21 Tools to Implement Best Practices for DevOps

In the IT ecosystem, there is more pressure than ever to be agile, without compromising the security and reliability. For a consistent product development cycle, people, processes, and tools need to be streamlined effectively. This is where DevOps comes into the picture, addressing the stumbling blocks of continuous integration, testing, and deployment in the software development cycle.

For automating various tasks involved in the development cycle, there are various tools that aid the team in DevOps. Here, we discuss a few of them, categorized according to every phase of development.

For Development

1. Git

Git is a source code management platform. Developers can make the most of this version control system for software development. However, it can be used to keep a record of changes done to any set of files. It aims at maintaining data integrity and works for both distributed and non-linear workflows.

2. PERFORCE

Perforce can aid in efficient development by providing a set of solutions, which includes version control, developer collaboration, Agile project management, repository management, audit and compliance, and more.

For Testing

3. Jenkins

Jenkins is an open-source automation server for Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) of a project. This DevOps tool offers hundreds of plugins to the DevOps specialists, enabling them to build, deploy, and automate a number of tasks in a project. It can be easily set up and configured using the web interface and is available with packages for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux-like Operating Systems. With Jenkins, the DevOps team can easily distribute the work across multiple machines, can help in more than one build, and enables testing and deployment across multiple platforms possible and fast.

4. Maven

Maven is a build lifecycle framework for developers. It enables the developer’s team to automate the project’s build infrastructure by using a standard directory layout. It also includes a default build lifecycle. With this all-in-one DevOps tool, developers can create reports, heck, build, and test while automation setup.

5. Gradle

Gradle enables to build, automate, and deliver the product, faster. From mobile app development to microservices, this build tool will open ways for both startups and enterprises to speed up product development. With Maven, you can write in Java, C++, Python, and many other languages that you feel comfortable with.

For Deployment

6. Capistrano

Capistrano is an open-source, remote server automation tool. Written in Ruby and supported by Linux, macOS X, and OpenBSD, this tool allows running scripts on multiple servers and is primarily used for deploying web applications. It automates the making of a new version of an app that’s available on more than one web server, which may include tasks like changes in databases.

7. Visual Studio TFS

Team Foundation Server (TFS) offers a set of development tools that can be integrated with Eclipse, Xcode, Visual Studio, or any other IDE/editor of a developer’s choice. It provides a platform for cross-functional teams to work on the software development project of any scale. It includes version control systems, tools for Agile teams (Kanban, Scrum, Dashboard), tools for Continuous Integration (build, package, test, release, repeat), and options to include a custom tool or third party service to TFS, etc. TFS by Microsoft has its support for both web and mobile languages like PHP, C++, Java, Python, Swift, Go, and many more.

For Monitoring

8. Nagios

Nagios is an open-source tool for monitoring networks, systems, and even infrastructure. It provides services to monitor the servers, switches, applications and pass an alert if anything goes wrong. While it’s originally made to run on Linux, you can use it on Unix Variants as well. Alongside this, the Nagios users can also design and develop their own service checks, according to the set of requirements they have by using languages like Ruby, Perl, C++, C#, Shell Scripts, etc.

9. New Relic

Mobile apps, browsers, infrastructure. This tool can help you to monitor and optimize all of these. You can view and analyze the data, and have actionable insights in real-time (for operations, development, and management teams), with no additional hardware cost as the tools are delivered in the SAAS model.

10. Ganglia

Ganglia is a distributed monitoring system, specially meant for high-performance computing systems like Grids and Clusters. With Ganglia, you can either view live or recorded stats that includes metrics like network utilization by nodes, average CPU load etc.

11. Sensu

A DevOps team can make the most of this monitoring tool as it allows to keep tabs on servers, services, the state of an application, the KPIs for seamless functionality of a business, and more. The tool notifies about any unusual behavior of servers (VMware, AWS, bare metal), Network Devices (Routers, Switches, SANs), Services (Databases, Warehouses), Containers (Docker, RKT, LXC), Remote resources (external APIs), etc.

For Configuration Management

12. Puppet Labs

Puppet is a software configuration management tool. It’s an open-source DevOps tool that runs on Windows and Unix-like systems. It offers solutions for simplified development to the production cycle, automated testing for continuous delivery, configurations that can be once defined and used on multiple physical environments (physical, cloud, virtual), etc.

13. Docker  

Docker offers a rescue system to the developers from ‘it works on my machine’ problem by doing away with the portability and predictability during the development, testing, and deployment phase. This DevOps tool isolates the apps in a container to minimize conflicts and improve the security system.

14. CF Engine

This open-source (as well as a commercial) solution provides automated configuration and maintenance of systems like servers, desktops, embedded networked devices, tablets, smartphones, etc. This DevOps tool for configuration management helps in seamless IT infrastructure automation, continuous operations, and at the same time maintains service levels and compliance.

ALSO READ: A CTO’s Guide to DevOps and its Services

For Log Management

15. GrayLog

This DevOps tool is a Syslog manager that helps the team to collect, index, and analyze the Syslog, all in one space. It enables the developers to set parsing for their messages, route the messages to their workstation for easy debugging, etc.

16. Loggly

Loggly is a cloud-based, log management and analytics service provider. It integrates into the continuous deployment practices, ultimately reducing the Mean Time to Repair, augmenting innovation, and ascertaining that the resources are used for development.

17. Papertrail

Papertrail is a frustration-free log management tool that allows you to instantly manage logs from different servers.

With Papertrail, you can consolidate your logs in one place with a cloud-hosted log management service that takes typically only minutes to set up. Powerful. Quickly diagnose and fix customer problems, error messages, app server errors, and slow DB queries with full visibility across all logs.

For Security

18. Tripwire

DevOps team can make the most of this security and data integrity tool to monitor and then alert them about any modification or intrusion being done to the files, on a number of systems. Primarily, it is a host-based intrusion detection system that detects the intrusion on the file system objects. It scans the entire file system and then records the information about every file in the database. This is done with the help of a cryptographic hash.

19. Threat Stack

Threat Stack is a cloud security management tool that detects unusual behavior across an infrastructure. This tool for the DevOps team will pass an alert when there is anything risky, unusual, or malicious. With this SAAS-based security model, the development team can integrate safety models that the Operations team is already using.

Collaboration Platforms

20. Slack

Slack is a tool for the collaborative working of a team. For the DevOps team to work on one or multiple projects with a seamless connection, this tool has got a number of tools and services. You can have chat rooms for discussions on a certain topic, direct messaging service, searchable content like files, people, conversations, etc. To make the experience more user-friendly, Slack can be integrated with third-party tools, services, and communities like Google Drive, GitHub, Zendesk, Dropbox, Trello, and many others.

21. Trello

Trello is another project management application that enables the team to collaborate. You can create projects, update status, have conversations, and more. It has got an alive and extremely simple interface that helps the developers to stay connected and streamline a project’s functionality.

Did we miss some amazing tools for the DevOps team here? If you know other tools that can be of help to the DevOps team, then share them in the comments below.