Top 10 DevOps Tools You Need to Know About

DevOps is the practice of automating the processes between software development and IT teams so they can build, test, and release software faster and more reliably. DevOps solutions simplify collaboration and integration between software developers and other IT teams and enable continuous delivery of software. This blog will provide details regarding the top 10 DevOps tools you need to know about to improve your software development workflow. 

Importance of DevOps

A DevOps company emphasizes the collaboration and communication between software development and IT professionals. It enables organizations to build, test and release software faster and more reliably. DevOps impacts business success in the following ways:

• Increases agility and speed to market: By automating the processes between development and operations teams, organizations can quickly adapt to changing business needs. Businesses can release software updates more frequently.
• Improves software quality: Frequent code merging and testing help identify issues early, reducing the number of bugs that make it into production.
• Improves reliability: Automated deployments and testing ensure each release into production works as expected and meets performance standards.
• Accelerates productivity: With automated workflows and toolchains, teams can quickly complete routine tasks and focus on value-added work.
• Reduces costs: By reducing downtime and rework, DevOps can lower expenses related to operations, maintenance and support.

Ultimately, DevOps helps organizations remain competitive by allowing them to rapidly develop, test and release high-quality products that meet the changing needs of customers.

Role of DevOps Tools in improving software development and Operations

DevOps tools play an integral role in improving efficiency, productivity and collaboration between software development and IT operations teams. These tools automate manual processes, integrate workflows, and enable continuous software delivery. Some of the ways DevOps tools improve development and operations are:

• Automating tasks: Deployment, configuration management, testing and monitoring can be automated using tools, reducing manual effort and errors.
• Providing visibility: DevOps dashboards and reports provide teams with transparency into code quality, deployment status, and application performance. It helps in empowering them to make data-driven decisions.
• Simplifying collaboration: Issue tracking, source code management and communication tools integrate teams and processes, fostering collaboration.
• Enabling continuous integration/deployment: With automated testing and deployment pipelines, teams can deploy software changes frequently with less disruption.
• Standardizing processes: A DevOps company can develop toolchains and frameworks that ensure best practices are followed by all teams, improving consistency and efficiency.
• Catching issues early: Integrated monitoring and alerting tools detect problems at development time rather than after deployment to production.

DevOps tools facilitate the cultural shift needed for development and operations teams to work together towards shared goals. They improve visibility, speed, reliability and productivity throughout the software lifecycle.

Criteria for Selecting DevOps Tools

There are many DevOps tools developed by a DevOps company available that claim to improve your software delivery processes. Some important questions and factors to keep in mind when choosing the right DevOps tools for your organization are:

• Platform support: Does the tool work with your current infrastructure like servers, frameworks, databases etc.? 
• Scalability: Can the tool grow with your organization as your team size and workload increase?
• Security: Does the tool have robust security measures and permissions to control access?
• Cost: Is the tool affordable for your team or organization, including paid support options?
• Integration: Can the tool integrate smoothly with other tools you currently use?
• Popularity: How widely adopted is the tool? This can indicate community support and stability.

Choose DevOps tools that align well with your current stack, workflow and future goals while considering the criteria listed above to maximize ROI and adoption success.

Top 10 DevOps Tools

Popular DevOps tools help teams automate processes and integrate development and operations. Important tools include:

Kubernetes

Kubernetes is an important DevOps tool for automating the management of containerized applications at scale. Developed by an expert DevOps company, this tool helps developers and operations teams implement a continuous delivery model by automating deployment workflows and managing container lifecycles. Kubernetes features like service discovery, load balancing, auto-scaling and self-healing allow teams to build and deploy applications quickly and reliably.

Kubernetes supports continuous integration/deployment by automating the deployment of new container images. It monitors running containers and will automatically restart those that fail, ensuring high availability. Kubernetes provides a declarative API that allows developers to define how applications should behave and Kubernetes handles the low-level orchestration details. This removes operational tasks from developers’ responsibilities and enables faster, more agile software delivery.

Puppet

Puppet is an open-source software configuration management tool that helps DevOps teams automate IT infrastructure provisioning, configuration and management. It helps ensure that all servers in an IT environment are in a known, consistent state. Puppet uses declarative language to define how a server should be configured. When Puppet runs on a system, it analyzes the server’s current state and applies the necessary changes to bring it to the defined state.

Puppet helps DevOps teams by standardizing server configurations, enforcing compliance policies, and reducing manual processes and human errors. It makes infrastructure code reusable across environments, allowing teams to easily spin up identical environments for testing, staging and production. Puppet improves efficiency, consistency and reliability throughout the lifecycle of IT infrastructure – benefits that accelerate software delivery and optimize operations.

Nagios

Nagios is an open-source IT infrastructure monitoring and alerting platform for servers, switches, applications and services. It helps DevOps teams monitor the availability and performance of infrastructure components and notify team members when issues arise. Nagios monitors servers, websites, applications and network devices by checking them according to a defined schedule. When it detects that a device, resource or service is unavailable or unresponsive, it can trigger notifications via email, SMS or other messaging systems.

Nagios gives DevOps teams visibility into the health and status of their IT infrastructure. It helps detect problems early before they impact end users or business processes. Its alerting capabilities allow teams to be notified immediately when issues arise so they can fix problems quickly. Nagios improves the reliability, uptime and performance of IT infrastructure through continuous monitoring – attributes that support continuous deployment and optimize overall operations.

Splunk

Splunk is an IT infrastructure monitoring and log management platform that provides DevOps teams with insights into the performance and health of their applications, systems and IT infrastructure. Splunk collects and indexes data generated by applications, websites, servers, networks and devices. It allows DevOps teams to query and analyze this data to identify trends, anomalies, performance issues and potential problems.

Splunk enables DevOps teams to more effectively manage change and reduce the meantime to detect and recover from incidents. Its dashboards and alerts provide real-time visibility into key infrastructure metrics and events. This visibility helps teams optimize application performance, improve uptime and reliability, and gain actionable insights to make better decisions at all stages of the software development lifecycle.

With data-driven insights, DevOps teams can reduce troubleshooting times, expedite releases and deployments, and make infrastructure changes with more confidence. The results for this tool will advance the goals of continuous integration, delivery and improvement.

Apache Maven

Apache Maven is an open-source build automation and project management tool for Java projects. It helps a DevOps company standardize their build processes, making them more efficient and predictable. Maven automates aspects like compiling source code, packaging software into JAR files, testing code, and managing external library dependencies. It manages a project’s build lifecycle through a predefined set of phases and goals in a declarative configuration file.

Maven as a DevOps tool helps teams implement continuous integration and continuous delivery. Its ability to manage the entire build lifecycle enables automatic building, testing and packaging of the software. Maven generates reports on project health and test results that provide visibility to development and operations teams. By standardizing and automating the build process, Maven simplifies project management, improves quality and accelerates the time it takes to develop, test and release software – all important DevOps goals.

Vagrant

Vagrant is another open-source tool for building and managing virtual machine environments in a consistent manner. It allows DevOps teams to easily create reproducible development environments that match production. Using a declarative configuration file, Vagrant can automatically configure and provision virtual machines using tools like Shell scripts, Chef, Puppet, or Ansible.

Vagrant helps DevOps teams by providing consistent environments for development, testing and staging. Since virtual machines defined in Vagrant match production servers, they allow developers to test applications in an environment that mimics production. This reduces environment-related bugs and ensures applications will work once deployed.

By automating the creation of isolated yet reproducible environments, Vagrant enables rapid testing, experimentation and continuous integration/deployment. It supports the goal of cloud DevOps automation, standardization and acceleration of the software development lifecycle.

Selenium

Selenium is an automated testing framework for web applications. It helps DevOps teams implement continuous integration by automating the testing of web applications during each code build. Selenium automates the simulation of many different browsers to execute test cases in a reliable and fast manner. It supports testing web applications across many platforms and browsers, including Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer and Safari.

As a DevOps tool, Selenium improves quality by identifying defects early in the development cycle when they are the cheapest to fix. It allows teams to run test suites frequently and catch regressions immediately. Selenium integrated with a Continuous Integration server like Jenkins can run tests with every code commit, providing rapid feedback on test results. The faster issues are identified, the faster developers can fix them – enabling faster and more reliable software releases.

Some ways Selenium benefits DevOps teams are:

• Identifies defects early: Selenium allows tests to be run frequently, especially with each code commit. This finds issues early when they are the least expensive to fix.
• Reduces testing time: Selenium automates repetitive test cases, saving time and effort compared to manual testing.
• Supports continuous integration: Selenium integrated with tools like Jenkins can run tests with every build, providing rapid feedback on test results.
• Supports multiple browsers: Selenium can test across different browsers and operating systems, ensuring wide compatibility.
• Generates detailed reports: Selenium provides test results, failure screenshots, and detailed reports that development and operations teams can review.
• Can test APIs: Selenium can also test web APIs, easing the testing of DevOps services.

By automatically executing test cases quickly and consistently, Selenium reduces the time between fixes and releases. The faster issues are found and resolved, the faster software can be deployed – aligning with the goals of continuous integration, delivery and improvement.

Ansible

Ansible is a configuration management and automation tool. It can be useful in automating software provisioning, application deployment, infrastructure configuration, and many other IT tasks. Ansible works by pushing out small programs called Ansible Playbooks that execute tasks on managed nodes. It uses an agentless architecture so there is no software required on managed machines, simplifying deployment.

Ansible allows teams to automate manual IT processes that slow down development. By standardizing server configurations and infrastructure setup, it helps reduce errors and improves consistency. It facilitates continuous integration and deployment by automating application rollouts across different environments. Ansible improves reliability through infrastructure-as-code that can be version controlled, tested and maintained efficiently. All of which help accelerate software delivery and optimize operations.

As a DevOps tool, Ansible helps teams in the following ways:

• Automates manual tasks: Ansible playbooks automate infrastructure setup, application deployment and configuration, patching, etc. This reduces time spent on repetitive tasks.
• Simplifies management of multiple servers: Ansible can provision and configure hundreds of servers with the same playbook.
• Enforces standards and best practices: Ansible playbooks ensure consistency across environments.
• Facilitates continuous integration and delivery: Ansible automates application deployments from testing to production.
• Makes infrastructure code reusable: Playbooks create reusable infrastructure code that can be version controlled and improved over time.
• Provides modular automation: Ansible roles and modules provide a modular approach to defining automated tasks.

By abstracting away the complexity of infrastructure and configuration details, Ansible helps DevOps consulting companies deliver applications faster while improving their reliability, security and performance.

Docker

Docker is a containerization platform that supports DevOps goals by allowing applications to be isolated in software containers and then deployed with ease across environments. The  containers package an application with all its dependencies so it can run reliably regardless of the underlying infrastructure. This simplifies and speeds up the development lifecycle.

Docker aids DevOps through features like standardizing application environments, reproducing testing environments, streamlining deployments and simplifying scaling. The  containers are lightweight, which means they start nearly instantly and use less computing resources. This quick provisioning enables faster testing and more frequent deployments, aligning with continuous delivery. Overall, Docker helps DevOps teams accelerate application releases, improve portability and maximize infrastructure resources.

Some ways Docker benefits DevOps consulting companies are:

• Enables portability: Docker containers are portable and can run on any infrastructure, from laptops to data centres. This eases app migration.
• Simplifies deployments: Docker containers include all dependencies needed to run an app, simplifying deployments across multiple environments.
• Speeds up testing and release cycles: Docker containers can be created, tested and deployed quickly, accelerating software development.
• Reduces overhead: Docker containers reuse the host operating system, reducing overhead compared to virtual machines.
• Improves scalability: Docker containers can be spawned on demand to meet load requirements.
• Provides isolation: Docker containers provide isolation for apps running on the same host, improving security and reliability.
• Enables microservices: Docker facilitates deploying and scaling individual DevOps services independently.

By making applications portable, lightweight and scalable, Docker helps DevOps service providers implement continuous delivery practices like continuous integration, deployment and testing. The speed, simplicity and reliability it provides support teams in delivering new features and updates faster.

Azure DevOps Server

Azure DevOps Server (formerly known as TFS) is a complete DevOps platform from Microsoft. It provides source code management using Git and TFVC. It enables work item tracking for planning and task management. Build and release management is automated using pipelines that deploy to Azure DevOps services, on-premises and third-party environments. It offers out-of-the-box process templates for Agile, Scrum and CMMI. Security and compliance features ensure data protection. Container management supports Docker containers. Its extensibility and scalability allow it to grow with organizations. Overall, Azure DevOps services provide an integrated environment to enable continuous integration, delivery and deployment of applications.

 Some key benefits of Azure DevOps Server for DevOps service providers are:

• Facilitates collaboration through work item tracking and discussions.
• Automates builds and releases with pipelines that deploy to any environment.
• Enables testing at all stages of the pipeline through test plans, Lab Management and 3rd party tools integration.
• Provides visibility into code quality, builds and releases through integrated dashboards and reports.
• Ensures security, auditing and compliance through role-based access control and data loss prevention.
• Simplifies container management and hosting of Dockerized apps.
• Offers flexibility through extensibility options and customizable process templates.
• Scales throughput and capacity on-demand as needs grow.
• Integrates with over 1,500 tools through extension points, webhooks and APIs.

Azure DevOps Server provides a comprehensive platform that spans the entire software development lifecycle. Its tools and capabilities support continuous integration, delivery and deployment – accelerating application releases.

Conclusion

DevOps tools help organizations integrate development and IT operations, allowing them to build, test and release software faster and more reliably. The tools mentioned in this article are some of the most popular DevOps tools used today to automate processes. They can also help deploy applications, monitor infrastructure and visualize data. Adopting the right DevOps tools can accelerate your software development cycles, and improve collaboration and transparency. 

However, tool selection should be based on your specific environment, workflows and culture. While there are many DevOps tools to choose from, evaluating tools against criteria like ease of use, integration, scalability and cost can help you identify those that provide the greatest benefits for your teams. Implementing the right DevOps tools and practices can transform your organization by optimizing people, processes and technologies to continuously improve the development and delivery of software.

FAQs

Is DevOps a software tool?

Although DevOps involves the use of various software tools, it would be incorrect to call DevOps a “tool” itself. DevOps is a methodology that aims to break down the barriers between software development and IT operations.

DevOps focuses on automating and monitoring the software development life cycle to enable a faster release cadence. It advocates a cultural shift where development and operations teams work closely together and share responsibilities. Instead of functioning in silos, the teams collaborate throughout the development process.

While DevOps solutions utilizes various tools to achieve its goals, such as configuration management tools, continuous integration tools and infrastructure automation tools, DevOps itself is not a tool. DevOps is a cultural and organizational shift that aims to break down the silos between development and operations teams and enable close collaboration. It works to build processes and workflows that integrate tasks like code commits, code reviews, testing and release management.

Adopting DevOps requires not only implementing the right tools and technologies, but also making cultural and organizational changes. Teams need to work closely together and share responsibilities. There needs to be a shift to more automation and monitoring of the development process. Ultimately, DevOps is a philosophy and set of practices rather than a single tool or technology. While tools can help enable DevOps, they do not represent DevOps in and of themselves.

Why DevOps is used?

DevOps solutions is used to improve the speed, quality and reliability of software delivery and IT operations. Some of the key reasons organizations adopt DevOps are:

• Faster release cycles: By eliminating handoffs between teams and automating processes, DevOps allows organizations to release software updates more frequently.
• Improved software quality: Through practices like test automation and continuous integration, DevOps helps catch issues early, reducing bugs that reach production.
• Increased reliability: Automated deployments, monitoring and self-healing systems improve the uptime and performance of applications.
• Higher productivity: Standardizing workflows and automating manual tasks frees up teams to focus on more valuable work.
• Reduced costs: Less time spent on rework and troubleshooting translates to lower expenses.
• Better visibility and insights: Integrating tools provides leaders and teams with data to optimize processes and make data-driven decisions.
• Faster mean time to recovery: Continuous monitoring and alerting helps tackle issues quickly to minimize downtime.
• Ability to respond to change quickly: Agile principles and rapid release cycles give organizations the nimbleness to adapt swiftly to market changes.

What is a DevOps tool?

A DevOps solutions and tools is any software that helps organizations implement DevOps practices to automate and integrate the processes between software development and IT operations teams. Common types of DevOps tools include:

• Configuration management tools like Puppet, Chef, and Ansible that automate server and application configuration.
• Continuous integration tools like Jenkins, Travis CI, and Bamboo that automate the build, test, and deploy process.
• Infrastructure as code tools like Terraform that allow infrastructure to be coded and version controlled.
• Container management tools like Docker and Kubernetes that package and deploy applications into standardized, portable units.
• Monitoring and logging tools like Nagios, DataDog, and Splunk that provide visibility into application health and performance.
• Issue tracking tools like Jira and GitHub that facilitate coordination and communication across the teams of DevOps consultant.

While tools are an important enabler of DevOps, cultural and process changes are also needed to truly achieve the benefits of DevOps. These benefits are faster release cycles, higher software quality, and improved visibility and insights. Tools should support and dictate how organizations implement DevOps practices that optimize the entire software development lifecycle.

What are the 5 pillars of DevOps?

The five pillars are culture, automation, measurement, sharing, and lean/agile. Together they form the foundation for successfully implementing DevOps practices that optimize the software delivery process. Details regarding these tools are- 

1. Culture – Fostering a collaborative culture that breaks down silos between development and operations teams.
2. Automation – Automating manual processes through infrastructure as code, configuration management, and continuous integration/deployment pipelines.
3. Measurement – Establishing KPIs and metrics to measure performance, track trends, and improve processes.
4. Sharing – Sharing information, data, and code between DevOps consultants to increase visibility, transparency, and trust.
5. Lean/Agile – Adopting agile, lean principles and practices to continuously experiment, learn, and improve.

Is AWS a DevOps tool?

No, AWS is not a DevOps tool in itself but rather a cloud platform that provides infrastructure for DevOps tools and practices. AWS offers a suite of DevOps services that can help enable DevOps including:

• Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) for provisioning virtual servers
• Simple Storage Service (S3) for object storage
• CodeCommit for source code management
• CodePipeline for continuous delivery
• CodeBuild for building code
• Elastic Beanstalk for deploying applications
• CloudWatch for monitoring resources
• CloudFormation for infrastructure as code

AWS provides many services that DevOps consulting companies use for cloud DevOps automation, deployment, monitoring, etc., but AWS itself is not a DevOps tool. Rather, AWS acts as the underlying infrastructure that allows DevOps tools from Amazon and other vendors to operate at scale.