DevOps is a rapidly evolving field, and staying on top of the advanced tools and technologies is essential for success. In this article, we will be discussing the top DevOps tools that will help elevate your workflow and improve your team’s efficiency. So, let’s dive in and discover useful DevOps tools!
Note: The usage of some of these tools is not limited to one class. GitLab CI, for example, may be used for both CI/CD and IaC. Similarly, AWS CloudWatch can be applied for both logging and monitoring.
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Tools
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) has gained popularity in the world of cloud computing as a way of managing and allocating resources. You can automate your infrastructure, reduce the risk of configuration errors, and optimize the workflow related to handling your infrastructure generally if you have the appropriate IaC tool in your toolkit.
Terraform
With Terraform, an IaC tool, you can write declarative configuration files using HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL). Because Terraform is cloud-agnostic, it can manage resources on multiple clouds, like AWS, Azure, and GCP. Using Terraform, you can assess changes before implementing them, define infrastructure as code, and apply changes securely and reliably. A wider range of cloud services is covered by the comprehensive provider list offered by Terraform. Furthermore, it has a huge and vibrant community that produces and distributes modules that may be used to automate common infrastructure processes.
CloudFormation
Using JSON or YAML templates, you can define and manage AWS resources with the help of CloudFormation, an IaC tool provided by Amazon Web Services. You can develop and manage resources as a feature of an AWS application stack due to its tight integration with other AWS services. You can apply a variety of pre-made templates that CloudFormation offers to create and manage resources, or you can design templates tailored to your needs.
You can code-describe your infrastructure, version-control it, and make regulated, repeatable adjustments with CloudFormation. It also offers the option to restore changes in the case of errors, making it a reliable tool to manage your AWS resources.
Pulumi
With the help of the recent IaC tool Pulumi, you can write infrastructure as code in well-known programming languages such as Python, JavaScript, and TypeScript. Pulumi offers an easy and clear API for creating infrastructure and supports many cloud providers, including AWS, Azure, and GCP. Leveraging your existing code skills and tools with Pulumi makes it easier to integrate infrastructure management into your development workflows. Furthermore, it offers a collection of reusable libraries that you can use to manage infrastructure resources and reduce the amount of code you have to write.
Containerization and Orchestration
Modern software development and deployment focuses on containerization and orchestration. When an application and all its dependencies are packaged into a container, it can be operated reliably in a wide range of environments. This process is known as containerization. Orchestration is the function of managing and scaling containerized apps across a cluster of servers.
Kubernetes
The open-source container orchestration tool known as Kubernetes (K8s) automates the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. With its effective container management API, you can quickly deploy, monitor, and scale applications across a cluster of hosts. Additionally, Kubernetes offers advanced features such as service discovery, rolling deployments, and automatic scaling.
Docker
Docker is a tool that is at the center of containerization and orchestration in DevOps. This helps to ensure that applications run consistently across different environments and reduces the risk of compatibility issues. Docker’s orchestration tools, such as Docker Swarm and Kubernetes, allow for the management and scaling of containerized applications. Furthermore, its integration with other tools such as Jenkins, Ansible, and Kubernetes, makes it a versatile tool that can be used in a variety of DevOps workflows.
Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)
The mentioned tools are essential in Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) because they enable automated methods for developing, testing, and deploying software changes. The following list of possible benefits of each tool includes:
Jenkins
Jenkins is a CI/CD tool that is open-source and has been used for many years. It is a popular choice among developers because it supports a wide range of plugins and is highly customizable. Jenkins can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud and is also very scalable.
Its extensibility is one of its best features. Its plugin architecture makes it simple to add new features, and it supports a wide range of programming languages and frameworks. Jenkins provides an advanced API as well as integrations with well-known development tools such as GitHub, Bitbucket, and Jira.
GitLab CI
GitLab CI's flexibility is one of its main benefits. Because of its YAML-based configuration, it supports a wide range of programming languages and frameworks and makes it simple to develop and oversee complicated pipelines. GitLab CI is a favorite among developers because it offers strong features such as auto-scaling, parallel testing, and Docker integration. It gives you the ability to automate the development, test, and deployment process, which enables it to go more easily and rapidly.
You can develop and manage the entire CI/CD pipeline from their GitLab repository according to GitLab CI. In a nutshell, you can access logs and reports in a centralized location and monitor the progress of their development and deploys with ease.
Github Actions
The heart of GitHub Actions is its tight integration with GitHub, which allows you to access logs and data from their GitHub repository and monitor the progress of builds and deploys with ease. By offering significant expertise such as auto-scaling, parallelism, and Docker integration, GitHub Actions is a preferable route for developers.
A robust CI/CD tool with a deep bond to GitHub is termed GitHub Actions. It gives users the capacity to directly automate the development, test, and deployment processes from their GitHub repositories. You can create and maintain pipelines using GitHub Actions by using YAML-based configuration files.
Circle CI
The accessibility of the usage of Circle CI is one of its main advantages. Developers can effortlessly configure and manage pipelines due to the web interface's clear and intuitive design. Circle CI is a useful solution for teams of all sizes since it offers a variety of strong features such as caching, parallelism, and Docker integration.
A cloud-based CI/CD tool called Circle CI makes it easy to develop, test, and deploy software. Including its YAML-based configuration, it allows a broad range of programming languages and frameworks and allows pipeline construction and management simple. Furthermore, it offers a robust API and integrations with well-known development tools such as GitHub, Bitbucket, and Slack.
Bitbucket Pipeline
A cloud-based CI/CD tool with strong integration with Bitbucket is called Bitbucket Pipeline. The build, test, and deployment processes may all be automated by developers right from their Bitbucket repository. You can define and maintain pipelines using YAML-based configuration files with Bitbucket Pipeline. Moreover, it offers strong features like auto. The close integration of Bitbucket Pipeline with Bitbucket is one of its main benefits. You can view logs and reports straight from their Bitbucket repository, as well as easily monitor the status of their builds and deployments.
Monitoring and Logging
Monitoring and logging are critical components of infrastructure management in the world of cloud computing. While the logging tool helps you to store and analyze logs generated by your infrastructure and applications, monitoring tools help you track the efficiency and accessibility of your resources. The following are useful logging and monitoring tools that you must be familiar with:
AWS CloudWatch
AWS CloudWatch allows you to maintain track of and collect data from metrics, log files, and other AWS resources such as EC2 instances, RDS databases, and Lambda functions. You can set alarms, create specialized metrics, and use dashboards to visualize your data with CloudWatch.
Prometheus
Prometheus is used for monitoring and alerting in DevOps. Prometheus is an open-source monitoring system that allows you to collect and store metrics from various systems and applications. This helps to ensure that the performance and availability of systems and applications are monitored in real-time and that any issues are quickly identified and addressed. Its scalability and reliability make it suitable for both small and large-scale projects, and it is a cost-effective solution.
Grafana
Creating and publishing interactive dashboards is facilitated using the popular open-source dashboard and visualization platform Grafana. It is integrated with various data sources, such as Prometheus, AWS CloudWatch, and Elasticsearch. You can create alerts based on data thresholds with Grafana, which provides lots of visualization options including graphs, tables, and heatmaps.
ELK & EFK Stack
A set of open-source tools for collecting, indexing, and analyzing logs is called the ELK stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana). Large volumes of data can be saved and searched through Elasticsearch, a search engine and analytics platform. Logstash is software for collecting, analyzing, and delivering logs. You can create interactive dashboards and visualizations using your logs with the visualization platform Kibana.
The EFK stack is a variation of the ELK stack that leverages Fluentd in place of Logstash. An open-source data collector termed Fluentd helps you to gather and analyze logs from various sources. Similar features offered by the EFK stack as compared to the ELK stack include centralized logging and potent analytics.
Service Mesh and Management Tools
For managing and securing microservices-based applications, service meshes are getting popular. They enable the deployment and management of these services easier and give a way to handle communication between microservices. Two beneficial tools for Service Mesh Management are Istio and Kiali.
Istio
Istio is a Service Mesh tool that was developed by Google, IBM, and Lyft. It provides an approach to managing inter-microservice communication without modifying the application code. Due to this, you can focus on writing business logic instead of managing the underlying infrastructure. Istio has features that make the deployment and management of microservices simpler, such as traffic management, service discovery, load balancing, and security. Furthermore, it gives a control plane that allows centralized management and monitoring of the Service Mesh.
Kiali
Kiali gives you a way to visualize the Service Mesh topology, which makes it easier to understand how microservices communicate with each other. It contains features like tracing, monitoring and alerting that facilitate the ability to identify and fix issues in the Service Mesh. Besides that, it enables a way to manage the Service Mesh's configuration, which simplifies the procedure to install and maintain microservices.
To know more about our Vikasietum DevOps and cloud adoption service, please contact us at biz.info@vikasietum.com. We can help you with your DevOps needs and recommend the best technologies suitable for your business.