10 January 2022
DevOps (stands for development and operations) is a methodology that helps developers communicate effectively with other IT professionals. It is a set of processes and tools that enables a company to build and improve products faster than traditional approaches to software development.
- According to the 2021 Dynatrace DevOps Report, DevOps practices shorten deployment lead times by 97% and reduce production incidences by 93%.
- 99% of respondents in the 2020 Atlassian DevOps Trends Survey said this approach had a positive impact on their organization.
These numbers are truly impressive. However, you need the right combination of tools to reach the peak of your team’s efficiency. As the market offers plenty of options, the Rocketech experts picked up the top 10 DevOps tools that can help you enhance performance and collaboration.
What Is DevOps?
Amazon Web Services call DevOps “the combination of cultural philosophies, practices, and tools” to improve speed, security, scalability, reliability, and collaboration. DevOps practices enable smoother, more continuous communication, collaboration, integration, and transparency between application development teams (Dev) and their IT Department (Ops) colleagues.
This methodological model is like a vertical flow, where all phases progressively merge. Simplistically, the process has a few stages. Defining the product requirements and design is followed by writing and assembling the code. The code is then sent to the testers. After the checks, the operations department uploads the code to run a ready product.
In other words, DevOps is essential for developers to understand their product, optimize the project cost, and get applications up and running faster. The methodology focuses on adapting to changing conditions and reducing the cost of development and maintenance. By using DevOps, developers can quickly spot and fix bugs and respond to customer requests.
Top 10 DevOps Tools
An agile approach to software development using DevOps tools helps developers and operations departments quickly and efficiently build, test, deploy, monitor, and manage products. The success of a DevOps implementation usually depends on an integrated solution set or toolset aimed to avoid manual steps. It reduces errors and increases flexibility. Here’s a list of trusted DevOps instruments you should consider.
Ansible for Configuration Automation
Ansible is a software tool that provides system administrators and developers with extensive options to deploy various configurations. It positions itself as a “simple IT automation” for application deployment, cloud provisioning, intra-service orchestration, and configuration management. It allows you to configure systems, deploy software, and perform more complex tasks like continuous deployment and delivery. Ansible is a lightweight and easy-to-learn yet powerful tool with a simplified architecture.
Key Features
- No agents and no additional custom security infrastructure
- Fast workflow orchestration
- Easy to deploy
- Inventory management in text files
- Written in Python
Docker for Containerization
Docker is a platform for developing, delivering, and running container applications. Docker allows you to create containers, automate their start and deployment, and manage the lifecycle. It allows multiple containers to run on a single host machine. Docker provides secure packaging, deploying, and running different applications and reduces the time between writing code and running it. Its lightweight container virtualization platform helps you manage and deliver your applications.
Key Features
- Community of 13M+ developers
- Desktop and cloud application development
- Integration with other tools through a development pipeline
- Multiple applications delivery
- Application deployment in separate containers and different languages
Slack for Collaboration
Slack is one of the best and most popular corporate internal communication tools. It helps an organization manage work processes for teams of any size with unlimited channels. Uber, Netflix, and Expedia are among the companies using Slack. The creators promote the solution as “your digital headquarters” to replace Skype, other messengers, and standard email communication. It helps organizations build workflows and automate all processes, including routine actions.
Key Features
- Over 2,200 integrations in Slack App Directory
- High level of personalization
- Enterprise management with encryption keys
- Integration of third-party tools for better task management
- Suitable for any field, from sales to engineering
Nagios for Continuous Monitoring
Nagios provides “the industry standard in IT infrastructure monitoring.” It’s an open-source continuous monitoring tool that controls the network, applications, and servers. It can find and fix problems related to network connections or overloaded data links. Moreover, the software also monitors hardware (including switches and routers) and can prevent potential issues before they affect end-users. Nagios products include solutions for application, server, Windows, Linux, log, and SNMP monitoring.
Key Features
- A full overview of IT infrastructure performance
- Network traffic monitoring
- Both agentless and agent-based monitoring
- 5K+ addons
- Alert and notification system
Jira for Issue and Project Tracking
Jira is the first choice for bug tracking and agile project management globally. It’s a versatile platform that allows the team to create user stories, plan sprints in an agile model, assign tasks, and track issues and performance. It provides both ready workflows (following kanban and scrum methods) and an option to create custom ones to accommodate your team and project style and needs.
Key Features
- Extended functionality
- Agile, visualized reporting
- Multitasking and roadmaps
- High level of customization
- Scrum and kanban boards
Splunk for IT Operations Analytics
Splunk is a data platform that combines “full-stack observability and unified security.” It collects, stores, processes, and analyzes machine data, or logs, from almost any source. The solution allows you to build samples and tables; sort, filter, aggregate, and build reports; create highly visualized dashboards; make alerts. By choosing the required features, users can personalize the application.
Key Features
- Application performance monitoring
- Log investigation
- Automated Incident response
- Real-time architecture as a unified system
- Fast time to value
GitHub for Version Control
“Where the world builds software,” says the platform’s greeting. GitHub is a code hosting platform for the Git version control system and collaboration, sometimes called a social network for developers. It allows developers to store and share their code and work on projects in remote teams regardless of location. You can create multiple parallel branches for a chosen repository, contribute to projects, track changes, and exchange experiences with other contributors.
Key Features
- 73M+ developers, 200M+ repositories, and 4M+ organizations
- Built-in code review
- GitHub Wikis
- Syntax highlighting for most programming languages
- High level of security
Bitbucket for Source Control Management
Bitbucket is a code collaboration platform “built for professional teams” similar to GitHub. Bitbucket provides free private repositories for small teams of up to five people and an option to scale up for a reasonable price. Apart from a standard Git code management, it’s designed as a virtual workspace for project planning, collaborating on code, testing, and deploying with built-in continuous delivery.
Key Features
- Code review, branch permissions, and pipelines
- Jira and Atlassian Open DevOps integrations
- 50+ third-party tools to connect with monitoring, analytics, and deployment integrations
- Code Search and code insights
- Merge checks
Jenkins for CI/CD
Jenkins is an open-source, community-driven automation server aimed to “build great things at any scale.” The platform provides hundreds of plugins to support building, automating, and deploying any project. Along with GitLab, Jenkins is a leading CI/CD tool. Jenkins distributes work across multiple machines. Working in distributed environments helps drive builds, tests, and deployments across multiple platforms faster.
Key Features
- Easy installation and configuration
- Excellent documentation
- Developed plugin ecosystem
- Parallel task execution support
- Remote Acess API
Sentry for Testing
Sentry is a cloud-based and self-hosted application monitoring and error tracking service launched under the slogan, “working code, happy customers.” It quickly notifies support teams and developers about new bugs and fixes them effectively. The Trace View and Trace Navigator instruments help find the root cause faster. Sentry shows the source code directly in the stack trace and provides error filters. The Sentry logging system allows you to collect, group, and present errors in real time.
Key Features
- 1M+ developers and 80K organizations
- Full-stack monitoring
- Highlighted version changes
- Sensitive data scrubbing
- Visualized dashboards
Final Thoughts
Above all, DevOps is a philosophy. It’s a methodology of finding the best combination of tools, technologies, and resources to optimize the development process and communication. There is, however, no fixed set of instruments universal to any project. By following agile development methods, the Rocketech Team is flexible when establishing workflows. We carefully select each tool and communication channel according to the project’s objectives and the client’s needs and requirements. Contact us to share your product ideas and get an estimate.