The State of DevOps Tools: A Primer
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This document provides an overview of various DevOps tools across different categories like source code management, continuous integration, infrastructure automation, container management, and more. It discusses the purpose and use of tools in each category. It also notes that the DevOps tools market is large and growing, reaching an estimated $8.8 billion by 2023, and that new tools will continue to emerge as DevOps practices mature.
The State of DevOps Tools: A Primer
- 1. A Snapshot of the DevOps Tools Scene
- 2. Scott Wilson, Director, CA Automic Brian Dawson, DevOps Evangelist, CloudBees Jeff Keyes, Director, Plutora Alan Shimel, Editor-in-Chief, DevOps.com Tracy Ragan, CEO OpenMake Software
- 3. DevOps Tools Market To Reach $8.8b by 2023, 18% YoY Growth * * KBV Research, https://kbvresearch.com/news/devops-market/
- 4. So Many (DevOps) Tools, So Little Time
- 5. How We Divided up the DevOps Tools World
- 6. Source Code Management A logical place to start a review of DevOps tools is with code repositories, as they are storing the code that makes up all of the applications deployed.
- 7. Open source software, like all software, changes with each version. Most of these changes evolve the software and enhance its capabilities, performance or security. Sometimes, however, changes can introduce errors and security defects. This is where artifact repositories come in. Artifact repositories provide organizations an authoritative source for current and approved versions of a module, library or other artifact. Artifact repositories also enable organizations to revert back to the last known trusted and approved version when undesirable software is entered into a system.
- 8. Continuous Integration Servers Continuous integration (CI) servers are the point of entry for many new DevOps organizations. As an extension of agile, CI servers enable automated build and test, along with varying levels of notifications fundamental to keeping agile efforts on track.
- 9. Automation and agile gave rise to continuous integration; the next logical step is continuous delivery. Many of the CI tools previously mentioned are also in continuous delivery. Additionally, many CD vendors are also in the application release automation market. Where does continuous delivery fit in the CI/CD continuum? Continuous delivery is the extension of agile to build and test processes, continuous delivery is delivering software more often through use of DevOps methods. The composite of both is the core of application lifecycle management (ALM) in DevOps.
- 10. Application release automation (ARA) combines the processes of continuous integration and deployment with deployment automation and release coordination. Ideally, the toolsets will be part of a chain that runs throughout application build, test and deployment. Once ready, applications and application updates can hit production by simply pushing a button.
- 11. Infrastructure Automation Infrastructure automation is the process that automates, largely through scripting, the installation, configuration and management of servers. It’s often called infrastructure-as-code because infrastructure automation is the ability to define infrastructure and workload configurations as sets of scripts that can be applied to either a single server instance or thousands of serve.
- 12. Continuous Delivery Management Enterprise IT environments are amazingly complex. Even before DevOps came along, most enterprises had several development languages, platforms, reporting tools, test environments and more. DevOps introduced a new set of tools — some that span this complexity, some that increase it. For organizations with dozens of application development teams, there are likely just as many architectures for build/test/deploy. And often they are interdependent, as applications require integration with other projects or platforms.
- 13. Log Management DevOps teams rely on log management to better run their environments and organizations. Without a log management tool, it can be difficult — if not almost impossible — to manage and analyze the volume of logs in most environments. Discovering and identifying trouble spots through either automation or search is essential.
- 14. Monitoring Monitoring from a DevOps perspective encompasses not only application performance but also can include user interaction, infrastructure capacity and delivery. Leading tools in this category have stretched the envelope in UX design to give DevOps teams visibility into a constantly scaling environment. The best of the best in this category can give a birds-eye view of expansive deployments, while allowing for quick drill-down to the gritty details.
- 15. Alerting No matter the monitoring tools and processes, a tree falling in a forest that no one hears fall doesn’t help DevOps teams deliver. The DevOps market has seen several alerting platforms evolve that free the admin from the NAC, but allow for teamwide 24/7 communication and response. The hallmark of these tools is a wide integration footprint with as many monitoring tools as possible, as well as the widest possible means to alert, communicate and remediate incidents.
- 16. ChatOps ChatOps originally described the use of APIs to embed chat tools into systems alerting. Vendors identified customer need and some started integrating chat capabilities into the DevOps toolchain to facilitate systems management and troubleshooting. Today, using ChatOps, it is possible to check in code changes and inform teams of the results, helping resolve problems quickly.
- 17. Database Configuration Automation Tools DevOps organizations have been slow to add database support and management into their toolchains. But if code is changing, it is almost guaranteed that databases are, too. The vendors below help fold the database into the DevOps practice. After all, sooner or later, the database needs to be included in DevOps simply because most apps rely heavily on data. But databases are not terribly mobile, which makes targeting databases to new platforms more difficult. Database configuration and automation tools are relevant to DevOps database management because agile applications still need help getting to existing data. And, in some use cases, the database actually is mobile, or a new empty instance can be launched on demand without loss of application functionality.
- 18. Container Management Containers have enjoyed rapid adoption across enterprises and industries. Containers are quick and easy to spin up, use fewer resources than a fully virtualized machine and, when combined with DevOps automation, can be scaled quickly to meet the needs of the application. Still, when a given application or service grows in complexity, more than just containers is needed. Infrastructure management, scalability and the ability to manage groups of containers uniformly are all necessary so the application can be created with dependencies and the container environment is useful. Container management tools address these needs.
- 19. DevOps Tools Continue to Mature The DevOps Tools market also sees consolidation
- 22. The maturation of DevOps guarantees new tools will continue to emerge. We’ve offered a cross-section of useful tools for enterprise DevOps teams. It is by no means an exhaustive study, but rather a good jumping-off point. Of course, an organization’s mileage may vary depending on its own needs. While exact toolchains for given project teams or enterprises will vary, the tools from each of these categories are all essential to automating the application life cycle and DevOps success.