buildpiper - Tumblr blog

[buildpiper]

The Different Stages of a DevOps LifeCycle!

DevOps is a methodology and an approach that is focused on agility, collaboration, and automation within the software world. Though DevOps is a practical methodology, it is basically a mindset and cultural shift in an organization. While the concept is not a magic bullet, it can solve many of the common pain points that surround a traditional IT organization. Here are the five important stages of the DevOps lifecycle. Knowing these phases is important for assessing the DevOps benefits for your business. Let’s dive into this blog to know more.

Source

Stage 1. Continuous Development

“Continuous Development” is the first stage of the DevOps lifecycle during which the planning and software coding takes place. The planning involves understanding the vision of the project and visualizing the end-product (software) based on those perceptions.

Planning doesn’t involve any major tools but writing the code involves a wide range of tools. Developing the source code for the application begins with choosing a programming language based on the application requirements. JavaScript, C/C++, Ruby, and Python are some of the prominently used programming languages for coding applications in DevOps.

Tools Used: The process of maintaining the source code is called Source Code Management (SCM), where version control tools such as GIT, TFS, GitLab, Subversion, and Mercurial, are used. A stable version of the application code is built with the help of a version control tool in the continuous development phase.

Stage 2. Continuous Integration

Continuous Integration is the next phase of the DevOps lifecycle. The source code often gets modified and these changes happen on a frequent basis. In this phase, new codes that support add-on functionalities are built and integrated into the existing code.

Continuous Integration involves the planning of the tests that need to be carried out in the testing phase. Bugs in the source code are detected and identified during this stage. Detection of bugs helps in resolving the issues at an early stage. This is how continuous integration works,

Developers run tools for unit testing, code review, integration testing, compilation, and packaging for creating new code that brings more functionalities to the application.

The new code is integrated into the existing code.

The updated code is then packaged and proceeded to the next phase, which is either the production server or the testing server.

Tools Used: Jenkins is one of the most popularly used DevOps tools that is used for obtaining the updated source code and constructing the build into .exe format.

Stage 3. Continuous Testing

In the Continuous Testing phase, the developed software is tested for bugs and issues. Each and every functionality of the software is tested to detect bugs if any. The testing team stimulates a test environment with the help of Docker containers. Though automated testing helps save time and effort, manual testing can be cumbersome and time-consuming.

The reports generated by automated testing improve the test evaluation process because of which analyzing the failed test cases becomes less complicated. The test suite goes through a UAT (User Acceptance Testing) process, which makes the resultant test suite simpler and bug-free. Tools Used: TestNG, Selenium and JUnit are some of the DevOps tools that are used for automated testing. Testing ensures the flawless functionality and inter-networking of the application. Once the process of testing is complete, the tested code is re-sent to the continuous integration phase for updating the source code.

Stage 4. Continuous Monitoring

Continuous Monitoring is an important stage of the DevOps lifecycle. The overall performance of the application is monitored in this stage. This is why this stage is of prime importance for the developers. The developers record data on the use of the application and monitor the application’s functionality.

Some of the common system errors that are resolved in this phase include “Server not reachable” or “low memory”. Continuous monitoring helps assess the functionality of the application. It detects the threats and the root causes of recurring system errors. Moreover, if there are any security issues and bugs, they are automatically detected and resolved during this stage.

When critical issues are detected in this phase, the application is swiftly rerun through all the earlier phases of the DevOps lifecycle.

Tools Used: Sensu, ELK Stack, NewRelic, Splunk, and Nagios are some of the important DevOps tools that are used in continuous monitoring. These tools enable the operations team to have complete control over the performance of the system, the production server, and the application. Stage 5. Continuous Deployment

The finalized application code is deployed to the production servers. Configuration management is a key process in this phase as it is responsible for carrying out the precise deployment of the application on all servers.

Consistency in the application’s performance is developed and maintained in this stage. The code is released to the servers and the updates are scheduled for all the servers.

Tools Used: These configurations are kept consistent throughout the production process with the help of configuration management tools such as Ansible, Puppet, and Chef. While containerization tools are used to achieve continuous deployment through the configuration management process, the scalability of the process of continuous deployment is handled by tools like Docker.

BuildPiper- A One-stop-shop for all your DevOps needs!

Businesses have to face a lot of challenges during cloud migration, application modernization or rearchitecting business architecture. There is a multitude of reasons for cloud migration. Flexibility, ROI, agility, performance, and digital transformations are some of these. Companies face issues with cloud migration as it is a complex task to handle. More often, the struggle is due to a lack of clearly defined strategy and sometimes because of the absence of adequate tools and platforms.

Enabling a seamless, secure and compliant cluster management and Microservices onboarding, BuildPiper emerged as a game-changer for some of the leading enterprises we’ve offered our services to. Explore other interesting features of this powerful and unique platform including Managed Kubernetes, Managed Microservices, Secure CI/CD Pipelines, Security, Compliance, and Observability. Leverage quick and best assistance to manage your K8s cluster from our experts. Take a demo today!