With the rapid advancements in the modern IT space, businesses can survive only when they successfully develop high-quality software or applications in less time. For this, they strive to innovate and adapt themselves according to the industry's trends. That's where they found DevOps culture, a dynamic methodology that bridges the gap between the development (Dev) teams and the operations (Ops) teams by navigating them into a single project.This new approach brings greater communication and understanding between the development and operations teams, due to which the misconception that used to happen between the two teams (developers & operations) has now completely ended. In addition, collaboration and automation streamline the software development lifecycle, which further allows businesses to accelerate the software delivery process and deliver high-quality applications at a fast speed.What is DevOps with ExamplesDevOps is the methodology or culture in software development that brings productive collaboration, automation, agility, and continuous delivery & communication between the developers and operations teams. With closer cooperation and shared responsibility between developers and operations teams, it creates a cultural shift in software development that ensures alignment of people and processes, which results in a single-pointed focus toward the product.Use Cases or Examples of DevOpsThis section highlights the real-life use cases of DevOps. Here we go:DevOps in the Online Financial Trading CompanyIn financial trading companies, DevOps culture automates the process of testing, building, and development. The process of deployment was a very daunting task for employees, as it takes long nights and weekends to deploy, but with DevOps, it takes only 45 seconds to deploy.Use of DevOps in Network CyclingWith the faster deployment, testing, and designing, adding patches of security every day has now become very easy for telco service providers, as it was previously done every three months. The new version of network cycling was being deployed and designed as it went live.Bug Reduction Benefit of DevOpsDevOps has been exceptionally good at reducing bugs. It reduced bugs by up to 35%, and for pre-production, it reduced up to 40% of bugs. It has done a great job of reducing the time taken in regression testing.Reduced computational cost and operation time.Decreased computational cost is another remarkable outcome of applying DevOps. It happens because the timing of completing a task is also getting decreased. Computing time has been reduced by up to 60% for many cases.DevOps practicesFor optimal utilization, it's important to embrace DevOps practices that include continuous integration, continuous delivery, automation, Infrastructure as code, Microservices, and Monitoring. All these things are crucial aspects of implementing DevOps culture in the organization. In the DevOps culture, breaking down silos between development and operations teams to accelerate software delivery has become more convenient with these DevOps practices.Incorporating continuous integration and continuous delivery into our DevOps practices enables a seamless and automated flow from development to production, ensuring that software is built, tested, and released faster and more reliably. Implement DevOps practices facilitate an organization with higher-quality software development and better customer experience, which further improve the software quality. DevOps Teams & DevOps EngineerThe relationship between DevOps teams and a DevOps engineer is integral to the successful implementation of DevOps practices within an organization. DevOps teams are more or less an ethical combination of development and IT operations teams. However, the development of DevOps teams is not as simple as it seems and, of course, a company becomes more conscious when they are about to develop DevOps teams.An ideal implementable structure of DevOps teams depends on how many products a company works on, technical leadership, and the capability to align processes between the development teams and IT operations staff.The capabilities for joining the DevOps teams constantly evolving due to the new technologies and methods. However, having solid technical skills, good communication, adaptability, and team collaboration is important to fit in the DevOps teams. Whereas a DevOps engineer is a key player within DevOps teams, who facilitate tools and infrastructure that enable continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) processes.Understanding DevOps ToolsSince the DevOps methodology was introduced, automation has been at the forefront of it. DevOps automation tools such as Terraform, Jenkins, Kubernetes, and many more streamline tasks like testing, deployment, and infrastructure provisioning.Let's understand some of these DevOps tools that create magic in the DevOps practices:TerraformThis Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tool offers defining, provisioning, and automating infrastructure resources on any cloud using configuration language. Terraform with its automation capabilities encourages DevOps teams to maintain consistency, manage infrastructure in a very efficient way, and adapt as per the evolving requirements.JenkinsDevelopers use this open-source automation server to build, test, and deploy their software projects. Jenkins has the potential to automate various tasks in the software development industry such as building and testing code, releasing software updates, and of course, deploying applications. With Jenkins, the automation of code integration has become effortless for developers and the automated simple deployment processes make sure to accelerate continuous software delivery.KubernetesGoogle-designed Kubernetes or K8s an open-source container orchestration system to automate the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. Kubernetes integrates smoothly into DevOps pipelines, enabling continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) processes, and abstracts the underlying infrastructure, resulting in a standard and declarative approach to application management.NomadWith HashiCorp Nomad, the simplification of deployment and management of applications and collaboration between developers and operators while maximizing resource efficiency has also become very accessible for organizations.Getting Started with DevOpsImplementing the DevOps culture to leverage agile software development processes can be very effortless or daunting, as per the team's understanding and requirements. Adopting the right tools and enabling a collaborative environment are essential practices teams can execute in DevOps implementation.Here is how to get started with DevOps:Take a Step forward to DevOps initiativeTo develop a strong foundation, it's very necessary to align the DevOps initiative with the organization's objectives. After ensuring a strong foundation, it's high time to move toward the endorsement process, where the company's executives launch the DevOps initiative.Clarified DevOps GoalsAn organization must have a clear purpose for successful DevOps implementation. Clearly defined specific goals regarding software delivery, quality, and operational efficiency are beneficial in achieving the desired outcome. In addition, setting measurable KPIs helps evaluate progress, identify blockages, and promote continuous improvement in DevOps techniques.Acquire a comprehensive DevOps StrategyHaving a robust strategy that includes a vision of collaboration between developers and operations teams, testing, and other significant departments; is the most important thing. To reach out to optimized DevOps implementation, the company should consider speeding up the software development cycle while maintaining a high-quality and complete automation process from build to deployment.Designate a DevOps Team StructureTo establish a decent DevOps team structure, an organization should have developers, operations engineers, site reliability engineers, DevOps engineers, and quality assurance professionals with clear roles and responsibilities. Executing these things ensures transparency and accountability within the DevOps team and draws future success for the organization.Implement ContainerizationContainerizing your applications using solutions such as Docker improves software trustworthiness and autonomy from the infrastructure, allowing for simple and consistent deployment across several settings. This step also makes operations management easier by separating modifications to specific microservices inside containers.Incorporate Infrastructure with CI/CD toolsFor acquiring containerized applications, the integration of infrastructure automation tools with continuous integration and continuous delivery tools is paramount. Organizations can use Kubernetes, and Chef as infrastructure automation tools with CI/CD tools (Jenkins, and GoCD) to ensure multiple things from fault tolerance and efficient configuration management to continuous monitoring and streamlined software deployments.Test Automation and QA Alignment with DevelopmentOrganizations should have a general understanding of which testing can be automated to improve test coverage and accelerate the delivery cycle. At the same time, don't forget to consider the close alignment between development teams and QA for facilitating early detection and resolving issues.Monitor Application PerformanceFor continuous monitoring of the application performance, the organization has to be able to prioritize, recognize, and address flaws. In addition, to know more about software conduct, and user experience problems, the implementation of application performance monitoring tools is paramount to organizations.To Sum UpSo, if you ever saw the logo of DevOps Lifecycle, you noticed a symbol of infinity, which means the DevOps processes have always been in continuous process of each step. You can't say now I'm done with each step and have successfully finished the DevOps processes. No, it doesn't work like that!Now, if you are still using traditional practices for software development, then you miss something very special for sure. DevOps is not just a set of tools, it's a cultural shift in agile software development that encourages teams to deliver exceptional software at lightning speed.So that's all for this article. Leverage DevOps culture and be a part of the tech revolution!We hope it serves you and adds value to your knowledge. Feel free to give us some suggestions about our work in the comment section!Cheers!!Read Morehttps://devopsden.io/article/best-devops-tools-in-2024Follow us onhttps://devopsden.io/article/why-is-devops-useful
