For the technical fraternity, DevOps is where the development and operations meet. A combination where both the developers or engineers and operations engineers work as a team throughout the entire software development cycle.
DevOps is to increase production time, improve communication, reduce cost, and reduce deployment failures. In this section, we’re going to talk about some of the major processes DevOps tools that we need to take care of as a DevOps, i.e. Communication/Collaboration, CI/CD, Configuration Management, Security, Monitoring, and Alerting.
Collaboration/Communication Tools (Plan/Operate)
There are several DevOps tools that have been developed to make collaboration and communication easier during the development. Some of the tools we really need to use are as follows:
1. Slack
Slack is one of the most popular and best communication tools used by teams for effective communication and collaboration on projects. It allows developers and operation teams to collaborate using different toolchains in the same environment.
Slack has the capability to integrate with several other DevOps tools like GitHub, Jenkins, Jira, Azure Pipelines, etc. Allowing to integrate of such third-party apps makes Slack more versatile and effective.
Major features of Slack:
- Project-friendly
You can create a single team channel or different teams as per your requirements. Each team has a number of channels and those channels can be topical, project-based, location-based, integration-based, or other.
- Third-party App Integration
Slack has the ability to integrate different tools like Asana, Jira, GitHub, Trello, Jenkins, etc.
- Automated Reminders
Slackbot is present in Slack, which can be used to help with various tasks on slack. Also Just typing “/remind” in a channel tell the bot to be reminded and it will ping you when the time comes.
- Easy Note-taking
- Powerful Search
You can search within a channel with “in:”. “From:” can be used to search content from a specific member, “Has:link” can be used to search only for links, “Has:star” searches starred messages, also you can search emojis if you want to.
- Custom Shortcuts Commands
There are several predefined commands but you can create custom commands as your need.
- Audio/Video Calls
- Bots
Not just slackbot, you can use other slack bots like DiggBot, PaperBot, Spacetime bot, etc
2. Jira
Most used and essential tool for DevOps. It provides sprint planning, issue tracking, and collaboration.
Containerization Tools (Build)
1. Docker
Docker is the most popular containerization tool that is being used all over. It allows secure packaging, deploying, and running of the applications irrespective of environments. Don’t worry, you’ll get to learn more about Docker in the next chapter(Docker Containerization).
Some major features of docker:
- Standard packaging format
- Container runtime on various Linux and Windows Server OSs.
- Docker Hub to explore tons of images from communities and publishers.
- Package, execute, and manage with the docker app
2. Kubernetes
This is an open-source DevOps tool used to automate deployment and manage containerized applications. It is the most popular container orchestration tool.
Some of the major features of Kubernetes:
- Automated rollbacks and rollouts
Monitoring health simultaneously with changes in configurations and applications.
- Load balancing
Offers own IP addresses and a single DNS name for a group of pods.
- Storage system mount
Automatic storage mount of your choice.
- Self-healing capability
Version Control Tools (Build)
1. GitHub/GitLab
GitHub and GitLab both have similar functionalities. They are used for easy collaboration, rapid integrations, and deployments, in case of error, immediate rollbacks, etc. We’ll discuss more on GitLab/GitHub in the chapter— CI/CD.
Some of the major features:
- Collaborative Coding
- Automation and CI/CD
- Project Management
2. Bitbucket
It is also one of the most popular version controlling tools. It is used not just for hosting code, it can be used to plan projects, collaborate on code, test, and deploy.
Some of the unique features are:
- Jira and Trello integration
- Integrated CI/CD
- Code in the cloud with IP whitelisting and 2-step verification
Infrastructure as Code (Build)
1. Terraform
Terraform is a popular IaC tool for spinning up variations of the development environment with a similar configuration as the production easily. IaC is an essential tool for DevOps as it can be tested, incorporated into CI, and deploy. There are other popular IaC tools such as Ansible, Docker, chef, puppet, etc.
CI Automation Tools (CI/CD)
1. Jenkins, AWS, CircleCI
Jenkins is an open-source tool written in Java, for continuous integration and continuous delivery/deployment. It is highly used to automate end-to-end release management. Last few years Jenkins has emerged as one of the most essential DevOps tools. Alternative—CircleCI
GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket can be used to automate your code from test to production.
AWS is one of the most popular cloud computing platforms.
Monitoring Tools
1. Prometheus
An open-source project, widely used for a monitoring solution. It also supports container monitoring.
Features:
- Client Libraries for easy service instrumentation
- Scaling with functional sharding and federation
- Powerful reporting through PromQL
