DevOps toolchain
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A DevOps toolchain is a set or combination of tools that aid in the delivery, development, and management of software applications throughout the systems development life cycle, as coordinated by an organisation that uses
DevOps DevOps is a set of practices that combines software development (''Dev'') and IT operations (''Ops''). It aims to shorten the systems development life cycle and provide continuous delivery with high software quality. DevOps is complementary to a ...
practices. Generally, DevOps tools fit into one or more activities, which supports specific DevOps initiatives: Plan, Create, Verify, Package, Release, Configure, Monitor, and Version Control.


Toolchains

In
software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...
, a toolchain is the set of programming tools that is used to perform a complex software development task or to create a software product, which is typically another computer program or a set of related programs. In general, the tools forming a toolchain are executed consecutively so the output or resulting environment state of each tool becomes the input or starting environment for the next one, but the term is also used when referring to a set of related tools that are not necessarily executed consecutively. As DevOps is a set of practices that emphasizes the collaboration and communication of both
software developer Software development is the process of conceiving, specifying, designing, Computer programming, programming, software documentation, documenting, software testing, testing, and Software bugs, bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applic ...
s and other information technology (IT) professionals, while automating the process of software delivery and infrastructure changes, its implementation can include the definition of the series of tools used at various stages of the lifecycle; because DevOps is a cultural shift and collaboration between
development Development or developing may refer to: Arts *Development hell, when a project is stuck in development *Filmmaking, development phase, including finance and budgeting *Development (music), the process thematic material is reshaped *Photographi ...
and operations, there is no one product that can be considered a single DevOps tool. Instead a collection of tools, potentially from a variety of vendors, are used in one or more stages of the lifecycle.


Stages of DevOps


Plan

Plan is composed of two things: "define" and "plan". This activity refers to the business value and application requirements. Specifically "Plan" activities include: *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 development is the process of conceiving, specifying, designing, programming, documenting, testing, and bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applications, frameworks, or other software components. Software development invol ...
, software architects, continual
release management Release management is the process of managing, planning, scheduling and controlling a software build through different stages and environments; it includes testing and deploying software releases. Relationship with processes Organizations that ...
, security officers and the organization responsible for managing the production of
IT infrastructure Information technology infrastructure is defined broadly as a set of information technology (IT) components that are the foundation of an IT service; typically physical components (computer and networking hardware and facilities), but also variou ...
.


Create

Create is composed of the building, coding, and configuring of the
software development process In software engineering, a software development process is a process of dividing software development work into smaller, parallel, or sequential steps or sub-processes to improve design, product management. It is also known as a software devel ...
. 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 vendors in this category often overlap with other categories. Because DevOps is about breaking down silos, this is reflective in the activities and product solutions.


Verify

Verify is directly associated with ensuring the quality of the
software release A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...
; activities designed to ensure code quality is maintained and the highest quality is deployed to production. The main activities in this are: * Acceptance testing *
Regression testing Regression testing (rarely, ''non-regression testing'') is re-running functional and non-functional tests to ensure that previously developed and tested software still performs as expected after a change. If not, that would be called a '' regre ...
* Security and vulnerability analysis * Performance * Configuration testing Solutions for verify related activities generally fall under four main categories:
Test automation In software testing, test automation is the use of software separate from the software being tested to control the execution of tests and the comparison of actual outcomes with predicted outcomes. Test automation can automate some repetitive bu ...
, Static analysis, Test Lab, and Security.


Packaging

Packaging refers to the activities involved once the release is ready for deployment, often also referred to as staging or Preproduction / "preprod". This often includes tasks and activities such as: *Approval/preapprovals *Package configuration *Triggered releases *Release staging and holding


Release

Release related activities include schedule, orchestration, provisioning and deploying software into production and targeted environment. 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 In software, a toolchain is a set of programming tools that is used to perform a complex software development task or to create a software product, which is typically another computer program or a set of related programs. In general, the tools form ...
include
application release automation Application-release automation (ARA) refers to the process of packaging and deploying an application or update of an application from development, across various environments, and ultimately to production. ARA solutions must combine the capabiliti ...
, deployment automation and
release management Release management is the process of managing, planning, scheduling and controlling a software build through different stages and environments; it includes testing and deploying software releases. Relationship with processes Organizations that ...
.


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 Continuous configuration automation (CCA) is the methodology or process of automating the deployment and configuration of settings and software for both physical and virtual data center equipment. Overview Continuous configuration automation is ma ...
,
configuration management Configuration management (CM) is a process for establishing and maintaining consistency of a product's performance, functional, and physical attributes with its requirements, design, and operational information throughout its life. The CM proc ...
, and
infrastructure as code Infrastructure as code (IaC) is the process of managing and provisioning computer data centers through machine-readable definition files, rather than physical hardware configuration or interactive configuration tools. The IT infrastructure manage ...
tools.


Monitor

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. A summary of Monitor related activities are: *Performance of
IT infrastructure Information technology infrastructure is defined broadly as a set of information technology (IT) components that are the foundation of an IT service; typically physical components (computer and networking hardware and facilities), but also variou ...
*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.


Version Control

Version Control is an important link in a DevOps toolchain and a component of software configuration management.
Version Control In software engineering, version control (also known as revision control, source control, or source code management) is a class of systems responsible for managing changes to computer programs, documents, large web sites, or other collections o ...
is the management of changes to documents, computer programs, large web sites, and other collections of information. A summary of Version Control related activities are: *Non-linear development *Distributed development *Compatibility with existent systems and protocols *Toolkit-based design Information from Version Control often supports Release activities required for changes and for new release cycles.


See also

*
Continuous delivery Continuous delivery (CD) is a software engineering approach in which teams produce software in short cycles, ensuring that the software can be reliably released at any time and, following a pipeline through a "production-like environment", withou ...
* Continuous integration *
Agile software development In software development, agile (sometimes written Agile) practices include requirements discovery and solutions improvement through the collaborative effort of self-organizing and cross-functional teams with their customer(s)/ end user(s), ad ...
*
WinOps WinOps (a portmanteau of "Windows" and "DevOps") is a term used referring to the cultural movement of DevOps practices for a Microsoft-centric view. It emphasizes the use of the cloud, automation and integrating development and IT operations into on ...


References

{{Reflist, 30em Software design Software development process Programming tools