Let's understand why DevOps was introduced first, and then we will see what exactly is DevOps.
Before DevOps the traditional waterfall model was used.
Waterfall Model:
Let's consider developing software in a traditional way using a Waterfall Model.
In the above diagram you will see the phases it will involve:
- In phase 1 – Complete Requirement is gathered and SRS is developed
- In phase 2 – This System is Planned and Designed using the SRS
- In phase 3 – Implementation of the System takes place
- In phase 4 – System is tested and its quality is assured
- In phase 5 – System is deployed to the end users
- In phase 6 – Regular Maintenance of the system is done
Waterfall Model Challenges
The Water-fall model worked fine and served well for many years however it had some challenges. In the following diagram the challenges of Waterfall Model are highlighted.
In the above diagram you can see that both Development and Operations had challenges in the Waterfall Model. From Developers point of view there were majorly two challenges:
After Development, the code deployment time was huge.
Pressure of work on old, pending and new code was high because development and deployment time was high.
On the other hand, Operations was also not completely satisfied. There were four major challenges they faced as per the above diagram:
It was difficult to maintain ~100% uptime of the production environment.
Infrastructure Automation tools were not very affective.
Number of severs to be monitored keeps on increasing with time and hence the complexity.
It was very difficult to provide feedback and diagnose issue in the product.
In the following diagram proposed solution to the challenges of Waterfall Model are highlighted.
In the above diagram, Probable Solutions for the issues faced by Developers and Operations are highlighted in blue. This sets the guidelines for an Ideal Software Development strategy.
From Developers point of view:
A system which enables code deployment without any delay or wait time.
A system where work happens on the current code itself i.e. development sprints are short and well planned.
From Operations point of view:
System should have at-least 99% uptime.
Tools & systems are there in place for easy administration.
Effective monitoring and feedbacks system should be there.
Better Collaboration between Development & Operations and is common requirement for Developers and Operations team.
I guess it's time we explore what is DevOps and how it overcomes these challenges.
DevOps:
DevOps integrates developers and operations team to improve collaboration and productivity.
According to the DevOps culture, a single group of Engineers (developers, system admins, QA's. Testers etc turned into DevOps Engineers) has end to end responsibility of the Application (Software) right from gathering the requirement to development, to testing, to infrastructure deployment, to application deployment and finally monitoring & gathering feedback from the end users, then again implementing the changes.
This is a never ending cycle and the logo of DevOps makes perfect sense to me. Just look at the above diagram – What could have been a better symbol than infinity to symbolize DevOps?
Now let us see how DevOps takes care of the challenges faced by Development and Operations. Below table describes how DevOps addresses Dev Challenges.
Going further, below table describes how DevOps addresses Ops Challenges.
However, you would still be wondering, how to implement DevOps. To expedite and actualize DevOps process apart from culturally accepting it, one also needs various DevOps tools like Puppet, Jenkins, GIT, Chef, Docker, Selenium, AWS etc to achieve automation at various stages which helps in achieving Continuous Development, Continuous Integration, Continuous Testing, Continuous Deployment, Continuous Monitoring to deliver a quality software to the customer at a very fast pace.
Now take a look at the below DevOps diagram with various DevOps Tools closely and try to decode it.
These tools has been categorized into various stages of DevOps. Hence it is important that I first tell you about DevOps stages and then talk more about DevOps Tools.
DevOps Lifecycle can be broadly broken down into the below DevOps Stages:
- Continuous Development
- Continuous Integration
- Continuous Testing
- Continuous Monitoring
- Virtualization and Containerization
These stages are the building blocks to achieve DevOps as a whole.
You can refer the below video on DevOps tools to understand how DevOps can be implemented in real-life. It gives a nice introduction to all major DevOps tools, like Git, Jenkins, Puppet, Docker etc.
Below are the videos on all major DevOps tools, namely: Git, Docker, Jenkins, Puppet, Chef, Ansible.
I would also recommend you to check out the following blogs on major DevOps tools which would help you in getting better insights:
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