Top DevOps Tools for 2023
DevOps has revolutionized the IT industry by combining development and operations teams to achieve faster product deployments and releases. Below is a list of the top DevOps tools for 2023, categorized by their functionality.
Source Code Management and Building Tools:
1. GitLab
2. GitHub
3. BitBucket
Container Management Tools:
4. Docker
5. Kubernetes
6. Mesos
CI/CD and Deployment Tools:
7. Jenkins
8. Bamboo
9. Octopus Deploy
Configuration Management Tools:
10. Ansible
11. Puppet
12. Chef
Monitoring Tools:
13. Nagios
14. Prometheus
15. Splunk
FAQs:
Q.1: Is coding required for DevOps?
Q.2: What are some best DevOps practices?
Q.3: What is the DevOps lifecycle?
Q.4: Can you provide a DevOps example?
Understanding DevOps for Faster Software Development
DevOps is the combination of development and operations teams aimed at quickly developing applications and maintaining existing software deployments. It involves 8 stages: plan, code, build, test, release, deploy, operate, and monitor. This approach fosters trust, transparency, and collaboration between teams leading to improved productivity, automation, and efficiency. Developers must understand each phase of the DevOps lifecycle to deliver faster results. With the quick adoption of DevOps practices, different DevOps tools have become popular due to different requirements.
DevOps Tools: Making Software Development Efficient and Effective
DevOps is a cross-functional approach that reduces time spent on software development and ensures continuous delivery of high-quality applications. To automate the software development process and reduce manual effort, DevOps uses a toolchain which includes version control, monitoring, conflict resolution, dependency management, and deployment. The right DevOps tools can accelerate development, enhance operational efficiency, facilitate frequent deployment, and increase collaboration between teams, resulting in faster innovation, quicker releases, and seamless flow across the value chain.
Top DevOps Tools in 2023
Here are 15 of the best DevOps tools, with their key features to help you choose the right one for your needs:
1. Jenkins - Continuous Integration and Deployment tool.
2. Docker - Containerization service.
3. Puppet - Configuration management tool.
4. Ansible - Open source automation tool.
5. Nagios - Continuous monitoring system.
6. Git - Version control tool.
7. Chef - Infrastructure automation tool.
8. Selenium - Test automation framework.
9. New Relic - Application performance monitoring tool.
10. ELK Stack - Log management tool.
11. Kubernetes - Container orchestration platform.
12. Graylog - Log management and analysis tool.
13. Prometheus - Monitoring and alerting toolkit.
14. Grafana - Analytics and observability platform.
15. Terraform - Infrastructure as code tool.
These tools can help you simplify your DevOps processes and streamline your development pipeline.
Source Code Management and Building Tools
In software development, it is essential to have proper version control of the codebase. This is where Source Code Management tools come in, helping developers to manage and track changes to code. Examples of such tools include Git, Mercurial, and Subversion.
Building tools are also crucial in software development as they automate tasks such as compilation, testing, and deployment. Popular building tools include Maven, Gradle, and Ant.
Using these tools can help streamline the development process, increase productivity, and improve code quality.
// Example of Git commit command
git commit -m "fix: typo in login page"
// Example of Maven build command
mvn clean install
GitLab: A Complete DevOps Platform for Large Projects
GitLab is an all-in-one platform for software development, Planning, SCM, Security, and Delivery. It offers a collaborative environment for teams to work on large DevOps and DevSecOps projects. With GitLab, software can be delivered quickly and efficiently, while reducing development costs and security risks. Some of the features of GitLab include:
- Free and open-source platform with unlimited free private repositories
- Provides a scalable, single source of truth for collaborating on projects and code
- Complete branching tools and access controls for git repositories
- Built-in capabilities for Security, Code Quality, Vulnerability management, and governance
Code:
“`
//sample code
function gitlab(){
//code logic goes here
}
“`
GitLab acts like an API
GitHub – Source Code Management Tool
GitHub is a popular tool for managing source code among developers and companies worldwide. It fosters collaboration and knowledge-sharing in the global community. It offers a user-friendly UI with features like collaborative coding, security alerts, discussions, and subscriptions. GitHub also includes CI/CD functionality and can restore deleted repositories. It is an ideal platform for open-source projects due to its extensive community and support.
BitBucket: A Git Repository Management Solution for Professional Teams
BitBucket is a popular platform among professional teams for hosting, collaborating, testing, and deploying projects. It allows teams of up to five members to have unlimited private repositories. BitBucket’s efficiency in managing large repositories is highly acclaimed. Additionally, BitBucket integrates seamlessly with JIRA and Trello, offers the Pipelines service for complete CI/CD cycles and has secure code features with IP whitelisting and 2-step verification. It also provides efficient pull requests for code reviews.
Container Management Tools
Code:
Here is a list of tools used for container management:
Docker – The Popular Container Platform
Docker, launched in 2013, is widely used for containerization due to its ability to facilitate distributed development and automate deployments. It simplifies the SDLC workflows with an integrated approach and provides standalone, executable packages (containers) that have all necessary components to run an application. Some features of Docker include: running applications in isolated environments, millions of images from Docker Hub, Docker App to package and manage distributed applications, simpler configuration, and quicker deployment leading to increased productivity.
Kubernetes: The Open-Source Container Orchestration Platform
Kubernetes is a popular tool for managing containers at scale, created by Google engineers to automate container deployment, scalability, and operations across clusters of hosts. It supports various container tools, including Docker, and allows you to build, schedule, scale, and manage multi-container applications efficiently.
Features:
- Monitoring of application health and simultaneous configuration changes.
- Automated deployment and scaling of containerized applications without manual intervention.
- Deploying containerized apps to a cluster of computers instead of one machine.
- Self-healing capabilities including restarting containers when they fail, killing unresponsive containers, and performing user-defined health checks.
//example code here
Apache Mesos for Cluster Management
Apache Mesos is an open-source DevOps tool that manages computer clusters, enabling dynamic resource sharing and isolated workload handling in distributed environments. It is ideal for large-scale clustered environments and has been used by prominent companies such as Twitter, Airbnb, and MediaCrossing for deploying and managing applications. Key features of Mesos include cross-platform compatibility, easy scalability to thousands of nodes, and native support for launching Docker/Appc container images. Mesos can handle different types of workloads, including Hadoop tasks and cloud-native applications.
CI/CD and Deployment Tools
Code:
// This code performs the deployment process using CI/CD tools
function deploy() {
// Run tests
runTests();
// Build deployment package
buildDeploymentPackage();
// Deploy package using CI/CD tool
deployUsingCICD();
}
This program demonstrates how to use CI/CD tools for deployment. It runs a series of tests to ensure the code is functioning correctly, builds a deployment package, and deploys the package using a CI/CD tool.
Jenkins for Continuous Integration and Deployment
Jenkins is a Java-based open-source platform that automates the software build process using hundreds of plugins and extending capabilities across the DevOps lifecycle. It’s perfect for iterating and deploying new codes quickly and can function as a simple CI server or a full-fledged CI/CD solution for development as well as handling the deployment workflow.
Some of Jenkins’ features are: easy configuration through a web interface with on-the-fly error checking and built-in help, scaling works with multiple machines to speed up builds and tests, and cross-platform compatibility between Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. With its built-in GUI, Jenkins can expand automation possibilities for the entire software development life cycle.
Bamboo: Automation Server for Continuous Delivery
Bamboo is an automation server that streamlines the process from code to deployment. Developed by Atlassian, it enables automated builds, integration, testing, documentation, and deployment of applications efficiently. It combines automated builds, tests, and releases, resulting in faster and easier bug-catching.
Compared to Jenkins, Bamboo has several built-in features, including deployment capabilities, automated merging, and build agent management. It seamlessly integrates with other Atlassian products such as Confluence, Bitbucket, and Jira. Bamboo’s intuitive GUI has an improved UI with tooltips, auto-completion, and other supportive features.
Whether it is setting up continuous integration, deployment, or delivery pipelines, Bamboo acts as an API for developers and organizations striving to attune to agile development practices.
Octopus Deploy: Automated Deployment Tool
Octopus Deploy is a widely-used automated deployment tool that helps achieve successful continuous delivery. With Octopus Deploy, you can easily manage and automate the deployment process across multiple environments. It is a single platform solution that helps improve code shipping, reduce operational silos, and enhance reliability. The tool is highly versatile and supports the deployment of web and mobile applications. Octopus Deploy also allows deployment to AWS and Azure cloud platforms. Some of its noteworthy features include support for multiple cloud services, full control of application development lifecycle, and runbooks for automating emergency operations. The tool is also highly flexible when it comes to platform support, enabling seamless integration with different tools.
Configuration Management Tools
Code:
Configuration management tools
Ansible: An Introduction to the Efficient Open-Source Configuration Management Tool
Ansible is a user-friendly open-source configuration management tool that provides a soft outlook and does not consume much device resources. It is among the best automation tools for DevOps, making scaling automation and improving productivity easier for DevOps teams.
Features:
- Manages configurations (or playbooks) easily via YAML.
- Useful for automating cross-platform tasks.
- Automates repetitive tasks to improve scalability, consistency, and reliability of application deployment environment.
- Manages complex deployments and speeds up development.
Puppet – A Configuration Management Tool
Puppet is an open-source tool used for delivering and managing software configurations throughout the development lifecycle. It effectively automates infrastructure management to enhance security and efficiency. Puppet is specifically designed for Linux and Windows systems and supports various platforms like mainframes, Cisco switches, and Mac OS servers. Developed in Ruby, Puppet has its domain-specific language.
Features:
– Automates configuration modifications, eliminating the need for manual script alterations.
– Encapsulates configuration details and platform differences among different OSs to simplify critical tasks.
– Comes in open-source and commercial versions, the commercial version includes reporting, orchestration, node management, role-based access control, and product support.
– Integrates easily with Git for version control.
Code: [Puppet]
Chef: An Efficient DevOps Tool
Chef is a powerful DevOps tool that simplifies the configuration and management of automation. Using the Ruby language, it facilitates the creation of a domain-specific language, leading to faster, more scalable, and consistent results. It’s ideal for deploying and managing cloud servers, storage, and software, and easily integrates with major cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. With Chef, DevOps teams can achieve better consistency and avoid making changes to thousands of servers individually, as changes made in one place will automatically reflect in others, across multiple cloud environments.
Nagios: A Popular DevOps Monitoring Tool
Nagios is a free and open-source monitoring tool used to identify and fix problems within an organization’s infrastructure. It comes in handy for large organizations that maintain a considerable amount of backend circuitry. Nagios alerts the user when something goes wrong on the backend or when a device fails, providing a downside duration chart and monitoring trends to anticipate possible failures. Its rich plugin ecosystem sets Nagios apart from other DevOps infrastructure monitoring tools.
Some of Nagios’ features include monitoring components such as applications, services, operating systems, and network protocols. It also provides downtime reasons, its duration, and events that may trigger outages. Nagios is also capable of thoroughly monitoring Java Management Extensions and identifying bottlenecks while optimizing bandwidth usage through its Network Analyzer.
Prometheus: A Performance Monitoring Tool for DevOps and IT Teams
Prometheus is an open-source performance monitoring tool that helps DevOps and IT teams to create alerts and visualizations based on time-series data. By monitoring this data, you can generate more precise alerts and insights that can lead to better engineering outcomes. This tool is open-source and community-driven, making it easy for developers and IT practitioners to tailor it for their specific needs. Prometheus supports more than ten languages and container monitoring, making it one of the best DevOps deployment tools.
Features:
– Powerful reporting capabilities with PromQL
– Flexible query language for creating tables, graphs, and alerts
– Time series data storage in memory and local disk
– Easy implementation of custom libraries
– Support for multiple modes of graphing and dashboarding
Splunk: The Monitoring and Exploring Tool
Splunk is an essential tool used for monitoring and exploring machine-generated data. It provides an excellent platform for quick and straightforward IoT integration. With Splunk, companies can easily access and analyze data to make methodical business decisions. It accepts data of any format and also provides real-time business analytics. Additionally, it enables the creation of real-time data applications to quickly aggregate, analyze, and extract value from machine data. Therefore, it is a unique tool among DevOps tools.
The Importance of DevOps Tools for Software Development
DevOps is a recent approach to software development that integrates development and operations teams to maximize the capabilities of your Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). It produces tangible benefits like increased productivity, increased transparency, and faster time to market for your products and services. To achieve these goals, it is imperative to use the right DevOps tools. At IQCode, we have compiled a list of the top DevOps tools, categorized them, and provided guidance to help you choose the right tools for your organization. Ultimately, the choice of tools depends on your goals and the resources available.
Does DevOps Require Coding?
DevOps is the collaboration between the Development and Operations teams. Basic knowledge of coding is essential for a career in DevOps. While you may not require a high level of coding skills, having a coding background is beneficial, as several DevOps tools require writing queries and code in specific languages.
// Sample code for writing queries in a DevOps tool
DevOps Best Practices
For DevOps, there are various best practices to follow, including:
- Continuous Development
- Continuous Integration
- Continuous Deployment
- Delivery and Automated Testing
- Application Monitoring, etc.
These practices help to ensure the efficient and effective development, deployment, and monitoring of software applications.
DevOps Lifecycle
The DevOps lifecycle involves continuous software development, testing, integration, deployment, and monitoring. The goal is to optimize development processes within organizations from start to finish, promoting continuous development.
// Sample code or further explanations can be added here
Example of DevOps
DevOps aims to bridge the gap between development and operations teams. It involves collaboration between the two teams during the entire software development lifecycle. Popular DevOps tools such as Docker, Kubernetes, Jenkins, and Git are used for development, testing, deployment, and operations.
//example code demonstrating DevOps collaboration
def deploy():
git.pull()
docker.build()
kubernetes.deploy()
Additional Resources
For helpful information regarding DevOps, check out the following:
DevOps Interview Questions
DevOps Engineer Skills
DevOps Projects
DevOps Engineer Salary
Who is a DevOps Engineer?
DevOps Engineer Resume
DevOps Principles
DevOps vs SRE
