DevOps consists of various stages before any software implementation is ready. These can be defined in various stages.
Plan
- Production metrics, objects, and feedback
- Requirements
- Business metrics
- Update release metrics
- Release plan, timing and business case
- Security policy and requirement
A combination of the IT personnel will be involved in these activities: business application owners, software development, software architects, continual release management, security officers and the organization responsible for managing the production of IT infrastructure. Some notable vendors and solutions that facilitate Plan include: Atlassian, CA Technologies, iRise and Jama Software.
Create
Create is composed of the building, coding, and configuring of the software development process.[8] The specific activities are:
- Design of the software and configuration
- Coding including code quality and performance
- Software build and build performance
- Release candidate
Tools and vendor in this category often overlap with other categories. Because DevOps is about breaking down silos, this is reflective in the activities and product solutions.[clarification needed]
Some notable solutions and vendors include Bitbucket, GitLab, GitHub, Electric Cloud, and CFEngine.
Verify
Verify is directly associated with ensuring the quality of the software release; activities designed to ensure code quality is maintained and the highest quality is deployed to production.[8] The main activities in this are:
- Acceptance testing
- Regression testing
- Security and vulnerability analysis
- Performance
- Configuration testing
Notable vendors and solutions for verify related activities generally fall under four main categories: Test automation (ThoughtWorks, IBM, HP), Static analysis (Parasoft, Microsoft, SonarSource), Test Lab (Skytap, Microsoft, Delphix), and Security (HP, IBM, Trustwave, FlawCheck).
Packaging
Packaging refers to the activities involved once the release is ready for deployment, often also referred to as staging or Preproduction / “preprod”.[8] This often includes tasks and activities such as:
- Approval/preapprovals
- Package configuration
- Triggered releases
- Release staging and holding
Notable solutions for this include universal package managers such as: Jfrog’s Artifactory, Sonatype Nexus repository, and Inedo’s ProGet.[9]
Release
Release related activities include schedule, orchestration, provisioning and deploying software into production and targeted environment.[10] The specific Release activities include:
- Release coordination
- Deploying and promoting applications
- Fallbacks and recovery
- Scheduled/timed releases
Solutions that cover this aspect of the toolchain include application release automation, deployment automation and release management; specific vendors are Automic, Clarive, Inedo, BMC Software, IBM, Flexagon, VMware, and XebiaLabs.[11]
Configure
Configure activities fall under the operation side of DevOps. Once software is deployed, there may be additional IT infrastructure provisioning and configuration activities required. Specific activities including:
- Infrastructure storage, database and network provisioning and configuring
- Application provision and configuration.
The main types of solutions that facilitate these activities are continuous configuration automation, configuration management, and infrastructure as code tools. Notable solutions include Ansible, Chef, Puppet, Otter, and Salt.
Monitoring
Monitoring is an important link in a DevOps toolchain. It allows IT organization to identify specific issues of specific releases and to understand the impact on end-users.[8] A summary of Monitor related activities are:
- Performance of IT infrastructure
- End-user response and experience
- Production metrics and statistics
Information from monitoring activities often impacts Plan activities required for changes and for new release cycles. Notable vendors are BigPanda, Ganglia, New Relic, Wireshark, and Plumbr.
Originally posted in medium.com
