In the past, development and operations teams worked separately in a siloed manner, but DevOps has become a great way to link the two together effectively. It employs the "pipeline" concept, aggregating necessary tools and unifying workflows of development and operations. With this approach, each team knows about the processes of the other team, making cooperation easier and improving quality.
With the introduction of DevOps, development teams created pipelines using different tools, but when a new one was introduced, the need to rebuild the pipeline arose, reducing efficiency. The solution to the issue was to bunch various pipeline components in containers.
A container is a digital solution that packages code and interdependencies required to run an app in any environment. The modular infrastructure of microservices in containers allows enterprises to set up flexible pipelines with minimum effort.
How does containerization help in DevOps?
Containerization is a process whereby the software and its related environment are packaged in a container, making deployment faster and improving patching and scaling. Containers employ 'runtime engines' and share the operating system they are deployed upon, providing required computational resources.
Using the engines leads to faster start-up, increased server and storage capabilities since the engines are only a few megabytes, compared to virtual machines, which need around eight gigabytes of storage. So containers are a DevOps-friendly solution, providing the user with greater security and scalability.
Container orchestration systems like Docker and Kubernetes are used to manage the container clusters, and below we will see how this approach could be helpful for DevOps.
What is Docker, and why use it for better DevOps?
Docker is a cloud-native containerization platform containing the application and its related functionalities. Being a popular Platform As A Service (PAAS), it uses virtualization and runs software in containers, making it easier to create and deploy apps. Docker's main advantages are increased productivity, rapid deployment, and faster and simpler configurations.
Docker is handy in DevOps because it helps to remedy many issues that development and operations teams face during the software development process. It allows control changes and streamlines operations. Docker helps create a single package of the application, its libraries and configuration files, control different versions of the application, and move through different environments without customization changes.
The way Kubernetes transforms infrastructure
Kubernetes is one of DevOps' most sought-after container orchestration tools to deploy applications to clusters and run them on-premises or in a cloud. Kubernetes ensures the same behavior of applications and infrastructure, automating the processes and removing the need to configure separate software parts.
Kubernetes distinctly separates operation infrastructure and deploying applications, enabling IT experts to concentrate on handling the clusters and other tasks like performance management, monitoring utilities and environment, failure recovery, and security. In contrast, application teams can pay more attention to creating container images or organizing resource configurations.
What benefits does Kubernetes bring to DevOps?
Eliminates downtime for deployment
Developers may deploy updates to the cloud-based applications without downtime using Kubernetes. The automation of rollback and rolling updates ensure trouble-free deploying updates. In addition, Kubernetes could be used to redirect traffic to other available microservices by updating one cluster at a time.
Scalability
Scaling applications up and down becomes enormously easy with Kubernetes autonomous ecosystem since it is conducted based on demand and available resources. Moreover, the process is automated with the Horizontal Pod Autoscaler saving resources and ensuring appropriate utilization.
Infrastructure as code
Developers may use Kubernetes to set up the 'infrastructure as code' and tweak programming environment configurations as code. There is no need to execute scripts continuously to deploy a new environment, and the source repository with its configuration files may be connected to Kubernetes.
Multifaceted collaboration
Kubernetes makes cooperation less complicated using role-based access controls, whereby different parties do not mingle in other processes. For example, testers only gain access to builds and related functionalities, while customers cannot monitor process or deployment execution.
