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What is a DevOps Pipeline?
A DevOps pipeline is the process that governs the deployment of software and provides a streamlined approach for delivering modern applications.
DevOps Principles
DevOps is a methodology that stemmed from the need to involve crossfunctional teams, systematize code delivery, and to optimize the process of building software at scale. The resulting principles are embraced by most software engineering teams and closely related professionals. These principles allow them to ship code changes at a faster pace, and thus delivering value to the organizations that have adopted them.
A number of studies have documented the benefits of proper DevOps implementation within software companies. Teams who adopt DevOps practices are said to have “shifted left”. This term underlines the fact that developers are given the responsibility over the deployment and performance of their software. In other words, the idea is that they’re equipped with the right tools to deploy, validate, and adjust their code.
Organizations in various verticals are struggling to implement DevOps best practices. In order to succeed, the right people must champion deployments and the right tools need to be given to the people working with various systems.
Implementation of the DevOps Pipeline
The first step in implementing DevOps principles within an organization is an internal audit. It’s important to have a clear understanding of the current technologies, teams, and standard operating procedures in place before any changes can be made.
There are multiple components to DevOps. In this section, our goal is to provide a brief explanation of each component and underline the benefit it provides to the team / organization. It’s important to understand that deploying a DevOps pipeline may entail the roll-out of one or more of the following components. Furthermore, note that the underlying procedures and technologies need to be adjusted to fit the team / organization. We’ve witnessed many projects fail due to internal pushback of tools and methodologies imposed.
Continuous integration and continuous delivery [CI/CD]
CI/CD is a toolset centered around rapid code changes and deployment. By integrating CI/CD methodologies and tools, software teams are capable of automating the deployment process and reduce the time it takes to push production code changes. It’s important to note that a proper CI/CD pipeline will often incorporate some of the other DevOps methodologies (Ex: Continuous Testing) in order to be efficient and reliable. We rarely see an organization focus on CI/CD as the starting point.
Continuous Monitoring [CM]
As previously discussed, developers are given the ownership and tools required to successfully deploy and run their code. Continuous Monitoring is the process of collecting real time system data and providing insights that allow developers to troubleshoot and optimize what they’ve released into production. A number of different tools exist on the current market that facilitate the process of obtaining system information. Some provide high level data while others, at the cost of performance and higher pricing, are able to dig much deeper into the applications running.
Continuous Testing [CT]
As developers deploy code into a test environment, Quality Assurance (QA) teams are responsible for error checking before that code hits production environments. In the current organizations, we find a mixed bag of QA practices. In the last few decades, organizations have transitioned from manual testing to automated / scripted testing methods. That being said, we currently see a spectrum of tests in the real world - testing requires a human touch when it comes to edge cases.
One of the most utilized tools in software testing is Jenkins. It allows developers to execute a set of defined unit tests. Unit tests are scripts that simulate various function calls to validate the code. In practice, the advantage of this method is that it’s possible to simulate millions of tests within a short timeframe. The drawback is that these tests are only capable of detecting issues they’ve been designed for. In other words, depending on the architect that wrote the unit tests, they may yield different results.
Continuous Operations [CO]
Continuous Operations is a term used to describe DevOps best practices. In other words, it’s a set of guiding principles to be followed by an organization looking to improve their code deployment process.
Languages, Applications, and Tools
When it comes to DevOps pipelines, it’s possible to apply the process to most modern programming languages - C, C++, Java, JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, Go, XCode, Swift, etc. Furthermore, the practices described above are applicable to applications running on Windows, Linux, MacOS, Android, or cloud based platforms - AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, etc.
In addition to the tools we’re covering below, it’s important to note that cloud providers have provisioned their own services that aid in the DevOps process. Each provider has a similar flavor of tools that all carry a name unique to the provider.
Key DevOps Tools
Version Control Tools - GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab
Build Tools - Maven
Continuous Integration Tools - Jenkins
Continuous Management Tools - Chef
Configuration Management Tools - Puppet, Ansible
Container Platforms - Docker, Kubernetes
Four Steps in DevOps Pipelines
Development
Software developers build applications, microservices, functions, and code.
Build
Software is stored into a code repository and is compiled for machine operations.
Testing
Software is tested using unit tests. These tests are built by architects and have the advantage of automatically detecting a number of issues with code before it's deployed in production.
Deployment
Once software has been validated, it's ready for production. A number of tools are available to simplify moving code from test to production environments.
Conclusion on DevOps Pipelines
DevOps is a methodology that allows developers to streamline software development, deployment, testing, and monitoring. The DevOps pipeline is a set of sequential steps that occur in the process. The goal is to deliver software quicker and more reliably to bring results to the organization in near real-time and reduce development costs.
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