Introduction to DevOps

DevOps is a culture or practice that give emphasis to the collaboration and communication between software developers and other professionals from information-technology (IT) while automating the process of application delivery and changes in infrastructure. It targets at starting a culture and environment where developing, testing, and releasing software can happen fast, repeatedly, and more reliably.

Since DevOps is a cultural shift and collaboration among development, operations, and testing, there is no single tool for DevOps, rather a set of tools or “DevOps toolchain”. Usually, DevOps tools are suitable in one or more of these categories.

Code – Code creation and review and continuous integration applications

Build – Version control applications, merging codes and build status

Test – Test & results define performance

Package – Application pre-deployment staging and artifact repository,

Release – Make changes in management, release approvals and automation

Configure – Configuration and management of infrastructure, Infrastructure as Code tools

Monitor – software performance monitoring, end user experience

Although there are numerous tools available, a few categories are essential in the DevOps toolchain setup for utilization in an organization.

Applications such as Docker (containerization), Jenkins (continuous Integration), Puppet (Infrastructure as Code), and Vagrant (virtualization platform) among different others are often utilized and frequently referenced in DevOps.

DevOps was essentially born due to increasing acceptance of agile development. DevOps and Agile are similar but are different in a few important aspects. One of the goals of DevOps is to create an environment where launching more reliable applications faster. Release managers have started to use tools such as application release automation & continuous integration tools to help in achieving this goal.

In order to practice DevOps successfully, software applications need to match a set of Architecturally Significant Requirements (ASRs) such as modifiability, deploy ability, testability, and monitor ability. These Architecturally Significant Requirements (ASRs) require a high priority and can’t be traded off lightly.