How To Build A Scalable DevOps Pipeline From Scratch
In today’s digitally competitive tech environment, launching any new app or service-based product is just the beginning of a never-ending journey of writing and deploying code. Modern tech users are impatient and easily influenced to try something new—if an app or SaaS product doesn’t work as expected. They would switch to a competitor in a fraction of a second just as easily. This is why development teams around the world continually roll out updates, patches, bug fixes, and new features to keep their users engaged and their expectations satisfied. While operations teams have their hands full making sure that new code works properly before deploying updates to the product for the end user, the process needs to be managed efficiently, to eliminate bugs and even downtime, the two very things the users hate!
With the evolving technology, most tech companies would be familiar with DevOps—a term created from combining “development” and “operations”. However, many assume that DevOps is an expensive journey that requires costly tools and infrastructure. But you will be surprised to know that you can build professional-grade pipelines using efficient resources and deliver reliable, high-quality applications at speed. This article explores what a DevOps pipeline is and how to build one effectively!
What is a DevOps Pipeline?
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A DevOps pipeline is built by the software engineering team with the help of a set of tools and automated processes to deliver quality code more quickly. They compile, build, and deploy code, building an effective DevOps pipeline and enabling companies to develop, test, and deploy new code and modify and upgrade existing ones consistently. The major requirements of a DevOps pipeline are to eliminate manual intervention by automating the end-to-end software delivery process. Being time-consuming and risking the potential for human error, manual processes often delay deployments. The transition from manual to automated processes not only eliminates the chances of errors but also allows developers to roll out higher-quality code faster than ever before!
Components of a DevOps Pipeline
There are numerous elements and tools that organizations can use to create a customized DevOps pipeline that is tailored to their requirements. Common pipeline components facilitate continuous delivery, ensuring code develops seamlessly from different stages and automates the entire process to minimize manual work.
- Continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD): CI/CD helps organizations to improve their software quality and eliminate repetitive tasks by automating procedures such as tests, security scans, and deployments. CI allows integration of small portions of new code from multiple developers into a unified repository after testing the code for errors to identify bugs in the early stages, making it easier to fix them. CD incorporates code changes after receiving feedback to ensure the code is tested and ready for deployment in the production environment, reducing the overall time and cost of a project.
- Continuous Testing (CT): CT allows developers to automate tests at every stage of the development process. A good quality CT strategy allows quick evaluations of risk related to any piece of code to be verified as production-ready at any stage of the pipeline. Tests begin to run automatically once code is integrated and produce more reliable results at speed.
- Continuous Monitoring: As the name suggests, continuous monitoring tracks application performance, detects issues in real time, and helps achieve faster releases. Far from traditional approaches, it provides continuous information that allows teams to minimize downtime and maintain a seamless user experience.
- Continuous Feedback: Once code is successfully deployed, continuous feedback indicates the reactions and impact the release had on end users. By automating feedback, the company gains valuable insights into how users react to the new release. If critical issues are discovered, a continuous feedback cycle allows for quick fixes by the development teams.
- Continuous Operations: The goal of continuous operations is to eliminate the need for planned downtime, minimizing interruption to the end users. Continuous operations might be a costly endeavor, but it may be worthwhile, considering its advantages and its impact on user experience.
How to Build a DevOps Pipeline From Scratch?
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Implementing a streamlined DevOps pipeline that functions seamlessly is a crucial factor that facilitates rapid deployments and quality applications. Common steps to achieve a strong DevOps pipeline are establishing a CI/CD tool, creating a control environment, setting up a build server, automating testing, and deploying the code to production.
Step 1: Establish CI/CD Tool
For companies just getting started on building a DevOps pipeline, the most important step of the pipeline is to pick a CI/CD tool to get the process up and running. With the needs and requirements varying for each company, the choice of tools will depend on the objectives set by the organization, so not every tool will be right for every situation. While there might be many CI/CD tools available, such as Jenkins, GitLab, CircleCI, Spinnaker, Argo CD, etc. Jenkins is one of the most commonly used. Featuring numerous plugins and tools, it can easily be customized to work for many different applications.
Step 2: Source a Control Environment
Organizations working with large development teams need a control simulation to store, share, and test their code. This helps prevent merge conflicts with the main codebase and allows the creation of different versions of code for the app or software. Git is commonly used for this purpose, along with other tools like GitLab and BitBucket. Source control management tools allow effective collaboration with team members from around the world, storing code from each developer in a separate shared repository.
Step 3. Set up a Build Server
The next crucial step in building an efficient DevOps pipeline is setting up a build server. It acts as a stable and centralized environment for distributed software development projects. Build servers not only retrieve and roll back integrated code from source code repositories, but they also provide a clean environment to test the code and ensure it works. Companies can choose from various build servers such as Jenkins, TeamCity, Travis-CI, and go.cd.
Step 4. Build Automation Tools for Testing
Once the code is configured on the build server, it’s time to test it! There are different strategies that the companies would adopt, but they all focus on three things: Continuous Testing, Test Automation, and Continuous Monitoring. In the testing phase, developers run automated tests to ensure error-free code continues to the deployment stage. Several automated tests are performed at the testing stage, from unit and functional to integration and regression tests, and are run one after the other. TestComplete might be a good option, as it has a Jenkins plugin that enables developers to run tests, store test history, and allows you to see the results directly from Jenkins.
Step 5. Deploy to Production
This is the final stage of your pipeline – the deployment stage. This is where your software is ready to roll out for production after being tested for efficiency. Azure DevOps might be your best option as it works with the cloud and offers a centralized system to build and test the code, integrate with different repository tools, customize the code environment, and deploy the code. Companies can link this to their test builds, so that the code only runs if it has been passed and is error-free.
Ready to Create a DevOps Pipeline?
We’ve covered the key elements and tools for building an effective DevOps pipeline that automates, streamlines, and accelerates every phase of development. It is a strategic investment that can transform how you develop, test, and deploy apps or software. Achieve faster releases, better collaboration, and high-quality software that meets user expectations by adopting a well-structured DevOps pipeline!
