What is DevOps and its Life Cycle Phases?

13-Oct-2022

DevOps is one crucial ingredient in the Software industry and many software enthusiasts may know what is DevOps. However, a thorough understanding of the DevOps Lifecycle is ideally necessary to understand what is DevOps all about. Today in this post we will dive into the intricacies of the DevOps lifecycle and help you understand DevOps accurately and thoroughly to help you achieve your career goals. 

Why DevOps?

Prior to the arrival of DevOps, there were the agile model and waterfall model for software development. Before we go on to define what is DevOps, let us reflect back on two models to understand the emergence of DevOps and understand why DevOps came about and its importance. 

Bried Overview of Previous Models to Know Why DevOps Emerged

Waterfall Model: The waterfall model can be described as a top-down, sequential method used in the development of systems and software. This model was simple and linear in nature. Requirement definition, software design, implementation, testing, deployment, and maintenance were some of the steps included in the waterfall paradigm.

Companies that developed software using the waterfall model technique needed a lot of time to perfect their product. This is so that you can go on to the following step after finishing a certain phase. Additionally, the operational software wasn't released until this model's final stage. Only projects with stable requirements could use this paradigm.

The Agile Model: Agile approach is a technique that encourages ongoing testing and development throughout the project's software development life cycle. Contrary to the Waterfall paradigm, development and testing activities are carried out simultaneously. Although the Agile approach increased agility in development, Operations did not catch up with agile principles and so it was lost on them.

The development and release processes were dragged down by a lack of cooperation between developers and operation engineers. Product businesses had started to see the need for improved teamwork and quicker software delivery. The DevOps methodology was born as a result. Continuous software delivery is now made possible by DevOps also it now facilitates easier and quicker solving issues.

What is DevOps?

The phrases "development" and "operations" are combined to form the term "DevOps." The creation of DevOps enables a single team to manage the complete application development life cycle. Additionally, the DevOps methodology facilitates development, deployment, testing, and operations

DevOps seeks to reduce the length of the system's development life cycle while delivering features, fixes, and upgrades regularly and in close coordination with corporate goals.

DevOps is a method of software development that makes it easier and faster to produce high-quality software. The following processes make up the DevOps development process:

• Continuous development

• Continuous integration

• Continuous testing

• Continuous deployment

• Continuous monitoring

What is DevOps Lifecycle?

Let us now dig into the DevOps Lifecycle which makes up the whole development process.

Continuous Development 

Continuous Development is the stage where the software is "planned" and "coded." During the planning stage, the project's vision is chosen, and the developers start writing the application's code. DevOps tools aren't necessary for planning, but there is a variety of them available for code maintenance.

While various version control systems are used to manage code, no DevOps tools are necessary for planning. Source code maintenance is the term for this process of code maintenance. Git, JIRA, Mercurial, and SVN are common source code maintenance technologies. Additionally, there are other tools available, like Ant, Gradle, and Maven, for packaging the codes into executable files. The executive files are then transferred to the following phases in the Lifecycle. 

Continuous Integration (CI)

This first phase in the DevOps lifecycle involves various processes that are linked to the test process execution. The information necessary for the expansion of the application functionality is hugely contributed by the clients as well. Here in this phase the source code frequently changes. On a daily or monthly basis, CI becomes the center for resolving these frequent changes. Unit and integration testing, code review, and packaging are all steps in the development of software. Since developers frequently make changes, they can rapidly identify any issues and address them before they become more serious.

New code functionalities are continuously integrated with the original source code throughout this phase. Given the continual development, the system's improved code integrates easily. Jenkins is one of the most popular solutions for continuous integration. It helps in making executable builds and accessing the most recent code. 

Continuous Testing (CT)

The next phase, that is -the continuous testing phase in the DevOps lifecycle involves checking the developed code for faults and defects that may have crept in. Here, quality analysis (QA) is crucial in determining whether the generated software is usable. The program must successfully pass the QA process in order to show that it complies with the client's requirements.

Continuous testing uses automation tools like Selenium, JUnit, and TestNG to let the QA team examine various code bases at once. Executing this ensures the flawless generation of program functions. Additionally, continuous testing makes advantage of Docker containers to simulate the full test environment. A Docker container is a standalone, compact executable package that includes all of the necessary system tools, libraries, runtime code, and settings to run an app.

Automation tools such as Selenium are used for automated testing, and then additional automation tools, like TestNG, are used to produce the results. With the use of Jenkins, a continuous integration platform, the entire testing procedure can also be automated. Testing automation is essential for reducing time, labor, and effort costs.

Continuous Deployment (CD)

The performance of the application is not harmed by continuous deployment (CD), which guarantees hassle-free product deployment. During this stage, it is crucial to make sure the code is accurately deployed across all accessible servers. This method gets rid of scheduled releases and speeds up the feedback system, enabling programmers to fix problems more efficiently and precisely.

Through configuration management, containerization solutions assist with continuous deployment. The consistency between test, development, staging and production environments can be achieved with the use of a containerization tool like Vagrant. Containerization focuses on raising virtualization to an operating system level.

Once you have a solid automated testing infrastructure in place, continuous deployment is certain to be advantageous for your company. In the continuous deployment stage, configuration management is quite valuable. It entails setting up and upholding uniformity in the app's functional requirements. Ansible, Puppet, and Chef are well-known DevOps technologies for configuration management that aid in the speedy deployment of new code.

Continuous Monitoring

To assess the entire effectiveness of a software product's output, performance monitoring is crucial. This stage handles crucial app-related data processing. Continuous monitoring allows developers to spot broad trends and ambiguous spots in the program that need additional work.

The goal of continuous monitoring, a phase of operations, is to increase the software application's overall effectiveness. Additionally, it keeps track of the app's functionality. As a result, it is among the DevOps lifecycle's most important stages.

In the phase of continuous monitoring, many system faults, such as "server not reachable," "low memory," etc., are fixed. It also keeps the services secure and readily available. At the moment they are discovered, network difficulties and other issues are automatically rectified during this phase.

The operations team uses tools including Sensu, Splunk, Nagios, Stack, ELK, and NewRelic to monitor user activity for improper conduct. As a result, engineers can proactively assess the system's general health during continuous monitoring.

 Continuous monitoring entailing proactive checking has made the possibility of enhanced system productivity and dependability and cutting down on maintenance expenses. Additionally, significant problems are immediately communicated to the development team so they can be fixed in the beginning. Consequently, it enables quick resolution of problems.

Additional Crucial Phases of DevOps Lifecycle

Continuous Feedback

It's imperative to have ongoing feedback in order to assess and evaluate the application's final result. It establishes the framework for enhancing the existing version and rolling out a new version in response to stakeholder feedback. Analyzing the outcomes of the software operations is the only way to improve the overall process of developing apps. Feedback entails the information gathered from the clients. This feedback is important since it contains all the information about the software's performance and any problems that may be associated with it. Additionally, it features recommendations from Software users.  

Continuous Operation

This stage also forms the most crucial phase and also is the quickest and simplest to understand. The cornerstone of all DevOps operations is continuity, which enables developers to immediately identify problems and create better iterations of software products. It is crucial to move forward in order to remove detours and other additional steps that impede progress.

Continuous operations have shorter development cycles, enabling businesses to advertise continuously and hasten the product's overall time to market. By making software products better and more effective, DevOps raises its value and draws in new customers.

We have discussed what is DevOps Lifecycle extensively in this article. DevOps techniques have become crucial as it transforms the manner in which the IT sector is developing software products. When the development and operations teams work together to produce something extraordinary and beneficial for the end users, businesses flourish. It is worthwhile to take the plunge and adopt the DevOps mindset. If you know how to use it effectively, DevOps may help your business reach its full potential.

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