DevOps Tools
DevOps Automation Tools
DevOps is one technology trend that has changed the way IT firms operate. DevOps model appeared as a boon to those firms facing challenges about faster deployment and in-time product release. DevOps didn’t just introduce new technology; it actively fostered a culture that bridged the gaps between development and operations teams, which are crucial to any IT organization.
Configuration Tools for Continuous Deployment
As the firms started realizing DevOp’s potential, their immediate challenge was with the implementation. Though they have multiple strategies, gaps in a full-fledged DevOps implementation still exist.
And DevOps tools appeared as a solution! However, no single tool can be a one-stop solution to full-fledged DevOps adoption, so there is a wide variety of DevOps tools for every specific DevOps requirement.
DevOps tools facilitate the effective sharing and exchange of resources, information, and technical know-how of the tasks between the development, operations, and security teams for effectual product output.
How DevOps Tools Benefit Your Business?
DevOps Tools make it easier by bringing in a new flow across SDLC. It addresses critical aspects of your DevOps environment by automating the process chain using Build, Test, Deploy, and Release features.
The right DevOps Tools in place can help you with the following:
- Accelerated Development
- Enhanced Operational Efficiency
- Quicker Release
- Continuous Delivery
- Frequent Deployment
- Faster Recovery Time
- Increased Collaboration
- Faster Rate of Innovation
- Seamless Flow Across Value-Chain
Here, we will look into different DevOps tools that play a vital role in DevOps implementation. By functionality, DevOps tools can be divided into two categories: Tools by Functionality and Tools by Requirement.
DevOps Tools by Functionality
| Puppet | Available as free open source and paid versions, we leverage this go-to automation tool that automates critical manual tasks and simplifies them by abstracting critical configuration details across different OS and technology platforms. | |
| Docker | Beneficial for Dev environments, we utilize Docker for quicker deployment to create their images or modify the existing ones as needed. A Docker-Puppet integration helps build robust images using more than seven million lines of Puppet code. | |
| Jenkins | Automating regular tasks, we use Jenkins, which enables CI/CD for any combination of coding language and source code repositories using a pipeline system. Allowing the usual scripting process, Jenkins ensures a robust procedure of integrating the entire DevOps chain. |
| Terraform | An infrastructure provisioning tool that maintains the state of infrastructure using ‘state files’. Through this tool, we facilitate public and private cloud infrastructure provisioning. | |
| Ansible | We use this agent-less configuration management and orchestration tool, where configuration modules are defined as ‘Playbooks’. Written in YAML format, Playbooks are relatively easy to write compared to other related tools. It supports cloud provisioning. | |
| Chef | We leverage this ruby-based configuration management tool that uses ‘Cookbooks’, where infrastructure is coded in Domain-Specific Language with limited programming. |
| Jenkins | A Java-based CI tool, we use this for faster app delivery as it requires association with a version control system such as GitHub. Pipeline-as-code functionality makes the CI/CD pipelines a complete code. | |
| Vagrant | A tool for configuring virtual machines for a developer environment, it contains plugins that support cloud provisioning, cloud management tools, and Docker. | |
| Docker | This works on the concept of process-level virtualization; Docker creates isolated environments for container apps. |
| Consul | We use this open-source, widely available tool mainly for service discovery requirements and the right fit to store and retrieve configurations in real-time. | |
| Etcd | We use this open-source key-value store in Kubernetes to store the cluster operations and management state. | |
| Vault | We use this open-source tool to store and retrieve confidential data that provides options to store secret keys through encryption. |
| Prometheus and Alertmanager | Prometheus is a lightweight, open-source monitoring system built for modern application monitoring; it supports Linux servers and container monitoring. The Alert Manager takes care of the mechanism for monitoring metrics. | |
| New Relic | This is a SaaS-based app that supports monitoring of PHP, Ruby, Java, and NodeJS, among other applications; it gives insights into the real-time performance of running apps. | |
| Sensu | Another open-source monitoring tool developed for cloud environments, easily deployable through Chef and Puppet. | |
| Datadog | Another SaaS-based application and server monitoring solution that helps monitor Docker containers and other related applications. |
| Splunk | This powerful tool has a significant role in monitoring and exploring machine-generated data. Its specialty lies in indexing data of any type, making it unique among other DevOps tools besides its effective information-sharing mechanism. | |
| Graphite | This tool is specialized in converting machine-generated data into graphical representations such as on-demand graphs. It renders chunks of available data into dashboards and graphs, which can further be deployed easily onto other applications or webpages. |
| Selenium | Selenium is an open-source automated testing tool that supports multiple operating systems (Windows, MAC, Linux) and browsers (Chrome, Firefox, IE, and Headless browsers). It supports various languages for test script writing, like Java, Python, Groovy, C#, Ruby, PHP, and Perl. Robot Framework is the most popular framework used with Selenium for Continuous Testing. | |
| Testsigma | Testsigma is a cloud-based automation testing tool that supports testing Web applications, Mobile Web applications, Android and iOS apps, and APIs. It uses a simple, natural English language to compose tests and requires no complicated programming, reducing the learning curve for manual testers to adopt automation skills quickly. Testsigma allows multiple open-source and third-party integrations and continuously supports numerous test environments to match the dynamic testing requirements. | |
| IBM Rational Functional Tester | A Rational Functional Tester (RFT) can perform functional testing, regression testing, data-driven testing, GUI testing, API testing, and performance testing. It supports various applications, including web-based, .Net, Java, Siebel, and PowerBuilder. | |
| Tricentis Tosca | Tricentis Tosca is a continuous testing platform that can be combined with open-source testing tools and more than 150 technologies. It supports model-based test automation, a scriptless approach that will reduce the maintenance overhead. It performs functional testing, load testing, BI testing, and risk-based testing. | |
| Watir | Watir is an open-source automation and continuous testing tool based on the Ruby language. It supports cross-browser testing for Chrome, Firefox, IE, and Opera browsers. Watir also supports data-driven and headless browser testing, integrating with BDD tools and frameworks, including Cucumber, RSpect, or Test/Unit. |
| Jenkins | One of the most popular DevOps tools for supporting continuous delivery offerings through DevOps. As a continuous integration server and a continuous delivery hub, the Jenkins tool offers hundreds of plugins that can help build, deploy, and automate projects of any kind. The new Blue Ocean sub-project developed better options to run, build, and analyze project pipelines through Jenkins’s advancement. | |
| Git | This tool enables version control of software projects and is more familiar among Linux users. It has a unique advantage when sharing master versions of application files with distributed teams. But Git by itself doesn’t have a centralized repository. | |
| GitHub | GitHub can be called an extended feature of Git. Addressing the centralized repository gap in Git, GitHub appears as a solution for hosting Git repositories. Easing information sharing across teams through graphical representations, GitHub bridges critical gaps between the teams, making information exchange more accessible and effective. The public and private repositories are available in paid versions. | |
| Gerrit | This is a web-based management solution for a Git-run control system. Gerrit allows you to manage code review and code repositories at a place. | |
| GoCD | Reliable and continuous integration from DevOps unique features, ensuring codes in short and reliable cycles. This continuous integration tool offers complete visibility throughout the workflow. With Go, one can easily compare builds and go beyond that with dozens of easily deployable plugins. | |
| Mercurial | This is also similar to Git in its version-control feature. With an instant graphing tool, Mercurial is unique because of its distributed nature. Like Git, this tool has no dependence on a central repository. | |
| Chef | A configuration-management tool for efficient web-scale IT operations. It uses the concept of ‘recipes’ for configuring databases, load balancing, and web servers. | |
| Ansible | Another powerful tool that offers a continuous delivery feature. With effective server and configuration management, this tool eases IT automation, ending repetitive tasks and enabling faster deployments. Cloud provisioning application deployment is among other vital features of Ansible. | |
| Kubernetes | This tool is a solution for age-old concerns related to server management, especially in updating and migrating servers. Kubernetes, an open-source tool, ensures a mechanism to deploy, maintain, and gauge containerized applications. This tool offers application predictability by limiting hardware resource usage. |
Tools That Can Fill Gaps
We leverage the ones above, which are crucial in functionality and a specific requirement for opting for DevOps services.
This is key to DevOps adoption that stands out among other DevOps tools. This is a measuring point for applications and process improvement and is crucial in DevOps progress. This speaks about DevOps progress from the end-user perspective.
Monitoring is critical to any organization as it grows. Busily engaged in automation and continuous delivery and integration, DevOps would need integration of monitoring tools to assess the workflows, which could boost efficiency in the deployment cycle, business process, and overall software development.
Tools that measure the DevOps progress regarding end-user experience are essential to the entire DevOps journey.
Analytics is one crucial aspect every organization looks at to stay perfect. Along with continuous integration and deployment tools, our DevOps services offer continuous analytics tools to measure application activity compared to the business requirements. Continuous monitoring, tracking, and analytics could be the need of the hour for a full-fledged DevOps implementation.
A new integration tool that addressed the security issues in DevOps.
Which DevOps Tools Suit Your Requirement?
Worried about choosing from widely-available options of open source and commercial tools? This usually needs some testing and experimentation. Don’t worry! We are here to guide you. All you have to do is prepare the checklist of your essential requirements and tell us.
Our DevOps experts, including planners and engineers, will help you choose the appropriate ones that meet your project requirements and assist you in the successful implementation.
Overall, 2024 has been noted as a promising year for DevOps and its tool market, with many more companies realizing DevOps’s potential. As the rate of deployment increases, the same will result in the rise of demand for the best DevOps tools.
How Veritis Helps?
Do you want to choose from widely available open-source and commercial tools? We understand that this process needs some testing and experimentation. We are here to guide you – All you have to do is prepare the checklist of your essential requirements and discuss your specifications with us.
Our DevOps experts, including planners and engineers, will help you choose the appropriate ones that meet your project requirements and assist you in successful implementation—looking For DevOps Consulting Services in a US location? What are you waiting for?