Introduction to DevOps for Beginners

In comparison to traditional methods, DevOps increases the efficiency, speed, and security of software development and delivery by combining the domains of development (Dev) and operations (Ops).

Importance of DevOps in modern software development.

• Shorter development cycles that encourage innovation

• More collaboration, better communication

• Reduced deployment failures and faster time to recover

• Efficiency: Improved resource management

Benefits of DevOps

• Achieve Quicker Deployment

A major benefit of the DevOps approach is the chance to create new systems more effectively by incorporating feedback from engineers, team members, and important stakeholders. These methods allow IT businesses to deploy more quickly than slower performers.

• Outstanding Product Quality

Another benefit of DevOps is the considerable improvement in the product’s quality results from frequent user input gathering, collaboration between the operation and development teams, and other factors. Automated testing in DevOps streamlines, accelerates and improves the testing process from integration through staging.

• Constant Software Delivery

In the DevOps philosophy, it is up to all departments to keep things stable and provide new features.

Software is delivered uninterruptedly and swiftly as an outcome, unlike the traditional procedure.

The entire team shares the same goals in terms of marketing time, stability, security, user experience, quality, and performance.

DevOps makes sure everything is in order; every change is documented, and everyone is aware of how each release will affect quality.

Adopting the DevOps mindset not only makes software delivery quicker but also improves quality and stability.

• Reduces Error

When the processes of development and operations are carried out simultaneously, identification errors occur quickly.

Application code, configuration, and infrastructure issues can be identified earlier and rectified right away.

It’s the feedback loop in DevOps that helps improve software development quality. They also ensure that the development, testing, and deployment results are delivered on time.

Core principles of DevOps:

Automation

A critical principle of DevOps is automation. Automation defines workflows while helping developers to concentrate primarily on writing code for upcoming new features. Anything and almost everything should be automated in the DevOps environment for fast delivery. Just for one instance, software developers need not waste their crucial time checking errors in the code, rather they use special software solutions to build and test their applications automatically. A single command would be enough to compile the whole source code to check for errors and examine if it will work similarly without any glitches.

Continues integration

In the DevOps pipeline, Continuous Integration (CI) plays an important role in encouraging developers to submit their code in the central repository several times a day. Instead of fitting huge code in just one day, DevOps prefers the integration of small chunks of code regularly which reduces the chance of blockages or service interruptions significantly.

The best tools of Continuous Integration (CI) available in the market are Jenkins, CircleCI, Travis CI, and GitLab as they offer speed and consistency.

Continues delivery

The Continuous Delivery (CD) principle in the DevOps environment enables teams to release code updates as often as possible.

Continuous Delivery (CD) is all about releasing code updates frequently and fast. Another benefit of Continuous Delivery is that organizations can easily release high-quality features efficiently and reduce the huge costs involved in the deployment process of huge pieces.

Continuous Monitoring

Continuous Monitoring ensures the application runs without any issues and builds on the CI/CD concept. DevOps keeps an eye on monitoring technologies and techniques to ensure an application is behaving adequately. Right from logs, apps, and systems to infrastructure, the DevOps team monitors and in case of any issue, they revert it to the previous stage and the team gets enough time to resolve the issue without hassling to customer.

Let us understand it better with the help of an example of a web portal running on AWS. In case the traffic on the website increases, a load balancer will successfully add a new EC2 server to handle the load effectively. In this scenario, an alert must be configured to add a new server. Configuration of such alarms is only possible with the help of DevOps as they have complete knowledge of various OSs of the application. Akamai mPulse, AppDynamics, ChaosSearch, Splunk, and Sumo Logic are a few best tools used for Continuous Monitoring.

DevOps lifecycle

1. Continuous Development

In Continuous Development code is written in small, continuous bits rather than all at once, Continuous Development is important in DevOps because this improves efficiency every time a piece of code is created, it is tested, built, and deployed into production.

2. Continuous Integration

Continuous integration is a DevOps software development practice where developers regularly merge their code changes into a central repository, after which automated builds and tests are run.

3. Continuous Testing

Any firm can deploy continuous testing with the use of the agile and DevOps methodologies. Depending on our needs, we can perform continuous testing using automation testing tools such as Testsigma, Selenium, LambdaTest, etc. With these tools, we can test our code, prevent problems and code smells, and test more quickly and intelligently.

4. Continuous Deployment/Continuous Delivery

Continuous Deployment: Continuous Deployment is the process of automatically deploying an application into the production environment when it has completed testing and the build stages. Here, we’ll automate everything from obtaining the application’s source code to deploying it.

Continuous Delivery: Continuous Delivery is the process of deploying an application into production servers manually when it has completed testing and the build stages. Here, we’ll automate the continuous integration processes, however, manual involvement is still required for deploying it to the production environment.

5. Continuous Monitoring

DevOps lifecycle is incomplete if there is no Continuous Monitoring. Continuous Monitoring can be achieved with the help of Prometheus and Grafana. By using Prometheus, we can gather many performance measures, including CPU and memory utilization, network traffic, application response times, error rates, and others. Grafana makes it possible to visually represent and keep track of data from time series, such as CPU and memory utilization.

6. Continuous Feedback

Once the application is released into the market the end users will use the application and they will give us feedback about the performance of the application and any glitches affecting the user experience after getting multiple feedback from the end users’ the DevOps team will analyze the feedbacks given by end users and they will reach out to the developer team tries to rectify the mistakes they are performed in that piece of code. Continuous Feedback can increase the performance of the application and reduce bugs in the code making it smooth for end users to use the application.

7. Continuous Operations

We will sustain the higher application uptime by implementing continuous operation, which will assist us in cutting down on the maintenance downtime that will negatively impact end users’ experiences. More output, lower manufacturing costs, and better quality control are benefits of continuous operations.

Tools and Technologies

There are many tools used in DevOps like:

• GitHub: GitHub is considered as one of the largest and most advanced development platforms in the world. Millions of developers and companies build, ship, and maintain their software on GitHub.

• CI/CD: Bamboo and Jenkins are used for CI/CD.

• Docker: Docker is a lightweight tool that aims to simplify and accelerate various workflows in your SDLC with an integrated approach.

• Kubernetes: Kubernetes is an open-source DevOps tool used to automate the deployment and management of containerized applications & perhaps one of the most popular container orchestration tools.

• Prometheus: Prometheus is an open-source and community-driven performance monitoring solution.

• Selenium: Selenium is a Test Automation tool, used to automate other web-based admin tasks.

Getting Started with DevOps

It is essential to know the right tools, practices, and concepts for the DevOps team. As per my experience, it is good if you know the nuances of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC).

Below are some essential skills and knowledge areas for DevOps:

Programming language(Python, Ruby, JavaScript, Go, Java)

Fundamentals of Operating System

Basics of Terminal and Shell Scripting

Networking Concepts

Continuous Integration & Continuous Deployment

Know-How of Monitoring Tools

At last,

Adopting a DevOps culture can benefit a company's software development and product delivery. Businesses can adopt a DevOps culture to improve collaboration and communication across their operations and development teams and achieve faster software delivery.

I inspire you, In your journey as a DevOps engineer you always keep upgrading yourself,

Keep collaborating, and being active in the community.