III – CI/CD Pipeline in DevOps

The backbone of the futuristic DevOps ecosystem is CI-CD Pipeline implementation belonging to the Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment Software. The pipeline has a great influence on the software and applications by way of providing periodic and steadfast updates to them In addition, it provides an agile and collaborative workflow for the entire DevOps squad.

With the help of test automation, CI/CD pipeline identifies the estimated issues way before anyone can find out, push codes the changes to different environments, and provides applications to the production environments. From performance to API and security, test automation analyses and assesses anything. This further becomes the most crucial source for pipeline quality control.

Know the differences between CI, CD, and CD?

Continuous Integration

It is a software development method where the team members can unite together for a minimum of one time a day. Here, an automated build to search tool assesses every small unification or integration with an aim to find out the errors.

continuous-integration

Pros of CI (Continuous Integration)

  • Automated monitoring of codebase, code coverage metrics, and code quality health
  • Low maintenance expenditure and keeps down the technical debts
  • Developers get a boost to enhance code quality with publicly-visible code quality metrics
  • A candid overview of the present scenario of development efforts is known with automated end-to-end acceptance tests.
  • Lesser risks over a period of time due to the quick feedback mechanism
  • Tools created to facilitate trace and fix integration and regression issues quickly so as to avoid more bugs and ensure fast delivery
  • Enables simplification of delivery and amplifies it through automation of deployment process. With this in place, the testers and end-users get quick access to the software.

Continuous Delivery

CD is a process of software engineering whereby a group of developers creates software within a short time span to ensure its quick delivery at a given time.

Pros of CD (Continuous Delivery)

  • Lesser Risks: The aim of CD is to develop effortless software deployments and make low-risk events that can be performed whenever demanded
  • Quicker Time to Market: Every integration and test/fix phase of the traditional phased software delivery lifecycle takes time more than weeks and months.
  • Decrease in Costs: The growth of any software product or service occurs only after a considerable time span of usage and the experience of its results
  • Sound Products: CD is inexpensive in terms of working within small batches. You can take feedback from its users through the entire delivery lifecycle depending on the working software.
  • Joyful teams: When the research gets a fair review from counterparts and peers, you improve with a continuous delivery that is less painful and decreases team burnout.

Continuous Deployment

This is another process of software engineering delivering functionalities with automatic deployment. The testers get support for validating the codebase changes and ensuring their correctability and stability.

CD also can be considered as a step ahead of Continuous delivery wherein each change in the source code is deployed to production automatically with no approval needed from a developer.

Pros of CD (Continuous Deployment)

  • Software release process automation: CD allows your developers’ group to automatically create, test, and make code changes for production release in order to deliver the software with speed and effectiveness.
  • Accelerates Developer Productivity: Your team gains higher productivity by making it more independent from doing manual tasks and promoting behavior that ensures error reduction and lesser bugs deployed to the customers
  • Traces and Addresses bugs quickly: Your team gets enabled to track and address the bugs quite before they become a big problem leading to frequent and aggressive testing. CD also allows flexibility to execute extra tests on your code with an intention to automate the entire process.
  • Quick Delivery of Updates: CD facilitates the team to provide regular updates to the customers with speed and frequency. With proper implementation, the CD can give you a deployment-ready build artifact gone through a rigorous testing process.

Stages of CI/CD Pipeline

The importance of CI/CD pipeline dwells in the steps with runnable specifications. These steps are required to be performed to ensure the delivery of the new version of the software product. Generally, CI/CD version comprises following stages:

stages-of-ci/cd-pipeline

Some common CI/CD tools

CI/CD tools assist the team to automate the development, testing, and deployment of the software. There are certain tools handling the integration (CI) side, while some handle the development and deployment (CD). The others develop a specialization in continuous testing or related functions.

The most popular open-source tool for CI/CD is the Automation Server Jenkins. Jenkins is created with an aim to manage and control everything beginning from a simple CI server to a fully operational CD hub

The fundamental tools of DevOps mostly become a part of CI/CD process. For example Configuration Automation (like Chef, Ansible, and Puppet), Container Orchestration (such as Kubernetes), and Container Runtimes (like Docker, CRI-O, and RKT). All this also shows up in several CI/CD workflows.

Conclusion

During the usage of CI/CD, the code quality gets augmented and there is a quick delivery of software updates. All this happens with great assurance of no breaking changes. For every release, its influence is definitely correlated with data starting from production and going towards operations.

II – DevOps Tool: SCM (Source Code Management)

DevOps Tool: SCM (Source Code Management)

For any IT company, Source code management (SCM) becomes the fundamental element of a development project. In this phase, the development teams work and evolve with collaboration.

SCM ensures you get what you want from what you have. It doesn’t start with the production but also is involved in the development phase. SCM offers the team various benefits that serve as safety nets. SCM can be undertaken either formally or rigidly. Also, it can be performed in several other informal ways.

Purpose

The core purpose of SCM is enumerated below:

  • To track the modifications to a source code repository
  • To keep a check on the running history of changes to a codebase.
  • To facilitate in resolving conflicts that arise during the merging updates from varied contributors
  • Synonymous with version control

SCM contains several benefits listed below

  • Team Work and Collaboration
  • Version history
  • Code Backup
  • Create release notes

With SCM implementation, you will always follow the best practices that reflect the reason for its creation.

  • Frequent commitment
  • Make sure the user uses the latest version
  • Always make detailed notes
  • Before making the commitment – always review
  • Check with the branch team consent

SCM Tools:

scm-tools

Version Control:

Version control system tracks and controls the location changes that comprise a particular set of files remaining for a longer duration. The VCS system is also utilized for the storage of image and layout versions.

version-control

Benefits of Version Control System

  • Version storage
  • Previous versions storage
  • Collaboration
  • Back up Facility
  • Situation Analysis

What is Git?

Git must be used for tracking all the changes that take place in various sets of your files. Git is that version control system that we can use for coordinating the work of the programmers. In the majority of cases, it is used for source code management in software development. The action takes place with various goals attached to it like data integration, supportive distribution, non-liner workflows, etc.

We can use vcs for:

  • Storage
  • Sharing
  • Differentiating
  • Tracking changes
  • Rolling back
  • Removing the fear of making changes
  • Avoiding computer glitches
  • Conserving old states

Basic commands of Git:

$ git init

Git repository initialization in a local folder.

$ git status

Status check of git repository

$ git add .

changes added to the working directory and staging area

$ git commit -m “message”

takes the snapshot of the current project’s staged changes.

$ git remote add <URL>

local repository connection to remote git repository.

$ git push

content upload of local repository to a remote repository.

$ git checkout <branch>

Specific branch checkout as a working directory.

$ git diff <ver1> <ver2>

Version specific comparison of git repository.

$ git clone <URL>

cloning of remote repository to local folder.

$ git pull

remote git repository merging with changes to local git repository.

Few Advanced commands of Git:

Merging vs. Rebasing

merging-vs-rebasing

When you want to work with the divergent history, select Git. The git merge and git rebase commands provide different ways for commits integration from various branches. Also, know that both the options come with their own advantages.

Resetting, Checking Out, and Reverting

resetting-checking-out-and-reverting

The Git commands undo particular changes in your repository via git reset, git checkout, and git revert commands. However, they create a varied impact at different places with different combinations of the working directory, commit history, and stages snapshot.

Advanced Git Log

advanced-git-log

Your project history becomes useful because of the git log command. Like most aspiring Git users, there is no doubt if you are found scratching the surface of what is all possible with git log.

Git Hooks

git-hooks

Hooks are special tools of choice that you can use for performing custom actions during the happening of certain events. They always let you normalize commit messages, notify continuous integration systems, automate testing suites, and do much more.

Refs and the Reflog

refs-and-the-reflog

Refs are the internal way of Git and refers to a commit. Since now you must be already familiar with lots of categories of refs that also include commit hashes and branch names. However, there are so many other types of refs that are virtually used by Git command in some form or another.

Conclusion:

Software configuration management comprises several sets of policies, procedures, and tools to lead to a successful development process. Git is a VCS that tracks the changes in computer files. And GitHub offers an online git repository hosting service with a web interface to upload the files. Various operations of the branching are – create, merge, delete, and checkout a branch. The entire system is impressive because it facilitates the team to work in coordination so that they can perform the changes in an orderly fashion from the idea generation to production to retirement. This can surely avoid chaotic and ambiguous situations in the future.

Frame-252-1

I – Basics of DevOps

In the year 2008, the concept of DevOps raised out as a result of a discussion between Patrick Debois and Andrew Clay, project manager, a Belgian consultant, and agile practitioner.

DevOps is a set of tools, Cultural Philosophies and practices, designed to shorten the software development life-cycle process. DevOps signify a change in IT culture, focusing on quick IT service delivery through the adoption of lean, agile practices in the context of a system-oriented method. By adopting a DevOps culture into business along with DevOps Practice and tools, teams gain the ability to better respond to customer needs and increase the confidence in the apps they develop and achieve business goals quicker.

basics_of_devOps

Benefits of DevOps

benefits_of_devOps

DevOps Vs. Traditional Approach

DevOps Traditional
  • Teams focus more on improving infrastructure
  • Teams spend less time on fixing issues and recovers from failures faster
  • Teams release applications at twice the speed of traditional IT teams
  • Continuous integration and deployment
  • All teams are equally responsible, which leads to better team
    engagement and productivity
  • Teams have limited focus on improving infrastructure
  • Requires more time to recover from failures
  • Teams requires more time to release applications
  • Linear model of development, testing, and deployment
  • Individual teams have have dedicated tasks, which leads to inefficient collaboration

DevOps Tools

To implement DevOps and work within the DevOps life cycle, following tools required

devOps_tools

  1. Code:For Source-Code Management (SCM) ,version control tools such as Git,GitHub, Subversion, TFS, and Mercurial are used.
  2. Build: For automating the build process of an executable application from source code, software build tools such as Maven, Gradle, Ant, and Grunt are used.
  3. In the continuous testing phase, the built software is continuously tested for bugs using testing tools such as Selenium, TestNG, and JUnit.
  4. Release: CI/CD pipelines are created for procuring updated source code and constructing the build into .exeformat using tools such as Jenkins.
  5. Operate:For deployment and operations phase, CMT and automation tools such as Jenkins, AWS CodeDeploy, Chef, Puppet, Ansible, and Terraform are used.
  6. Monitor:For monitoring system performance and productivity, to reduce (or even eliminate) downtime, monitoring tools such as Nagios are used.
  7. Deploy: For packaging an application with its required libraries, frameworks, and configuration files to efficiently run it in various computing environments, containerization tools such as Docker and Kubernetes are used.

Key Takeaways

  • DevOps is a set of practices and tools designed to shorten the life cycle of a software development process
  • Networking and cost-related issues, tools and software compatibility, and DevOps culture are a few challenges in traditional SDLC approach
  • Agile is an iterative development procedure that promotes constant iteration of development and testing all over the life cycle of a project.
  • Saas, PaaS, and IaaS are the three models of cloud computing services which help to implement DevOps in the cloud.
  • Continuous development, continuous testing, continuous integration, continuous deployment, and continuous monitoring are the five phases of DevOps.

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