What is DevOps? 2024 Best Guide To Tools, certifications, Benefits, and more

In the time of technological domination and continuous development, organizations, regardless of their domain, are trying to keep up with this ongoing evolve to ensure constant competitiveness in their fields. With these changes becoming the heart of businesses, there’s no doubt that DevOps is at the core, proving itself vital for the success of future engineers.

What is DevOps?

According to PeopleCert DevOps means a software development approach to work that combines software development (Dev) with information technology operations (Ops). The goal of DevOps is to shorten the systems development life cycle while delivering software releases frequently, in close alignment with business objectives in a faster, better, and cost-efficient way.

The DevOps approach to work is based on three critical success factors: cultural shift, improvement of practices and processes, and leverage of automation technologies.

DevOps can be defined as a collaboration between development and operations teams. It is a process or practice that helps in continuous integration and union which can better collaboration and delivery of value to the end users.

The term DevOps is formed by combining the two words "Development" and "Operations" which signifies a new and solid integration between operation and development teams and fills the gap between them.

By using DevOps, organizations can accelerate the delivery of services as well as enhance quality. In this regard, Development and operation agents work together on projects from scratch, i.e. from the design and development process to product releases and support. By this, consequently, they can control, manage and minimize the risks by getting continuously updated feedback from the end-users and stakeholders at early stages.

What are the benefits of DevOps?

The benefits of adopting DevOps methodology:

• Staying ahead in the market by following the latest updates.
• Accelerating product delivery.
• Reducing the failure rate of new releases.
• Minimizing risks by getting continuous feedback.
• Offering a more stable operating environment.

What are the DevOps Tools?

Organizations that follow DevOps use various tools that can enhance the workflow of each stage in the delivery process. The following presents a sample of tools used at DevOps lifecycle stages:

• Plan:

Tools like Jira or Git can be used to help manage, plan and track the work in this stage.

• Code:

Tools like GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, or Stash can be used in this stage.

• Build:

Tools like Docker, Ansible, Puppet, Chef, Gradle, Maven, or JFrog Artifactory can be used in this stage.

• Test:

Tools like JUnit, Codeception, Selenium, Vagrant, TestNG, or BlazeMeter can be used to help in continuous testing at this stage.

• Deploy:

Tools like Puppet, Chef, Ansible, Jenkins, Kubernetes, OpenShift, OpenStack, Docker, or Jira can be used in this stage.

• Operate:

Tools like Ansible, Puppet, PowerShell, Chef, Salt, or Otter can be used to manage software during production in this stage.

• Monitor:

Tools like New Relic, Datadog, Grafana, Wireshark, Splunk, Nagios, or Slack can be used to collect information in this stage.

DevOps Certifications

The need for skilled DevOps professionals is growing fast, because of the increasing global demand for rapid developmental strategies and continuous application deployments.

DevOps is known for combining more than one field, so it is a practice that combines tools and technologies from each field together. In this regard, there is no specific one certification that covers all fields. Based on the market needs, many certifications prove their significance for DevOps practitioners.

PeopleCert offers the following DevOps certifications:

• DevOps Fundamentals

The DevOps Fundamentals Course level of the PeopleCert DevOps qualification scheme is aimed at anyone who wishes to become an efficient member of a DevOps environment.

Get more information about the DevOps Fundamentals Training Course that Bakkah offers from here!

• DevOps Leadership

The DevOps Leadership Course level of the PeopleCert DevOps qualifications scheme is aimed at anyone who is managing a DevOps team or aspiring to lead a cultural shift towards DevOps practices.

Get more information about the DevOps Leadership Training Course that Bakkah offers

• DevOps Engineering

DevOps Engineering is designed to give practical guidance on automation tools use and how these tools support DevOps culture and practices.

Here are the 6 DevOps Certifications that are accredited by DevOps institute:

• DevOps Foundation®

DevOps Foundation certification covers the fundamental knowledge of basic DevOps terminology, principles and practices. This will help candidates to build their skills and knowledge which improves their communication with the other departments and develops organizational success.

Get more information about the DevOps Fundamentals Training Course that Bakkah offers from here!

• SRE (Site Reliability Engineering) Foundation℠

SRE Foundation certification covers the fundamental knowledge of SRE terms, principles and practices. By understanding the basic concepts of SRE, candidates will be able to know how SRE could be used in order to improve operational activities when using or applying its practices and principles.

• DevOps Leader (DOL)®

DevOps Leader (DOL) certification is designed for anyone who wants to make a cultural shift for better integration and collaboration by using DevOps principles and practices. It is considered a more advanced level of DevOps Foundation.

Get more information about the DevOps Leadership Training Course that Bakkah offers from here!

• DevSecOps Engineering (DSOE)℠

DevSecOps Engineering (DSOE) certification is designed for IT security professionals who are skilled at security as code and they are willing to make security known and consumed as a service. A DevSecOps Engineer uses data and security science as their primary means of protecting the organization and customer.

• Continuous Delivery Architecture (CDA)℠

Continuous Delivery Architect (CDA) certification is intended for people who are engaged in the design, implementation and management of DevOps practices and principles of integration and collaboration.

• DevOps Test Engineering (DTE)®

DevOps Test Engineering (DTE) certification covers testing in a DevOps environment and concepts such as the active use of test automation, testing earlier in the development cycle, and instilling testing skills in developers, quality assurance, security, and operational teams.

What is the Difference Between DevOps and Agile?

DevOps with Agile since are both considered software development methodologies and have many similarities. Despite all these similarities, they are not alike.

 To reduce the confusion, we will elaborate on the differences between DevOps and Agile as follows:

• Agile helps to manage complex projects while DevOps's central concept is to manage end-to-end delivery processes.
• The agile process focuses on constant changes whereas DevOps focuses on constant testing and delivery.
• Agile Feedback is given by the customer while DevOps Feedback comes from the internal team.
• Agile addresses gaps in Customer and Developer communications whereas DevOps addresses gaps in Developer and IT Operations communications.
• Agile requires a small team while DevOps requires relatively a large team.
• The target area of Agile is Software development whereas the Target area of DevOps is to give end-to-end business solutions and fast delivery.
• JIRA, Bugzilla, and Kanboard are some popular Agile tools whereas Puppet, Chef, TeamCity OpenStack, and AWS are popular DevOps tools.
• Developing software is inherent to Agile while developing, testing, and implementing all are equally important to DevOps.
• Agile addresses the gap between customer needs and development and testing teams while DevOps addresses the gap between development and testing and operational teams.

Organizations and businesses should know and understand both Agile and DevOps methodologies in order to be aware of how they help teams work more efficiently, achieve fast delivery and increase customer satisfaction.