In a software development industry, it is very important that the agile tools are used in building software or applications. The word ‘DevOps’ is a combination of two words ‘development’ and ‘operations.’ Although DevOps is a culture that promotes collaboration between Development and Operations Team to deploy code to production faster in an automated & repeatable way,
it has also helped in increasing an organization’s speed to deliver applications and services. It allows organizations to serve their customers better and compete more strongly in the markets.
Need for DevOps:
- DevOps are more flexible over other software modules as they release a much stable version with every new update.
- The development tools and operational tools are now integrated into a single unit and they can work synchronously.
- Saves a lot of time for building the project rather than testing, designing and debugging the application.
- It also provides an enhanced version control system that allows the developers to leverage programmable infrastructure at different stages of application development.
Key factors that influence the usage of DevOps over other tools:
- Good quality: DevOps lets the users with better quality application development with better quality and improvised versions of the build tools.
- Reduced Risk factor: All the released versions are more stable and the bugs are fixed immediately. This makes them more secure and stable to use.
- Predictability: With fewer failure rates of new releases and better code predictability, DevOps are very flexible to use.
- Reproducibility: The earlier versions can be restored and the same platform can be used again.
- Resiliency: Changes made to the operating system are auditable, stable and can be reformed easily.
- Maintainability: Crash recovery is easy and the tools involved in the system makes the code much efficient
- Cost-Effective: Since most of the tools are built in a single unit, it reduces the cost of the project.
- Modularity: DevOps uses the modularity approach where it breaks large pieces of code into smaller functionalities.
Most frequently used DevOps:
DevOps isn’t about a single person’s job. It’s about many people working and collaborating together for sharing the resources to develop a project. The unplanned work and resources can be brought up together using DevOps and worked on simultaneously.
Here are some of the most frequently used DevOps:
- Gradle: Gradle is the official tool built especially for application development. It supports many languages such as Python, Java, XML, JavaScripts. It uses Groovy-based DSL for the design-build and structure of this program. It can import files from Maven and Ant tools to continue and
- Git: Git is a version control system tool that is used to integrate different modules of the project in a single go. Different versions of your source code can be saved and returned to a previous version when necessary.
- Jenkins: Jenkins is an open-source automation server that helps in automating the developing processes and facilitate the technical aspects. With Jenkins, you can set up and customize your CI/CD pipeline according to your own needs
- Bamboo: Bamboo is an on-premise server service that is used for continuous integration and development of the project. Bamboo boasts the best integration with Jira, BitBucket, and FishEye.
- Docker: It is a service that uses a platform as a service to deliver oS level virtualization to deliver software in packages called containers. Docker is portable and has clean interfaces to access the data. A Docker container is a docker image brought to life.
Since DevOps is mostly about integrating the developer tools with operations, if one is seeking a career in this field, they must be able to work in both fields as well. Here are the job roles that are feasible for those who have mastered DevOps.
Automation architect
Also called integration specialists, these automation architects often analyze, design, and implement strategies for continuous deployments to ensure high availability on production and pre-production systems
Release Manager
The job of release managers is to work to address the management and coordination of the product from development through production. Usually, they work on more of the technical details and hurdles in which a traditional project manager would not be involved.
Security Engineer
The security aspect of a product is no longer discarded as a non-functional requirement. Companies working with DevOps have security engineers working side by side with developers. They build security into the product while building, unlike the waterfall model where they build at the end.
Experienced Assurance Engineer
The need for QA testers is replaced by a need for XA experts charged with ensuring that all new features and functions are released with the end-user experience in mind. Along with Quality testing, it is also important to ensure that the right tools are used and implemented.
According to Indeed and GlassDoor reviews, a DevOps Engineer on an average gets a salary of more than $90K per annum. Hence, it is one of the most seeking job-role for all the tech geeks in the industry.
The software industry i always evolving with new technologies. With every new release, it is important that one is equipped with the knowledge to use these tools.