12/01/2017

Important Aspects Of DevOps Automation

By Janet Jackson


Defining DevOps ranges differently from one organization to another. Some firms execute it as a practice while others absorb it as a movement or culture. However, each institution has to execute some changes while changing from the conventional software development culture to one practitioner to another. Some organizations implement theirs as a practice whereas others DevOps Automation. They too have to create an environment where every software development activities are integrated seamlessly into a single cycle.

This can be achieved by ensuring that the code is always in a deployable state even when multiple developers make changes on a continuous basis. Thus, it enables faster and more effective application rollouts with shorter release cycles. The need of the hour for enterprises is shorter release cycles and quality products that are easier with this methodology. Most enterprises and organizations are aligning towards it as it is a preferred philosophy being used with agile software development.

Test Automation- While implementing this, the practitioner needs to ensure that all testing activities are aligned to a single cycle. The organization must explore ways to automate all the test cases and achieve 100% test coverage. It needs to automate both pre-testing and post-testing activities to facilitate continuous integration and delivery. Hence, the enterprise needs to invest in robust software testing frameworks and tools to automate the entire testing process and run the tests repeatedly throughout the DevOps cycle.

Continuous Integration- It emphasizes on the continuous and rapid delivery of software applications. To facilitate faster delivery of software modules, the practitioner must facilitate continuous integration (CI). CI will enable QA professionals to perform unit tests regularly to evaluate the quality of code being added to the centralized code base on a daily basis. They can further get the bugs or defects identified through unit testing fixed immediately by coordinating with programmers.

SaltStack: This is a remote execution tool and configuration management system that allows users to run commands on different machines along with a targeting system. This makes Salt a multitasking system that can be used to solve multiple problems in an infrastructure.

Three Accelerators for this Process i. E. People, Process and Tools: In addition to the culture change the three accelerators includes people, a proper process to be in place and there is need for automation tools that may consist of the open source or licensed tools. In addition, it substantiates a need for a cultural change, a figurative environment set-up, configuration, monitoring, automation techniques for deployment and continuous testing that helps achieve collaborative development and ensures faster time to market.

Likewise, they need to perform compatibility testing to check how the application works with other devices, operating systems, and browsers. The QA professionals also need to perform elaborate usability testing to check if the application is simple and easy to use. An enterprise has to provide robust tools to enable QA professionals to perform compatibility, usability, and performance testing repeatedly throughout the cycle.

Understand the Important Patterns: There are basically four areas with respect to its patterns such as Extend development into production, Create production feedback into development, Embed development into IT operations and lastly Embed IT operations into development. All these patterns are useful as they ensure production readiness of the code and environment. Further, helps to create re-usable user stories for the IT operations and even defines the non-functional requirements that can be used across the process.




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