Understanding the interplay between best practices and the tool chain
DevOps is gaining traction as a software development
methodology. Though it may not be the right fit for every development
organization, the idea of collaboration between developers (Dev) and IT
operations (Ops), as well as testers, solves a lot of problems inherent in
organizations that must release code in rapid cycles. It’s pretty intuitive.
Who wouldn’t want better coordination and tighter, more productive connections
between the people who develop code and those responsible for testing and
making it work in the real world?
Making DevOps pay off can be a little tricky, however. Return
on the investment (ROI) in DevOps derives a combination of faster rollout of
quality code to customers, increased productivity in both Dev and Ops teams, as
well as potential labor cost savings across the entire process. To realize
these outcomes, it is necessary to keep quite a few moving parts running in a
coherent structure. In our experience, getting to success with DevOps involves mastering
the methodology itself with best practices as well as the tool chain that is
used for its implementation.
The need to align practices with the tool chain makes DevOps
different from other IT paradigms, where the methodology and tools can be
distinct. An organization can pursue cloud computing, big data or event-driven
architecture, to name a few popular trends, and get away with selecting any
number of tools to get the job done. DevOps is different. In DevOps,
practices and tooling are deeply intertwined. The unique nature of software
(it either works or it doesn’t) and the fragile connections between distributed
stakeholders put pressure on tools to make practices work.
For the last several months, we have been working with DevOps
teams at Fortune 500 companies as well as those at lean start-ups. The
challenges of implementing Continuous Delivery in these demanding environments
have shaped our thinking and influenced the functionality we offer in our full
stack CloudMunch DevOps platform. Channeling Marshall MacLuhan, we have come
to see that the tooling is the practice and the practice is the
tooling, so to speak. The following aspects DevOps show the value of this
fusion between best practices and tool chain:
Making early, instant feedback available in a single pane
of glass for all roles
Figure 1: DevOps dashboard for cross team data viewing
DevOps is based on collaboration between developers and operations
teams. This represents a cultural shift for larger teams, where it has been
historically difficult to get everyone to share goals and metrics. When it
works, though, people get more productive and agile. Developers, testers,
product managers and system engineers all deliver great results and see
improvement in the qualities of their work lives. Collaboration becomes the
norm of the work culture. The only way to ensure that every developer, tester,
and system engineer is a high performer is to make sure they get early and
instant feedback. When a developer pushes code into the repository, he or she
should get immediate feedback on that it. A product manager needs to be able to
create a sandbox to show the new feature to business stakeholders to get feedback on day one. System engineers have to be
able to simulate new features in a production environment while the code is still
in development.
Bringing early, instant feedback practice to life involves
tooling. The tooling is the practice, in three senses: There has to be
ongoing intelligence of the code in development. Operational intelligence and an
automated dashboard for analytics are also essential. Development and
operational tools should be configured to generate metrics. For example, a
Continuous Integration tool could record when a build occurred, how many tests
ran, how long the tests ran, whether the build was successful, how many tests
were successful, which files are frequently changing and so on. This data can
then be analyzed and displayed in automated dashboards. Operational
intelligence is an aspect of application and infrastructure monitoring. It
provides a mechanism feedback across all functions and roles in a single
dashboard so that everyone can see it and act upon it as needed. Analytics and
an automated dashboard provide real-time insight to the entire team across
roles so that they can get early and instant feedback on all aspects of their
respective tasks. If done right, the result is a productive, efficient DevOps
team.
One-Click Access to the Entire Application Lifecycle
With DevOps, collaboration needs to be seamless across Dev and
Ops teams. It has to function smoothly across the entire application delivery
value chain. Good DevOps starts with setting up automated processes and systems
for Integrated Configuration Management, Continuous Integration, Automated
Testing, Deployment Planning, Infrastructure Provisioning, Continuous
Deployment, Integrated Change Management and Monitoring. These practices are
inextricably linked to tooling. The practice is the tooling.
It essential to integrate all these tools in a full stack
DevOps platform so that everyone shares common tooling and won’t need to hand
off artifacts between teams and risk creating gaps. It means testing and
deploying application code and infrastructure code in the same pipeline. Productivity
and quality problems inevitably arise when DevOps teams create a patchwork of
mixed toolsets. Things may work well at first, but as scale and complexity
grows, the tool chain starts to break and ceases to provide the visibility and
metrics the team needs to make better decisions. Making things worse, scale and
complexity typically trend up with the success of the Continuous Delivery model.
Figure 2: An integrated toolchain ensures seamless handoff
Multiple deployments every day are not uncommon as new features
are released. As DevOps flourishes, the business gets used to more innovation
from IT and the cycle grows more intense. This is known as having a rapid
innovation culture. It arises when DevOps best practices and the tool chain are
one. Having a fully integrated DevOps tool chain with one-click access to the
entire application lifecycle has been proven to help teams scale effortlessly.
Develop and run seamlessly
Applications have to be designed to morph with business
needs. This best practice is the essence of DevOps, one that is realized
through the tool chain. A company may start with an application running in a
public cloud but soon needs to move it behind the firewall or have the back end
moved to a big data platform and so forth. When a DevOps team starts
developing applications, it usually has a target environment in mind. However,
the best practice is to ensure that there is flexibility in both development
and runtime environments so the application can change as the business evolves.
For instance, the team might use a public PaaS today but tomorrow it will need
to shift to an internal private cloud.
Tooling the DevOps team for
flexibility involves elastic provisioning of systems for Contiguous
Integration, automated testing, deployment and production environments. The
tooling is the practice. It is imperative to have the flexibility to
develop/test/run in any environment seamlessly.
Figure 3: Enable provisioning to anywhere
The only way to do this is to provision the infrastructure
and tool chain anywhere and carry the application stack across these
environments. Projects and profiles can be tracked and versioned so that
previously configured systems can be re-created with a single click to easily
test new code, revert to previous configurations, and compare system versions.
A fully searchable repository must be available to facilitate standardization
and reuse.
DevOps ROI: Making the Tooling and the Practice One and
the Same
The DevOps platform is the connection between the tool
chain, best practices and DevOps ROI. In the case of CloudMunch, we enable
the DevOps team to plug a large number of different development tools, PaaS
platforms and production environments into the core platform. Centralized as a
platform but multi-faceted as the team requires, CloudMunch gives each
participant access to, and the ability to give, instant feedback on any aspect
of the process. Integrated across Dev and Ops teams, CloudMunch provides that
sought-after one-click access to the entire application lifecycle. CloudMunch
is also built for the flexible movement of applications between diverse
production environments. All three of these practices enabled through tooling
drive efficiency and productivity, which in turn leads to the kind of rapid
deployment and low cost DevOps that the methodology promises.
To learn more about DevOps ROI, read the full whitepaper.
