Understanding DevOps Lifecycle Phases: A Complete Guide
Each passing day sees technology evolve for the better, enabling industries to accelerate tedious and time-taking processes, and grow at a faster pace. One of the industries that have made the most of these technological advancements in the software industry; a world of its own that is fueled by impressive innovations. So how does the sector leverage technology? By building time-efficient, cost-efficient solutions like DevOps.
If you have been navigating the software development sector, then you are already aware of the divine power of DevOps. But, if you are fairly new to the phenomenon, this blog will help you better understand the very concept, the DevOps application lifecycle management, and the DevOps lifecycle tools-
What Is DevOps?
DevOps is a tool that is the best of both these terms – development and operations. To put it simply, DevOps is the combination of practices, tools, and techniques that work in sync to enhance an organization’s potential to deliver applications and solutions faster than the traditional software development operations and management processes. With its uniqueness, the model has altered the IT industry by eliminating outdated architectures and procedures.
There are some advanced DevOps models where quality assurance and security teams join hands with the development and operations teams as well. The members of each team work closely to automate manual and tedious processes that have not yielded any positive outputs in the past. Businesses all over the world are leveraging the efficacy of DevOps-related technologies and practices. Amazon, Netflix, and Google – all use DevOps in their day-to-day operations to maximize productivity and boost delivery time.
What Is DevOps Lifecycle?
A DevOps model is a product of the best of the development and operations teams, combined to create better solutions. These two key departments come together and the engineers weave the entire application lifecycle, from development and test to deployment to operations. This process helps them develop a range of skills that are not limited to a single function. You cannot master DevOps without first understanding its lifecycle. To help you get familiar with them, here are the key stages of the DevOps lifecycle-
The Phases of DevOps Lifecycle
1. Continuous Development:
The very first stage of the DevOps lifecycle is related to all-things-core-development. This is the part where the actual end-to-end coding of the software application takes place. The process starts with the planning and the visualization of the coding structure. The final strategy is created in accordance with the vision of what the software product should be like, in terms of its features and functionalities.
When the designers start writing and maintaining the code, they do not essentially need any apparatuses. But to accelerate the process and to ensure the effectiveness of the code, there are a few devices available. When it comes to maintaining the code, these are the tools that come in handy SVN, Git, Jira, and CVS; and this process is called Source Code Management.
2. Continuous Integration:
Although every step plays an important role in any and every DevOps lifestyle, the second stage is rewarded more as an integral phase. Why? This is a process that takes place either on a daily or on a weekly basis. It is where the engineers scan thoroughly through all the codes and actively submit changes to the source code. day by day or week after week premise.
When done methodologically, this helps developers detect any faults in the code, in order to rectify them during these early development phases. The entire process involves unit testing, combination testing, code survey, and bundling. More importantly, the code that gives the software application a new functionality is continuously integrated with the existing code. Any and every change made to the original code structure has to be consistently coordinated for all the teams and the client to be on the same page.
3. Continuous Testing:
This is the process that helps developers optimize the user experience. The developed code is continuously tested to look for bugs that can get in the way of the smooth running of the application. To test the ease of use of the software, there is a set of best practices that the Quality Assurance team follows. It helps them verify whether the software aligns with the expectations and the requirements of the clients or not.
There are multiple automation testing tools that come in handy during the continuous testing phase – be it free-to-use tools like Selenium or advanced test management tools like QARA Enterprise and TestNG. By leveraging these tools, the team can easily execute tests simultaneously. This helps expand the test coverage, while also speeding up the overall testing process.
4. Continuous Deployment:
This phase is a slightly tricky one as compared to the other phases. It involves deploying the code in a way that does not have any adverse effects on the performance of the application. Developers have to be mindful of multiple things, for example – making sure that the code is deployed correctly on all the servers, with no possible errors insight. This makes it easier for the application to run smoothly on different systems and devices.
The key tools that are used during this process are – Puppet, Ansible, Chef, and SaltStack. Transient and Docker are well-known instruments that are utilized for this reason. These tools are the best way to ensure consistency across the development, organizing, testing, and creating the ideal environment.
5. Continuous Monitoring:
As the name suggests, this stage is where all the operational aspects of the DevOps systems are closely monitored by the responsible team. This step further helps in identifying the possible errors in the fundamental codes. This data collection about the working of the software application is systematically recorded; this way, if any obstacles arise in the later stages of development, they can be easily located.
The consistent recording and monitoring of the key information of the software application also help developers understand the recurring errors and build strategies to best avoid them. All these efforts contribute to improving the efficiency of the application, thereby enhancing its performance.
6. Continuous Feedback:
No matter the kind of project, when the feedback is objective and constructive, it always helps improve the product. Similarly, when developing an appealing and reliable application, it is important to study the outcomes from the operations of the product.
In the case of DevOps, continuous feedback is not just limited to the technical teams working on the project, but also the non-technical ones such as marketing. Moreover, this step does not necessarily come at the end of the DevOps lifecycle, it involves coordination between teams throughout code development, deployment, and support. This process has to be conducted before the release of the application as it helps evaluate the user experience. The feedback collected from each release allows the DevOps team to ensure the wide acceptance and the eventual success of future releases.
7. Continuous Operations:
This phase is primarily dedicated to minimizing, or rather optimizing, the need for planned downtime, such as scheduled maintenance. The best practices to do so include making sure that no code submission gets built without passing all test harnesses, small frequent releases of the application, deploying database changes first, without the corresponding software changes that depend on it, creating the development and production environments through automated tools, leveraging the power of A/B testing when incorporating new features in the application, and such.
The art of continuous operations is not an easy one to master. But with time and experience, DevOps developers can use this phase to their advantage and build applications that are awe-inspiring in their truest sense.
Enroll With Cyber Success For The Best DevOps Training In Pune
DevOps has created rewarding opportunities for tech wizards. The demand for DevOps experts is on the rise as businesses are trying to stay ahead of the curve and outpace their competitors by implementing this technology. To cater to this demand, Cyber Success has curated a knowledge base in DevOps coaching. If you have been looking for ’DevOps classes near me’, then you have come to the right place.
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