Principles and Practices of DevOps

For many years, development and operations functioned as separate entities. Developers wrote the code, while system administrators were responsible for its deployment and integration. Limited communication between these two silos meant that specialists primarily worked independently within a project.

This was acceptable when the Waterfall development methodology was dominant. However, with the rise of Agile and continuous workflow, this model became obsolete. The need for short sprints and frequent releases, occurring every two weeks or even daily, demanded a new approach and new team roles.

Today DevOps is a highly discussed software development approach. It is utilized by leading companies like Facebook Netflix, Amazon and Etsy. If you are considering adopting DevOps to improve performance and business success and competitiveness your first step should be hiring DevOps engineer. But first let's delve into what DevOps entails. It enhances product delivery.

DevOps in a Nutshell

DevOps stands for development and operations. It is a practice aimed at merging development, quality assurance, and operations (deployment and integration) into a single, continuous set of processes. This methodology is a natural extension of Agile and continuous delivery approaches.

By adopting DevOps, companies gain three core advantages, covering technical, business, and cultural aspects of development:

Higher speed and quality of product releases: DevOps accelerates product release through continuous delivery, faster feedback, and early bug fixes. This allows teams to focus on product quality and automate various processes.

Faster responsiveness to customer needs: DevOps enables teams to quickly respond to customer change requests, adding new features and updating existing ones. This increases time-to-market and value-delivery rates.

Better working environment: DevOps principles and practices enhance communication, productivity, and agility within teams. Both developers and operators work in harmony towards common goals.

These benefits stem from the understanding that DevOps is not merely a set of actions but a philosophy fostering cross-functional team communication. The main focus is on altering how people work, rather than making substantial technical changes. Success depends on adhering to DevOps principles.

DevOps Principles

In 2010, Damon Edwards and John Willis introduced the CAMS model to showcase the key values of DevOps. CAMS stands for Culture Automation Measurement and Sharing. Let's explore these principles in more detail.

Culture

DevOps is fundamentally about creating a culture and mindset. It forges strong collaborative bonds between software development and infrastructure operations teams. This culture is built upon:

·        Constant collaboration and communication: These are the building blocks of DevOps. Teams must work cohesively, understanding each other's needs and expectations.

·         Gradual changes: Implementing gradual rollouts allows delivery teams to release products while being able to make updates or roll back if issues arise.

·         Shared end-to-end responsibility: When all team members share responsibility for a project from start to finish, they work cohesively and support each other's tasks.

·         Early problem-solving: DevOps emphasizes addressing issues early in the project lifecycle.

Automation of Processes

Automating many development testing, configuration and deployment procedures as possible is golden rule of DevOps. Automation eliminates time-consuming repetitive tasks. This allows specialists to focus on more important activities.

Measurement of KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)

Decision-making should be based on factual information. Tracking the progress of activities within the DevOps flow through various metrics helps identify what works well and what needs improvement.

Sharing

Sharing feedback, best practices, and knowledge among teams promotes transparency, creates collective intelligence, and eliminates constraints. This is crucial for maintaining an uninterrupted development process.

DevOps Model and Practices

DevOps requires a delivery cycle that includes planning, development, testing, deployment, release, and monitoring with active cooperation among team members. Let's break down the core practices of DevOps:

Agile Planning

Agile planning organizes work in short iterations (sprints) to increase the number of releases. This approach allows for flexibility and pivots based on early product increments.

Continuous Development

Continuous development involves iterative software development, with work divided into small portions for better and faster production. Engineers commit code in small chunks multiple times a day, enabling easy testing and automation of builds and unit tests.

Continuous Automated Testing

Quality assurance teams use automation tools like Selenium, Ranorex, and UFT to test committed code. Bugs and vulnerabilities are addressed early through version control systems.

Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)

Code that passes automated tests is integrated into a shared repository on a server. Continuous integration prevents "integration hell," while continuous delivery merges development, testing, and deployment into a streamlined, automated process.

Continuous Deployment

Code is deployed to production on a public server in a way that doesn’t disrupt existing features. Frequent deployment allows for early testing and verification of new features using automated tools like Chef, Puppet, Azure Resource Manager, and Google Cloud Deployment Manager.

Continuous Monitoring

Monitoring detects problematic areas and analyzes feedback to improve the product's functioning. This stage ensures ongoing assessment of the entire DevOps lifecycle.

Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

IaC uses scripts to automate deployment environment configuration. It ensures consistency across various environments. This approach allows for early testing and efficient scaling.

Containerization

Containers, which are lightweight and packaged with runtime components, facilitate instant application deployment across various environments. Docker is a popular container tool. Container orchestration platforms like Kubernetes and OpenShift manage these containers.

Microservices

Microservices architecture builds an application as a set of independent services, allowing isolation of issues and ensuring system stability. This approach supports high deployment rates and system resilience.

Cloud Infrastructure

While not mandatory for DevOps adoption, cloud infrastructure offers flexibility, toolsets, and scalability. Hybrid clouds and fully public clouds (managed by providers like AWS and Microsoft Azure) support DevOps-driven teams.

DevOps Tools

To achieve an automated release pipeline, teams must use specific tools rather than building them from scratch. Popular DevOps tools include:

·         Server Configuration: Puppet, Chef, Ansible

·         CI/CD: Jenkins, GitLab CI

·         Containerization and Orchestration: Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift

·         Monitoring and Alerting: Nagios, Prometheus

The Future of DevOps

DevOps is continually evolving. Future trends include:

Cloud-Native Security: Integrating security into development and deployment workflows.

BizDevOps: Eliminating boundaries between developers, operations teams, and business staff for faster user-oriented product development.

Increased Involvement of Development Teams: More engagement in decision-making to drive digital transformation.

By adopting DevOps, organizations can enhance their development processes. They can improve product quality. They can achieve faster time-to-market, ensuring long-term success and competitiveness.