Software Development – DevopsCurry

What is Mobile DevOps & How is it Different?

Fri, 27 Sep 2024 08:33:07 +0000

: Image credits: What is the Role of DevOps in Mobile App Development

DevOps generally refers to a collaborative environment among the development and operations teams. It aims to ensure a smooth flow of communication between various teams to make the software development and deployment process as effortless as possible. It involves several tools for automation, containerization, orchestration, etc. However, it’s not the same for every business or company. For example, DevOps for an enterprise looks very different from DevOps for a smaller startup. In the same way, DevOps for mobile app companies i.e. mobile DevOps, also has a unique set of problems and solutions.

In this article, you will learn about how mobile DevOps is different from general DevOps, its key concepts, and best practices.

How Mobile DevOps is Different?

The usual DevOps principles apply to all software types and business environments. However, they may differ in terms of scale, tool sets, and some processes. That said, mobile DevOps is specifically designed for mobile app development and solves challenges unique to mobile applications.

To start with, mobile apps need to be approved by app stores like Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store. Moreover, once the app is published, every following update also needs to be approved by the app store. This means, fixing any bugs and making the corrected version available for the end user can take time. Also, deploying the app to app stores requires additional formalities like meeting the right asset requirements and signing certificates. Hence, regular CI/CD practices may not be possible to apply in the case of mobile apps.

Next, mobile apps require extensive testing to make sure they work on all devices with different screen sizes and operating systems (OSs) seamlessly. This can be difficult to maintain as new device models come up every now and then. Moreover, mobile app developers also need to ensure that the app works with any update in the device’s OS.

Security and data privacy is yet another important aspect of mobile apps as mobile devices often contain sensitive data such as personal information or money transactions.

Mobile DevOps Key Concepts

Mobile DevOps follows the key concepts of usual DevOpssuch as…

Continuous Integration (CI): In Mobile DevOps, Continuous Integration involves developers frequently merging their code changes into a shared repository, triggering automated builds and tests.
Continuous Testing: Continuous Testing involves using automation tools to ensure that every code change in a mobile app works smoothly and properly.
Continuous Monitoring: After a mobile app is deployed, Continuous Monitoring tracks its performance, crashes, and user interactions in real-time allowing teams to detect and resolve issues quickly to enhance app stability and user satisfaction.
Continuous Delivery (CD): Continuous Delivery is all about automating the process of building, testing, and getting the mobile app ready for release. This means that new features and fixes are always good to go for deployment to staging or app stores without needing someone to do it manually.
Continuous Deployment: Continuous Deployment takes Continuous Delivery a step further by automatically deploying every code change that passes testing directly to production, allowing for faster mobile app updates, though it still depends on app store review processes for final releases.

Mobile DevOps Best Practices

Automate everything: Automation is one of the key principles of DevOps. It helps save time, cost, and much of manual effort. Moreover, it also minimizes any chance of human error. Automating testing and deployment helps to reduce the time-to-market for apps while maintaining quality and integrity.
Monitoring and feedback: App stores have a public rating feature which is often a mix of negative comments, genuine issues, and praise. That said, developers can use that feedback to improve their app or fix bugs. Monitoring tools should also be used to monitor the app’s performance in real-time to diagnose and resolve issues faster.
Security: The codes and dependencies of the mobile app must be regularly checked for vulnerabilities and loopholes to ensure data privacy and the safety of users. DevSecOps is a term used to refer to a DevOps pipeline where security is prioritized.
Version control: Version control tools like Git help to manage multiple versions of the mobile app and enable team members to collaborate on them.
UI/UX design: Mobile apps should have a responsive design and a user-friendly user interface so that they work smoothly on all device models and screen sizes.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Mobile DevOps brings a tailored approach to app development, addressing unique challenges like app store approvals, extensive device testing, and security. By incorporating key practices such as automation, continuous integration, and monitoring, Mobile DevOps ensures faster, more reliable releases while maintaining high app quality and user satisfaction. As the mobile ecosystem continues to evolve, adopting Mobile DevOps is essential for developers to stay competitive and deliver seamless app experiences to users.

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Blue-green Deployment Explained: The Secret to ZERO Downtime

Wed, 25 Sep 2024 03:52:14 +0000

This article talks about what is blue-green deployment and how it helps to reduce downtime to improve end-user experience.

Introduction to Blue-green Deployment

Frequent and quality deployments are a core principle of DevOps. However, whenever you need to deploy a new version, you must stop the current one first. This leads to significant downtime for the end user and can affect customer experience. Moreover, if any bug or error is found after release, it will require additional downtime to withdraw the updated version and switch back to the old one. This process is how newer versions of the application were deployed conventionally.

A modern approach that solves the problem of downtime and time-consuming rollback procedures is blue-green deployment. Although a bit complicated, blue-green deployment requires ‘zero’ downtime and makes rollbacks easier, thus ensuring seamless user experiences.

But how does it work?

How does Blue-green Deployment Work

Blue-green deployment involves 2 production environments:

‘Blue’ environment is the old/active environment.
‘Green’ environment is the newest environment that needs to be deployed.

As per the traditional method, the blue environment should be stopped first and the green environment should be deployed in its place. However, in blue-green deployment, the green environment is deployed alongside the blue one so that both of them run simultaneously. Then, the user traffic is gradually shifted from the blue environment to the green one. Once all of the traffic has been successfully shifted to the green environment, the blue environment is finally withdrawn. Therefore, there occurs no downtime for any user as both the old and the new versions stay active.

The following illustration depicts how traffic is shifted from the blue environment to the green environment…

Image credits: What is Blue/Green Deployment?

But I also mentioned that it makes rolling back easier in case of bugs, right? How does that work?

So, when the traffic is being shifted from the blue environment to the green one, the latter is closely monitored for any signs of errors or bugs. If any of them occurs, whatever traffic that lies in the green environment is shifted back to the blue environment. The green one is then rolled back for redevelopment and retesting. In this way, blue-green deployment makes rolling back easier in case of bugs that might have bypassed the testing phase but are evident only when actual users interact with it.

All the steps involved in blue-green deployment can be summarized as follows…

Image credits: Blue-green deployment

Benefits

The following are the main advantages of blue-green deployment:

Rapid releases: Earlier, development teams had to wait for off-peak times like midnight to deploy new features so that the downtime affects minimum user traffic. But with blue-green deployment, new versions can released spontaneously without any risk of downtime. That said, it helps to achieve continuous delivery (CD).
Easier rollbacks: As discussed before, blue-green deployment makes rolling back updates simpler without requiring any additional downtime. It makes the deployment process even more risk-free.
A/B testing: A major advantage of blue-green deployment is that it allows for A/B testing. For this, a new code is loaded into the blue environment instead of the green one. A part of the traffic (usually 50%) is sent to the green environment while the other half remains in the ‘newer’ blue environment. Then both of these environments are monitored to decide which one works best and appeals to the audience more.
Improved customer experience: Overall, blue-green deployment helps to improve user experience by limiting downtime and providing 24/7 availability.

Challenges & Limitations

Although blue-green deployment sounds ideal, it comes with a few challenges and limitations:

Demanding: Using the blue-green deployment approach can be expensive as it requires you to keep two nearly identical environments active simultaneously. Also, it requires smooth and effortless coordination between the teams and its members.
Set up time: Initially, setting up blue-green deployment can be a time-intensive process and may require many tries before it is perfected.
Complex traffic routing: Moving traffic from one environment to the other (traffic routing) smoothly can be a complex task and may sometimes cause latency issues. Tools like load balancers may have to be used.
Not applicable to all applications: Blue-green deployment is difficult to apply in the case of stateful applications. This is because if a user is active in the blue environment, his/her user session may get interrupted or lost after making the switch to the green environment.

Conclusion

Blue-green deployment is a modern solution that effectively addresses the downtime problem, ensuring a smoother and more reliable user experience. By running two environments in parallel and switching traffic seamlessly between them, it eliminates the need for downtime during updates. It comes with an added advantage of easier rollbacks which makes it suitable for teams looking to improve their deployment efficiency. While it does have its limitations, such as infrastructure costs and setup complexity, the overall benefits make it a powerful strategy for delivering continuous and uninterrupted services.

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What are Progressive Web Apps (PWAs): Websites or Native Apps?

Wed, 11 Sep 2024 02:01:11 +0000

In today’s article, we are talking about what are Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) and how are they different from traditional websites and native apps.

Introduction to PWAs

Progressive Web Apps or PWAs are neither entirely websites nor are they native applications that you keep on your home screen. They are sort of in-between – combining the best of the two worlds.

Websites, as you already know, are a group of web pages compiled under a single domain. If you search literally anything on your browser, you’ll get a list of millions of websites related to that search term.

Native apps, on the other hand, are way different from a websites because it is ‘native’ to your system or device. You do not view them on a browser, but download them from an app store (like Google Play Store or Microsoft Store) They are the usual apps on your mobile or desktop like Gallery, Instagram, Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, etc.

However, PWAs neither open up on a browser nor are they downloaded like native apps. Still, they stay on your home screen and function as smoothly as any other native app.

So, what exactly are these PWAs?

What is a Progressive Web App (PWA)?

“A progressive web app (PWA) is an app that’s built using web platform technologies, but that provides a user experience like that of a platform-specific app.” as defined by Mmdn web docs. Here, ‘platform-specific app’ refers to a native app only, as they are specifically built for a particular platform like Android or iOS.

PWAs have several advantages over native apps. They occupy less space on a device, for one. When compared to websites, PWAs work much smoother and have an appealing design. Because of these benefits, and those which we will discuss later, many companies choose to have PWAs even if they already have a native app or a website.

Amazon, for example, has a native app that you can download from the Play Store (Android) or App Store (iOS) and a website as well. In addition to that, Amazon has a PWA as well that you can install from the browser itself.

Let me show you how to install a PWA on your mobile…

How to install a PWA on your mobile?

We’ll use Myntra as an example…

Step 1: Open Chrome.

Step 2: Go to the Myntra website.

Step 3: Click on the three dots in the top right corner.

Step 4: Click on ‘Add to Home screen’.

After this step, Myntra will begin installing on your mobile device. Once it is installed, you can find it on your device along with your other native apps just like below.

I have also shown a comparison of Myntra as a website, PWA, and a native app below.

Myntra’s Website vs PWA vs Native App

As you can see, the PWA appears almost identical to the native app. But it is quite different from the website, as it lacks the browser window.

To understand PWAs better, let us look at their characteristics now, after which we will talk about their technical features.

Characteristics of PWAs

Discoverability: As PWAs are essentially websites, they are discoverable by search engines, unlike native apps.
Installable: After installing, PWAs appear on your home screen (if you’re using a mobile) or your desktop (if you’re using your PC). That said, you no longer have to go to your browser and search for the website, to use it. With PWAs, you can find them simply on your screen just like any other app on your device.
Network independence: A major advantage that PWAs have over their corresponding websites is they can work even without a stable internet connection. This network independence is possible because of caching and service workers (more on that later).
Responsiveness: PWAs work on all devices and screen sizes – whether it’s a laptop, an iPad, or an Android mobile.
Appearance: PWAs can become visually appealing and welcoming if they have the look and feel of the actual app. This includes using a recognizable app icon, internal appearance, and use of splash screens.
Cross-platform: PWAs should work smoothly irrespective of the browser they are installed from or the device they are running on.

Technical Features of PWAs

Web app manifest file: A manifest file is a JSON file that contains all the information for a PWA to install on your device. It includes things like the app’s name, icon, background color, behavior, etc. In other words, you may say that it helps the PWA to manifest on your device.
Service worker: As discussed before, service workers help PWAs to work offline. They intercept the network and make decisions based on whether the internet is available. They also enable features like background sync and push notifications.
HTTPS: Lastly, PWA uses the HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) connection to secure user’s data.

Progressive Web Apps vs Native Apps

Here’s a table summarizing the differences between PWAs and native apps…

Image credits: PWA vs. Native App vs. Hybrid vs. SPA vs. MPA vs. Responsive Website

Pros

PWAs are more available and accessible than traditional websites or apps as they can work offline or with minimal internet connectivity.
They have much better and faster performance while occupying much less space on the device.
PWAs do not require manual updating, unlike native apps which need to be updated from the app store.
They are more flexible as they work equally well on all devices and operating systems.
PWAs are cost and time-efficient for smaller businesses and companies as users can directly install them from the browser. Traditional native apps are downloaded from the app store, hence, the companies had to pay a fee for publishing their apps on their app store.

Cons

PWAs consume more battery than native apps as they work on the browser.
Although they can perform a variety of functions, they still have limited functionality compared to native apps.
Safety with PWAs is not fully assured as they undergo the app stores’ approval process.
They may not work smoothly or full-fledgedly with legacy devices.

Conclusion

Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are an efficient alternative to native apps. They can be easily installed from the browser and don’t even take up much space on the device. However, they aren’t safe enough for sensitive tasks like making transactions. Still, PWAs can be a profitable option for smaller businesses and companies who cannot afford to develop a native application and submit it to an app store.

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Understanding APIs: How They Work & Why They’re Essential

Tue, 20 Aug 2024 01:22:14 +0000

Introduction to APIs

Various weather apps can show you your local temperature and weather. But do you know that none of them actually measure the temperature of your locality?

Moreover, when you book an Uber ride, you can see the location of the driver you are assigned to. Throughout the ride as well, you can track your location and check your route. Again, is this mapping service created by Uber?

The answer is no– to both of them. Uber borrows the mapping service from Google Maps while weather apps get their data from weather service providers like Open Weather Map or AccuWeather.

And they do this with the help of APIs– which stand for Application Programming Interfaces…

What are APIs?

IBM (International Business Machines Corporation) defines APIs as “…a set of rules or protocols that enables software applications to communicate with each other to exchange data, features and functionality.”

In our example, Uber uses Google Maps’s API to integrate maps and location tracking into their application, while weather apps use Open Weather Map API or AccuWeather API to get weather updates for you.

In this way, instead of building location or weather services from scratch, APIs enable developers to ‘borrow’ those services from other applications already specializing in them. This saves significant amounts of time and effort while also broadening an app’s or website’s functionality. Because of this, APIs are considered an integral part of modern applications and websites.

How do APIs work?

Image Credit: From the source of internet

API working can be explained as a client-server model. The client (Uber) submits a request to the server (Google Maps) and the server responds to the client with the requested data (maps). However, this is only an overview of the API communication.

The API request is further made up of components that vary with the type of architecture of protocol it is following. The most popular architecture is REST architecture which we will be discussing primarily.

REST API protocol & its working

REST API or RESTful API stands for Representational State Transfer. It uses HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) methods which include GET, PUT, POST, etc (more on this later).

The primary feature of REST API communication is statelessness. It means that the server does not store any information about the client and any transaction remains unrelated to its previous transactions.

A RESTful API request includes the following components:

API endpoint: An endpoint is a specific URL dedicated to specific resources on the server. Based on what resources are required, the client sends the API call to the specific endpoint on the server.
Method: Every API request includes a method that defines the action the client wants to perform on the resource. REST APIs use HTTP methods like:
- GET (for retrieving data from a specified resource)
- POST (for creating a new resource)
- PUT (for updating the resource with new data)
- DELETE (for removing a resource)
Parameters: Let’s say you are ordering food from a food delivery app. The API needs to know certain things to process your request – like what food you want, your address, your name, etc. These details vary from person to person and are sent to the API through parameters. In other words, parameters are the variable elements in a resource. Some common types of parameters include query, header, path, and body
Request headers: Request headers provide extra details about the API request like the authorization credentials, content type, and information about the client.
Request body: Request body consists of the actual data of the request. For example, in the last example about the food delivery app, the request body would include the order details like the food items, address, and customer info.

Benefits of using APIs

As already discussed, APIs help integrate newer capabilities and functionalities into the application or website without the need to create them from scratch. It is done so by sourcing those services from specialized applications.
APIs also help different services within the same application communicate with each other even if they are built using different languages. This further improves the integrity and functionality of the system.
API communication is protected by several layers of security. For example, authorization credentials in HTTP headers and statelessness of RESTful APIs. It also protects the privacy of personal users. For instance, when a website asks you if it can access your location or not.
That said, APIs benefit the business by saving costs and reducing time-to-market for new products and features and benefit users in terms of improved user experience.

Conclusion

APIs are the communication link between services within the same and even different applications. They help companies diversify their software’s capabilities without investing much time or effort while also reducing costs. Moreover, while integrating new features and enhancing customer experience, APIs also take care of security for both, the client application and the user. Thus, APIs have become crucial to the success of modern applications and websites.

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Introduction to Kubernetes: The Go-to Container Orchestration Tool

Fri, 16 Aug 2024 06:27:05 +0000

If you google for Kubernetes, you will be hit with terms like orchestration, containers, and Docker. But what are these things? And how are they related to Kubernetes?

That’s what we are covering in today’s article. Here, you will be learning about Kubernetes and its working, plus how it relates to the terms mentioned above.

Let’s start from the beginning: What are Containers?

Containers are the fundamental units of containerization technology. They are lightweight packages that contain the application code and its dependencies like runtime, libraries, databases, etc. They are highly portable and help improve the speed and efficiency of the development and deployment process. The most popular example of containerization technology is Docker, an open-source platform that uses containers to facilitate the development, testing, and deployment of software.

However, although lightweight, the number of containers can often get out of hand for large-scale companies that provide a variety of services. In this case, managing hundreds and thousands of containers requires a separate tool.

That’s where an orchestration tool like Kubernetes comes in…

What is Kubernetes & Container Orchestration?

AWS defines container orchestration as “…the process of automating the networking and management of containers so you can deploy applications at scale.” As businesses grow, they add more and more services or features to their applications, with each of them having its own container. If a business keeps growing in this way, a time comes when there are thousands of containers that need to work simultaneously to keep the whole application well alive. However, managing such huge numbers of containers manually can be impractical and lead to a variety of problems and inefficiencies. This is why a container orchestration tool is required – to manage the containers.

Kubernetes (also known as K8s) is a container orchestration tool that was originally developed by Google and released as an open-source platform in 2014. Although there are other orchestration tools like Docker Swarm and Mesos as well, Kubernetes is the most popular one and is considered an industry standard.

Kubernetes Architecture: Components and Working

Image credits: The Kubernetes Architecture

Kubernetes cluster: A Kubernetes cluster is a set of nodes (or, in simple terms, computers) that run containerised applications. A cluster consists of 2 kinds of nodes: the master node and several worker nodes.
Nodes: The worker nodes are those that do the actual work of running the applications. The master node, on the other hand, manages these worker nodes by monitoring and scheduling various processes. It is further made up of 3 components: API server, scheduler, and controller manager.
Components of master node: The Application Programming Interface (or API) server acts as the link between the user and the various components of the K8s cluster. It is through this that one interacts with pods, services, and nodes within the cluster. The controller manager simply monitors the performance of the cluster. The scheduler, as the name suggests, schedules the placement of pods and containers based on the current capacity and availability of resources.
Pods: A worker node contains several pods, which are the smallest unit in Kubernetes architecture. Pods can further contain a single container or a group of containers. All the containers in a pod share the same resources and a common IP address. This IP address is used by pods to communicate with each other. Moreover, pods are ‘ephemeral’, which means they can ‘die’ (i.e. fail) in case of application crash or node failure. The backup, in these cases, is provided by services.
Services: Failed pods are quickly replaced or recreated by the master node. However, the newly created pod always comes with a new IP address. Since pod failure happens frequently, the IP address also changes often, which can affect the communication network between the pods. To solve this issue, services act as the permanent IP address of a pod. Even if the pod behind a service changes, the service remains as it is and keeps the communication going.
Kubelet: Kubelet is an important component of the K8s cluster, which is present on every worker node. It monitors and facilitates coordination and communication between all the components (pods and nodes) of the cluster.

Benefits of Using Kubernetes

Kubernetes orchestration helps businesses implement containerization effectively, especially when the containers are in large numbers.
It can be used to automate container deployment and scaling. During peak times, it can automatically scale up the resources (by adding pods) for better performance. During low traffic, it can scale down the resources (by removing pods) to reduce waste.
Kubernetes reduces downtime and ensures the availability of the application 24/7 through load balancing and automatic replacement of failed or unhealthy pods.
It helps to save on costs and resources by automating the various processes mentioned above.
Kubernetes overall complements and supports modern approaches to software development like DevOps and microservices.

Conclusion

Kubernetes has become a game-changer in the world of container orchestration, providing a robust and scalable solution for managing complex applications. Its ability to automate deployment, scaling, and operations across clusters has made it an essential tool for modern DevOps practices. As organisations continue to embrace cloud-native technologies, Kubernetes will play a critical role in enabling more efficient and resilient application management. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to optimise your existing infrastructure, Kubernetes offers the flexibility and power needed to meet the demands of today’s fast-paced tech environment.

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Sustainable DevOps: Optimizing DevOps For The Planet

Wed, 07 Aug 2024 06:02:17 +0000

Detail Information About Sustainable DevOps

Introduction & History Of Sustainable DevOps

Sustainable DevOps is a concept that combines the principles of sustainable development with the practices of DevOps. DevOps, a blend of “Development” and “Operations,” is a methodology aimed at improving collaboration between software developers and IT operations. It focuses on automating and integrating the processes of software development and IT operations to increase the speed and reliability of software delivery.

Sustainability in this context refers to practices that ensure long-term environmental, social, and economic health. Sustainable DevOps aims to make the process of developing, deploying, and maintaining software more environmentally friendly, cost-effective, and socially responsible.

DevOps emerged in the late 2000s as a response to the traditional separation between software development and IT operations. This separation often led to inefficiencies and slow release cycles. DevOps sought to break down these silos by fostering a culture of collaboration, continuous integration, and continuous delivery (CI/CD). By the mid-2010s, organizations began to recognize the importance of incorporating sustainability into their DevOps practices.

Environmental impacts of Software Development

You use a variety of software’s and applications throughout the day. Each software drains your mobile’s or PC’s battery at different speeds. To keep your battery and your device working, you need to charge or power them with electricity. Now unless you are getting it from solar panels or windmills, high chances are that the electricity you use comes from burning fossil fuels. These fossil fuels, as you must have read a hundred times in your school, are limited and cause pollution when burnt. In short, the software’s that you are using is directly linked to pollution, or in technical terms, carbon emission.

The carbon footprint of an individual software or the software carbon footprint is affected by the software’s code quality, architecture, network usage, etc.

Moreover, the devices and hardware that runs the software also emits large amounts of carbon during its manufacturing. After their life ends, they are dumped in landfill while only a minimal percentage of them gets recycled. This is called embodied carbon (or embedded carbon) which is the amount carbon emitted during the manufacturing and disposal of a device. This means that even if a hardware is not using much electricity, it has already contributed to the carbon footprint during its manufacturing. An FPT TV and desktop computers have a much higher embodied carbon while a smartphone has the least.

Image Credit: https://learn.greensoftware.foundation/assets/images/17_embodioed_carbon-9e6e805fdc5d2381d34fb0b391618e11.png

What is Sustainable DevOps?

Sustainable DevOps, also referred to as Green DevOps or DevGreenOps, is a DevOps approach that focuses on reducing the environmental impact of software development processes. In other words, you can say it is an ideology that sees DevOps as the key to reduce the carbon footprint of the IT development industry. It involves the use of eco-friendly DevOps practices and instilling a sense of responsibility among the company’s teams.

In another terms, it refers to the practice of integrating sustainability principles into the DevOps processes, aiming to create software and manage IT infrastructure in an environmentally friendly way. This involves optimizing resource usage, reducing energy consumption, and minimizing the carbon footprint of IT operations.

Sustainable DevOps practices

Improving code efficiency

Poorly written or longer codes can increase the energy consumption of software and ultimately lead to more carbon emissions.

Green coding is defined by Stl Partners as “programming code that has been produced and written in a way that minimizes the energy consumption of software, thereby limiting the potential environmental impact.” Lazy loading (loading only those resources that are required at the moment) and caching mechanisms (locally storing frequently accessed data) are some green coding practices that help to save energy.

Using cloud services

Cloud computing allows businesses to use computing resources (servers, storage, infrastructure, etc.) whenever required without relying on physical hardware. In addition to being cost-efficient, cloud computing has numerous environmental benefits as well.

Firstly, it reduces the need for physical hardware that, as discussed before, reduces carbon emissions. Then, some cloud providers use green data centers that run on renewable energy. Lastly, cloud resources are auto-scalable. This ensures that no extra energy or hardware is wasted while business requirements are also met.

Continuous monitoring

In DevOps, continuous monitoring refers to constant monitoring and analysis of the development and operations processes. But in terms of sustainable DevOps, continuous monitoring refers to constantly checking the environmental impact of software’s instead. It involves tracking parameters like carbon emissions, energy consumption, and resource utilization.

Carbon Footprint, released by Google Cloud in 2022, is a monitoring tool that helps businesses track their carbon emissions based on their Google Cloud platform usage.

Automation

Automation can help in efficient resource utilization and make sure resources are used only when necessary. It can automatically scale up resources (like servers) during peak times and scale down during peak-off times. In this way, it also helps in reducing unnecessary costs. Automated monitoring tools can help monitor carbon and energy efficiency as discussed before. They can also be used to detect anomalies and inefficient codes.

Conclusion

Sustainable DevOps is about making the process of developing and running software more environmentally friendly and responsible. It combines the speed and efficiency of DevOps with sustainable practices like using energy-efficient technology, writing efficient code, and reducing waste. By adopting Sustainable DevOps, organizations can not only improve their software delivery but also help protect the environment and support long-term social and economic health. Embracing these practices benefits everyone—businesses, customers, and the planet.

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An Brief Introduction On Cloud- Native Infrastructure

Shiwani Sharma — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 03:04:21 +0000

A Brief Concept Of Cloud-Native Infrastructure

To understand the term “cloud-native infrastructure,” first, you need to comprehend the concept of being “Cloud- Native Infrastructure.” Although these two terms are similar, they have some slight differences. Let’s delve into each of these terms separately.

What is “Cloud-Native”?

This technology revolves around skills, speed, and enhancing the way crucial business systems are designed. The business process has evolved from merely facilitating business skills to implementing strategic modifications that accelerate business growth. Consequently, it rapidly introduces ideas to the market. Several features and pillars form the foundation of cloud-native systems: Microservices, Containers, Backing services, Automation, and Modern design. Cloud-native is a pivotal theme in software development and represents the perspective of software creation. It has revolutionized the procedures and our understanding of operating software products, deployment, and development. Cloud-native impacts application operations, design, deployment, and execution, offering benefits beyond managing existing applications.

Definition Of Cloud -Native As Per Wikipedia:

Cloud native computing is an approach in software development that utilizes cloud computing to “build and run scalable applications in modern, dynamic environments such as public, private, and hybrid clouds”.^[1]^[2] These technologies, such as containers, microservices, serverless functions, cloud native processors and immutable infrastructure, deployed via declarative code are common elements of this architectural style.^[3]^[4] Cloud native technologies focus on minimizing users’ operational burden.^[5]^[6]

What is “Cloud-Native Infrastructure”?

Cloud-native infrastructure possesses the capacity to mold resources into manipulable, scalable, and automated products. In other words, cloud-native infrastructure encompasses techniques that leverage the advantages of cloud services, constructing scalable and efficient systems. This approach empowers organizations to harness cloud benefits like cost optimization and on-demand resources. It particularly suits modern applications and aids the software development process. Cloud-native infrastructure is a prerequisite for operating cloud-native applications. If the cloud infrastructure is not correctly designed to handle the demands of the application, it risks compromising the functionality of cloud-native applications.

Image Credit: https://www.scnsoft.com/blog/cloud-native-infrastructure

This term Cloud -native infrastructure also refers to a latest techniques to make and flow the applications that make use of the advantages of cloud computing delivery models. This infrastructure is created to completely leverage the flexibility, scalability and resilience of cloud environments.

Some common characteristics of cloud-native infrastructure include:

Facilitating CI/CD and deployment cycles.
Simplifying automation to minimize human errors.
Enabling continuous IaC (Infrastructure as Code) patterns and deployments.
Offering high availability and auto-scaling that adapts to the environment.

In summary, cloud-native techniques involve creating applications integrated with cloud capabilities, whereas cloud-native infrastructure is responsible for designing and managing the technology supporting these applications.

Some of the other useful characteristics of cloud-native infrastructure are as follow:

• It can automatically scale resources up or down that is based on ensuring optimal performance , demand, cost efficiency.

• It is created for failure, cloud-native application, and can easily and rapidly recover from outages and ensure high availability

• CI/CD pipeline authorize chronic updates and fast delivery of new features, improving agility and time-to-market.

Benefits of Cloud-Native Infrastructure

Numerous benefits are associated with cloud-native infrastructure. Below, we will discuss some of these benefits:

Enhanced Customer Satisfaction

Enhancing customer experiences, increasing speed, and fostering customer engagement and employee experiences are significant advantages of cloud-native infrastructure. This, in turn, elevates customer satisfaction and enhances overall experience.

Cost Reduction

Many organizations utilize Kubernetes for containers, leveraging its open-source nature to efficiently allocate cloud resources. This strategic approach ultimately leads to decreased costs and benefits the organization. As it depends on the concept of Pay-As-You-Go that means cloud providers offers flexible pricing models, so you only have to pay for the resources you are using and it is efficient to utilizing the resources reduce waste and operational cost.

Ease Of Management

Simplified Management Platforms like Azure Functions and AWS Lambda eliminate concerns about managing aspects such as storage allocation and network configuration. This simplifies management tasks significantly.

Elasticity

Cloud-native infrastructure enables dynamic resource management, ensuring applications can handle varying workloads without excessive resource provisioning.

Global Reach

Cloud providers maintain data centers worldwide, facilitating easy and efficient global application distribution.

Conclusion

In this blog, we have explain you then two terms, one is cloud native and one is cloud-native infrastructure. Cloud native technology revolves around skills, speed, and enhancing the way crucial business systems are designed. The business process has evolved from merely facilitating business skills to implementing strategic modifications that accelerate business growth. Cloud-native infrastructure possesses the capacity to mold resources into manipulable, scalable, and automated products. In other words, cloud-native infrastructure encompasses techniques that leverage the advantages of cloud services, constructing scalable and efficient systems.

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An Ultimate Guide In Agile Operations

Shiwani Sharma — Mon, 20 May 2024 08:02:48 +0000

Basic Concept Of Agile Operation (AgileOps)

What is AgileOps?

AgileOps is a short abbreviation of Agile operations. A software development methodology that builds all the DevOps techniques & helps the organization with their operations quickly and flexibly.

In other terms, Agile plays a central role that helps the developer and operations and also helps to work with the whole organization, data analysts, and business leaders. Agile is a method of software development that collect all the provisions and after that build, test, and release the overall solution. A methodology that helps the organization for becoming more responsible & doing the changes by wiping out some of the work of software development in tiny parts and have to finishes this work more efficiently and quickly is called AgileOps.

Definition Of AgileOps As Per Wikipedia: Agile software development is the mindset for developing software that derives from values agreed upon by The Agile Alliance, a group of 17 software practitioners in 2001. As documented in their Manifesto for Agile Software Development the practitioners value.

Key Principle Of AgileOps

Some important principles of AgileOps are as follow:

Repetitive and Total Development
Workability and Flexibility
Constant modification
Immediate feedback
Priority on customer teamwork

Benefits Of AgliOps

Some key benefits of AgileOps are as under:

Less Blunders: With the help of AgileOps, the observations become more powerful that’s why the issues and problem easily identified. Agile operations promote continuous cooperation’s between DevOps, Operations and Business teams and making sure everyone is lineup.

Better Accountable: AgileOps helps to become more responsible to changes the environment of organization and market place.

Improved Customer Services: It helps to satisfy the customer more efficiently.

More Flexibility: It improves the work era, how to get it and promotes the better flexibility towards the work.

Stages Of AgileOps Cycle

Image Credit:https://www.analyticssteps.com/blogs/what-agile-software-development

As you can see in the above given images, there are six stages of AgileOps Cycle (Meeting, Planning, Designing, Practice, Testing and last one is Evaluate). Now you can go a deeper insights of each stages as described below:

Meet

The first stage of the Agile cycle is meeting. Here, all the stakeholders meet together to solve the problem of what they are facing. It is most commonly a democratic process. Some people called this meetup is as “Kickoff Meeting” The purpose of this first stage is : Every stakeholder has their perspective, so we get to have so much information and solution to the problem. This first stage is very important for fixing the basic work for the rest entire life cycle of Agile and make certain that all the team members are put in a order and get ready for the latest project.

Planning

The second stage is planning, Now from the first stage we have the solution in our hand of the problems that we are facing. In this stage, we have to plan what work to prioritize. The main intention of this stages is to explain the goals, find out the importance and getting ready to the entire team for an productive implementation. This stage is also very important for handling resources, organizing the teams efforts, reducing the risks and eventually contributing to the success of AgileOps life cycle.

Designing

In third stage creates little more reflexive sense in the context of technical project. After completing this designing stage, we come in a phase of performance. This third phase is also important where all the specific plans and structures are manufacture to address the goals and requirements find out in the earlier stages. The main goal of the designing stages is to translate the find out requirement and objectives into detailed plans and blueprints. This stages is basically for creating a robust and successful blueprint that lead the growth and performance of the solution.

Practice

After completing these three stage it’s time to practice what you have learn. This stages is all about complete the techniques and practices that have been created in the stating stages such as Plan, Develop and Test. In the other ways you can say its is an dynamic phase that consists of feedback collection, continuous monitoring to assure that the carry out practices deliver the wanted profit and hand out to the overall goals of AgileOps.

Testing

When you have completed the phase of practice, it’s time to do testing, that means whatever we are thinking of it should be work like that. In the other world we can say, the real word should like same as in real world. The fifth and important stage of AgileOps is testing and it make sure that the quality, reliability and performance of the product s being expand and sustain. AgileOps assure that the system is secure, robust and perform well under several conditions.

Evaluate.

This is the last stage of AgileOps cycle that concentrate on evaluating the outcomes of previous activities to assure that the ongoing improvement and layout with the customers requires the business target. This stage is also important for sustaining the agility and effectiveness of the AgileOps cycle.

Difference Between AgileOps & DevOps.

S.No.	AgileOps	DevOps
01.	John Kern & Martin Fowler invented it in 2001.	John Allspaw and Paul Hammond at Flickr, and the Phoenix Project by Gene Kim invented DevOps in year 2007.
02.	A methodology for creating software	DevOps is not related for creating any software
03.	Some tools used for AgileOps: JIRA, Kanboard etc.	Some tools used for DevOps : AWS, Chef, Puppet etc.
04.	Agile is not related to automation.	DevOps relates to automation.
05.	A large number of team is not essential.	It requires a different team members.

Similarities Between DevOps & AgileOps

Agile and DevOps both have some similar factors which as discussed below:

Both give to benefit the productivity of an Organizations : Agile and DevOps both emphasize company productivity. Agile pushes DevOps for the fastest work and DevOps Pushes Agile to be intensive.

Accepting the narrow Philosophies: In a comprehensive amount, both DevOps and Agile executed the narrow Philosophies.

Collaboration Procedure: Both Agile and DevOps are delivered end to end and bring in collaboration with each other to make the process of tools and data easy and effective.

Conclusion:

Agile plays a central role that helps the developer and operations and also helps to work with the whole organization, data analysts, and business leaders. Agile is a method of software development that collect all the provisions and after that build, test, and release the overall solution. There are six stages of AgileOps Cycle (Meeting, Planning, Designing, Practice, Testing and last one is Evaluate).

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An Ultimate Guide On Low-Code, No-Code Platform (LCNC)

Shiwani Sharma — Wed, 15 May 2024 07:50:00 +0000

Low Code, No Code Development Platform(LCNC)

Introduction

This LCNC platform is designed for people with limited coding knowledge and for those who know coding but have no time to do it. They may be familiar with real coding languages such as Java, Python, etc. Both platforms aim to speed up the application development process. Nowadays, many organizations prefer LCNC because it accelerates the software development process, reducing dependence on traditional coding.

Both low-code and no-code have become popular and important because they significantly reduce the time required to create software applications and make them available to the audience. LCNC techniques are beneficial for constructing internal tools and implementing applications of various sizes. This is best for those organization and people who are making tools online, and now anybody can make the website and application by their own with the help of LCNC including content creators, designers and owner of any organization.

Let’s understand these two terms separately, as defined below:

Low-Code Development

In traditional development, developers create applications manually, which is time-consuming and error-prone. With low-code development, developers can create applications quickly by avoiding manual coding. They use custom code when necessary and rely on templates and pre-built components to build applications. An important role of low-code development is to address business problems without writing comprehensive code.

Definition of Low-Code Development Platform (LCDP) as per Wikipedia: A low-code development platform (LCDP) provides a development environment used to create application software, generally through a graphical user interface (as opposed to only writing code, though some coding is possible and may be required). A low-coded platform may produce entirely operational applications, or require additional coding for specific situations.

No-Code Development

No-code takes the concept of low-code further by providing a platform where users with little or no coding knowledge can easily and quickly create applications. The targeted audience of the no-code platform includes citizen developers, business users, and individuals without a programming background but possess domain expertise and can identify automation opportunities to streamline processes.

Definition of No-Code Development (NCDPs) as per Wikipedia: No-code development platforms (NCDPs) allow creating application software through graphical user interfaces and configuration instead of traditional computer programming based on writing code.

Image Credit:https://gradientflow.com/ranking-low-code-development-platforms/

The above images shows you the common types of low-code, No-code development tools.

Advantages of LCNC

Here is a list of advantages of LCNC:

Faster Development: LCNC importantly speeds up the development process, reducing the overall development time and enabling faster application development.
Easy to Supervise: LCNC makes it easier to manage the development process and minimizes struggles related to coding.
Easy to Use: Unlike complex code that can be difficult to understand and execute, LCNC is easy to comprehend, making it simple to identify configurations.
Cost Saving: LCNC eliminates the need for a large development team, resulting in indirect cost savings for the organization.
Bridging the Knowledge Gap: LCNC allows non-developers to create applications without coding knowledge, bridging the gap between business requirements and IT.

Disadvantages of LCNC

However, LCNC also has some disadvantages:

Less Customization: LCNC does not support highly customized solutions, limiting the building of high-level applications. Unlike traditional coding, developers may have fewer options for customization.
Less Security: Since LCNC platforms have no control over the source code, applications created by users with limited coding knowledge may have higher security risks.
Performance Issues: Applications built with LCNC may have lower performance compared to those developed using manual methods.
Deliberation Of Cost: With the help of LCNC, the cost of decreasing the requirement of skilled developers is low, organization has to be strictly follow the overall cost of ownership, that consists training cost, potential vendor lock-in, to secure cost-effectiveness over the long term.
Depending on Third-Party Services: Organization should be think of potential changes to those integration which could impact the application functionality and performance.

Difference Between Low-Code And No-Code

S.No.	Low-Code	No- Code
01	Low-code is used for complex application	It is used for tracking the application, for reporting and analytics.
02	In low-code, it’s important to have basis technical knowledge.	In no-code there is no limitations required.
03	It is a advance application.	It is a simple and easy application.
04	It is used by developer.	It is used by business users only.
05	Coding is requires in little basis.	No coding requires in no-code.

Conclusion

This LCNC platform is designed for people with limited coding knowledge and for those who know coding but have no time to do it. Both Low-Code, No-Code platforms aim to speed up the application development process. Both low-code and no-code have become popular and important because they significantly reduce the time required to create software applications and make them available to the audience.

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Come About To Know DevOps CAMS Model

Shiwani Sharma — Tue, 14 May 2024 07:03:21 +0000

DevOps CAMS Model/Principle

Firstly, without going further about the CAMS model and principle of DevOps, it’s important to know detailed information about what DevOps is all about. Though we have many blogs about DevOps, you can go through our previous blog to see more information about DevOps. Here while starting this blog, we are going to mention a few about about DevOps.

What is DevOps ?

A Process that integrates IT operations, practice, tools, software development And contributes the outstanding characteristics of software with the endless delivery. It characterizes the take on the renewal of programmable infrastructure and expenditure, software development, industrialization. In a company, it stimulates alliance and transmission.

DevOps have some procedures such as the CI/CD tool (Continuous Integration/ Continuous Delivery) with an intensity of task automation. Microservice, Container, and Executing together with the DevOps methodologies. Though it is clear that it has some methodologies, it is not a technology.

Wikipedia Definition Of DevOps: DevOps is a methodology in the software development and IT industry. Used as a set of practices and tools, DevOps integrates and automates the work of software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) as a means for improving and shortening the systems development life cycle.

The two words define DevOps (software development and Operations) and in other words, you can say the assortment of software development and operation is known as DevOps. It enhances the speed and quality of the application that has been delivering to an enormous extent and that’s why it’s becoming more prominent for the organization. It provides you with the faster speed, security for your code, delivered quickly, these are some of the important features of using DevOps.

What is the CAMS principle in DevOps?

It is very important to understand the purpose of DevOps for your organization, either you are in any role such as a software developer or a system administration.

The CAMS principle of DevOps helps to solve problems and provides solutions. CAMS stands for Culture, Automation, Measurement, and Sharing.

C – Culture

A – Automation

M – Measurement

S – Sharing

Let’s discuss all these separately as below:

Culture

Culture in DevOps refers to the way both operations and development teams work together, with shared routines and goals. Embracing failure as an opportunity to learn and promoting continuous learning and improvement is an essential aspect of DevOps culture. It bound the behaviors, attitude, norms and values shared by any members of the organization. In short, culture in CAMS model refers to stimulate a communicative and collective environment where all the team member works together with having a common goals. DevOps recommend a culture where a single person take the responsibility for the security, reliability and quality of their work all over the lifecycle of software delivery. In the journey of DevOps organization that categorize culture is were often see development in innovation, collaboration and overall performance.

Automation

Automation is a crucial element in the DevOps principle, as it reduces manual tasks in the software delivery process. By automating various stages of software development, such as testing, building, handling, and deployment, teams can achieve quicker and more reliable releases while minimizing human errors. Automation is the best choice in terms of consuming time, money and efforts. You can easily says that automation is the important pillars of the DevOps CAMS model that also helps in maintaining the stability and repeatability, and make certain that deployments are to be expected and reproducible all over the separate environments.

Measurement

Measurement is a key component to track and improve the company’s performance. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are often used to measure improvements. Some relevant questions related to measurement include: How satisfied are our clients? How can our company improve collaboration to enhance performance? If you are utilizing the measurements it will helps in find out the progress is being made in the calculative direction. Measurement consists of analyzing and evaluate different aspects of the software delivery pipeline and the system as a whole. The very basis aim of measurement is to collect the data that gives insights into the quality, efficiency and performance of the operation and development processes.

In the measurement some key metrics are as : Customer satisfaction, Deployment frequency, lead time, MTTR(Mean Time To Recover) and change the failure rate.

Sharing

Sharing is the final principle of the CAMS model. It emphasizes the practice of sharing knowledge and information across the entire team within the organization. By fostering knowledge sharing, continuous improvement can be achieved. Sharing plays an important role in transparency, fostering collaboration and continuous improvement within an organization. It is also very important to share the knowledge for braking down silos between several teams within the organization. When overall we are talking about the perception then we can say that sharing is the primary to the success of DevOps initiatives, as it encourages transparency, collaboration and continuous improvement all over the software delivery and development.

Conclusion:

The CAMS model provides an effective delivery process, promotes collaboration, and ensures customer satisfaction in DevOps practices. The two words define DevOps (software development and Operations) and in other words, you can say the assortment of software development and operation is known as DevOps. The CAMS principle of DevOps helps to solve problems and provides solutions. CAMS stands for Culture, Automation, Measurement, and Sharing.

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