devops overview
What is DevOps ?
DevOps is a culture, set of practices and bunch of tools that encourages communication, collaboration, integration, and automation between software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) teams. It's objective is to shorten the software development life cycle and provide continuous delivery with high quality software to customers. DevOps is complementary with Agile software development, several DevOps aspects came from the Agile methodology.
History of DevOps
In 2009, the first conference named devopsdays was held in Ghent, Belgium. The conference was founded by Belgian consultant, project manager and agile practitioner Patrick Debois. The conference has now spread to other countries. In 2012, the State of DevOps report was conceived and launched by Alanna Brown at Puppet. As of 2014, the annual State of DevOps report was published by Nicole Forsgren, Gene Kim, Jez Humble and others. In 2014, they found that DevOps adoption was accelerating. Also in 2014, Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory wrote the book More Agile Testing, containing a chapter on testing and DevOps.
Why adopt DevOps ?
The problem : Traditionally, Complains always had different teams that were responsible for developing and delivering software. These teams often operated in their silos. This effectively translated into a much longer feedback cycle, which is not something we desire in today's world. We've seen that incremental development with faster feedback has become the cornerstone of software delivery today.
The solution : While traditional agile methodologies take us to a reasonable point to overcome from this problem but it is still not ideal. So, it doesn't require a lot of reasoning to understand that well-integrated, cross-functional agile teams are much better suited to deliver their objectives. DevOps is the practice that encourages communication, collaboration, integration, and automation between software development and operations teams. This better enables us to realize incremental development with faster feedback.
examples,- Before DevOps, the development and operation team worked in complete isolation that results a blame game when something goes wrong during delivery.
- Before DevOps, Manual code deployment leads to human errors in production.
- Time to market of software is more as Operation team starts working once development is done.
Benefits of DevOps
DevOps resolves a lot of complexities in the software development process and ensures a smooth delivery process, resulting in client satisfaction. The most important DevOps benefits are :
- Less Time to Market : One of the key reasons why DevOps is important for your business is that your software can be delivered faster because of streamlined processes, proper automation, systematic release planning, and more. Faster time to market means you have a chance to outrun your competitors.
- Better Innovation : DevOps culture creates trust on teams. When teams trust each other, they can experiment and innovate more effectively.
- Efficient Development and Reliable Deployment : In DevOps the amount of manual work is minimum. Parallel workflows, acceleration tools, scalable infrastructure, continuous integration servers, and much more contributes to efficient development and reliable deployment.
- Less Deployment Failures, Rollbacks, and Time to Recover : The development, deployment, and other processes become more predictable and error-free. With shorter development cycles ensured by DevOps and continuous testing, the team can spot any inconsistencies or defects in the software in a timely manner. Because of good collaboration and exchange of experience, it’s easy to quickly resolve them. It’s also incredibly easy to roll back a deploy at any time.
- Reduced Costs and IT Headcount : All of the DevOps benefits translate to reduced overall costs and IT headcount requirements. According to Kevin Murphy from Red Hat, DevOps development teams require 35 percent less IT staff and 30 percent lower IT costs.