The task of developing and launching applications quickly, safely, and efficiently is constantly on the minds of IT specialists. And here it should be noted that in the process of its implementation, different approaches and tools were tested.
Unfortunately in the end, one way or another, it all came down to inconsistency in the tasks and actions of the two main groups of specialists – developers and system administrators.
In an attempt to smooth out the contradictions between these main players in the product development life cycle, 15 years ago a new concept of collaboration between developers and operations (system administrators) was proposed.
This concept should be aimed at a single result and was called DevOps. Moreover, this concept became the founder of a new profession in the IT field – the profession of DevOps engineering.
With the advent of blockchain technology, which initially began to be perceived as the source of cryptocurrency movement and making money, the question inevitably arose: can the concept of DevOps work within the framework of blockchain?
Since the main indicator of a blockchain network is its decentralization, then, of course, the principle of deploying applications in a decentralized network differs from that in a centralized network, however, all stages of traditional DevOps can be implemented without problems within the framework of blockchain devops.
DevOps Tool Groups
Like any global philosophy, the DevOps concept includes various engineering tools with which it can be successfully applied in practice.
The number of DevOps tools is quite large; they are combined into certain groups depending on what tasks these tools are intended to solve.
To understand this statement more clearly, it is necessary to list the main groups of DevOps tools.
1. Source Control Management: Tools in this group are designed for storing code and versioning it. With their help, you can see what changes were made to the code, by whom, and when. This opportunity is important not only for the developers themselves but also for other DevOps team specialists.
2. Database Automation: This toolkit is designed to work with databases. If there is a pattern such as migration, there is no need to enter the database every time to make changes; it is enough to write code that will control both the presence of changes already made and the need to make new ones.
3. Continuous Integration (CI): This includes examples of typical tools for implementing the continuous integration process, i.e. those stages of CI/CD that relate to working with code and assembling the application.
4. Testing: This toolkit is intended for testing development. This can be unit tests, integration testing, and many other types of tests.
5. Configuration Management: These tools are designed to manage the configurations of the virtual machines used – servers or clouds.
6. Deployment (CD): These are utilities that are responsible for continuous deployment. This means that once applications are generated, they need to be continually deployed.
7. Containers: Since recently cloud technologies have been increasingly used as virtual machines, the need for containerization automatically arises. The tools of this group are intended both for creating containers and for managing them.
8. Release Orchestration: This toolkit is related to continuous delivery.
9. Cloud: Cloud technologies require appropriate tools like cloud providers. This group of tools features the most well-known cloud providers.
10. AIOps: This group includes tools that are theoretically positioned as operations with artificial intelligence. However, in practice, these tools help to carry out operational management of the application, using some additional logic that helps to find the necessary information faster.
11. Analytics: Analytics is a very important tool when looking for problems. Therefore, this group of tools is designed to allow you to go back into history, study previous data, for example, about the load or errors at each specific moment, etc., and find a solution to the problem that has arisen.
12. Monitoring: Despite the fact that some groups have separate tools that, in addition to the main functions, also perform a monitoring function, this group contains typical utilities that are intended exclusively for monitoring.
13. Security: Security is, of course, the most important component of any development and a special responsibility of DevOps. Key tools that impact safety should be used by professionals throughout the product development lifecycle.
14. Collaboration: The tools of this group allow you to provide a communication layer between developers and DevOps, between business and DevOps, between business analysts, support services, etc.
This toolkit will allow you to understand the essence of the problem, receive a signal from the system or other people who were the first to notice the problem.
In addition, using these tools, you can provide feedback to the business about what is happening on the project, how the application is being developed, and how this or that problem is resolved.
In cases where DevOps has some kind of technical task or requirements for a project, first of all, specialists must assess what types of tools may be needed to implement the project.
First, they need to analyze in detail the main groups of tools mentioned above, and then select specific tools from them depending on the goals and objectives of the project.
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