DevOps: Ultimate Guide on Explaining the Service’s Top Practices, Tools, & Benefits
DevOps stands for development and operations; the use of practices and tools intended to speed up the delivery of applications and services to the market.
This article provides an overview of key DevOps solutions and explains the benefits of DevOps and its outsourcing.
What is DevOps?
DevOps solutions help companies with better, faster, and more efficient software development with the main goal being a faster release to the market.
Why Do You Need DevOps?
Software development companies mention the following benefits:
- Higher customer satisfaction
- Driving business innovations and continuous process improvement
- More frequent product releases, features, and updates with proper quality and security
- Quick identification of issues in a product, resolution, and repeated release
- High performance of software thanks to thorough testing before release to the market
How Does DevOps Work Anyway?
What is the difference between DevOps vs software engineers?
Developers concentrate their efforts on the delivery of new functionality, while DevOps engineers unify and automate the processes of coding, maintenance, and software management.
One of the main goals of DevOps specialists is to ensure a smooth process for keeping the solution up to date, making quick changes to it, and ensuring its reliability and stability.
DevOps Outsourcing vs In-house Service
As with almost any other process in a development company, you can keep an in-house DevOps team or outsource DevOps services.
Outsourcing DevOps have a number of advantages:
- The best talent on the market
- You don’t need to take care of staff turnover and employee attrition
- You can easily scale up or down without the need to take care of employee hunting and hiring
- Project management on the vendor’s side
- Good price and quality ratio, especially when working with a outsourcing company from a favorable outsourcing region
DevOps Solutions: Seven Main Practices
The main idea behind DevOps is continuous automation and improvement. The top 7 DevOps practices include:
1. Continuous development (CD)
2. Continuous testing (CT)
3. Continuous integration (CI)
4. Continuous delivery (CD)
5. Continuous deployment (CD)
6. Continuous monitoring (CM)
7. Infrastructure as code (IaC)
DevOps Methodologies & LifeCycle
Many of the Agile development methodologies are present in DevOps. The main underlying principles are highlighted:
- Scrum
- Kanban
DevOps service providers often use a number of tools that help them streamline, speed up, automate, and optimize the software delivery workflow.
The traditional DevOps tools list usually includes the following:
- Plan
- Code
- Build
- Test
- Deploy
- Monitor
Top 10+ Tools & 3rd-Party Solutions used for DevOps
1. AWS Tools and Services for DevOps
The company provides all the necessary AWS DevOps tools that streamline the processes:
- AWS CodeBuild
- AWS CodePipeline
- AWS CodeDeploy
2. Microsoft Azure
Azure is a trusted cloud computing service by Microsoft. Key Azure DevOps tools that can help you streamline these processes:
- Azure DevTest Labs
- Azure Stack
3. Digital Ocean
The company enables developers to easily build, test, manage, and scale applications of any size. The company provides various products:
- Droplets
- Kubernetes
- Databases
- Spaces
4. Docker
Kubernetes is a Linux-based open-source platform that works with containers. Thus, you don’t need to deal with managing dependencies.
5. Ansible
Ansible holds the title of the second most popular DevOps automation tool.
6. Git
Git helps to keep track of the development process and coordinate task flow.
7. Puppet
Puppet is a popular open-source tool used for a range of tasks for software inspection, delivery and operation management and automation.
8. Chef
Chef is an open-source tool for configuration management that allows companies to deal with infrastructure complexity, security issues and application automation.
9. Nagios
Nagios can be used for the monitoring of apps, services, network protocols, and much more.
10. Jenkins
Jenkins is an open-source DevOps tool used for the automation of the delivery pipeline.
11. Splunk
Splunk allows you to monitor all processes during the application delivery lifecycle — from development to testing and production.
12. Bamboo
Bamboo is just Jenkins. The list of features includes built-in Git branching workflows, test automation, parallel execution support, easy setup, and a user-friendly interface.
13. Kubernetes
Kubernetes is a relatively new addition to the DevOps tools list that allows you to manage hundreds of containers.
14. Selenium
Selenium is an open-source solution for the automated testing of only web applications.
Simple 5-Step Flow for DevOps Outsourcing
DevOps outsourcing is a great way for you to improve the processes in your own company.
1. Define Areas for Improvement
DevOps companies can help you with a number of tasks:
- Scalability
- Cost optimization
- 24/7 support
- Migration
- Big data
2. Assess the Risks
Before hiring a company providing DevOps, you first need to assess the associated risks:
- Legal issues
- Architecture expertise
- Integration
3. Choose a vendor
When looking for vendors, a proven track record should be the main deciding point. Working with a company that has experience providing DevOps services will help you mitigate any risks that might arise.
4. Assess the tech expertise
After you’ve shortlisted some qualified vendors, you can start by signing up for a DevOps consultation to check their expertise.
5. Check the tech stack of DevOps engineers
Usually, companies work with the following technologies:
- Cloud platforms: Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Digital Ocean
- Data centers: Rackspace, Unicept, Hetzner, etc.
- Infrastructure as a code: Helm, AWS CloudFormation, Azure Resource Management
- Automation & orchestration: Kubernetes, Docker, Puppet, Chef
- CI/CD: Azure DevOps, AWS, CodeDeploy, CodePipeline
- Logging & monitoring: AWS CloudWatch, Nagios, Zabbix
Why You Should Consider Outsourcing DevOps: 5 Core Benefits
1. Great price-quality ratio
- Zero time addressing security issues
- 25x faster recovery from failures
- 22% less unplanned work
- 5% fewer reworks
- 3x lower failure probability
2. Great tech basis
DevOps outsourcing to Ukraine provides you with access to a wide talent pool. You can hire the best professionals on the market at a cost that is twice as low as compared to US companies.
3. Great number of specialists
DevOps companies can provide you with experts without you having to spend countless hours trying to find them.
4. Project management on the vendor’s side
Companies providing DevOps usually take on the task of project management.
5. Shorter development cycles with improved quality
Constant monitoring, continuous testing, and automation improve the quality of code and reduce the time needed to deliver the product to the market or update its features.
Note: This is a summary of a guide.
Check out more details about DevOps services and recommendations on their utilization in the complete article on the MLSDev blog.
