding & operation teams have their separate timelines and are not in synch causing further delays.
How DevOps Works?
Under a DevOps model, development and operations teams are no
longer “siloed.” Sometimes, these two teams are merged into a
single team where the engineers work across the entire application
lifecycle, from development and test to deployment to operations,
and develop a range of skills not limited to a single
function.
In some DevOps models, quality assurance and security teams may
also become more tightly integrated with development and
operations and throughout the application lifecycle. When security
is the focus of everyone on a DevOps team, this is sometimes
referred to as DevSecOps.
These teams use practices to automate processes that historically
have been manual and slow. They use a technology stack and tooling
which help them operate and evolve applications quickly and
reliably. These tools also help engineers independently accomplish
tasks (for example, deploying code or provisioning infrastructure)
that normally would have required help from other teams, and this
further increases a team’s velocity.
Benefits of DevOps
Speed
Move at high velocity so you can innovate for customers faster, adapt to changing markets better, and grow more efficient at driving business results. The DevOps model enables your developers and operations teams to achieve these results. For example, microservices and continuous delivery let teams take ownership of services and then release updates to them quicker.Rapid Delivery
Increase the frequency and pace of releases so you can innovate
and improve your product faster. The quicker you can release new
features and fix bugs, the faster you can respond to your
customers’ needs and build competitive advantage. Continuous
integration and continuous delivery are practices that automate
the software release process, from build to deploy.
Reliability
Ensure the quality of application updates and infrastructure
changes so you can reliably deliver at a more rapid pace while
maintaining a positive experience for end users. Use practices
like continuous integration and continuous delivery to test that
each change is functional and safe. Monitoring and logging
practices help you stay informed of performance in
real-time.
Scale
Operate and manage your infrastructure and development
processes at scale. Automation and consistency help you manage
complex or changing systems efficiently and with reduced risk.
For example, infrastructure as code helps you manage your
development, testing, and production environments in a
repeatable and more efficient manner.
Improved Collaboration
Build more effective teams under a DevOps cultural model, which
emphasizes values such as ownership and accountability.
Developers and operations teams collaborate closely, share many
responsibilities, and combine their workflows. This reduces
inefficiencies and saves time (e.g. reduced handover periods
between developers and operations, writing code that takes into
account the environment in which it is run).
Security
Move quickly while retaining control and preserving compliance.
You can adopt a DevOps model without sacrificing security by
using automated compliance policies, fine-grained controls, and
configuration management techniques. For example, using
infrastructure as code and policy as code, you can define and
then track compliance at scale.
DevOps Lifecycle
DevOps is deep integration between development and operations.
Understanding DevOps is not possible without knowing DevOps
lifecycle.
Here is a brief information about the Continuous DevOps
life-cycle:
- Development
In this DevOps stage the development of software takes place
constantly. In this phase, the entire development process is
separated into small development cycles. This benefits DevOps team
to speed up software development and delivery process.
-
Testing
QA team use tools like Selenium to identify and fix bugs in the
new piece of code.
- Integration
In this stage, new functionality is integrated with the
prevailing code, and testing takes place. Continuous development
is only possible due to continuous integration and
testing.
- Deployment
In this phase, the deployment process takes place continuously.
It is performed in such a manner that any changes made any time
in the code, should not affect the functioning of high traffic
website.
- Monitoring
In this phase, operation team will take care of the
inappropriate system behavior or bugs which are found in
production.
