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What is DevOps Automation? Tools, Best Practices

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Published
17th Feb, 2023
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5,812
In this article
  1. What is DevOps Automation?
  2. Which Processes to Prioritize to Achieve DevOps Automation
  3. What Does Effective DevOps Automation Look Like?
  4. Why Is Automation Important for DevOps?
  5. Need for a Unified Approach to Aggregating DevOps Toolchain Data
  6. Importance of Wrapping Up Security As an Additional Layer to DevOps Practices
  7. How to Get Started With DevOps Automation?
  8. Conclusion
  9. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
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What is DevOps Automation? Tools, Best Practices

DevOps automation has emerged as a significant trend in the technology industry in recent years. It combines development and operations teams to streamline the software delivery process. Statista claims that the global DevOps automation software budget will reach 755 billion U.S. dollars by 2023. DevOps automation enables organizations to deliver quality software products quickly and reliably by automating the development, testing, and deployment process. A DevOps Foundation Certification provides a comprehensive overview of DevOps and its underlying principles, allowing you to understand the techniques and tools used in the DevOps process. You can also learn how to implement DevOps successfully and gain practical advice on integrating DevOps into existing IT environments. In this article, we will discuss DevOps automation, the various DevOps automation tools list, its associated techniques, and how organizations can benefit from it. 

What is DevOps Automation?

DevOps automation combines software engineering and information technology practices designed to enable automation and continuous delivery of software-related products. Automation primarily aims to automate the development, testing, deploying, and monitoring of software. DevOps automation scripts are the tools used to automate the DevOps processes, allowing developers to focus on their core tasks and speed up software delivery.

These automation scripts ensure fast testing and deployment of the software in a consistent, reliable, and repeatable way. With DevOps automation, organizations can reduce their marketing duration, improve software quality, and streamline other activities. 

Which Processes to Prioritize to Achieve DevOps Automation

DevOps automation is a process that requires a set of prerequisites. Once these fulfilling requirements are addressed, automation can be easy. 

  • Utilize a DevOps automation platform: The first step in automation is to implement a DevOps automation platform. This platform should enable users to define, execute and monitor automated workflows and provide visibility into the processes.
  • Set attainable goals: The next step is to set clear goals for the automation process. It will provide the team with a roadmap to follow and help ensure the process is successful.
  • Automate frequently used processes: Once the goals have been set, it is crucial to identify which operations should be automated first. These processes used frequently impact the organization the most.
  • Test automated processes: Once identified, the team should run testing to ensure proper functioning. One can do the testing regularly to ensure that the DevOps test automation process runs perfectly. 
  • Monitor and adapt automated processes: After they have been implemented and tested, monitoring them and making adjustments as needed is imperative. Carrying out this process ensures that the process produces effective results.
  • Track and Report automated processes: Finally, the team should track and report on the progress of the automation process. It will provide visibility into the process and help identify areas for improvement. 
  • Utilize Continuous Integration (CI): CI combines all the code written by the development team into a single main source code repository. It helps developers quickly identify and fix any errors or bugs that may arise in the code.
  • Use Continuous Delivery (CD): CD includes delivering software to users and customers with fast, reliable, and consistent delivery. It helps organizations ensure that their software is always up-to-date and working as expected.
  • Utilize infrastructure as Code: Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is a process that helps organizations quickly deploy, configure, and manage their IT infrastructure. It helps organizations reduce costs and time by automating IT infrastructure management tasks.

By prioritizing these processes, organizations can achieve DevOps automation, enabling them to deliver quality software at scale quickly. 

What Does Effective DevOps Automation Look Like?

DevOps automation is becoming increasingly important in the software development landscape as technology and development tools continue to evolve. 

New developments, such as containerization and Infrastructure-as-Code, are making DevOps automation more accessible and powerful. Containerization allows developers to quickly and easily package and deploy applications in a standardized way, making deployment faster and more reliable.

Meanwhile, Infrastructure-as-Code enables developers to easily configure and deploy software applications in an automated manner, reducing development and maintenance costs. 

In addition to these new developments, organizations should leverage DevOps Automation tools such as Puppet, Chef DevOps, and Ansible. These tools enable organizations to automate deployment, configuration, and testing processes, allowing them to work quickly and efficiently to deliver applications. 

Finally, organizations should ensure that their DevOps Automation processes are well-documented and well-tested. It ensures that the automation process runs smoothly and can handle any changes that may occur over time. By following these simple steps, organizations can ensure that DevOps Automation is as efficient as possible. 

Why Is Automation Important for DevOps?

Automation forms an integral part of the DevOps environment by ensuring better workflow in the system. Moreover, the DevOps system allows for more profitable integration and facilitates the automation of standard tasks. In addition, the DevOps environment employs improvement and monitoring for overall management. 

DevOps Automation Benefits

Automation is critical to DevOps' success, enabling organizations to rapidly deliver software and services while maintaining control, quality, and reliability. Here are the benefits of using DevOps automation software: 

  1. Improved accuracy and quality: Automation helps improve the accuracy and quality of software products as it eliminates manual errors that can occur when tasks are performed manually.
  2. Increased efficiency and productivity: It streamlines processes, thereby increasing the efficiency and productivity of DevOps teams and processes.
  3. Reduced time to market: Automation reduces the marketing time for new products and features, as automated ones can replace manual processes.
  4. Increased scalability: It assists DevOps in teaming up and scaling quickly and efficiently, as they can quickly add new resources and capabilities as needed.
  5. Improved collaboration: It helps DevOps teams to collaborate more effectively, as they can share resources, processes, and results more quickly.
  6. Improved security: It improves the security of applications and systems by automating the detection and response to security threats.
  7. Cost savings: Automation can lower the costs associated with DevOps teams and processes by eliminating the need to adopt manual practices.

Need for a Unified Approach to Aggregating DevOps Toolchain Data

DevOps is a complex process that requires a variety of tools to be used to be successful. However, each tool has its data format and structure, making it challenging to aggregate and analyze the data from all of the tools in a unified way.

A unified approach to aggregating DevOps toolchain data would allow organizations to compare and correlate data from different tools more quickly, enabling them to understand their DevOps process and make more informed decisions.

Importance of Wrapping Up Security As an Additional Layer to DevOps Practices

Enabling security as a protective layer is essential to ensure that all applications, data, and systems are secure and protected from malicious actors. By establishing security processes and procedures, organizations can protect their infrastructure from potential threats and vulnerabilities.

Implementing these processes helps organizations identify and mitigate potential risks and build secure applications. Security processes should be embedded into DevOps practices, allowing for a secure development lifecycle. Furthermore, security should be an integral part of the development process, ensuring that developers are aware of the security implications of their code. 

How to Get Started With DevOps Automation?

To get started with DevOps automation, you should first identify the tasks that need to be automated and the processes that can be improved. Let's discuss how it's done. 

  1. Identify the current state of your DevOps environment: Before you can begin automating your DevOps process, you need to understand your existing domain clearly. Examine the tools, techniques, and people involved in your current DevOps flow.
  2. Pinpoint the areas of your DevOps process that can be automated: Once you understand your current environment, you can identify areas that can benefit from automation. Consider which activities can be automated and how automation may improve the process. Additionally, consider the amount of time it might save.
  3. Choose the right tools for the job: The appropriate automation tools are essential for successful DevOps automation. Take into account the type of tasks you need to automate, the DevOps automation platform you are using, and the cost.
  4. Build your automation pipeline: Once you have selected the right tools, you can build your DevOps automation pipeline. It includes creating your automation scripts, making the necessary infrastructure, and configuring the devices.
  5. Test and deploy your automation: Before you deploy it, you must test it to ensure it works as expected. Once you have verified that everything is functioning correctly, you can deploy your automation to production.
  6. Monitor and optimize your automation: After deploying it, you should monitor it to ensure it is running correctly and efficiently. If necessary, you can make adjustments or tweaks to optimize its performance.

Conclusion

Automation is essential for DevOps, enabling teams to quickly and efficiently deploy applications and updates to production. Furthermore, it is one of the leading skills for developers, with a whopping 25% of developers utilizing automation software. You can become a part of this progressive talent base with KnowledgeHut DevOps Foundation Certification, a program conceived to offer developers the opportunity to become well-versed in the concepts of DevOps. The certification benefits professionals looking to increase their knowledge and expertise in automation software. By opting for this certification, individuals can gain a deep understanding of DevOps, which is highly sought after in today's tech-driven world. 

The certification also includes continuous delivery, continuous integration, and configuration management, which can help developers become more productive and efficient in their roles. Upon completing the course, they will be equipped with a better understanding of DevOps and its impact on the industry and be able to make more informed decisions regarding IT projects. 

Profile

Binod Anand

Blog Author

A content marketing analyst, Binod’s area of interest is EdTech, marketing analytics, and digital marketing. He is also a professional blogger and writes extensively on skill development. His hobbies include travelling, programming, and watching sitcoms.

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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. What are the differences between DevOps and automation?

DevOps is a set of practices emphasizing automation to streamline the software delivery process, whereas automation is a process to improve or automate processes and tasks. Automation is a tool that can speed up and simplify workflows, but more is needed to replace the human collaboration and communication that is essential to successful DevOps. 

2. Does DevOps require automation?

DevOps requires automation to streamline the software development process and reduce errors. The DevOps automation scripts are an essential part of DevOps and can help make the software development process more efficient and reduce manual efforts. Developers can use automation scripts to automate processes such as deploying applications, running tests, configuring servers, and managing the entire software development lifecycle. 

3. Which tool is used for automation in DevOps?

A range of tools is used for automation in DevOps. Examples include Jenkins, Selenium, Chef DevOps, and Docker. These tools enable automated deployments, configuration management, and continuous integration. They also speed up development processes and reduce human error. 

4. Is Selenium a DevOps tool?

Selenium is not a DevOps tool but an automation tool for testing web applications. Other DevOps automation examples and tools include Puppet, Chef DevOps, Ansible, Jenkins, and SaltStack.