devopsy.kinsta.cloud

Author: Veritis

The Past, Present and Future of DevOps Infrastructure
Infrastructure automation enables organizations to set up operating frameworks that allow smooth functionality with enhanced usage, minimal scope for error and faster deployment of code. The process of infrastructure automation eases development and operations processes by introducing good deployment practices such as computerized testing and versioning.

The need for automation was realized when the demand for deploying error-free applications at a faster rate increased. Additionally, competition from similar businesses forced organizations to look for a way to bridge the gaps between development and operations to deploy applications that would serve their business needs.

The Challenge of Implementing DevOps Practice

The following challenges present a roadblock in bringing out the best results of DevOps practices:
1. The disparate work cultures of the development and operations teams.
2. Non-involvement of DBAs in release cycles.
3. Failure in deployment of error-free codes.
The Emergence of DevOps

The introduction of DevOps practices resolved a lot of problems in terms of increasing business operations efficiency. It created a common operating framework where disparate teams including development and operations teams can work together and deliver applications faster that will, in turn, result in effective business operations and an increase in ROI.

Adopting DevOps involves:
1. DevOps experts outlining of traceable metrics for creating a roadmap by visualizing the desired outcome.
2. Creating a pilot framework that will include the tools of both development and operations teams further integrating these existing tools with the DevOps experts’ robust ecosystem,
3. Analyzing, designing, constructing, automating and implementing the network based on the metrics and resources collated.
DevOps Tools:

The DevOps infrastructure automation process uses several tools that define and drive the success of the implementation process. Here is a short overview of some of the more well-known and widely used tools.
- Jenkins – A Java-based continuous integration (CI) tool contributes to the faster delivery of applications. Jenkins must be aligned with a version control system such as GitHub or SVN. Whenever the code repository receives a new code, a Jenkins server builds and tests the new code and informs the team about results and any changes. Over time, Jenkins has moved from being just a CI tool to being used as an orchestration tool that builds pipelines for application provisioning and deployment.
- Chef – A ruby-based configuration management tool, Chef includes cookbooks that code infrastructure in domain service language (DSL) in combination with a little bit of programming. Chef creates virtual machines and customizes them in accordance with the rules listed in the cookbooks. An agent residing on all the servers that need configuration extracts the cookbooks from the chef master and runs them on the server to get the desired results.
- Puppet – Also, a ruby-based configuration management tool, Puppet was developed with system administrators in mind. A configuration code is written using Puppet DSLs and is wrapped in modules. Puppet performs a similar function to Chef but, unlike Puppet, Chef is a developer-focused tool. It runs a puppet agent on all servers that require configuration and extracts the compiled module from the puppet server and installs required software packages as prescribed by the module.
- Ansible – An agentless configuration management and orchestration tool, Ansible can be used for cloud computing. Ansible has configuration modules called “Playbooks,” which are written in YAML format and are easy to compose in comparison with other configuration management tools.
- Docker – Docker, a process-level virtualization tool, creates isolated environments for applications known as containers. These containers can be transferred to any other system without making any application changes. Docker has evolved as the next step in virtualization. It is beginning to become a favorite of many DevOps practitioners and leading cloud experts.
The Future of DevOps Infrastructure Automation

A lot of organizations are beginning to benefit from the implementation of DevOps infrastructure automation. And with the pace at which the demand for DevOps services is increasing, infrastructure automation has a long way to go.

As per statistics, by bringing DevOps practices into the picture, organizations can benefit by deploying code up to 30X more frequently and reduce the deployment failure to less than 50 percent.

— Veritis
May 22, 2018
Early Automation: A Key Requirement for DevSecOps Success

According to the “2017 DevSecOps Community Survey,” by Sonatype, almost 60 percent of the respondents consider security to be an inhibitor to DevOps agility, while more than 50 percent of developers say they do not have sufficient time to allocate to security.

Hence arises the need for enhanced security automation in DevOps. Security automation helps in refining and improving application security by reducing the time taken for detecting an attack and responding to any identified issue.

Tools for Security Automation

Organizations looking to implement DevSecOps by integrating security into their DevOps pipelines have an increasing number of tools such as Tanium, InSpec, Splunk, Checkmarx, Metasploit, FireEye and Contrast Security for security analysis and testing throughout the software development life cycle (SDLC), right from source-code analysis to post-deployment monitoring.

For security to become an integral part of the DevOps workflow, which includes continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD), automation is essential. As most organizations are pushing tens of new versions of code into production for each application every day, it becomes necessary to embed security controls early in the development life cycle, which is possible only through automation.

Around 40 percent of the 2,300 IT professionals surveyed have said that they have deviated from the waterfall development model, where automated security tests are run just ahead of production, by running them throughout the development life cycle.

Using SAST Tools

Static application security testing (SAST) tools help in scanning code and providing instant feedback to developers on security-related issues who, in turn, can remediate the potential vulnerabilities as part of the standard workflow.

However, static analysis may not be alone sufficient for detecting all problems in the code.

Automating DAST

Automated dynamic application security testing (DAST) searches for vulnerabilities in real time while the application is running and is really a major improvement over static analysis that only looks for potential security issues in the code.

Inclusion of automated security analysis helps in limiting the introduction of vulnerable code earlier in the development life cycle. The runtime analysis of the issues detected through automation enables developers to prioritize the code problems that need to be fixed.

Red Teaming and Threat Modeling

Organizations have begun to employ the concept of red teaming, a military terminology, by having separate teams to simultaneously take up attacking the code and performing security testing respectively. This ensures that any potential flaws are uncovered in the production stage itself and code fixes are pushed as soon as possible.

Threat modeling is critical for the success of DevSecOps as it leads developers to look at software from an attacker’s perspective. While the threat modeling process cannot be automated, it helps in identifying flaws in the application design and architecture better than other security approaches.

Are You Ready for Automation?

Organizations can automate the provisioning and commissioning of DevSecOps environments to achieve a predictable, consistent and secure service delivery.

While the goal of DevOps Services automation is to help development teams in faster deployment and monitoring of applications, DevSecOps adds security to the automation and contributes to enhancing the quality and efficiency of the software.

DevSecOps adoption provides organizations with a strong foundation for mitigating risk in a proactive, efficient and streamlined manner.

— Veritis

April 10, 2018
DevOps and Cloud: A Symbiotic Relationship Aimed at Business Success
DevOps and cloud computing are not mutually exclusive, though their relationship has often been uncertain and confusing from a layman’s perspective. While cloud computing relates to technology and services, DevOps is more about processes and process improvement. However, both DevOps and cloud computing are vital in every organization’s journey toward an effective digital transformation.

Cloud-centric DevOps Automation

Cloud computing’s centralized nature enables a standard and centralized platform for DevOps automation. Using a cloud platform resolves issues in centralized software deployment caused by the distributed nature of enterprise systems.

DevOps objectives including continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) are supported by most of the private and public cloud service providers. This ensures centralized governance and control, in addition to reducing the costs associated with DevOps automation on-premises. DevOps utilizes orchestration systems that can proactively monitor the cloud data sets and application workloads. End-to-end automation is a prerequisite for deriving the full advantage from the cloud.

By expanding the concept of continuous improvement to cloud-based platforms, DevOps ensures lesser system vulnerabilities and greater security.

DevOps Best Practices for Effective Cloud-Based Computing

DevOps provides several core capabilities that assist organizations in effectively handling cloud challenges. These include:
- Infrastructure as Code (IAC): IAC comprises the provisioning of servers and installation of application code, the core components of the system architecture.
- Automated Application Deployments: DevOps practices facilitate the creation of a fully automated application deployment pipeline that is of great importance in the development life cycle.
- Application Lifecycle Management (ALM): DevOps principles such as continuous integration and delivery help in effective ALM in the cloud.
- Continuous Quality Assurance (QA) and Testing: DevOps capabilities address the challenges for QA and testing in the cloud by provisioning multiple test environments using cloud-based resources that result in enhanced quality and productivity.
- Knowledge-Sharing with the Cloud Provider: DevOps promotes the concept of knowledge sharing between organizations and SMEs of the cloud service providers throughout the application life cycle using online communities that are focused on fostering communication and collaboration, thereby ensuring that most risks are mitigated effectively.
The Significance of Cloud Computing vis-á-vis DevOps

Cloud computing complements DevOps in several ways. The application-specific infrastructure in the cloud enables developers to own more components easily and enhance their productivity and efficiency. It allows developers to create the development environments quickly without the need for IT operations to provision resources and infrastructure.

Cloud computing ensures flexible IT infrastructure in addition to enabling greater business agility. It propels IT transformation by helping organizations in streamlining and embedding DevOps processes.

DevOps tools and services eliminate human error and help in establishing repeatability by automating and streamlining the process of building and managing code.

IT Transformation Enabled by DevOps with Cloud Technology

Cloud computing coupled with DevOps ensures that scalability becomes an integral part of application development, thereby contributing to reduced infrastructure costs and increased global reach.

Cloud-based operations increase the availability and failover ability of applications in addition to eliminating downtime, which leads to improved business reliability and rise in customer satisfaction.

DevOps automation and IAC help in reducing the complexity of the cloud and improving system maintenance. Additionally, the automated repeatable processes increase security controls. Process streamlining and faster access to the development environments ensure improved product time to market.

In Conclusion

By realizing the importance and prioritizing the usage of DevOps in the cloud, organizations can derive a huge number of potential benefits including enhanced agility and reduced operational costs.

— Veritis
April 5, 2018
Transition to DevOps Increasing Across IT Firms
Demand for faster product development and quick market release created a need for increased collaboration between Development (Dev) and Operations (Ops) teams, which eventually led to “DevOps.” With this, transition to DevOps has become one of the key points of discussion across many IT firms. This article gives you an overview of the demand and trend for organizations to transition to DevOps.

Rise in IT innovation and burgeoning digital revolution have led to the demand for faster development and quicker releases to stand out in the IT competitive scenario. This transition eventually led to a new culture that saw collaboration between two key IT teams, development and operations teams, which the industry calls DevOps.

DevOps established a new style of IT functioning, easing different phases of software process from product development to testing and final market release, all in a rapid and reliable way.

Why DevOps Transition?

Rapid delivery of independent software components and continuous integration of the same with production systems forms the key principle behind DevOps functioning.

DevOps is often confused with Agile methodology. Though they share similarities in providing improved IT performance through rapid development, DevOps stands apart from Agile because of its efficacy in the software deployment phase, ensuring a constant communication between the two teams. Thus, DevOps is often termed as a successor to Agile.

A collaborative approach, key for information exchange across the line, is one of the major factors driving firms to undergo DevOps implementation.

Though DevOps is well-known as a merger of development and operations teams, an effective DevOps model extends beyond that to other key functional areas of organizations.

Breaking the old trend of limiting individual teams to their respective work domains, DevOps brought in a scope for knowledge-sharing among them, wherein developers can extend themselves to testing and deployment and operations team members can upgrade their skill set, learning new languages, architectures and tools.

Increased Demand for DevOps Resource

Transition to DevOps holds a key demand in the fast-growing IT market, wherein managing with the existing infrastructure or resource plays an almost equal role as coming up with something new.

Greenfield projects aside, DevOps deployment is most often seen in brownfield projects that encourage building on the existing resources.

With this situation in place, there is also a lot of demand for DevOps resources across firms. The “2017 Open Source Jobs Report” from the Linux Foundation shows 60 percent demand for DevOps human resources among more than 2,000 IT open source professionals and IT hiring managers.

This clearly shows the level of demand that transition to DevOps is holding in the IT industry.

“If there isn’t an existing DevOps role within your company, software developers should spend time sitting with the operations team or vice versa to understand how their processes work and how they can be improved through collaboration,” said Mike Durney, CEO of the job-hunting site Dice.

The report found:
- Nearly 50 percent of hiring managers are keen about those DevOps resources with professional credentials such as relevant certifications
- More than 47 percent of the companies are ready to fund certification programs for their existing personnel
- 42 percent of companies are keen on adding DevOps skills to their hiring portfolio
- “DevOps Engineer” profile ranks second in Glassdoor’s Best 50 jobs in America
Despite its advantages, however, DevOps has a few challenges to overcome related to application integration, test automation, budget and skill set, among others.

— Veritis
March 26, 2018