Table of Contents
Introduction
DevOps is one of the most focused models that bridge the gap between developmental and operational processes. DevOps has changed how IT firms and software companies function, fundamentally empowering these companies with faster development and in-time release of products.
DevOps has become the key to sustaining development projects and coming to the desired results within the stipulated time.
There are multiple DevOps tools that assist DevOps adaptation in companies, however, every tool has an area where it can be implemented best. Therefore, a suite of DevOps tools or integration of multiple tools in development and deployment architectures is a great idea.
There is a huge variety of DevOps tools providing value for certain operational, developmental or deployment requirements that we should know about.
What is DevOps?
DevOps is one of the most valuable concepts in IT and software development that places heavy emphasis upon CI (Continuous Integration) and CD (Continuous Delivery). DevOps ensures that development and operations meet the deployment goals and business requirements.
It allows software developers and operational or architectural engineers to collaborate throughout the development cycle and deliver the pipeline goals within the timeframe.
DevOps improves communication, reduces cost, decreases deployment failures, affects output positively, and drastically reduces production time. For an effective DevOps strategy or model, companies place huge importance on CI/CD processes, Security, Alerting, Monitoring, and Configuration Management.
What is the Primary Function of DevOps tools?
DevOps tools have a variety of functions but the most important role they fulfill is automating the development process. This includes but is not limited to building, testing, deployment, and release-related functions. There are DevOps tools that can assist in all of these CI/CD functions and more.
DevOps tools help in reinforcing the Systems Development Life Cycle or development pipelines and ensure that team members can collaborate effectively. With a good suite of DevOps tools or automation servers such as Jenkins.
Companies can effectively isolate key areas of the development cycle and distribute tasks effectively. Here are the main benefits that DevOps tools provide to organizations.
- Rapid Development
- Effective and Efficient Operations
- Accelerated Release
- Continuous Delivery
- Recurring Deployment
- Fast Recovery Time
- Effective Learning Curve
- Stable Development Infrastructure
- Increased Cooperation and Collaboration
- Rapid Innovation
- Seamless Flow Across Development Cycle
- High Return on Investment and Cost Cutting
- Increased Productivity
- Quality Products
Best DevOps Tools that You Should Check Out
Here are the top DevOps tools that are preferred across multiple software and application development cycles or pipelines:
Jenkins:
It is an open-source automation server that promotes CI/CD for reliably building, testing and deploying software. Jenkins models and automates the chain of actions that allow accelerated rollouts of projects. Jenkins offers a huge list of plug-ins and has an adaptive ecosystem with a huge developer community behind it.
It is one of the most popular DevOps tools, Java-based and portable across most platforms. The main benefit of Jenkins is easy integration. Jenkins also builds every commit contributed by developers immediately instead of at specified intervals. This allows bugs or errors to be identified early during the development process.
Ansible:
Ansible provides an excellent way to automate complete IT infrastructures and application lifecycles. Ansible is definitely one of the best tools that can be used in DevOps for automation. This tool is great for scaling automation and speeding up developmental processes.
It’s very easy to deploy software using Ansible, and it eliminates the need for doing repetitive tasks. Ansible is ideal for managing complex deployment and allowing developers more time for important tasks that require human oversight.
Git:
Git is one of the most DevOps tools across companies and smaller groups alike. Git is a distributed source code management system that is popular for being open source and promoting easy collaboration.
Collaboration and progress tracking are the main advantages of Git, empowering remote workforces across different locations and integrating sub-processes being worked upon by different contributors in real-time.
Building commits, maintaining version control and integration of existing workflows are very easy when using Git. Git also provides access to a massive number of public repositories.
Docker:
Docker is another great alternative for an automation tool that also provides security integrations alongside agile operations. Docker is especially useful when building native cloud applications or legacy software. Docker easily packages dependencies, being popular for containerization to deliver a reliable final product.
It also provides a stable supply chain and allows applications to run smoothly across cloud platforms such as AWS and GCP. A distributed development environment can be seen when using Docker and it perfectly divides applications into containers to secure and isolate them.
This allows more integrated changes in the workflow and allows easy transfer, replacement, and repair of these smaller portions of the entire application.
Kubernetes:
Kubernetes has become the most popular container orchestration tool. Kubernetes automates the management, networking, scaling and deployment of container-based applications. It is one of the best solutions for deployment automation and it does this by orchestrating container building and deployment effectively.
It creates containers automatically and allocates functions on demand. This also promotes scalability and makes for a great CI/CD approach.
Selenium:
Selenium is an automated testing framework that is highly portable in nature. Selenium is especially useful for automating the testing of web applications. Selenium can also be used for debugging and sampling. DevOps can use Selenium to test web services across various clients such as browsers and Operating Systems.
Developers can use the versatile nature of Selenium to use it for various programming languages and run multiple parallel tests at the same time. Selenium can perform image-based testing, cross-platform testing and generate reports. Selenium also has fewer hardware requirements compared to other DevOps tools.
Jira:
Jira is the best for collaboration and integration of partner tools. Jira is also great for providing insights, maintaining backlogs, integrating systems, and using repositories to extensively build and operate the software.
It is also great for scheduling workflow, tracking products, managing deployment, bug discovery, and debugging. Jira is also based on Java and a great choice for developers who wish to use their own tools and code to specify functions in Jira-supported DevOps tools.
Apache Maven:
Apache Maven allows developers to build an immense number of projects into pre-specified output. It is a highly preferred project management tool for software. It is also an application comprehension tool, focusing on the build of the project, reporting, documentation, and information collection.
It is easy to set up and is consistent across all the projects. Maven also supports parallel projects and is highly extensible with huge support for plugins, repositories, and custom scripts.
Apache JMeter:
Apache JMeter is a Java-based DevOps tool that is built for testing functionality and measuring performance. It is an open-source tool that was originally built to test web applications. JMeter allows users to test the performance of both dynamic and static resources and software assets.
JMeter also allows the emulation of heavy server loads, server clusters, network events, and object probabilities to analyze the stability and performance of the software.
Chef:
Chef is an automation and configuration management tool that simplifies repair, updating, infrastructural management, and deployment of applications. Chef automates script-based changes and seamlessly CI/CD methods for future releases.
It can be customized to execute changes to the deployment cycle automatically. Chef has huge support for cloud-based extensions and allows AWS, Azure, and Rackspace integrations.
Bitbucket:
Bitbucket offers unlimited repositories and is one of the best CI/CD implementations for software development. It is meant for collaboration and effective code review. It offers the power of collaboration alongside the added security by designating approvers and merging checklists.
Security issues and vulnerabilities are identified easily when using Bitbucket, and team members are offered live visibility of approved code or containers. Bitbucket also allows post-deployment monitoring, live commits, pull requests, and branch connections.
Bitbucket ensures that frameworks can be seamlessly connected and this DevOps tool including its UI can be customized for the application being built. It is also easier to trigger webhooks with Bitbucket.
Puppet:
Puppet is one of the most popular configuration management tools in DevOps that automates inspection, delivery, and software management in development lifecycles. It is an infrastructure automation tool that provides platform independence and allows the software to be deployed securely and in time.
Ruby has been used to write Puppet, and this tool removes the need to manually script the configuration changes. This allows developers to skip writing code for unimportant changes across hundreds of systems.
Here is another DevOps tools list with each tool having its own advantages. These are popular DevOps technologies as well and extensively used for multiple CI/CD, building, testing or delivery purposes.
- Prometheus
- Nagios
- Splunk
- Vagrant
- Gradle
- Gitlab
- TeamCity
- Slack
- JUnit
- Trello
- Kibana
- SonarQube
- CodeClimate
Frequently Asked Questions
Build tools in DevOps or DevOps deployment tools are known as DevOps tools. These tools help in implementing CI/CD processes and also mostly automate building, testing, and deployment of software.
DevOps is a model or strategy that integrates development and operations. This department is especially useful for allowing developmental and operational collaboration. DevOps tools are tools or automation servers that assist DevOps and the processes it oversees.
Jenkins is the go-to DevOps tool, preferred by many professionals across the industry and by an enormous number of companies. However, Ansible is proving to be equally good and one of the best solutions for CI/CD or IT infrastructure automation.
Jenkins, Ansible, Docker, Selenium, Git, Bitbucket, Kubernetes, and Apache’s DevOps solutions are some popular DevOps tools.
Yes, Jira is a DevOps tool that is being extensively used in modern times.
Correct, Docker is a very popular DevOps as well. A huge number of developers use Docker.
Continuous integration, continuous delivery and continuous deployment are methods of integrating development and operational processes in order to automate the building, testing and delivery of software.
Jenkins is the better choice for automation while Git is the best for collaboration. Bitbucket is another Git-based alternative that is great for collaboration and infinite repository usage.
Yes, DevOps is growing to become one of the most important areas of IT with the latest DevOps technologies being adopted by companies across the world. The available DevOps tools and uses of these tools are truly increasing at a massive scale with DevOps assisting most major software development processes.
Key Takeaways
Choosing the right DevOps tools is important in order to integrate oneself properly into building, testing, and deployment processes. Being aware of CI/CD methods and tools that promote automation is a huge advantage when delving into the development and delivery of applications.
DevOps-related technologies and tools used in DevOps are very important for companies to ensure that software building projects are reliable, stable and that the pipeline goals are achieved.
