DevOps toolchain

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A diagram of the DevOps stages Devops-toolchain.svg
A diagram of the DevOps stages

A DevOps toolchain is a set or combination of tools that aid in the delivery, development, and management of software applications throughout the systems development life cycle, as coordinated by an organisation that uses DevOps practices.

Contents

Generally, DevOps tools fit into one or more activities, which supports specific DevOps initiatives: Plan, Create, Verify, Package, Release, Configure, Monitor, and Version Control. [1] [2]

Toolchains

In software, a toolchain is the set of programming tools that is used to perform a complex software development task or to create a software product, which is typically another computer program or a set of related programs. In general, the tools forming a toolchain are executed consecutively so the output or resulting environment state of each tool becomes the input or starting environment for the next one, but the term is also used when referring to a set of related tools that are not necessarily executed consecutively. [3] [4] [5]

As DevOps is a set of practices that emphasizes the collaboration and communication of both software developers and other information technology (IT) professionals, while automating the process of software delivery and infrastructure changes, its implementation can include the definition of the series of tools used at various stages of the lifecycle; 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. Instead a collection of tools, potentially from a variety of vendors, are used in one or more stages of the lifecycle. [6] [7]

Stages of DevOps

Plan

Plan is composed of two things: "define" and "plan". [8] This activity refers to the business value and application requirements. Specifically "Plan" activities include:

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.

Create

Create is composed of the building, coding, and configuring of the software development process. [8] The specific activities are:

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

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. [8] The main activities in this are:

Solutions for verify related activities generally fall under four main categories: Test automation, Static analysis, Test Lab, and Security.

Package

Package refers to the activities involved once the release is ready for deployment, often also referred to as staging or Preproduction / "preprod". [8] This often includes tasks and activities such as:

Release

Release related activities include schedule, orchestration, provisioning and deploying software into production and targeted environment. [9] The specific Release activities include:

Solutions that cover this aspect of the toolchain include application release automation, deployment automation and release management.

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. [8] Specific activities including:

The main types of solutions that facilitate these activities are continuous configuration automation, configuration management, and infrastructure as code tools. [10]

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. [8] A summary of Monitor related activities are:

Information from monitoring activities often impacts Plan activities required for changes and for new release cycles.

Version Control

Version Control is an important link in a DevOps toolchain and a component of software configuration management. Version Control is the management of changes to documents, computer programs, large web sites, and other collections of information. [8] A summary of Version Control related activities are:

Information from Version Control often supports Release activities required for changes and for new release cycles.

See also

Related Research Articles

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Release engineering, frequently abbreviated as RE or as the clipped compound Releng, is a sub-discipline in software engineering concerned with the compilation, assembly, and delivery of source code into finished products or other software components. Associated with the software release life cycle, it was said by Boris Debic of Google Inc. that release engineering is to software engineering as manufacturing is to an industrial process:

Release engineering is the difference between manufacturing software in small teams or startups and manufacturing software in an industrial way that is repeatable, gives predictable results, and scales well. These industrial style practices not only contribute to the growth of a company but also are key factors in enabling growth.

Build automation is the practice of building software systems in an relatively unattended fashion. The build is configured to run with minimized or no software developer interaction and without using a developer's personal computer. Build automation encompasses the act of configuring the build system as well the resulting system itself.

Azure DevOps Server, formerly known as Team Foundation Server (TFS) and Visual Studio Team System (VSTS), is a Microsoft product that provides version control, reporting, requirements management, project management, automated builds, testing and release management capabilities. It covers the entire application lifecycle and enables DevOps capabilities. Azure DevOps can be used as a back-end to numerous integrated development environments (IDEs) but is tailored for Microsoft Visual Studio and Eclipse on all platforms.

AnthillPro is a software tool originally developed and released as one of the first continuous integration servers. AnthillPro automates the process of building code into software projects and testing it to verify that project quality has been maintained. Software developers are able to identify bugs and errors earlier by using AnthillPro to track, collate, and test changes in real time to a collectively maintained body of computer code.

Progress Chef is a configuration management tool written in Ruby and Erlang. It uses a pure-Ruby, domain-specific language (DSL) for writing system configuration "recipes". Chef is used to streamline the task of configuring and maintaining a company's servers, and can integrate with cloud-based platforms such as Amazon EC2, Google Cloud Platform, Oracle Cloud, OpenStack, IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Rackspace to automatically provision and configure new machines. Chef contains solutions for both small and large scale systems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Release management</span> Process of software building

Release management is the process of managing, planning, scheduling and controlling a software build through different stages and environments; it includes testing and deploying software releases.

DevOps is a methodology in the software development and IT industry. Used as a set of practices and tools, DevOps integrates and automates the work of software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) as a means for improving and shortening the systems development life cycle. DevOps is complementary to agile software development; several DevOps aspects came from the agile way of working.

OpenText ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) is a comprehensive solution designed to support and enhance the entire lifecycle of application development and management. It provides robust tools for planning, development, testing, deployment, and maintenance, ensuring that software projects are delivered efficiently and effectively.

Continuous testing is the process of executing automated tests as part of the software delivery pipeline to obtain immediate feedback on the business risks associated with a software release candidate. Continuous testing was originally proposed as a way of reducing waiting time for feedback to developers by introducing development environment-triggered tests as well as more traditional developer/tester-triggered tests.

Continuous delivery (CD) is a software engineering approach in which teams produce software in short cycles, ensuring that the software can be reliably released at any time. It aims at building, testing, and releasing software with greater speed and frequency. The approach helps reduce the cost, time, and risk of delivering changes by allowing for more incremental updates to applications in production. A straightforward and repeatable deployment process is important for continuous delivery.

Application-release automation (ARA) refers to the process of packaging and deploying an application or update of an application from development, across various environments, and ultimately to production. ARA solutions must combine the capabilities of deployment automation, environment management and modeling, and release coordination.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">BuildMaster</span>

BuildMaster is an application release automation tool, designed by the software development team Inedo. It combines build management and ARA capabilities to manage and automate processes primarily related to continuous integration, database change scripts, and production deployments, overall releasing applications reliably. The tool is browser-based and able to be used "out-of-the-box". Its feature set and scope puts it in line with the DevOps movement, and is marketed as "more than a release automatigs together the people, processes, and practices that allow teams to deliver software rapidly, reliably, and responsibly.” It's a tool that embodies incremental DevOps adoption.

XebiaLabs is an independent software company specializing in DevOps and continuous delivery for large enterprise organizations. XebiaLabs offers a DevOps Platform for application-release automation (ARO). These components include release orchestration, deployment automation and DevOps intelligence.

Infrastructure as code (IaC) is the process of managing and provisioning computer data center resources through machine-readable definition files, rather than physical hardware configuration or interactive configuration tools. The IT infrastructure managed by this process comprises both physical equipment, such as bare-metal servers, as well as virtual machines, and associated configuration resources. The definitions may be in a version control system, rather than maintaining the code through manual processes. The code in the definition files may use either scripts or declarative definitions, but IaC more often employs declarative approaches.

Continuous configuration automation (CCA) is the methodology or process of automating the deployment and configuration of settings and software for both physical and virtual data center equipment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MLOps</span> Approach to machine learning lifecycle management

MLOps or ML Ops is a paradigm that aims to deploy and maintain machine learning models in production reliably and efficiently. The word is a compound of "machine learning" and the continuous delivery practice (CI/CD) of DevOps in the software field. Machine learning models are tested and developed in isolated experimental systems. When an algorithm is ready to be launched, MLOps is practiced between Data Scientists, DevOps, and Machine Learning engineers to transition the algorithm to production systems. Similar to DevOps or DataOps approaches, MLOps seeks to increase automation and improve the quality of production models, while also focusing on business and regulatory requirements. While MLOps started as a set of best practices, it is slowly evolving into an independent approach to ML lifecycle management. MLOps applies to the entire lifecycle - from integrating with model generation, orchestration, and deployment, to health, diagnostics, governance, and business metrics. According to Gartner, MLOps is a subset of ModelOps. MLOps is focused on the operationalization of ML models, while ModelOps covers the operationalization of all types of AI models.

TestOps refers to the discipline of managing the operational aspects of testing within the software delivery lifecycle.

References

  1. ↑ Edwards, Damon (22 August 2023). "Integrating DevOps tools into a Service Delivery Platform". dev2ops.org.
  2. ↑ Seroter, Richard. "Exploring the ENTIRE DevOps Toolchain for (Cloud) Teams". infoq.com.
  3. ↑ "Toolchain Overview". nongnu.org. 2012-01-03. Retrieved 2013-10-21.
  4. ↑ "Toolchains". elinux.org. 2013-09-08. Retrieved 2013-10-21.
  5. ↑ Imran, Saed; Buchheit, Martin; Hollunder, Bernhard; Schreier, Ulf (2015-10-29). "Tool Chains in Agile ALM Environments: A Short Introduction". On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems: OTM 2015 Workshops. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 9416. pp. 371–380. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-26138-6_40. ISBN   978-3-319-26137-9.
  6. ↑ Loukides, Mike (2012-06-07). "What is DevOps?".
  7. ↑ Garner Market Trends: DevOps – Not a Market, but Tool-Centric Philosophy That supports a Continuous Delivery Value Chain (Report). Gartner. 18 February 2015.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Avoid Failure by Developing a Toolchain that Enables DevOps (Report). Gartner. 16 March 2016.
  9. ↑ Best Practices in Change, Configuration and Release Management (Report). Gartner. 14 July 2010.
  10. ↑ Roger S. Pressman (2009). Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach (7th International ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
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