What is DevOps Toolchain

DevOps is a culture that combines development and operations. DevOps replaces the traditional SDLC in which the problems are removed and more benefits are reaped. The benefits of DevOps are faster time to market, the operations and development are no longer siloed, frequent releases, teamwork, and greater accountabilities, fewer bugs, and errors, integration of all the phases, automation in every stage of DevOps Life Cycle Management, shared goals, shared responsibilities, greater collaboration and communication, updates and fixes at every phase and finally multiple releases of software. To accomplish every benefit of DevOps there are tools available that help in automation, management, and monitoring in every phase of the DevOps.

The DevOps Life Cycle Management consists of Plan, Code, Build, Test, Release, Deploy, Operate, and Monitor and all the phases have different tools to accomplish the software development. We need to talk about the DevOps pipeline which is continuous development, configuration management, continuous integration, continuous testing, continuous deployment, and continuous monitoring. In this article, we will discuss what the DevOps toolchain is, how to build them, and its benefits. StarAgile conducts DevOps online certification training which is for aspiring DevOps professionals.

Basics of DevOps toolchain

The DevOps toolchain is a continuous chain of streamlined activities that can be grouped into two stages they are development and Operations. The development stage consists of activities such as plan, create, verify, and package whereas the operations stage consists of a monitor, configure, and release activity. The DevOps Culture is the integration of operations and development and removes the siloes in each activity by being transparent, communicative, and being collaborative. There is no distinction between the 2 stages as they are combined. Let us discuss each activity and how are they related to each other. Learn more by enrolling in a DevOps course online at StarAgile institute.

Plan - In this activity the planning of the DevOps life cycle management takes place and it reduces the overwork or underwork and also sets in the priority and sequencing of the activities in the backlog items. Planning is a crucial phase and it takes inputs from the operations such as production, monitoring, and operating to ensure that all these are taken care of at the beginning of the activities. It breaks down the final requirements into the backlog items and ensures that the stages flow smoothly from the beginning till the end. The planning ensures that the crucial steps are taken such that there are no issues or problems in the operations as well as the development

Create - Once the plan is ready the next step is to create the software or the application. The backlog items are converted into features of the products and inputs are taken from operations to creating a standard application. It takes into account the final requirements; the release dates and creates a source file for the next stage that is verification. The modern software is developed with geographically dispersed teams who work collaboratively and transparently. The code is committed as frequently as possible in the GitHub which is the version control repository to commit codes. Enroll and take up the online DevOps course training at StarAgile to explore more on DevOps practices

Verify - In the verification stage the source code committed is verified or tested. The testing takes as frequently as the new codes are committed in the version control. Once the verification is passed then it is ready to be packaged in the next stage. The changes in the software applications are either accepted with changes or rejected by communicating the feedback to the development team. 2 types of analysis take place those are static and dynamic analysis and similarly manual and automated verification takes place.

Package - This is the last step in the development phase. There are 2 types of packaging that take place one is for the internal client such as installed on-premises to be installed in the local systems. Executables are available in the GitHub releases. The second type of packaging is for the cloud applications which are containerized applications that run on cloud systems such as Kubernetes. The applications are packaged as containers are then managed inside the container registries such as Docker Hub, GitLab registry, or Google cloud platform container registry, etc.

Release - This is the first step in operations, here the packaged applications are put into the end-user services or released into production. If the planning and other prior development activities were done correctly then there will be no changes or updates in the production. For example, the release is done in GitHub Pages where the website applications are directly hosted from there.  Some examples are for banking applications there is no scope for downtime and high infrastructure cost are bearable. Similar to marketing applications there is no need for sudden upfront infrastructure cost. For more on the DevOps toolchain example registers for the DevOps training and certification at StarAgile institute.

Configure - This is the second step in the operations phase where the infrastructure needed to run the applications are configured with fixes, changes, and updates. Even the applications are configured in this step to ensure that the application runs on the specific platforms and with architecture and infrastructure provided for production. Both of these configurations are created, managed, and tracked as a code in the GitHub repositories. By this approach, not only the operations people but also the development people will come to know of the run-time requirement of the applications and requirements of the infrastructure-as-a-code. It removes the siloes in the teams and there is increased cooperation between development and operations. This strengthens the fundamentals of DevOps culture. Thus the development teams and testing teams can confirm codes as required by the operations teams.

Monitor - This is the last step in the operations phase where the different metrics are collected and the system is monitored as per the guidelines of the planning stage. Monitoring ensures that the applications and infrastructures are tracked and monitored based on the metrics and the goals and requirements of the applications. The monitoring stage is important to troubleshoot software and infrastructure issues. Monitoring is done for parameters such as the health check, performance, and capacity of the applications in the production environment, etc 

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How to Build a DevOps chain

 Everyone in the team can use tools to create a toolchain. There requires research on picking the best tools for your DevOps projects. You need tools for all phases of the DevOps life cycle management. There are options such as the Out-of-the-box tool and custom tools. The out-of-the-box maybe suited in the scenarios where there is no need for a dedicated team to look after the coding or customization of the tools. The custom tools require a dedicated team, cost, and efforts, and time to make it work for you. The choice depends on your team, cost, time, and management of the tools. The following items will help you in choosing the right tools,

• Acceptance
• Analysis
• Build
• Strategy

DevOps toolchain list

 The DevOps toolchain list is shown in the DevOps toolchain diagram below which self-explanatory.

 Benefits of DevOps toolchain

 The 3 key benefits of the DevOps toolchain are

• High-quality products
• Refined Incident Management
• Rapid deployment

Conclusion

 We have seen how toolchain helps in DevOps culture and how the toolchain works together in considering the operations and development stages and keep them together. To know more about live real-time toolchain examples and to learn about DevOps toolchain, enroll for DevOps Certification Training at StarAgile institute.