As DevOps continues to gain tons of momentum in the IT world, it’s time you think about how it can help your team stay on top of the digital game. But if you’re new to DevOps, it may be challenging to figure out which tools are best for your business goals and processes. We’ve compiled a list of the best and latest tools in DevOps, so you can see the ways in which each will provide faster and more reliable innovation for your team.
- Git
As one of the most popular tools in DevOps, this distributed source code management (SCM/DVCS) tool is a favorite among remote teams and open source contributors. Because it enables you to create separate branches and merge new features only when they fully ready, it’s great for experimenting. It also lets you track your progress for development work and save different versions of your source code, so you can return to them whenever you need. - Jenkins
Jenkins is great for implementing Continuous Integration (CI) process. A typical CI pipeline involves check out of code from SCM, build the code by using a build-engine (e.g. Maven, Grade, Ant, MSBuild, etc), run the unit tests, check for code quality, and install the artifacts to a binary repository (e.g. Nexus or Artifactory). Jenkins can also be used to implement Continuous Delivery (CD) which can involve manual approval of a build and then deployment to any environment on a physical machine, a VM, or a containerization solution (e.g. Docker/Kubernetes/OpenShift). Jenkins is also very well-known for its huge plugin ecosystem with over 1,000 plugins, allowing you to integrate with almost all DevOps tools. For these reasons, Jenkins is the go-to automation tool for many software development teams. - Puppet
Puppet is an open-source (a paid enterprise edition is also available), cross-platform tool that helps you deliver software quicker and more securely by automating infrastructure management. Puppet is a very useful configuration management tool which allows you to use Infrastructure-as-Code concept to install and configure the software. This includes inspecting, delivering and operating your software across the entire lifecycle, allowing you to manage multiple teams and an endless number of resources. By understanding the relationships within your infrastructure, Puppet will not only help identify a failed configuration but also skip all dependent configurations as well. - Chef
You can transform infrastructure into code using this powerful configuration automation tool. Chef is very easy to integrate with other cloud-based platforms and ensures all your configuration policies are versionable, flexible, and testable. This tool handles machine set up on physical servers, virtual machines, and in the cloud to ensure all the files and software they expect on these machines are present and working as intended. - Ansible
Ansible provides one of the simplest ways to automate your apps and IT infrastructures, including configuring networks, deploying within the cloud, and creating development environments. This open-source configuration management tool is similar to Puppet and Chef but boasts even more simplicity. It uses agentless architecture, meaning information is transmitted to or collected from computers using the software already installed on the computer without the need of proprietary agents. The resulting benefit is simplified management and large productivity gains for a variety of automation challenges.
- Docker
Since its launch in 2013, Docker has been the top container platform with continuous improvement ever since. It’s made distributed development possible by isolating applications into separate containers, so they are portable and much more secure. With Docker, developers can package all dependencies into the app’s container and ship it all at once as an independent unit. - Nagios
This powerful open-source monitoring tool enables organizations to find and resolve IT infrastructure problems before they can affect crucial business processes. You can keep records of events and failures while observing different trends through Nagios’ reporting to help you predict any errors or threats in advance. It also has a very rich plugin ecosystem, which also includes add-ons, tutorials, translations and more. - Splunk
Splunk is a software platform that converts machine data from websites, applications, sensors, etc. into valuable information for developers. It collects data in a multiple file format from which it then uses to create knowledge objects for operational intelligence. Its features are most beneficial for small IT environments.
Determining the best DevOps tools for your team will require some experimentation, but the first step is having a clear understanding of how each will help you address your business needs and achieve your goals. To learn more about the latest DevOps tools and how they could help improve your processes, contact one of our experts today.
