Introduction to DevOps

1. What is DevOps?

DevOps is a bundle of best practices, tools and more importantly a cultural philosophy that helps to integrate and automate the entire software development lifecycle. This software development methodology combines the efforts of software development (Dev) together with information technology operations (Ops) and emphasis on providing continuous high-quality products in a shorter time span.

“The Upskilling IT 2022 Report revealed that DevOps professionals who possess the skills needed for digital transformation through human and technical skills remain in high demand despite the lack of talent found throughout the industry,” said Jayne Groll, CEO of DevOps Institute.

Source: https://www.devopsinstitute.com/press-release-devops-institute-opens-upskilling-it-2023-survey/

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This new set of practices needs continuous monitoring, communication, and collaboration throughout the entire software life cycle. And so, practitioners use an infinite loop to represent the DevOps stages/phases that symbolises its sequential flow for a continuous iterative process.

2. The Old School Software Development Model

A classical Waterfall model is said to be the oldest Software development life cycle model. Almost every software developer should have practiced it in their early days. This is a simple but very idealistic working model. But it is no longer in usage as it led to high uncertainty and risk for frequently changing requirement projects. In the current market trend, innovations happen day-on-day and our software development lifecycle should accommodate the frequent changes. This is where the traditional waterfall model failed.

2.1 Waterfall model Lifecycle

Life cycle of a traditional waterfall model is very simple to understand and practice. Its lifecycle holds different phases and this phase happens one after the another in a sequential manner. So the output of one phase will be the input of the next phase. No overlapping happens between phases. This is simply called a linear-sequential life cycle.

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2.2 Advantages

Although the waterfall model was not used in recent days, it has few advantages.

• It is a simple and easy method to understand and use.
• Review happens in each phase making it less prone to errors.
• Most reliable model for small projects.
• Every phase happens one at a time, so overlapping issues are avoided.

Pain points

In the current scenario, the Waterfall model is no more in use. Listed below are a few disadvantages of this model:

• End products are tagged with high risk and uncertainty.
• Working models are not produced until we reach the end phase.
• It is not suitable for complex and long-term projects.
• Difficult to accommodate frequent requirement changes. 
• Difficult to measure the progress of the project at mid phases.
• Since testing and integration are done at the end, early detection of challenges or bottlenecks is difficult.
• This model focuses more on internal teams to work efficiently. And hence the same focus for end users is not given.
• No feedback path provided to incorporate and rectify the errors.

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3. Agile methodology

Agile methodology includes an incremental approach like the waterfall model along with an additional focus on an iterative process, incorporating frequent business needs or changes and speeding the release process. The Agile model breaks the final product into smaller units of work and finally combines them for testing and deployment.

In contrast to the waterfall model, Agile model is designed to adapt to changes in business requirements during the development phase. In this way, developers are allowed to explore new ideas and they can estimate if the idea is viable. 

The agile process aims in promoting sustainable growth among the sponsors, developers, and end users at a constant pace. Agile works with 12 important principles and 4 main values to enhance agility.

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3.1 Lifecycle

In the Agile process, the entire product is split into several small-time framed models called “sprint”. Every sprint takes one to four weeks’ time to complete. Segmenting the whole process into small pieces  helps in achieving the project delivery at the right time along with a reduced risk. Every sprint includes all the phases of an SDLC i.e., plan, design, develop, test, and deploy. The result of all the deployment phases together forms the final product to be delivered to the customer.

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3.2 Advantages

Agile is open to accepting the change in requirement at any phase of the development lifecycle. It is the most outstanding feature for which developers made a shift from the waterfall model. Apart from this, there are a lot more advantages that made Agile stand out and they are:

• It accommodates change at any time meeting the business and leading to better customer satisfaction.
• Agile methodology gives importance to customer feedback throughout the entire lifecycle, thus improving the developer and customer interactions.
• It provides the ability to scale up and down easily.
• Rather than the waterfall model, this provides a continuous delivery in which pieces of the product could be seen before the entire output.
• Involvement and coordination within the team are observed more since developers work for a small part for a short time.
• Continuous monitoring and attention are provided which improves the product quality.
• It reduces the overall time needed for development.
• Stakeholders like customers, developers, and product owners focus more on customer needs rather than processes and tools.

3.3 Disadvantages

• Agile costs more than the traditional waterfall model.
• In case of a small-scale project, Agile can’t be implemented.
• Agile does not focus on process and documentation. This might lead to mistakes in practising the process in the organization.
• Since there is less documentation supporting a project, maintenance becomes challenging if the developers are moved to a different project.
• There is a gap between the development and operations teams.
• In case of fallbacks too, due to minimal or no documentation, the team might face a challenge to rectify errors and the entire process to look back is time-consuming.
• Since it accepts and accommodates frequent changes, the final product might look different than the actual planned one or stakeholders will not have a clear vision of how the product would look alike.
• Stakeholders meet up every day constantly and in case of any requirement changes, each one should agree to one other’s way/choices to incorporate the change. This process is time-consuming.

4. Why DevOps?

In the previous section, we understood the pain points of the traditional development lifecycle and agile models. With the purpose of resolving and bridge the missing gaps of other development models, DevOps emerged. DevOps is needed to overcome the below challenges:

• Development team and operations team work in isolation.
• Development and operation teams have their individual timeframe and they work without coordination leading to delays in the delivery of the final product.
• More time spent working on separate phases of development, testing and integration rather than automating the entire process.
• Inevitable manual errors due to human intervention. 

4.1 Evolution of DevOps

In a nutshell, DevOps came into existence to overcome failures in agile methodology. Similarly, DevOps came in to overcome the disadvantages faced in the Agile model.

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a. The Waterfall model failed to deliver a consistent outcome and there was a gap between the customer and the developer.
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b. Although the Agile model overcame the gaps in the waterfall,  it still left a gap between developers and the operations team. 
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c. DevOps came in to establish communication between the two siloed teams.
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4.2 History of DevOps

A brief history of DevOps can be understood from the website Transposit,  which describes the following:

The term “DevOps” was first coined in 2009 by Patrick Debois, a Belgian IT consultant who organized the first “DevOpsDays” conference in Ghent, Belgium. The conference brought together developers, operations professionals, and other IT practitioners to discuss ways to improve collaboration and efficiency in product development and delivery lifecycle. The conference sparked lively debates over Twitter where the hashtag was soon shortened to simply “DevOps”.

DevOps gained momentum in the early 2010s as many organizations recognized the need to fasten the delivery cycle with high quality and reliability. In 2011, Gartner presented his prediction for the trajectory of DevOps for the next few years. His positive outlook on its impact on the industry led to more DevOps movement.

4.3 DevOps vs other SDLC practices

5. DevOps Culture

To leverage the full potential of DevOps, organizations should adhere to the right mindset and culture. DevOps culture refers to a set of values or principles that promotes collaboration and communication between development and operations teams to deliver a high-quality product more efficiently and effectively. 

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Adoption of DevOps culture aids in building high-performing organizations along with winning the hearts of employees. 

Collaboration and Ability to problem solve are ranked first among traits of a successful DevOps team

-Atlassian survey 2020 – DevOps trends. 

Listed below are the components of DevOps culture:

1. Collaboration and communication
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   The most important cultural shift that happened in DevOps is the collaboration and communication leading to increased transparency. This helped in bringing the teams closer. All stockholders like designers, developers, testers and the IT operations team all together worked as one team.
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   This cultural trait cultivates a multidisciplinary team who takes care of the entire end-to-end life cycle. The DevOps team understands the actions of the Development team making a closer move towards business needs and requirements. They also understand the Operations team for smoother product maintenance.
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2. Autonomous team
   
   DevOps team should work autonomously to make decisions and implement changes as needed without any complicated process. The team should be clear about the right process with the right tools to make the workflow smooth and easier.
   
   In the case of a traditional workflow, for a single code deployment, it needs Developer, build engineer and tester to share their work. In the case of DevOps, the team doesn't need several contributors, they make use of Automation tools to build and deploy the changes.
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3. Infrastructure as Code
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   DevOps encourages the use of Infrastructure as Code to take care of infrastructure (IaC). IaC simply means, managing all the infrastructure resources just like a software code thereby enabling automation, version control and testing. This feature helps to ensure consistency and reduce the risk of human errors.
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4. Shared responsibility
   
   The development and Operations teams merge into a single team and they communicate, collaborate, and share feedback through the entire application life cycle. Both the development team and operations teams are responsible for the success or failure of the product they work on.
   
   Developers are expected to collaborate more with testers and IT operations. That way developers are likely to build a code that simplifies deployment and maintenance tasks. Similarly, when the operations team works closely with the development team, they help in identifying the right automation toolset to simplify the job.
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5. Customer-centric actions
   
   The main and most important focus is given to the Customer. Every aspect of data or design change has a customer in mind. Monitoring tools are used to identify and address the areas of friction. The DevOps team always has an ear open to clients to hear their changing needs.

6. Embrace failure
   
   The DevOps environment makes failure the opportunity to learn things to mitigate future issues and improve the product. This attitude change leads to innovations and improvements in the product.

6. DevOps best practices

To embrace the DevOps culture, organizations must follow best practices like Lean and Agile, CI/CD, Automation, monitoring and observing along with feedback. With the best practices in hand, organization might have a smooth shift in culture.

1) Lean and Agile

Adopting the Lean and Agile methodologies to shorten development cycles and fast feedback to improve flexibility, speed, and quality. This iterative methodology helps in delivering high values to customers with less friction.

DevOps complementing with Agile approach shortens the system development life cycle along with delivering several features and benefits to business needs. It also helps the business to align its people, processes and tools in a more unified manner.

DevOps follows the key concepts of Agile methodology:

• Break large projects into small pieces
• Start with a workflow
• Stick to a framework(Scrum and Kanban are core frameworks)

2) Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery

Integrating the developed source code into a shared repository triggers the automation till the deployment and delivery to production in a continuous and automated way. Another important best practice to be followed is teams should shift left with CI/CD. It means that they bring in the testing process in the early stages of development. Developers themselves run a wide range of testing scenarios to fix the bugs and improve the code quality, instead of sending updated code to QA to test them.

- What is Continuous Integration?

Continuous Integration(CI) involves integrating the developed code or changing code to a common repository regularly and executing automated tests to find the issues in the early stages.

- What is Continuous Delivery?

‍‍Continuous Delivery(CD) involves automating the process of delivering the product to the production environment, which reduces the risk of human errors and is open to further feedback and iteration.

3) Automation

Automation allows developers to merge code regularly into the main repository. Instead of checking code manually or guiding help from a building engineer, CI/CD automates this process. In addition to CI/CD, automated testing is an essential feature for a successful DevOps practice. Automation includes Checking In source code, end-to-end testing, unit testing, integration testing and performance testing.

All the repeated processes are automated to avoid human errors and increase team productivity. Developers will have more time to generate new ideas rather than spending time on iterative tasks.

4) Right tools at the right place

DevOps Toolkit or Toolchain is nothing but the combination of different products or vendor units that integrate and work together as a single unit to design, build, test, manage, measure and operate the software. 

It requires the right tools for each phase of the lifecycle that determines the software quality and improves the speed of delivery. Choosing the right tools for DevOps automation plays a crucial role in deciding the success or failure of implementing DevOps. 

Always the right choice of tools will enhance the below factors in the DevOps teams:

• Collaboration
• Efficiency
• Scalability
• Security
• Integration

This toolkit will vary from team to team based on the project’s needs. A few factors like cost, complicity, and ease to use are to be considered while choosing the tools.

5) Monitoring 

As the pipeline is a combination of different products, it is always essential to monitor the workflow. In an automated cycle, if any breaks happened,  the expected speed of completion couldn't be achieved until the break is noticed and rectified. It is always better to monitor the production pipelines continuously to know about the failures or breaks before we hear from the customers.

Continuous monitoring helps in improving stability, measuring performance and providing a quick turnaround in case of issues. This proactively prevents outages and minimizes user issues.

6) Observability

Observability in DevOps refers to the ability to gain insights into behaviour and performance of the software product in real-time. This helps in identifying the problem proactively before they cause a large issue. This also allows teams to quickly pinpoint and resolve issues, reducing downtime and improving the overall quality of the product and reliability. 

Data is monitored and gathered from different sources like logs, traces and metrics. Listed below are a few tools that help with gaining different insights:

7) Gather continuous feedback

With continuous feedback, DevOps makes it possible to deliver a product with optimized speed and high quality. This process is an essential part of the DevOps lifecycle. It helps teams to identify and resolve issues quickly, improve collaboration and continuously improve their processes.

Continuous feedback ensures that developers have the required information to generate a flawless output at the right time.

8) Security

DevOps involves a lot of automation along with a huge risk of security vulnerabilities. Choosing the right tools helps to avoid security breaches and protect your data. Integrating security into every aspect of the application lifecycle ensures confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data.

7. DevOps Lifecycle

DevOps lifecycle is a continuous sequential process holding many phases/stages together, where the output of one phase serves as the input to the next phase. The goal of this approach is to create software that is high in quality, reliable and efficient. In this DevOps model, the development team and operation team merge and work as a single team, where DevOps engineers work across the entire application end-to-end from development, testing to deployment, thus developing a multidisciplinary skill.

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7.1 Discover

The discovery phase in DevOps is the initial stage in the software development lifecycle. In this stage, 

• The team works together to understand the process, system and infrastructure. 
• The team identifies key stakeholders and users, their needs and requirements. 
• They spend time analyzing the existing process and any bottlenecks or pain points. 
• This information helps the team to set a goal and work towards it. 
• They also estimate the capabilities and limitations of the existing process.

7.2 Plan

The planning phase of DevOps includes defining goals, objectives and strategies for implementing DevOps practices thereby achieving the project objective. Detailed timelines and milestones are identified that help in tracking the progress. The team also identifies the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that will help in measuring the success of the project. With the list of stakeholders, a proper structure is derived. 

This stage simply gathers details about what needs to be done and how it is to be done. The steps involved in the planning phase are listed below:

• Define objectives and goals
• Construct a roadmap
• Identify KPIs
• Define team structure
• Prioritize activities

7.3 Build

In DevOps, the build phase refers to a group of processes like developing code, compiling, building and packaging the source code to a common repository including various build automation tools like Maven, Gradle, Jenkin and a few more.

During the build phase, the source code is compiled and an executable code with the necessary downloadable files is made ready. As the build process is automated, the team saves a lot of time and effort, resulting in reduced human errors and issues.

7.4 Test

Continuous Integration (CI) helps in merging the source code from different developers into a single shared repository. Once the source code is merged with the common repository, it triggers automated testing.

Testing happens just after the build and before the deployment process. In this stage, the developed code or application is tested to ensure that it meets the required function, standard or quality. 

- Types of Tests ‍

Various types of tests performed include:

• Unit Testing
• Integration Testing
• Functional Testing
• Performance Testing and 
• Security Testing

In addition, testing happens in different types of environments such as Development, Testing and Production. 

During this process, all kinds of bugs or flaws are found in the early stages before they cause a failure in production. Selected tools and frameworks are employed for automated testing to make it more efficient and effective, which also saves a lot of time and cost.

7.5 Deploy

Continuous Delivery(CD) helps in staging the build artifacts in the pre-production environment. Extended testing on the environment is done to ensure functional correctness and its business needs. When the CD happens successfully, the next step will be deployment.

Continuous Deployment helps the teams to release features frequently in small batches rather than all at one time. 

This approach improves productivity and efficiency. To ensure successful deployment, a robust DevOps process is needed which includes monitoring and feedback loops. Using this, early detection of issues is done which ensures in delivering high-quality products with less downtime.

7.6 Operate

This phase is known to be the “production” or “deployment” phase, where the application is accessible to the end user. It includes the continuous delivery of software updates, bug fixes if needed, and new features to production environments in a fast and reliable manner. 

During the operating phase, DevOps teams are responsible for managing the infrastructure, configuring the system, monitoring performance, and ensuring the security and stability of the production environment. This phase mainly focuses on automating and streamlining the entire software deployment process.

7.7 Monitor

The monitoring phase focuses on gathering system performance, stability, and security information. The issues that might arise in the future are analyzed with this information. 

The DevOps team uses a wide variety of tools (like Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog and New Relic) to collect this information. By implementing Intrusion Detection System (IDS) in DevOps, organizations can enhance their security posture and maintain a secure infrastructure. It also helps to detect and protect sensitive data and respond to security threats promptly.

By continually gathering and analyzing data, DevOps teams can proactively identify and address potential issues, and make data-driven decisions to improve the system's performance and reliability.

7.8 Feedback

The feedback phase is an essential part that gathers reviews from end-users and stakeholders. This also aids to improve the functionality of the application. The team might also conduct surveys, user testing or a direct review comment to gather the required information. This information is further used to make data-driven decisions about how to improve the performance of a function or to improve the user experience.

8. DevOps Pipeline and Automation

8.1 DevOps Pipeline

A DevOps Pipeline is a series of automated steps, practices and tools that are used to automate and support building, testing and deploying any software applications. The basic goal of the pipeline is to streamline the software development lifecycle and deliver new features and updates in less time.

The DevOps pipeline varies from organization to organization and also varies depending on the project. But typically, it includes continuous integration, continuous testing, monitoring and validating. Also, the pipeline might have a manual intervention for any check on the process. 

8.2 Factors to be considered for building a pipeline

Pipelines are not standard sets to be practiced across organizations. The DevOps pipeline for each organization is unique. This should be built with expertise and knowledge considering the below-mentioned factors:

• Project objective
• Technology stack
• Cost
• Project complexity
• Team’s experience level

DevOps team should have a good knowledge of continuous development, integration, feedback and monitoring. Let us look into the details of individual components of the pipeline.

8.3 Components of pipeline

8.3.1 Source Control Management (SCM)

Source code management is the most essential component and first step in the DevOps pipeline. This allows every member of the team to make changes to the code in a controlled and collaborative way. This step helps the developers to track changes, collaborate while developing code and roll back the changes if necessary. All these happen consistently and in a predictable manner.

A few examples of SCM tools are Git, Subversion, Mercurial, and Perforce. Git is the most popular among DevOps developers for its vast user community and extensive range of products. 

8.3.2 Continuous integration(CI)

Continuous Integration is where developers integrate their code changes to a shared repository as needed. Every time integrations are verified by an automated build and test process to capture the errors. CI involves:

• Code commit
• Code build and test 
• Followed by report generation 
• Analysis based on the reports

CI helps to improve code quality and accelerate the software development cycle. 

8.3.3 Continuous Delivery

In this process, all the code changes are deployed to the respective environments. The code changes are deployed to a pre-production environment which is very close or similar to the actual production environment. 

Continuous Delivery ensures that the code changes are automatically tested and any possible errors are identified before moving to production.

8.3.4 Continuous Deployment(CD)

With Continuous Deployment, all the code changes are deployed to production or user environments without any manual intervention. In case of any errors or a failed scenario, the pipeline will have a brake for manual intervention. 

Continuous Deployment accelerates the time-to-market factor. Moreover, it encourages developers to check the live results and hear feedback from customers. Some popular CI/CD tools used are Jenkin, CircleCI, GitLab, Travis CI, Bamboo, and TeamCity.

8.3.5 Continuous Testing

Continuous Testing ensures that code changes are tested in every phase of the development life cycle. It helps in verifying the functionality, performance, security, scalability and quality of the product. A few tests that run behind every change are the unit test, integration test, performance test, functionality test, smoke test and acceptance test.

There are various tools and frameworks available to achieve this automated testing and a few popular ones are Selenium, Junit, Appium, Cucumber, and TestNG. These tools are integrated with CI/CD tools to automate the entire testing process.

8.3.6 Continuous Monitoring

Continuous Monitoring is a practice where the software application is monitored continuously for performance, availability and security. With the help of several tools logs, metrics and events are collected and analyzed. A few activities involved in continuous monitoring are infrastructure monitoring, application monitoring, security monitoring, user experience monitoring, and log monitoring. Monitoring helps to improve the reliability and availability of the software. It also reduces security threats and vulnerabilities thereby enabling quick identification and resolution of issues.

8.3.7 Continuous Alerting

Continuous altering complements the continuous monitoring component. This is an essential component where the stakeholders are notified timely of any failures or anomalies. This helps the team to identify and resolve issues faster, which reduces downtime making the application more reliable and available most times.

A few tools like Prometheus, Nagios, Zabbix, Grafana, Datadog, AWS CloudWatch and Splunk are integrated with CI/CD pipeline to achieve automated monitoring and alerting.

8.4 DevOps Automation

DevOps automation refers to the usage of automated tools and processes that streamline the software development lifecycle. It involves all the components and phases that have been discussed in the above topics. DevOps automation aims to improve the speed of the software development cycle and application efficiency. It also reduces the risk of errors and defects. It helps to ensure the consistent delivery of high-quality software.

9. DevOps toolkit

The DevOps toolkit is a set of tools and technologies that enable teams to collaborate and deliver software products quickly and efficiently.  It is simply a series of tools that facilitates  automation. Choosing the right tool depends on your specific needs, budget, and technology stack. It's important to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each tool and determine which tool best fits the project.

To leverage the benefits of DevOps, the toolkit should address every phase of the SDLC. It should have tools to address development needs. During the operations phase, it should help in monitoring, along with the toolkit should bridge the gap between Dev and Ops teams by providing continuous feedback.

The toolkit can either be comprehensive or customized. Choosing the right toolset is very essential since it shapes the entire process. The factors like project objective and complexity, project costing, technology stack and team’s experience are to be considered while choosing the right tools for the DevOps cycle.

9.1 Comprehensive toolkit

There is no single tool that covers all aspects of DevOps, but there are a few all-in-one tools that need no external integrations or very few integrations to cover a wide range of functionality. These all-in-one tools might be useful for those who are just new to implementing DevOps or want to implement DevOps quickly. However using a single tool might not help in evolving further to match the fast-changing market.

Listed below are a few examples of comprehensive tools:

1. ‍GitLab
   GitLab is a web-based Git repository management tool that offers a complete service, including project planning, source code management, CI/CD, monitoring, and security. GitLab offers two versions, a free community edition and a paid enterprise edition that includes added features like high availability, advanced analytics and security features.
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2. Azure DevOps
   Azure DevOps is a suite of services offered by Microsoft to help software development teams plan, develop, test, and deploy applications. Azure DevOps is available as a cloud-based service or can be installed on-premises. It is well-suited for teams that use Microsoft development tools and technologies.
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3. AWS CodePipeline
   AWS CodePipeline is a continuous delivery service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS). It helps developers to build, test, and deploy their applications automatically, along with providing full visibility into the entire delivery process. It is a cloud-based service and integrates with a wide range of development tools and platforms.
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4. Jenkins X
   Jenkins X is a cloud-native, open-source, and fully-automated CI/CD solution designed for modern cloud applications. Jenkins(open-source automation server) forms the base for Jenkins X and is designed to streamline the entire software delivery process, from source code to production deployment. It is well-suited for teams that are developing modern cloud applications using microservices architecture and Kubernetes-based deployments.
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5. JFrog Platform
   JFrog Platform is an end-to-end DevOps platform that provides a range of tools to manage the entire software development lifecycle, from code to production. It is available as a cloud-based solution or can be installed on-premises. It is designed to help organizations accelerate their software releases and improve software quality. It is well known for its universal package management capabilities and integration with other DevOps tools.
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6. Octopus Deploy
   Octopus Deploy is a deployment automation tool designed to simplify the deployment process and manage applications in complex environments. It is a flexible and powerful tool that can automate even the most complex deployment scenarios.

9.2 Customized Toolkit

A customized toolkit is a set of selected tools and technologies to build a DevOps process, based on the project's specific needs and requirements. This way of choosing a toolkit energizes the team to use the tools or technologies they love to work with. They also have more comprehensive options to cover all the components and phases. Given below are the steps to be followed for customizing the toolkit.

1. Start with identifying and documenting the organization's specific requirements and goals.
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2. Evaluate and assess the current tool set, if the organization already has any. Few tools need to be upgraded and replaced based on the changing market trends.
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3. Identify the gaps and critical areas, which need improvement.
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4. Study on the new tools and technologies plays an important role in designing a customized toolkit.
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5. Research and compare different tools based on the reviews, recommendations and community support.
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6. Test and evaluate the effectiveness and compactability of the tools by having a proof-of-concept test or conducting a pilot project.
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7. Define steps to implement the new tools. Ensure the integration of new tools aligns with the existing process.
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8. Offer courses and workshops to train the team to new workflows. Additional documentation, dedicated online support and channels can be established to make the team get along with new tools.
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9. Continuously monitor and evaluate the performance and effectiveness of customized DevOps toolkit. Collect feedback from teams, measure key performance indicators. Make adjustments to meet project needs.

The picture below gives a brief outline of different tools and technologies that are available in the market and used mainly by stakeholders for the successful implementation of DevOps. For easy understanding, the tools are mapped with the phases of DevOps.

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9.3 DevOps Dozen 2022 

The DevOps Dozen 2022 has honored the best and most impacted DevOps tools/services. They have identified the most outstanding individuals and companies in the DevOps community and their remarkable contributions to the industry. 

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Table3: List of most impacted DevOps tools/services in 2022

Source: https://devops.com/meet-the-devops-dozen%C2%B2-2022-honorees/

10. DevOps framework

DevOps framework is a set of practices, principles, and tools that are used to guide software development teams to implement DevOps methodologies effectively. A framework typically provides a structured approach for building a DevOps culture, guidelines for building cross-functional teams, implementing automation and monitoring performance using data-driven insights. They also help in implementing specific tools and technologies that support DevOps methodologies.

A few popular frameworks are listed below:

1. ‍Agile: 
   Agile is a project management methodology that works as an iterative model. Agile highlights more on collaboration and continuous improvement. It helps the team to deliver value to customers at a faster rate.
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2. Scrum: 
   Scrum is an Agile framework that emphasizes teamwork, communication, and collaboration. It helps teams to manage themselves, learn through experience, and adapt to change.
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3. Kanban: 
   Kanban is a project management Lean framework that emphasizes continuous delivery and workflow management. It works based on visual tasks to manage workflow. 
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4. DevOps Handbook: 
   The DevOps Handbook is a comprehensive guide to achieving Digital transformation in software development. It elevates work culture and exceeds goals.
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5. SRE (Site Reliability Engineering): 
   SRE helps to automate IT operations using software engineering models. They are more suitable for systems that aim to scale up, sustain, and migrate to the cloud.
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6. CALMS (Culture, Automation, Lean, Metrics, and Sharing): 
   CALMS is a framework that is used to measure the success of the Digital transformation. CALMS checks the company's ability to adopt DevOps. It monitors the activities of all stakeholders within DevOps to make the transformation journey successful.
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7. SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework): 
   The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) helps in implementing agile practices in the organization. This framework/workflow model has a structured guide to roles and responsibilities, steps to plan and manage the work, and values to uphold.

11. DevOps Benefits

When the gap between the development team and the operations team is reduced, the team would be able to achieve frequent releases and better-quality deliverables. The impact of implementing DevOps is huge. This is seen from the Executive summary of the 2020 DevOps trends survey by Atlassian and CITE Research. It says:

Impact on career

78% had to learn a new skill

48% of respondents say it helped them get a raise

Better deliverables

61% say it helped them produce higher-quality deliverables

Faster deliverables

49% say they see a faster time to market

49% say it improved their deployment frequency

Source: https://www.atlassian.com/whitepapers/devops-survey-2020

The benefits of implementing DevOps are:

1. ‍Faster time to market: 
   Fast and frequent delivery cycles could be achieved with DevOps. This benefits not only the customer by bringing in new features but also the organization to compete with competitive market trends.
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2. Promotes business agility: 
   DevOps's automated workflow helps the business to quickly and effectively change customer demands. It is possible to achieve the required scalability with automated processes.
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3. Increased collaboration: 
   DevOps practices promote collaboration and communication between development and operations teams, leading to better alignment and improved outcomes.
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4. Improved software quality: 
   DevOps helps teams identify and address issues as early as possible, thereby improving the quality of software and reducing the risk of defects and errors.
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5. More reliable and resilient systems: 
   DevOps emphasizes deploying and maintaining reliable and resilient systems that report only lesser incidents and downtime.
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6. Greater efficiency: 
   As DevOps automates many aspects of the software development cycle, increased efficiency and reduced time and effort required for deployments are observed.
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7. Enhanced innovation: 
   DevOps enables organizations to experiment and innovate more rapidly, leading to the development of new products and features that can drive business growth. This also leads to higher customer satisfaction and loyalty.
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8. Improved security: 
   DevOps practices help organizations integrate security into the software development process, reducing the risk of security breaches and data loss.

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12. DevOps team

In today’s business strategy, organizations move from a project-oriented working model towards a customer-centric approach, which has short release cycles and better collaboration. In the DevOps-driven approach, development and operations respond together to business needs. For proper implementation of DevOps, organizations should have the right tools at the right place along with the right people. Having the right team makes the digital transformation journey easy.

The 2020 DevOps trends survey by Atlassian and CITE Research states that, 

Larger organizations with 500+ employees are especially likely to have a team with DevOps in the title (57%). 

Organizations that have been using DevOps for 3+ years are also more likely to have a team with DevOps in the name (57%).

Source: https://www.atlassian.com/whitepapers/devops-survey-2020

With the above fact, it is clear that software teams nowadays become DevOps teams as the implementation of DevOps becomes widespread. The structure of a DevOps team can vary depending on the organization's size, goals, and needs. A Small organization might have very few roles and large organizations might have more roles to cater to the team. 

The DevOps team structure depends purely on the organization based on several things specific to them:

• Type of products the organization serves
• Strength and effectiveness of the leadership team
• If the organization is open to changes
• If the organization can change the IT operations

There is no definite structure or standards to define the DevOps team structure or roles. Also, not all the DevOps teams share the same goals. Depending on the company’s context and need for changes, the DevOps team in one company might be entirely different from the other. But the most DevOps team will have the below roles:

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Among the above-mentioned roles, DevOps engineer is the most crucial role which requires interpersonal skills to work with development and operations teams.

12.1 Roles and responsibilities

1) DevOps Engineer

A DevOps Engineer is an IT specialist having a wide range of knowledge about all activities like development, operations, infrastructure, system administration, tools and technologies used in the DevOps pipeline. DevOps Engineers should also have interpersonal skills to collaborate and work with siloed teams. DevOps Engineers should have a strong knowledge of agile principles, DevOps culture and a subject matter expert in DevOps. 
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A DevOps Engineer is at the core of digital transformation, holding a comprehensive skill set to facilitate the journey. Still, most organizations need a mix of skilled people or specialists to work closely, rather than just a DevOps Engineer to implement and improve the cultural shift.
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A skilled Devops Engineer would possess the following qualities:

• Good communication skills
• Collaborative working attitude
• System Administration
• Experience with DevOps tools
• Familiar with coding and scripting
• Expert in container orchestration
• Automation skills
• Knowledge of cloud computing         
  
  The key responsibilities of a DevOps engineer would be:

• Studying and understanding project requirements
• Planning the team structure and management tasks
• Identifying tools and technologies required
• Encouraging automations
• Managing Infrastructure 
• Mentoring and problem-solving
• Monitoring the metrics
• Collaborating and communicating with siloed teams
• Ensuring security and compliance
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2) ‍‍DevOps Evangelist

A DevOps evangelist is a DevOps expert who is passionate about the principles and practices of DevOps and helps in promoting it across organizations. They hold a good experience in DevOps and have seen the benefits of DevOps. They are enthusiastic about sharing their knowledge and experience within the organization or with a vast community.

Overall, DevOps evangelists are advocates for DevOps, helping to achieve its success within organizations by adopting the cultural shift. 

3) Release Coordinator

The release coordinator in the team is responsible for collaborating and coordinating the changes or updates done in the application. They work closely with developers, quality assurance and operations teams to ensure the changes or new features are documented and deployed. A key responsibility for this role is to check if the released software meets the security standards and appropriate approvals.

4) Automation Expert

Every member of the DevOps team should be an expert in automation. Still, this role aims to have a person who exclusively manages CI/CD tooling and development. They also manage the test suites. They utilize their technical expertise to automate repetitive tasks, reduce manual efforts and increase efficiency.

5) Software Developer

Developers are people who take care of developing new code or addition of new features. They might be anyone who contributes either to a front-end development or a back-end development. They adhere to DevOps principles and practice them to deliver an efficient application.

6) Quality Assurance Engineer

QA (Quality Assurance) Engineer in DevOps is the process of ensuring that the developed software application meets the desired quality standards, performance, and security requirements before they are deployed into production. In DevOps automation, QA is embedded within the development and deployment pipelines. QA identifies and resolves the defects before they reach the production environment.

7) Security Engineer

The Security Engineer in a DevOps team is responsible for ensuring that security practices are integrated into the development and deployment processes. This involves working closely with development and operations teams to identify potential security threats and vulnerabilities and developing solutions to mitigate those risks.

13. Challenges to DevOps adoption

There is no doubt that the adoption of DevOps brings in numerous benefits like faster delivery, improved collaboration and delivering high-quality products. Still, some organizations are yet to adopt DevOps culture. When they plan for this shift, the first step they face is the challenges by both leaders and developers. Organizations should find solutions to overcome the challenges and make themselves stay ahead of the competition.In Puppet’s “2023 State of DevOps global report”, they said, 

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Resistance to platform team adoption (32%)

Lack of communication around changes to the platform team (32%)‍

Source:https://www.puppet.com/resources/state-of-platform-engineering?ls=Campaigns&lsd=Sponsored&cid=7016f000001vHUKAA2&utm_medium=press-release&utm_campaign=CY23_WP_Download_2023-State-of-DevOps-Platform-Engineering&utm_source=pan

Listed below are some common challenges that organizations face while adopting DevOps:

1. ‍Cultural shift: 
   A cultural shift is a major challenge and change that happens while implementing DevOps. Cultural shift might look easy but this is the most difficult thing to take up and it needs a long time. For example, shared responsibility is an aspect of cultural shift. Developers are expected to take ownership of not only developing a source code but also ensuring that it smoothly deploys and operates in the respective environment. At the same time, Operations teams are also expected to participate in the development process, providing input on infrastructure to ensure seamless deployment. 
   
   This aspect seems to be easy, but actual collaboration should happen focusing towards shared goals, for the success of the entire system. Organizations should be transparent, positive and patient until they achieve cultural change.
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2. ‍Toolkit integration: 
   DevOps relies heavily on automation and tool integration. It could be difficult if Dev and Ops teams have different sets of tools and metrics. Some teams might be unwilling to depart the legacy tools they used, but it is much needed to make Dev and Ops teams sit together to decode the toolkit so that they both benefit and work together.
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3. ‍Skill gap and training: 
   DevOps team requires persons with a wide range of skill sets to take care of end-to-end operations. Finding and training staff with these skills can be a challenge, especially in regions where there is a shortage of skilled IT workers. Organizations should work with experts and provide learners with a good infrastructure to learn the best practices.
   
   With Uptut, you can ensure that your team develops a strong conceptual foundation and adopts the DevOps mindset with hands-on experience. Learn more and get started with DevOps Transformation.
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4. ‍Resistance to change: 
   Some team members and stakeholders may resist DevOps adoption because they feel scared and threatened by changes to their roles or because they are not comfortable with new changes. A good approach is to implement DevOps in a small-scale project so that the team could visualize the changes and benefits in a short time and easily. Once they start leveraging the benefits of DevOps, it will be easy to implement further projects.
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5. ‍Switching to Microservices:
   The use of Infrastructure as code along with microservices benefits hugely to the entire development lifecycle. This allows businesses to adapt to the changing markets and needs as quickly as possible. This will also improve the system’s stability. Microservices along with a cloud-native approach will enable innovation and also accelerate time-to-market for new features.
   
   It can be hard to overcome these basic challenges, but when everyone in the team feels the benefits and innovations happening around they start adopting DevOps. These challenges will fade over time and DevOps will bring in a new work culture to deliver values rather than just products.
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14. AWS DevOps

AWS (Amazon Web Services) provides a comprehensive set of tools and services to implement DevOps practices. With the help of these all-in-one services, organizations can automate their end-to-end software delivery processes. 

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Source:https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/architecture/using-devops-automation-to-deploy-lambda-apis-across-accounts-and-environments/

Steps to build AWS DevOps pipeline

Given below are the high level steps to build a basic AWS DevOps pipeline:

1) Setup AWS account

Creating an AWS account is the first and foremost step. This is simple if the instructions on the AWS website are followed. From the AWS management console, AWS resources/services can be created and managed.

2) Create and configure AWS resources

• Use EC2 instances to run containers and leverage security.
• Use AWS CloudFormation to manage infrastructure as code.
• Use AWS CodePipeline for setting up a CI/CD pipeline.
• Use AWS CodeCommit to host source code.
• Use AWS CodeBuild to build and test applications.
• Use AWS CodeDeploy to automate the deployment process
• Use AWS Elastic Beanstalk to deploy applications in a managed environment.
• Use AWS Lambda to deploy applications as a serverless function.
• Use AWS CloudWatch to monitor applications and the environment. Set up alerts in case of critical events.

3) Setup pipeline, monitor and feedback

           Using the above-mentioned AWS resources, setup and create a pipeline, deploy and monitor the deployment activities.

15. Azure DevOps

Azure DevOps is a set of services offered by Microsoft Azure that provides a complete end-to-end solution to implement DevOps. The details below will give a basic idea of using Azure to build a DevOps pipeline.

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Source: https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/opensource/2018/11/27/tutorial-azure-devops-setup-cicd-pipeline-kubernetes-docker-helm/

Steps to build Azure DevOps pipeline

Given below are the high level steps to build a basic Azure DevOps pipeline:

1) Create an Azure DevOps account

The initial step is to have an Azure DevOps account. Go to the Azure DevOps website and sign up for the free account. Once the account is created, browse through the dashboard.

2) Create a project

A project in Azure DevOps is a container for all of your application’s artifacts, including code, builds, tests, and releases. Choose the version control system and process type while creating the project.

3) Set up a build pipeline, release pipeline, monitor and improve

• Use Azure DevOps to implement CI/CD pipelines.
• Use Kubernetes, a container orchestrator that makes collaboration easy.
• Use Helm, a package manager for Kubernetes.
• Use Docker to add more consistency and quality.
• Use Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), a fully managed Kubernetes container orchestration service.
• Use Azure Container Registry (ACR), a dedicated enterprise container registry.
• Use Azure Application Insights and Azure Log Analytics to study the metrics and performance of the application.

16. Future of DevOps

DevOps is more optimistic and over the next decade, DevOps will become increasingly popular. Many companies will adopt the DevOps culture to enhance their development and delivery processes. The future of DevOps is always promising and it always continues to evolve and mature. 

“DevOps journeys will accelerate as teams adopt value stream management practices and platforms cross-organization” ---- Helen Beal, chief ambassador, DevOps Institute

Listing below some predictions and trends regarding the future of DevOps:

1. ‍Automation and Orchestration
   ‍Key features of DevOps are automation and orchestration, which will remain to continue, helping in faster release cycles and more reliable software products.
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2. ‍AI and ML in DevOps:
   With the help of Artificial Intelligence(AI) and Machine Language(ML), the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the DevOps process will be improved. Based on the collected data, MI could predict errors and AI predicts the failures based on patterns.
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3. ‍Increased focus on security:
   As cyber threats rise day by day, DevOps will incorporate a security-first mindset. It might include security testing and monitoring in the software development life cycle.
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4. ‍DevSecOps:
   This is a practice of interesting security in each phase of the DevOps process. As organizations understand the importance of building secure software from the start, DevSecOps will be recognized more.
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5. ‍Shift towards GitOps: 
   GitOps is an approach to DevOps that makes use of Git repositories as the central source to provide infrastructure as code. GitOps provides a standard workflow, to increase security, consistency and reliability.
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17. Debunking DevOps Myths and Misconceptions

17.1 DevOps Myths

DevOps myths are misunderstandings of the facts about DevOps. These myths can lead to incorrect assumptions about what DevOps is and what it involves. Given below are a few myths and facts about DevOps:

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17.2 Anti-patterns

Anti-patterns in DevOps are generally those deep-rooted traditional mindsets about software delivery processes that are believed to be effective, but it doesn’t work that way and it hinders the project objectives. It is a set of behaviors that usually slows delivery, decreases team collaboration and increases downtime. 

In most cases, Anti-patterns are the results of misunderstanding or misinterpretation of DevOps principles and practices. For a successful implementation of DevOps culture, the team should understand and identify the anti-patterns that act as hindrances to the effectiveness of the development cycle. The most commonly observed DevOps antipatterns are:

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Even Though DevOps myths and anti-patterns may be different, they both have negative impacts on the implementation of DevOps practices. DevOps myths can lead to incorrect assumptions or a lack of understanding about what DevOps entails, while DevOps antipatterns can lead to practices that are counterproductive to the goals of DevOps.

Such common DevOps myths and antipatterns should be addressed with the right strategies like training and evaluations. Only in this way, the team will be able to adopt a successful DevOps culture to deliver business value.

18. Conclusion

In conclusion, DevOps is a software development approach that emphasizes collaboration, automation, and continuous improvement across two different teams’ development and operations. DevOps involve a variety of tools, practices, and methodologies that help organizations streamline and automate their software development and delivery processes. It has become increasingly popular in recent years due to its wide range of benefits like the ability to promote faster time-to-market, increased efficiency, improved quality, and better customer experiences.

Any organization should have a clear understanding of DevOps principles, practices, and benefits as well as a strong commitment to successfully implement DevOps. Stakeholders need to focus on building a culture of trust, transparency, experimentation, and a willingness to embrace new technologies and tools.

Learning DevOps can provide various benefits like career growth, increased salaries, improved efficiency, better collaboration, enhanced innovation, good customer experience, and increased agility. By mastering DevOps skills, one can become a valuable asset to an organization and advance in a career in the software development industry.

Uptut has proven itself to be a leading provider of professional training in DevOps for corporates. With its comprehensive curriculum, experienced instructors, and hands-on approach, Uptut equips organizations with the essential knowledge and skills required to succeed in the rapidly evolving world of technology.

As businesses continue to recognize the importance of DevOps in achieving their strategic goals, Uptut stands as a trusted partner, empowering corporates to embrace and excel in the DevOps culture, ultimately driving their success in the digital age.
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FAQs

Q1. Does DevOps need Coding?

Yes, DevOps generally requires coding skills. DevOps always emphasizes collaboration and communication between development and operations teams. The goal of DevOps is to automate the entire life cycle of the software development process to deliver quick and reliable outputs. To achieve this goal, it makes use of different tools and technologies. These tools require coding skills to customize the automation and maintain the same.

Understanding coding concepts and being able to write code helps DevOps professionals to communicate more effectively with developers, and to understand the software development process more deeply. Therefore, while coding may not be the primary focus of a DevOps role, it is an important skill for DevOps professionals to have.
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 Q2. List a few challenges faced while adopting DevOps?

• Cultural resistance to change
• Siloed teams
• Communication barrier
• Lack of automation
• Difficulties with integration and managing complex systems and application
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Q3. What are all the industries that implement DevOps rather than Software development?

 While DevOps is often linked with software development, this culture can also be implemented in a wide range of industries beyond software development. The key concept of DevOps is to streamline the development and deployment process to achieve fast and efficient delivery of products or services. Here are some examples of industries that have adopted DevOps:

• Banking and Finance
• Healthcare
• Retail and e-commerce
• Manufacturing
• Networking and telecom
• Government
• Medical field
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Q4. Are Agile and DevOps the same?

 Agile and DevOps are related but distinct concepts that can be used together to improve the software development process. Agile focuses on delivering value to the customer in small increments, while DevOps focuses on automating the entire software delivery process to increase efficiency and quality.

While Agile and DevOps share some common goals, such as collaboration and delivering value to the customer, they focus on different areas of the software development process.
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Q5. Can Continuous Delivery (CD) be achieved without any downtime in DevOps?

It is always important to avoid workload interruptions while software deployments. Most companies lack this needed expertise. There are a few ways to achieve Zero downtime deployments. In DevOps CI/CD pipeline helps in reducing the time between the development of a new feature or fix and the release of that feature or fix to end-users. Along with this few strategies and techniques could be used to achieve Zero downtime.

A few such techniques are:

• Blue-Green deployment
• Rolling deployment
• Canary deployment
• A/B deployment
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Q6. List steps to become a DevOps engineer?

 Becoming a DevOps engineer typically requires a combination of technical knowledge, soft skills, and practical experience. Here are some steps to take to become a DevOps engineer:

• Acquire the necessary technical skills
• Learn about Agile and Continuous Delivery
• Gain experience in software development
• Develop soft skills
• Consider getting certified
• Stay up-to-date with industry trends
• Look for opportunities to gain practical experience

Becoming a DevOps engineer from a non-technical background will be harder, but still, it is possible if proper technical knowledge is acquired.
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Q7. List a few trending technologies in DevOps.

• Containerization
• Kubernetes
• Low-code DevOps automation (Drag-drop pipeline builders)
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
• Microservice architecture
• Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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Q8. Does DevOps have any one-stop tool to deliver applications?

Several one-stop tools deliver end-to-end DevOps solutions. 

• AWS platform (Check section 14 AWS DevOps for the different combinations of AWS resources to achieve end-to-end software delivery)
• Atlassian Slack -  Bitbucket (for code hosting and collaboration), Bamboo (for continuous integration and deployment), and Opsgenie (for incident management)
• GitLab along with Kubernetes (for container orchestration) and Prometheus (for monitoring)
• Electric Cloud (DevOps automation platform) and VersionOne (provides end-to-end visibility and traceability)
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Q9. Define DevSecOps and how does it differ from DevOps?

DevSecOps and DevOps differ in a few factors, but both approaches to software development emphasize collaboration and automation throughout the software development lifecycle.

The goal of DevOps is to automate the process of building, testing, and deploying software to production, to deliver software faster, more reliably, and with higher quality.

DevSecOps, on the other hand, is an approach that adds security to the DevOps process. It emphasizes the integration of security practices into every stage of the software development lifecycle, from design and development to testing and deployment. This includes practices such as threat modeling, code analysis, vulnerability testing, and continuous monitoring, to identify and address security issues early in the development process.
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Q10. List some latest CI/CD tools used in DevOps.

• Jenkins
• GitLab CI/CD
• CircleCI
• Travis CI
• TeamCity
• Spinnaker
• Bamboo
• Codefresh
• Buddy
• Codeship
• Wercker
• Semaphore