Step by Step Guide to Successful Implementation of DevOps Services
From reducing IT resource wastage to building seamless collaboration between IT operations and development teams, DevOps comes with a stream of benefits. Even after observing its benefits, a lot of companies are still not tapping the DevOps potential.
In an exponentially growing industry, keeping up with the new developments and insights is essential. With DevOps being one of the critical aspects to keeping up with the developments, integration of DevOps solutions in your organization is essential.
DevOps is important; there is no denying that argument. But more important is the way you implement it within your organization. This guide will cover the step-by-step process for the implementation of DevOps services.
What is DevOps, and how does it work?
Development and Operations are combined to get DevOps, and it represents a collaboration-led approach to execute the tasks complete in an organization. In the simplest form, DevOps means working with an iterative approach towards software development and automating the repetitive tasks to improve maintenance and reduce wastage.
While all this seems simple as you read, implementation of DevOps services is easier said than done. The companies completely unaware about the processes sometimes fail to fathom the amount of work that needs to be done.
This is where we, the top DevOps consulting company, comes in to effectuate technological and cultural changes within the organization to help you implement DevOps with success.
Since DevOps is a methodology, it works as a method where each step is a part of a bigger process. So, it is like a loop wherein we must;
- Plan
- Code
- Build
- Test
- Release
- Deploy
- Operate
- Monitor
- Plan, again.
So, the last plan is for making the changes to the existing structure to nip the gaps and ensure effective implementation.
According to this process, DevOps helps companies build the software to meet the market and user’s requirements and deploy the same without overusing or wasting IT resources and overspending on teams.
In DevOps, the developers, stakeholders, and operations team will work together to understand the software expectations and communicate about the project. Plus, the developers will also work on smaller updates independently, without any intervention, and then merge them together.
We use CI/CD pipelines to effectuate automation with the development environment and complete every stage proactively.
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Step-by-Step Process for Successful DevOps Implementation
The shift from a traditional computing setup to a DevOps-based setup won’t be an easy one; let’s be clear about that. You need to work hard to implement all the changes. It’s a process, which means we need to take it one step at a time. Here are the steps you need to follow.
1.) The DevOps Initiative and Mindset
As part of the IT department’s program, the company’s CIO organizes a DevOps initiative. As a result, the IT department has the chance to make changes in development and operations with the least amount of inconvenience to the rest of the company.
In turn, the CIO is capable of arranging financial investments and human resources in the most efficient manner. A program manager is in charge of developing the DevOps strategy and overseeing its execution.
Plus, you also need to make some cultural changes for the implementation of DevOps services. Follow these suggestions to build a DevOps culture;
- Educate your team on the DevOps development cycle and how it will impact your company. This will help to avoid culture shock and resistance to change.
- It should always be your goal to improve the user experience. As you make the change, emphasize how your DevOps approach aids you in achieving this aim.
- The goal of DevOps is to improve as you go. Encourage an experimental culture by automating a testing environment where you can collect feedback and use it to improve processes and projects.
- Encourage continuous improvement. Encourage your staff to design more efficient ways to execute solutions, even if your present procedures and cross-functional teams aren’t broken.
- Encourage joint accountability across the organization, not only among software development and operations teams, to combat blame culture.
We want you to focus on nurturing the right environment because there might be some barriers along the way and a team that is ready to implement the changes makes it easier to find the right solutions.
2.) Build a Strategy
For successful DevOps implementation services, you need to build a plan. A plan that will be based on six parameters, including;
- Collaboration
- Accelerated Execution
- Reliability
- Deliverability
- Scalable
- Security
While catering to these aspects, your DevOps strategy should be built in a way that encourages inter-departmental collaboration. For this, you can ask the major teams in a shared DevOps environment (like development, testing, operations, etc.).
This will ensure that everyone is focused on the software development cycle’s objectives and is aware of each other’s motivations and responsibilities. Set an unified aim for everyone involved in software development and operations — to shorten the software development cycle while maintaining good software quality.
Implement Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to ensure that developers and test engineers have access to IT infrastructure as soon as they need it to create a new build or assess its quality.
DevOps practitioners will be able to get new infrastructure for development or testing in a single click and eliminate human errors that commonly occur when IT infrastructures are configured manually.
3.) Leverage the Benefits of Containerization
Containers are software runtimes that are isolated on a shared operating system. They enable abstraction, allowing code to run on a variety of underlying infrastructures, from development to testing to staging to production.
Containerization is the process of implementing the best practices to enable seamless collaboration in isolated environments. The most popular tool for this process is Docker, which addresses the issue of software reliability.
For example, as it moves from development to testing and finally to production. Containers contain all of the dependencies, libraries, and configuration files needed to run a program. The containerized elements of the program are isolated from the broader IT infrastructure, allowing for stable operation independent of the environments they are placed in.
Furthermore, because the program’s components (database, front end, etc.) are separated into multiple containers, an operations team can better manage the application because they don’t have to rebuild the entire software when changes are required in one of its microservices.
4.) Execute Automation with CI/CD Tools
A Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipeline is a set of procedures that must be followed in order to deliver a new version of the software. Successful DevOps implementation includes CI/CD pipelines in DevOps, which are meant to optimize software delivery and application development processes.
This exercise focuses particularly on the integration and testing phases and during delivery and deployment. Although each stage of a CI/CD pipeline can be completed manually, the true value of CI/CD pipelines is realized through automation.
We can use automation tools like Kubernetes, Ansible, and Chef combined with CI/CD tools like Jenkins, Bamboo, or GoCD to help with configuration management and deployment.
Within CI/CD pipelines, we also have the process of Continuous Monitoring and rolling software updates that helps build robust containers and enhance their risk tolerance.
5.) Automated Testing Environment with QA
As one of the leading DevOps consulting services and having built hundreds of DevOps implementation plans for our clients, we cannot focus enough on this part of the process.
It’s critical to automate testing and add automation testing to the process. These checks are run as soon as the new code is finished, which means your engineers won’t have to spend days remembering and updating the code that was created weeks ago.
For an effective automated testing environment in the software development lifecycle, keep these things in mind;
- Use smoke tests, necessarily.
- Build the testing environment with remote machines from the beginning.
- Run tests in parallel while integrating them with the CI/CD pipeline.
- Analyze the test results daily.
Automated testing will result in faster delivery cycles, better quality, and greater test coverage. But, do not indulge in automation for every type of test. Make sure to identify the number of iterations required for each test before automating it. This way, you’ll know if automating a test is really worth the effort.
On the other hand, when it comes to dealing with post-launch issues, QA-Dev alignment is crucial. This alignment enables fault discovery and aids developers in resolving issues prior to the next release.
6.) Application Performance Monitoring
The last step in the implementation of DevOps services is application performance monitoring. Using appropriate tools, application performance monitoring assists in finding, prioritizing, and isolating application issues and their root causes.
These vulnerabilities are frequently discovered via application server and user experience monitoring efforts. Hence, the process gives DevOps teams visibility into all performance concerns, such as poor response times, memory leaks, and runtime failures. The problems could be discovered by application server monitoring, user experience monitoring, and other methods.
With the use of sophisticated application monitoring tools, it is possible to detect, prioritize, and isolate application faults before end-users see them and quickly identify the main causes of the failures.
This was all about the steps of DevOps implementation. We can help you build a DevOps-oriented organization by following the steps given above. Yes, of course, there will be some changes and customizations along the way as we know more about your organization.
Now that the step-by-step process is underway, we have one more thing to discuss to build a complete understanding of DevOps. These are the phases of DevOps or the 6 C’s of DevOps implementation services.
6 C’s of DevOps
Your DevOps journey as an organization begins with identifying the existing business practices, IT infrastructure, and delivery pipelines. This is followed by crafting specific objectives for the DevOps implementation plan to achieve for your company.
Although DevOps is applied in various ways in different organizations, every plan is structured on these six different parameters or criteria. These are;
- Continuous Development
- Continuous Integration
- Continuous Testing
- Continuous Delivery
- Continuous Deployment
- Continuous Monitoring
| Parameter | Meaning and Concept |
| Continuous Development | CD introduces new ways to plan, write, and test the code to optimize the code writing part. We can benefit by reducing the time between development and deployment. |
| Continuous Integration | This is about merging the developed code into a central repository where it is further configured with configuration management (CM). In CI, we also use testing and development tools to identify and solve issues with the code. |
| Continuous Testing | CT is about speeding up the code delivery process and sending it to the production stage. This is where we can use automated testing tools to run code tests with a fixed schedule and as it is being updated for further improvements. |
| Continuous Delivery | Continuous Delivery involves delivering quick and sustainable updates of the code and making it ready for deployment. This stage aims to ensure that even if the code is being updated, it is always in a deployable state. |
| Continuous Deployment | Here, we use containerization tools to ensure the release of the changed or updated code without any breaks. We use solutions like Docker to ensure code consistency and stability in the performance. |
| Continuous Monitoring | The last C of DevOps implementation services includes consistent monitoring of the code and the underlying structure that supports the code. |
A successful DevOps implementation plan cannot be executed overnight. It’s a process, and it will take time. That’s why a lot of companies start with a pilot project to get a feel of how the tools, new systems, solutions, and structures work. Based on the experiences and response of small-scale implementation, it is easy to execute the same on a large scale.
Tools and Technologies Used in DevOps Implementation Services
You need to onboard several different software and solutions for DevOps implementation. Since there are multiple options, it won’t be easy to boil down to the ones you need or are comfortable with.
However, as we are one of the top DevOps consulting company in the industry, you can trust us to make this choice for you. As an overview, we are sharing the tools and technologies we use for our clients for the implementation of DevOps services.
| Process or Activity | Tools and Technologies you can Use |
| Planning | Git
Jira |
| Coding | Stash
GitHub GitLab |
| Software Build | Docker
Puppet Chef Ansible Gradie |
| Testing | Vagrant
Selenium JUnit TestNG Codeception |
| Deployment | Jenkins
Kubernetes Docker OpenShift Jira |
| Monitoring | Datadog
Wireshark Slack Nagios |
Conclusion
DevOps is not a temporary arrangement. In other words, it won’t run out of scope in the near future. Businesses will continue to adopt it in growing numbers in the future. It is critical to creating a good DevOps strategy and select solutions that integrate effectively with other tools and the development environment to achieve successful DevOps implementation.
The best thing about DevOps is its ability to release software more quickly without sacrificing quality. To obtain this benefit, you’ll need to change your software development process as well as your IT architecture. DevOps makes your IT infrastructure more stable and flexible.
For more information and assistance for DevOps implementation services, you can contact us at MobMaxime. We have helped many companies change their operational and developmental bottomline by executing specific and stable DevOps plans.
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