DevOps workflow automation: A guide to best practices
Meeting customer expectations for improved performance, extended functionality and guaranteed availability requires a streamlined development process. This is where DevOps workflow automation comes into play.
It revolutionizes how software is developed, deployed and maintained. By automating repetitive and manual tasks throughout the software development lifecycle (SDLC), organizations can achieve higher levels of productivity, reduce errors and enhance collaboration between teams.
Whether you are a seasoned DevOps practitioner or just starting to embrace the DevOps philosophy, this article will provide valuable insights to help you optimize your IT operations workflow.
What is DevOps workflow automation?
DevOps automation is the practice of automating repetitive and manual tasks in the DevOps lifecycle, including design and development, software deployment and release and monitoring.
Automating the DevOps lifecycle reduces the manual workload and:
- Reduces human error
- Increases productivity
- Hastens the lifecycle process
- Makes everyone’s job easier
To automate DevOps, you’ll need a DevOps workflow automation tool. It can help you automate various tasks and processes within the software development lifecycle (SDLC). It provides a centralized platform to streamline and orchestrate the different stages of development, deployment, testing and monitoring, enabling teams to work more efficiently and deliver high-quality software faster. But more on that later.
Let’s review some benefits of DevOps workflow automation.
The benefits of DevOps workflow automation
DevOps workflow automation offers several benefits that significantly improve the software development and delivery process.
Here are some key benefits:
1. Speed
Automation eliminates manual, repetitive tasks, reducing human error and saving time. Developers can focus on higher-value activities, such as coding and innovation, while automation takes care of routine tasks.
2. Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD)
Automation tools enable seamless integration of code changes, automated testing and deployment to production environments. Also, according to the core concepts within agile software development, CI/CD is the main component that you should automate in your organization. It covers:
- Builds
- Code commits
- Deploying packaged applications in testing or production environments
This promotes a continuous delivery pipeline, ensuring frequent and reliable releases with minimal manual intervention.
3. Consistency
Automation enforces standard practices and configurations across the development process. It eliminates inconsistencies caused by human error and ensures that deployments and environments are reproducible.
4. Compliance and security
Automation helps enforce security and compliance policies consistently across the development and deployment process. It ensures that security measures are built into the software and that compliance requirements are met during every stage of the workflow.
5. Standardization
Automation tools allow for the creation of predefined configurations and templates for various environments, infrastructure and deployment processes.
It also enables the creation of repeatable and standardized processes. Tasks previously performed manually can be automated using predefined workflows and scripts. This ensures that the same sequence of steps is followed every time, eliminating variations caused by human error.
Developers and operations teams can rely on these automated processes to consistently deliver software with predictable outcomes.
The top DevOps practices to keep in mind
Implementing best practices in DevOps workflow automation can greatly contribute to the success of your software development and delivery process.
Let’s review our top best practices your team should consider:
1. Start with a clear strategy
Development teams can automate basically everything with DevOps workflow automation software.
To start, define your automation goals and objectives. This involves identifying the specific areas within the development process that can benefit from automation. For example, teams may want to automate tasks such as code compilation, testing, deployment and infrastructure provisioning.
Your goals could include reducing manual errors, improving release frequency, enhancing collaboration between development and operations teams or ensuring consistent and repeatable processes. Whatever makes your team’s job easier.
Defining automation goals also helps in prioritizing tasks and determining the scope of automation. Teams can focus on high-impact areas that provide significant value when automated.
Not all processes need to be automated. Identify the critical and repetitive tasks that can benefit the most from automation.
2. Design for modularity and reusability
Design automation workflows and scripts in a modular and reusable manner. This allows for flexibility and scalability as your software development process evolves.
Create reusable components that can be easily integrated into different workflows. For instance, instead of building a separate automation script for each specific task or scenario, identify common tasks or functionalities that can be abstracted into reusable modules.
With continuous integration and deployment, you can create a modular script that handles the compilation, testing and packaging of your application. This script can be designed to work with different programming languages and frameworks, allowing it to be reused across multiple projects.
Let’s consider a scenario where you have a web application built with Node.js and you want to automate the build and deployment process.
- Compilation module: The compilation module can include installing dependencies, transpiling or bundling source code and generating any necessary build artifacts.
- Testing module: The testing module can include various tests, such as unit tests, integration tests and end-to-end tests. It can utilize testing frameworks like Mocha or Jest to execute the tests and generate reports.
- Packaging module: The packaging module is responsible for creating a deployable artifact, such as a Docker image or a ZIP file containing the necessary files. It gathers all the compiled code, dependencies and configuration files and packages them into a format suitable for deployment.
This is just one of many ways you can adopt a modular design approach in your DevOps workflow automation.
3. Use version control
Apply version control to your automation scripts and configuration files. This ensures that changes are tracked, documented and can be easily reverted.
Version control also promotes collaboration and allows multiple team members to work on automation tasks simultaneously.
For example, say you’re using Git as your version control system and you have a repository dedicated to your automation scripts and configuration files.
- You have a script called
deploy.shthat automates the deployment of your application. You make changes to this script to improve its functionality and add new features. - Instead of directly modifying the script, you create a new branch in the Git repository, such as “feature/deployment-enhancements.”
- You make the necessary changes on this branch, commit them with descriptive messages and push the branch to the remote repository.
Other team members can review your changes, provide feedback or even collaborate by making additional modifications on their own branches. They can create pull requests to merge their changes into the main branch, allowing for a structured and controlled collaboration process.
- You also have configuration files that define various settings for your deployment process, such as environment variables or server configurations.
- Create a new branch specific to the changes you want, make the modifications, commit them and push the branch to the repository.
4. Embrace open-source tools and methodologies
DevOps teams can benefit from leveraging open-source tools to automate their processes. Open-source software offers flexibility, community support and a wide range of available integrations. Popular open-source tools such as Jenkins, Kubernetes and GitHub provide capabilities for continuous integration, deployment and configuration management.
Redwood seamlessly integrates with cloud platforms like AWS and Azure to enhance the adoption and utilization of these services.
Here’s how Redwood can help connect with AWS and Azure:
- Redwood integrates with AWS and Azure’s deployment services, such as AWS CloudFormation and Azure Resource Manager.
- Redwood complements the CD pipelines offered by AWS and Azure by providing additional automation and orchestration capabilities.
- Redwood connects to the monitoring and logging services provided by AWS and Azure, such as AWS CloudWatch and Azure Monitor. It aggregates and visualizes the metrics and logs generated by the DevOps workflows, providing real-time visibility into the system’s health and performance.
- Redwood integrates with collaboration tools like GitHub and provides notification mechanisms to keep stakeholders informed about the progress and status of DevOps workflows.
Learn more about Redwood’s cloud-based workflow automation software.
5. Implement continuous testing and monitoring
Automation allows for continuous testing throughout the software engineering lifecycle. By integrating automated testing tools and frameworks, DevOps teams can identify bottlenecks, improve code quality and ensure that applications meet performance and functional requirements. Real-time monitoring and notifications help detect issues promptly and enable quick iteration and remediation.
6. Leverage configuration management
DevOps workflow automation should include robust configuration management practices.
Tools like RunMyJobs by Redwood, ActiveBatch by Redwood or Tidal by Redwood provide efficient management of infrastructure and application configurations. With configuration management, teams can define and enforce consistent setups across on-premises and cloud environments, reducing time-consuming manual configurations and ensuring reliable and reproducible deployments.
7. Monitor metrics and create informative dashboards
Establish a comprehensive set of metrics to monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) and track the efficiency and effectiveness of your DevOps processes.
Use monitoring tools and create informative dashboards to visualize these metrics in real-time. This enables stakeholders to gain insights into the system’s health and make data-driven decisions for continuous improvement.
8. Document and share best practices
Promote knowledge sharing and collaboration within your DevOps team by documenting best practices and creating a centralized repository. Share insights, automation scripts and configuration templates that can be reused across projects.
This way, no one person holds the keys to your secret automation processes. If someone leaves the company, you have a knowledge base full of information.
Automation for DevOps teams
Adopting DevOps workflow automation and implementing best practices can greatly enhance software development and delivery processes. Leveraging cloud platforms like AWS and Azure provides real-time scalability, cost-efficiency and a comprehensive ecosystem of services.
Tools such as Redwood seamlessly integrate with these platforms, offering enhanced automation, orchestration and monitoring capabilities.
DevOps workflow automation, in combination with these practices, enables organizations to deliver high-quality software, meet customer expectations and remain competitive in the ever-evolving technology landscape.
