I have taken up the #90DaysDevOps Challenge, and today marks the first day of this incredible learning journey. Over the next three months, I will be dedicating myself to mastering the art of DevOps and sharing my daily learnings with all of you.
I am excited to share my daily learnings and insights from this DevOps journey with all of you. Each day, I will post about a specific topic, tool, or concept I have explored, along with the key takeaways and any practical examples or challenges I encountered.
What is DevOps?
The word DevOps is a combination of the terms development and operations, meant to represent a collaborative or shared approach to the tasks performed by a company’s application development and IT operations teams.
This is DevOps Life-Cycle:
This section will delve into the different phases of the DevOps lifecycle in some detail.
1)Plan — The planning phase is exactly what it sounds like: planning the project’s lifecycle. In contrast to conventional methods to the development lifecycle, this model assumes that each stage will be repeated as necessary. In this manner, the DevOps workflow is planned with the likelihood of future iterations and likely prior versions in mind.
This implies that we will likely have information from past iterations that will better inform the next iteration, and that the present iteration will likewise inform the next iteration. This stage often involves all teams to ensure that no area of the planning is ignored or forgotten.
2) Code — The developers will write the code and prepare it for the next phase during the coding stage. Developers will write code in accordance with the specifications outlined in the planning phase and will ensure that the code is created with the project’s operations in mind.
3) Build — Code will be introduced to the project during the construction phase, and if necessary, the project will be rebuilt to accommodate the new code. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways, although GitHub or a comparable version control site is frequently used.
The developer will request the addition of the code, which will then be reviewed as necessary. The request will be approved if the code is ready to be uploaded, and the code will be added to the project. Even when adding new features and addressing bugs, this method is effective.
4) Test — Throughout the testing phase, teams will do any necessary testing to ensure the project performs as planned. Teams will also test for edge and corner case issues at this stage. An “edge case” is a bug or issue that only manifests during an extreme operating event, whereas a “corner case” occurs when many circumstances are met.
5) Release — The release phase occurs when the code has been verified as ready for deployment and a last check for production readiness has been performed. The project will subsequently enter the deployment phase if it satisfies all requirements and has been thoroughly inspected for bugs and other problems.
6) Deploy — In the deploy phase, the project is prepared for the production environment and is operating as planned in that environment. This would be the responsibility of the operations team; in DevOps, it is a shared responsibility. This shared duty pushes team members to collaborate to guarantee a successful deployment.
7) Operate — In the operating phase, teams test the project in a production environment, and end users utilise the product. This crucial stage is by no means the final step. Rather, it informs future development cycles and manages the configuration of the production environment and the implementation of any runtime requirements.
8)Monitor — During the monitoring phase, product usage, as well as any feedback, issues, or possibilities for improvement, are recognized and documented. This information is then conveyed to the subsequent iteration to aid in the development process. This phase is essential for planning the next iteration and streamlines the pipeline’s development process.
Key principles of DevOps include:
1) Collaboration and Communication: DevOps encourages close collaboration between development, operations, and other stakeholders involved in the software development lifecycle. This collaboration helps in sharing knowledge, aligning goals, and improving communication channels.
2) Automation: DevOps promotes the use of automation tools and practices to streamline repetitive tasks, such as building, testing, and deployment processes. Automation reduces errors, accelerates delivery, and enhances efficiency.
3) Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD): CI/CD is a core practice in DevOps. Continuous Integration involves frequently integrating code changes into a shared repository, allowing for early detection of issues and ensuring that the software remains in a releasable state. Continuous Delivery focuses on automating the release process, making it easier to deploy new features or bug fixes rapidly.
4) Infrastructure as Code (IaC): DevOps encourages treating infrastructure provisioning, configuration, and management as code. Infrastructure as Code allows for the use of version control, automated provisioning, and consistent environments, enabling faster and more reliable deployments.
5) Monitoring and Feedback: DevOps emphasizes the importance of monitoring software performance and gathering feedback from users. Monitoring helps identify issues, track performance metrics, and make data-driven decisions for improvements.
In DevOps, automation, scaling, and infrastructure are important concepts that play a crucial role in the development, deployment, and management of software systems. Here’s an overview of each term:
1) Automation: Automation refers to the process of replacing manual, repetitive tasks with automated processes. In DevOps, automation is used to streamline and accelerate various aspects of software development and operations. By automating tasks such as code builds, testing, deployment, and monitoring, teams can improve efficiency, reduce human error, and achieve faster release cycles. Common automation tools used in DevOps include configuration management tools like Ansible, deployment automation tools like Jenkins or GitLab CI/CD, and infrastructure provisioning tools like Terraform.
2) Scaling: Scaling refers to the ability of a system to handle increased workload or accommodate growth in terms of resources, performance, and capacity. In DevOps, scaling is essential to meet the demands of a growing user base or an application experiencing increased usage. Scaling can be done vertically, which involves adding more resources to an existing server or infrastructure component, or horizontally, which involves adding more instances or nodes to distribute the workload across multiple servers or infrastructure components. DevOps teams employ various techniques and technologies, such as load balancing, auto-scaling, and containerization (using tools like Docker and Kubernetes) to ensure that the system can handle increased demand while maintaining performance and reliability.
3) Infrastructure: Infrastructure in DevOps refers to the underlying technology stack and resources required to support the development, deployment, and operation of software systems. This includes physical servers, virtual machines, cloud services, networking components, storage systems, and more. Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is a common practice in DevOps that involves defining and managing infrastructure resources using declarative code or configuration files. IaC tools like Terraform, CloudFormation, or Ansible allow teams to provision, configure, and manage infrastructure resources programmatically, making the infrastructure easily reproducible, scalable, and version-controlled.
Why is DevOps Important?
DevOps is important because it’s a software development and operations approach that enables faster development of new products and easier maintenance of existing deployments. DevOps enables organizations to respond quickly to customer needs, reduce time-to-market, and maintain a competitive edge. It also promotes stability, scalability, and resilience of systems, leading to improved quality and customer satisfaction. Overall, DevOps helps organizations adapt to the fast-paced digital landscape, deliver value to customers, and drive business success.