Comprehensive DevOps Implementation using Kovair

In today’s fast-paced world, organizations need to be effectively agile to match the ever-changing market needs and keep them responsive to different consumer demands. While business innovation is largely driven by software in this digital age, it is important for enterprises to ensure the rapid release of application updates to win, serve and retain customers’ needs.

Agile practice of software development brings collaboration between the business and its developers. DevOps provides collaboration between IT operations, developers, and security teams for timely and efficient release of changes and upgrades. Kovair provides a complete end-to-end solution to manage different Agile templates for planning and release. Kovair DevOps provides consolidated visibility to the progress of the application delivery for achieving an organization’s goals.

Automation is the primary value that DevOps provides. The two major core values are the “DevOps pipeline” and “DevOps life cycle management” that provides the Organization level culture shift in the way the products and projects are being planned and executed. The traditional Software Life cycle process was more of chunks of code modules delivered with long gaps, deployed at a later stage, and deployments that often result in gaps and disruption. Refer Fig 1.0 Fundamentally, embracing DevOps provides 4 core values -Automation, Sharing, Culture change, and Measurement.

Fig 1.0

Identifying a proper DevOps platform like Kovair DevOps is the key step to start. Leveraging the Platform which must support VSMP DevOps solution with CI/CD functionality to deploy applications to any platform at any scale and provide complete visibility across the toolchain. DevOps helps organizations in their Software applications deployment journey in various ways covering different aspects of the DevOps process. Following are the key capabilities of Kovair DevOps.

• Multiple OS – can be deployed on any Platform – Windows or Linux. Highly scalable across multiple hosts.
• Multi Database Support – can work with MongoDB, My SQL, and SQL Server.
• Project & Release – the platform provides complete isolation of the Pipeline through other projects. Allows to define, run and monitor your releases through a task-based DevOps pipeline
• Containerized -the platform is Docker enabled, which can be managed through Kubernetes or OpenShift.
• Build & Deployment Automation – ability to continuously build and deploy processes through 3rd party tools or plug-ins and custom routines. Provides centralized governance and control for every deployment
• Manage pipelines from handheld devices through e-mail
• Manage parallel and sequential tasks with optional pre & post-conditions for every task
• YAML – Supports Pipeline-as-Code. Can convert Pipeline to YAML and vice-versa
• Tightly integrated with Omnibus ESB with 110+ tools integration and Kovair ALM for managing the Agile practices.

The mainstream agile methods are focused on different aspects of the software development life cycle with an implicit focus on development methodology. Some focus on the practices (Extreme Programming, Pragmatic Programming, Agile Modeling), while others focus on managing the software projects (the Agile approach). Yet, there are approaches providing full coverage over the development life cycle, such as Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM). Thus, there is a clear difference between the various agile software development methods in this regard. Kovair with its product-centric focus, provides an excellent foundation on which scalable delivery processes can be built seamlessly with multiple choices of the methods.

Continuous integration implemented through Kovair DevOps not only merges codes checked in by different developers but integrates the development team with other functional areas as stated below. Some of the benefits that developers get through this implementation are:

• Plug-in based integration for IDEs to view different artifacts of ALM “in place”
• An ability to initiate unit testing, code coverage, and code analysis from the IDE with tools such as NetBeans, Eclipse, Visual Studio.
• Traceability view of test artifacts and their execution status from the IDE allows them to identify what % of code is being tested
• Ability to perform static code analysis from the IDE allowing to validate their code even before checking in
• Helps them in better understanding of features without much manual interaction and dependency on other team members
• Gives them real-time visibility of defects and related information raised against their code

A DevOps Platform provides two key core aspects – Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment

Continuous Integration (CI) is a key benefit of agile development and DevOps processes. In this software development process, continuous integration is the practice of merging all code files from all the developers to a central repository, after which automated builds and tests are run.

Continuous Delivery (CD) is the practice of regular delivery of applications (under development or changes) to QA and Operations for validation, and potential release and deployment to customers.

Prior to the CI/CD and release pipeline, there is a large pre-processing of data across tools. Figure 2.0 below shows a DevOps platform that connects to an ESB that provides a unified flow of data from Epic, User Story, Code, to Test Automation. Opting for a platform that is well connected to an ESB will leapfrog the power of the platform. The power of ESB-connected tools from the various domains such as ITSM, ALM, Security, Release, and Deployment significantly enhance DevOps capabilities of Kovair.

In order to meet the challenges of getting early to the market, more and more organizations are moving towards DevOps. However, purchasing new tools to achieve this is a huge challenge for organizations that have already invested on different tools. But, choosing the right one is a real challenge. End-to-end automation requires the entire work to flow unimpeded through multiple tools and teams. Kovair DevOps is also tightly integrated with Omnibus ESB and Kovair ALM, which currently has integrations with 110+ commercial tools covering different aspects of the application lifecycle, CRM, ITSM, PPM, ITM, PLM, and delivery. All these integrations along with capabilities like task-based workflow, notifications, and business rules help organizations to reduce time to market. Kovair DevOps not only supports integrations and plug-ins with commercial tools but also integrates with in-house tools of an organization helping them to protect their investment while implementing DevOps.