Introduction to DevOps
DevOps is a buzz in the industry; it’s growing at a speed of light due to its potential to produce quality products at a lightning pace. Companies that have adopted it are growing far better than those that do not practice it. The fundamental principle of it is to automate everything, so automation is its lifeline.
Automation promotes speed, consistency, accuracy, and dependability and improves the number of deliveries. Automation encapsulates everything from building, deploying, and monitoring.
Make the development and delivery process fast by continuous process for quick development and delivery. Taken From Article, Role of Agile in DevOps
Best DevOps Automation Tools List for Organization
DevOps Automation starts from code generation and runs continuously even after the software or app is in the monitoring/production phase. The entire pipeline contains:
All of these processes are automated using different tools.
Tools for Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
It is the concept of managing infrastructures like data server, storage, and networks using the code rather than operating them manually, in other words, we use machine-readable files to set up the infrastructure of a system. Infrastructure as Code deploys the whole infrastructure using the code, so it is easy to redeploy the same code in other systems whenever it needed.
Infrastructure as Code Tools for increasing your productivity
Ansible
Ansible is a tool designed with automation in mind since the beginning, and it provides a “radically simple” configuration language that automates cloud provisioning, configuration management, and other IT needs and also it is a flexible IaC tool available currently.- It is an open-source easy to use the tool.
- Ideal tool to manage complex IT flows.
- No need to install any other software or firewall ports on the system we want to automate
- It also removes the repetitive task.
Terraform
Terraform is an Infrastructure as Code (IaC) software tool; it’s an open-source tool used for building, changing and versioning infrastructure safely and efficiently.- It creates the graph of all resources and shows the dependency on one another.
- Very less human intervention is required to make changes in the infrastructure that avoids possible human error.
- It performs a dry run to the configuration and shows the changes to be made to support even before making the changes.
Puppet
Puppet is a DevOps automation tool for configuration management that allows complete managing Infrastructure as Code (IaC) without expanding the size of the team. Puppet uses master-slave architecture which uses encryption for communication between them with the help of SSL.- It eliminates the manual efforts for software delivery process.
- It can run on any platform that supports ruby.
- It has a large installed base; more than 30,000 companies worldwide use the puppet.
- It provides real-time context-aware reporting.
Chef
The chef is an automation its tool that helps in achieving speed, scale, and consistency. It also used for defining Infrastructure as Code (IaC). It works on the client-server server architecture, and It uses pure-ruby, domain-specific language (DSL) for writing the configuration for the system.- It Increases server performance.
- It can manage multiple cloud environments.
- The chef comes with a low barrier entry; we can use it even for a small task.
- It provides visualization of data in real-time.
Helm
Helm makes deployments so easy in Kubernetes, all you need to add helm charts on your Kubernetes cluster. All the Helm charts are stored in Helm repository; you can search the required application chart on Helm registry and add them to your Kubernetes cluster with ease.
- Kubernetes packages can be used using a single CLI command.
- Helm offers the ability to customize application configurations during deployment.
- Helm plays a crucial role in streamlining CI/CD pipelines.
- Helm maintains a database of all the versions of your releases automatically.
- Helm enhances productivity. It lets software developers do what they are best at writing code.
IT organisations have transformed how they design, build and deliver products using automatio. Click to explore about our, DevOps Checklist for Enterprises
Tools for Continuous Integration/Deployment
Continuous integration is a DevOps practice in which developers merge their codes in local directory frequently, due to integration they can detect errors quickly and also locate them very easily. Continuous Deployment is releasing or deploying the software in the production environment automatically. No manual interference is needed in continuous deployment.
Jenkins
Jenkins is a self-contained open source automation tool in it, which can perform continuous integration and other automation tasks. It’s entirely written in java, and it is one of the most widely used tools in the world.- It’s an open-source, user-friendly tool.
- It’s a platform-independent tool available in almost every platform.
- It has a vibrant plugin environment; it offers over a thousand plugin for automation.
Buddy
Buddy is a web-based continuous integration and deployment platform, automation DevOps tool it works on the delivery pipeline to build, test and deploy software. Buddy is a cloud-hosted tool, but we can use it on our local server.- Deployment in Buddy is speedy, it has an average deployment time of only 12 seconds.
- Five times lower failure rate after the Deployment and we can recover from failure with just one click.
- Every developer spends 37 min daily for the new updates and features of Buddy.
- Apps can be built, tested and deployed faster just after one minute of setup.
Juju
Juju is an open-source service and application modelling tool, it was developed by Canonical in 2011, and it’s the same company which developed Ubuntu OS. Juju allows the quick automation of cloud infrastructure and deploys applications faster.- It produces detailed logs that help in resolving issues quickly.
- It deploys the application to the cloud in a fraction of time.
- It comes with a powerful GUI and a command-line interface.
Docker
Docker is a world-leading container platform, and it’s an open-source tool that packages the application alongside with dependencies in the form of docker containers and deploys them on any platforms.- Help us in configuring system easily and quickly.
- Provide isolations in boxes so that there are no conflicts between any apps or software.
- It provides rapid Deployment, which increases productivity.
DevOps Tools for Testing
Continuous testing is a process in its lifecycle in which tests are executed automatically on the software, continuous testing test software early and often to provide better software quality, and it also provides feedback at every instant. Here is the list of best tools for Continuous Testing
Selenium
Selenium is an open-source automated testing tool, it works on a web framework, and it only tests web applications. Selenium does not check any mobile or desktop application.- Selenium is a free testing tool.
- Selenium can work on multiple operating systems like Windows, MAC, Linux.
- Selenium also supports numerous browsers like Mozilla, Firefox and Chrome.
- Selenium supports various languages for test script writing like java, python and c#.
Mocha
Mocha is a JavaScript test framework that runs on Node.js and web browser, and It performs asynchronous testing that runs serially, Mocha helps in developing a more flexible and accurate code.- Mocha uses JavaScript API for testing.
- Mocha highlights the slow tests.
- Mocha comes with file watcher support.
Cucumber
Cucumber is a Ruby written software tool that is used for testing other software or application, and it uses Behaviour-driven development (BDD) approach for testing the software.- Although it is written in Ruby, it supports other languages too like java.net.
- We can write the test for Cucumber without any prior knowledge of the software code.
- It provides test reusability.
DevOps Tools for Monitoring
Continuous monitoring is an essential process in it in which software, developer and development process is monitored continuously; it is used to find errors as early as possible. It helps developers and tester to check the performance and availability of their software or application.
Prometheus
Prometheus is a monitoring and alerting toolkit built by sound cloud. It’s an open-source tool mostly written in GoLang. It collects metrics from the given target and also triggers alerts when needed.- It has a multidimensional data model for collecting time series data to generate tables and graphs.
- Stores time series both on memory as well as on local disk.
- It contains custom libraries that are easy to implement.
Datadog
Datadog is a Software as a Service (SaaS) based server monitoring system, and It provides turnkey visibility into most applications and infrastructure components.- It is used to monitor different DevOps like Docker.
- It comes with a customizable monitoring dashboard.
- Its search tool is simple and easy to use.
Sensu
The Sensu is open-source software and infrastructure monitoring tool, it monitors servers, services of application and health of the application, it is written in Ruby, and it uses Redis to store data.- Can manage to monitor using its web UI.
- Provides swift implementation.
- It is flexible to expand.
- It has built-in de-duplication which eliminates alert fatigue.
New Relic
New Relic is a cloud-based (SaaS) solution which is developed to work in real-time with a web app; It has a dynamic and flexible monitoring system that can monitor applications like Ruby, Java, NodeJs etc.- Provides real-time insight into the running app.
- It performs the in-depth analysis of the app.
- It has real-time error analysis with on-demand diagnostic tools.
Conclusion
Automating everything is needed to achieve the objectives of DevOps, and these tools help us in doing so; these tools remove the manual error and individual dependencies, also enable the speed and quality of the product, without these tools we can’t even imagine it.
- Read more here Best Open Source DevOps Tools
- Continue reading Automation Testing and Test Automation Framework
