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 incomplete 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.
There is a demand to increase the rate of software delivery by business stakeholders. As per Forrester Consulting Study, Only 17% of teams can use delivery software fast enough. This proves the pain point.
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
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.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.
DevOps Certifications
DevOps Foundation Certification
The DevOps Foundation course provides a baseline understanding of key DevOps terminology to ensure everyone is talking the same language and highlights the benefits of DevOps to support organizational success
DevOps Leader (DOL)
The DevOps Leader course is a unique and practical experience for participants who want to take a transformational leadership approach and make an impact within their organization by implementing DevOps.
DevSecOps Engineering (DSOE)
This course explains how DevOps security practices differ from other security approaches and provides the education needed to understand and apply data and security sciences.
Continuous Delivery Architecture (CDA)
This course is designed for participants who are engaged in the design, implementation, and management of DevOps deployment pipelines and toolchains that support Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, Continuous Testing and potentially Continuous Deployment.
DevOps Test Engineering (DTE)
This comprehensive course addresses testing in a DevOps environment and covers concepts such as the active use of test automation, testing earlier in the development cycle, and instilling testing skills in developers, quality assurance, security, and operational teams.
Certified Agile Service Manager (CASM)
This course provides an introduction to Agile Service Management, the application, and integration of agile thinking into service management processes and process design projects.
Certified Agile Process Owner (CAPO)
This course provides guidance into the process Owner responsibilities so they can describe what they are doing as a process and provides the education needed to oversee the design, re-engineering, and improvement of IT Service Management (ITSM) processes; particularly in the context of Agile Service Management.
