Boost Your Software Development with the Top DevOps Tools

Quick Summary: DevOps is a blend of tools and techniques that helps in transforming application development by enabling quality outputs at a faster rate. This blog post has a curated list and comparison of the best DevOps tools published in the year 2023 based on your requirements.

What are DevOps Tools? 

DevOps tools are essential in organizations that work on Software-as-a-Service and other projects. The intention of DevOps tools is to make operations better for both the developers and the users. They help with process integration, platform development, and process automation, which in turn make the complete SLDC model of DevOps more efficient.

The value of DevOps tools in providing a reliable and efficient environment cannot be overstated. Creating an automation-driven continuous feedback loop that reduces the time to deliver changes dramatically within production is the essence of the DevOps philosophy. A more collaborative alliance between development and operations teams encourages transparency, which results in better product quality and overall efficiency.

Best DevOps Tools 

Jenkins: 

Jenkins is an open-source and cross-platform Continuous Integration and Delivery tool written in Java. It enables you to automate your software delivery cycle. Using Jenkins, you can build, test, and deploy applications. The tool offers hundreds of features and plugins that are compatible with other popular DevOps tools such as GitHub, Pipelines, Nagios, JIRA Cloud, Hipchat, Skype for Business, Slack, etc. Jenkins supports a large community of users who often contribute by submitting new plugins and adding features to the main codebase.

CircleCI: 

CircleCI is an automated continuous integration and continuous deployment platform for software projects. It provides fast, secure, and highly scalable builds. Its continuous delivery (CD) capability lets you deploy new code from every GitHub push, automatically building your project and running your tests to ensure it’s ready to be shipped.

Bamboo: 

Bamboo is a continuous integration tool that automates the delivery pipeline for software developers. It offers time-saving pre-built features and eliminates manual configuration like Jenkins. Bamboo allows you to set triggers, and dependencies, build plans, and allocate resources for mission-critical builds and deployments.

AWS CodePipeline: 

Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers a comprehensive suite of technologies and services for building, testing, and deploying applications. AWS CodePipeline, a commercial continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) tool, helps product development teams automate workflow automation to streamline product development and delivery. By integrating with various AWS tools, CodePipeline simplifies cloud pipeline setup and deployment. However, familiarity with AWS services is key to using CodePipeline’s full features.

Bitbucket: 

Bitbucket is a cloud-based source code management and collaboration platform for developers. A robust offering, Bitbucket also boasts an intuitive interface that enables developers to create, commit, and submit changes quickly and efficiently. Utilizing Git technology, which allows for data to be synced bidirectionally between multiple working environments, Bitbucket makes it easy for enterprises to manage and implement technical projects that require multiple users to simultaneously collaborate.

Git: 

Git is a powerful SCM (Software Configuration Management) solution that helps teams develop projects efficiently. It acts as a shared database, ensuring each developer has the latest changes available. It also lets you edit file contents without having to download an entire project again. Being a distributed solution, Git allows working on projects and sharing work with team members from anywhere, including machines that are offline.

Mercurial: 

Mercurial is user-friendly and capable of supporting large-scale projects. It rapidly handles branching, merging, development, and code review processes to ensure projects are always on target. Mercurial is an obvious choice for organizations seeking a cost-effective software development solution.

Puppet: 

Puppet is a configuration management tool that has been around since 2005 and has since become one of the most popular open-source DevOps tools, with over 4,000 contributors. Initially known for being a server-side systems management tool, it now comes with a dashboard to help users manage the entire application lifecycle (build and server management) on a single platform, thereby making it a one-stop shop for DevOps enthusiasts.

Chef: 

Chef is an open-source software framework that allows you to manage your infrastructure as code. It makes it easier to deploy and update applications and services while automating operations like security audits and compliance. Chef works through a client-server model, with all nodes building the server’s desired state through a push model, where each node is constantly updating itself based on a predefined recipe. Furthermore, Chef provides a mechanism for using community–developed cookbooks to streamline configuration management of machine environments.

Apache Maven: 

Maven is an open-source build automation tool that is widely used in the Java community. The framework was created by Apache Software Foundation and aims at simplifying the development, management, and publishing of projects. Maven uses a project object model (POM) for a consistent build order, resulting in faster builds and fewer configuration errors. It also promotes convention over configuration by defaulting to common best practices for a project’s architecture. The tool was designed to follow the principles of Convention Over Configuration and to be “a building tool, not a scripting language.

Docker:

Docker is a command line tool and a set of integrated tools to create, control, and manage Linux containers. It can be used to run existing containers or images, or any application packaged into a container. It also manages these containers through orchestration and scheduling services.

Conclusion  

The DevOps industry has gained major momentum in the past few years. With the fast-changing market and exponential growth in demand for automation and continuous integration, most organizations are building their teams to keep up with continuous release cycles. If you’re a developer who wants to move into a DevOps role or if you’re a full-time DevOps engineer, your first step before you think about learning new tools is to make sure that you’ve got a good piece of arsenal in place. If you’re a business owner looking to navigate your DevOps journey successfully, consider collaborating with seasoned DevOps experts such as Brain Inventory. Their expertise can help you achieve optimal results efficiently and swiftly.