Cloud DevOps

We all know that DevOps has taken a center stage in the world of software development and every company today is embracing this path to achieve zero-touch automation and win in the game called competition. DevOps is a set of practices, tools, and mainly a philosophy, which focuses on automating and integrating the development and operations team so they can collaborate and work on delivering software smoothly. 

DevOps aims for team empowerment, cross-team communication and collaboration, and technology automation. In simple layman terms, the word DevOps is a combination of development and operations, which indicates the process of integrating the cultural disciplines into a single continuous process.

How DevOps works?

A DevOps team consists of the software developers and IT operations people, who work together throughout the product lifecycle to increase the speed and quality of software deployment.

The devs write the code and share it in a code repository, which gets triggered, and the build process is carried out with a CI tool and then comes the release management phase where the working code is tested on different environments such as Dev, QA, and Staging to see everything is working fine. This is where Ops come into play. Finally, when everything seems to be working fine, the code is pushed to the production but only after the review and approval processes.

In the DevOps model, the software development and IT operations teams work together as a single unit in which the engineers work across the entire application lifecycle from development and test to deployment, operations, and also have a range of multidisciplinary skills. The DevOps teams use tools to automate processes and improve the reliability of the system maintaining services to be highly available at any given moment. A DevOps toolchain helps teams to handle CI/CD, automation, and collaboration.

With more focus on security these days, it is considered an integral part of the software development lifecycle, starting from code repository to production, and this new concept of embedding security is known as DevSecOps.

Due to the continuous nature of DevOps, teams use the infinity loop to represent the phases of the DevOps lifecycle related to each other. The loop represents constant collaboration and iterative improvement throughout the entire SDLC.

The DevOps lifecycle consists of six phases, which represent the processes, capabilities, and tools needed for development and operations. In every phase, the teams collaborate and communicate to maintain orientation, velocity, and quality.

Image credits: Atlassian

Following are the six phases of the DevOps lifecycle:

• Plan

This is the first phase where all the planning happens. The DevOps team and all the related stake holders decide on the features expected and delivery time for each. The DevOps teams tend to use agile practices here to increase speed and quality. An agile methodology is an iterative approach to project management and software development, which helps teams to divide work into smaller pieces to deliver incremental value.

• Code and Build

This is where you build software by merging different branches and code written by your developers before CI/CD. You can use Git for this phase, which is a free and open-source version control system. It provides support for branching, merging, and rewriting repository history, which helps for innovative and better workflows and tools for the development build process.

• Continuous integration and deployment

The continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) enables teams to release quality software and features frequently from the source code repository to the production with automated workflows. 

The main functions of teams are:

• Merge code changes
• Deploy feature flags
• Incorporate end-to-end testing
• Monitor and alert

In this phase, you can identify and resolve problems, which impact product uptime, speed, and functionality. There are many monitoring tools out there that can help you with providing real-time analytics on what’s happening with your systems and pipeline in a single pane of glass. In case of any disturbance, an alert is sent to the teams through chatops systems like Slack or email. 

• Operate

In this phase, you can achieve the end-to-end delivery of IT services to the customers. It includes the practices involved in the design, implementation, configuration, deployment, and maintenance of all the IT infrastructure, which supports an organization’s services. This is a complete operating phase of the system. 

• Continuous feedback

The DevOps teams must examine each release and create reports to improve planned features and releases. You can gather continuous feedback to improve the processes and incorporate client feedback for future releases.

The top cloud providers for DevOps

In this section, we will talk about the three major cloud providers ruling the cloud-native space – Amazon web services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.

AWS (Amazon Web Services)

Amazon Web Services is one of the most trusted cloud providers with a comprehensive collection of cloud-based products with varying capabilities depending on the clients’ needs. AWS offers highly thought-after tools and solutions that help enterprises move fast with high scalability, lower IT and infrastructure costs. The tools and solutions provided by AWS include developer tools, computing power, databases, AI-based cloud solutions along with IoT and ML, storage capabilities, analytics, networking, managed services, security applications, etc.

Google Cloud

Google Cloud Platform is referred to as one of the highly efficient cloud providers today. It has a lot to offer when it comes to developer efficient tools, networking, big data, machine learning capabilities, and IoT. There are more than 90 services that GCP offers and that’s a huge list that cannot be explained here hence we will talk about only the notable products and services. 

Azure Microsoft

Microsoft Azure provides the modern toolsets with flexible offerings for developers ranging from computing power, efficient networking and storage capabilities, analytics, and big data for modern enterprises. Most of the fortune 500 companies have set their heavy workloads to run on Azure. Once you subscribe to Azure, you will have access to all the services added in the Azure portal.

Which cloud provider to consider?

There is no one answer to this question. All three – AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure are the best cloud technology for DevOps. Although, selecting the best cloud technology for DevOps depends on the current market, what challenges you are trying to solve as a company, and cost feasibility.

Cloud engineer vs. DevOps engineer differences

• Both Cloud engineers and DevOps engineers are essential components of the Cloud environment, but they differ in their responsibilities and scope of work. Cloud engineers focus on building and operating infrastructure, while DevOps resources are dedicated to developing, testing, and automating tools and processes.
• Cloud engineers work on behalf of a company to develop cloud systems. In contrast, DevOps engineers ensure more streamlined development and publication of a company’s software products and services, including cloud services. Cloud engineers use their skills and expertise to judge which services to take on and avoid and are responsible for establishing best practices in software engineering, DevOps, and SRE. DevOps engineers support cloud development and frequently work on online applications and downloadable software.
• In DevOps, development and operations engineers work as part of a team to bridge the gap between development, management, and other aspects of the cycle and ensure the continuous delivery of high-quality software. DevOps engineers are responsible for implementing the changes; conversely, cloud engineers focus mainly on the operations tasks to manage cloud infrastructure, administration, and operating with public cloud systems. 
• AWS cloud engineers are a new generation of business engineers who started their careers at AWS, and they are doing very well. In the case of Azure, however, it is various Microsoft product administrators who have switched to cloud-based services. Job growth among cloud engineers is lower than among DevOps engineers. As demand for DevOps / SRE cloud engineers grows faster than their actual availability, they are gaining the upper hand when it comes to selecting their next job. 

Difference between Cloud Engineer and DevOps Engineer [In a chart format]

Today, every company is considered as a software company and it has become a must for companies to adopt to the cloud to thrive in this highly competitive world to deliver the products and services with speed, high quality, and in a much reliable fashion. Like we discussed in the sections above, the cloud has a lot to offer whether you choose AWS, Azure, or GCP. Developers these days are required to acquire not just the programming skills but also the know-how of different cloud-native tools such as Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, Helm, etc to grow in their career.