DevOps toolchain

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DevOps toolchain is a set or combination of tools that aid in the delivery, development, and management of application throughout the software development lifecycle.[1] Because DevOps is a cultural shift and collaboration between development and operations, there is no one product that can be considered a single DevOps tool.[2][3] Generally, DevOps tools fit into one or more of these activities, which supports specific DevOps initiatives: Plan, Create, Verify, Preprod, Release, Configure, and Monitor.[4][5]

Plan

Plan is composed of two things define and plan.[1] This activity refers to the business value and application requirements. Specificly "Plan" activities include:

  • Production metrics, objects and feedback
  • Requirements
  • Business metrics
  • Update release metrics
  • Release plan, timing and business case
  • Security policy and requirement

A combination of the IT personnel will be involved in these activities: business application owners, software development, software architects, continual release management, security officers and the organization responsible for managing the production of IT infrastructure. Some notable vendors and solutions that facilitate Plan include: Atlassian, CA Technologies, iRise and Jama Software.

Create

Create is composed of the building, coding, and configuring of the software development process.[1] The specific activities are:

  • Design of the software and configuration
  • Coding including code quality and performance
  • Software build and build performance
  • Release candidate

Tools and vendor in this category often overlap with other categories. Because DevOps is about breaking down silos, this is reflective in the activities and product solutions.

Some notable solutions and vendors include, GitHub, Electric Cloud, and CFEngine.

Verify

Verify is directly associated with ensuring the quality of the software release; activities designed to ensure code quality is maintained and the highest quality is deployed to production.[1] The main activities in this are:

  • Acceptance testing
  • Regression testing
  • Security analysis, performance and vulnerability
  • Configuration testing

Notable vendors and solutions for verify related activities generally fall under four main categories: Test automation (ThoughtWorks, IBM, HP), Static analysis (Parasoft, Microsoft, SonarSource), Test Lab (Skytap, Microsoft, Delphix), and Security (HP, IBM, Trustwave).

Preprod

Preprod refers the activities involved once the release is ready for deployment, often also reference as staging or packaging.[1] This often includes tasks and activities such as:

  • Approval/preapprovals
  • Package configuration
  • Triggered releases
  • Release staging and holding

Notable solutions for this include universal package managers such as: Jfrog’s Artifactory, SonaType Nexus repository, and Inedo’s ProGet.[6]

Release

Release related activities include schedule, orchestration, provisioning and deploying software into production and targeted environment.[7] The specific Release activities include:

  • Release coordination
  • Deploying and promoting applications
  • Fallbacks and recovery
  • Scheduled/timed releases

Solutions that cover this aspect of the toolchain include application release automation, deployment automation and release management; specific vendors are Automic, Inedo, VMware, and XebiaLabs.[8]

Configure

Configure activities fall under the operation side of DevOps. Once software is deployed, there may be additional IT infrastructure provisioning and configuration activities required.[1] Specific activities including:

  • Infrastructure storage, database and network provisioning and configuring
  • Application provision and configuration.

The main types of solutions that facilitate these activities are Continuous Configuration Automation, configuration management, and Infrastructure as Code tools.[9] Notable solutions include Ansible, Chef, Puppet, Otter, and Salt.

Monitor

Monitoring is an important link in a DevOps toolchain. It allows IT organization to identify specific issues of specific releases and to understand the impact on end-users.[1] A summary of Monitor related activities are:

  • Performance of IT infrastructure
  • End-user response and experience
  • Production metrics and statistics

Information from monitoring activities often impacts Plan activities required for changes and for new release cycles. Notable vendors are BigPanda, Ganglia, New Relic, Wireshark.

See also

References

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