Thursday 26 January 2017

What is DevOps? What do we need to know?


According to TheAgileAdmin.com, ‘DevOps is a new term emerging from the collision of two major related trends. The first was also called “agile system administration” or “agile operations”; it sprang from applying newer Agile and Lean approaches to operations work.  The second is a much expanded understanding of the value of collaboration between development and operations staff throughout all stages of the development lifecycle when creating and operating a service, and how important operations has become in our increasingly service-oriented world.
Some experts define DevOps as a culture, while others consider it as a practice or way of thinking. But the concept aims to create a reliable environment where a variety of software applications can be developed, tested and released rapidly and frequently. Also, DevOps requires enterprises to build a robust environment where software developers can communicate with system administrators, system engineers, database administrators, security professionals, release engineers and other IT professional without any restrictions and hindrance.
Understanding Important Aspects of DevOps
Primary Objective
DevOps aims to enhance the quality and user experience of software by combining the development and operations of an organization effectively. It aims to enhance the quality and user experience of a software application by facilitating constant and efficient communication between the development team and the operation team.  Also, DevOps focuses on the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC) to reduce time to market, get bugs or flaws in the software quickly, and reduce failure rates of new releases.
While adopting DevOps, an enterprise has to create a single team to handle both software development and operations. In the new environment, software developers will support common operational requirements like script deployment and load/performance testing from the initial stages of software development lifecycle.  Likewise, the non-programmers will support and provide feedback to the software developers consistently during the planning, development and deployment phase of the application.
Lifecycle
As noted earlier, the primary objective of DevOps is to make software development, software QA testing, deployment, and release processes more efficient by unifying the development and operations teams. Also, DevOps enable enterprises to take advantage of latest technologies like virtual machines and cloud infrastructure. Hence, DevOps lifecycle is completely different from conventional project management methods and techniques. It further aims to create a rapid release cycle complemented by a strong feedback loop.
Hence, DevOps emphasizes on infrastructure automation, deployment automation, infrastructure monitoring, configuration management, log management, and application performance monitoring and management. DevOps lifecycle further make it easier for professionals to focus on more important tasks by automating routine and repetitive tasks. The automation further makes the production environment standardized and software development predictable. At the same time, an enterprise can use the right tools to build, test, deploy, deliver and manage software applications rapidly.
DevOps Toolchain
DevOps further requires both enterprises and professionals to make software development and delivery process more efficient by using a set of tools. The DevOps toolchain includes a variety of tools to simplify and effectuate various aspects of software development and delivery. The DevOps toolchain includes tools for application code development and review, version control, software testing, package management, software release management, infrastructure configuration and management, and monitoring application performance and user experience. However, the enterprises can always customize and set up DevOps toolchain according to their specific needs.
Benefits
An enterprise can always implement DevOps to accomplish a number of business and technical benefits. It can make the operating environment more stable by combining the development and operations team. The unification will further enable the business to deliver new features quickly, and maintain and manage the application easily. Likewise, the single environment will further help the enterprises to build a base of happy users by delivering software continuously and resolve problems immediately. At the same time, DevOps makes the software developers productive by enabling them to resolve production issues quickly, control the entire code delivery process, and stay involved in the entire software development lifecycle.
However, each enterprise has to focus on a number of factors and break several old practices to implement DevOps efficiently. In addition to picking the right DevOps toolchain, it also needs to follow some widely accepted DevOps principles and methods. Also, it is important for the business motivate each employee to collaborate and communicate with other members of the team continuously.