Contact Us

Tag: DevOps

10 Steps for Building a Successful Cloud Migration Strategy

Posted on by Pavel Tantsiura
In this issue:

Imagine that you recently launched a social networking app. To host the app’s infrastructure, you decided to use the existing on-premise server because you do not expect it to handle many users immediately. Your app is going viral and, during just one month, over 1000, 000 users downloaded and used it on a daily basis. Do you know what will happen next? Since your server infrastructure was not ready for such huge loads, it will now not work correctly. Thus, instead of your apps’ interface, users will see an error message and you will lose a significant amount of them because your app failed to live up to their expectations. 

To avoid situations where you jeopardize user trust, use cloud platforms for both hosting databases and running app infrastructure. 

Such data giants as Facebook, Netflix, and Airbnb, already adopted a migration strategy to the cloud due to cheap costs, auto-scaling features, and addons as real-time analytics. Oracle research says 90% of enterprises will run their workloads on the cloud by 2025. If you already run data centers or infrastructure with an on-premise environment, and you will need more capacity in the future, consider migrating to the cloud as a solution.  

Yet, to migrate to the cloud is not as simple as it seems. To successfully migrate to the cloud you need, not only an experienced developer but also a solid cloud application migration strategy. 

If you are ready to leverage cloud solutions for your business, read this article to the end. 

By the end of this blog post, you will know about cloud platform types and how to successfully migrate to cloud computing.

Cloud migration strategies: essential types

Migration to the cloud means transferring your data from physical servers to a cloud hosting environment. This definition is also applicable for migrating data from one cloud to another platform. Migration in cloud computing includes different types, due to the number of code changes developers need to conduct. The main reason is that not all data is ready to be moved to the cloud by default.

Let’s go through the main types of application migration to the cloud one by one. 

  • Rehosting. This is the process of moving data from on-premise storage and redeploying it on cloud servers. 
  • Restructuring. Such a migration requires changes in the initial code to meet the cloud requirements. Only then can you move the system to a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) cloud model. 
  • Replacement migration means switching from existing native apps to third-party apps. An example of replacement is migrating data from custom CRM to Salesforce CRM. 
  • Revisionist migration. During such a migration, you make global changes in the infrastructure to allow the app to leverage cloud services. By ‘cloud services’ we mean auto-scaling, data analytics, and virtual machines. 
  • Rebuild is the most drastic type of cloud migration. This type means discarding the existing code base and building a new one on the cloud. Apply this strategy if the current system architecture does not meet your goals. 

How to nail cloud computing migration: essential steps

For successful migration to the cloud, you need to go through the following steps of the cloud computing migration strategy. 

Step 1. Build a cloud migration team 

First, you need to hire the necessary specialists and employ the distribution of roles. In our experience, a cloud migration team should include: 

  • Executive Sponsor, a person who handles creating a cloud data migration strategy. If you have enough tech experience, you can take this role. If not, your CTO or a certified cloud developer will ideally suit you. 
  • Field General handles project management and migration strategy execution. This role will suit your project manager if you have one. If not, you can hire a dedicated specialist with the necessary skills. 
  • Solution Architect is an experienced developer who has completed several cloud migration projects. This person will build and maintain the architecture of your cloud. 
  • Cloud Administrator ensures that your organization has enough cloud resources. You need an expert in virtual machines, cloud networking, development, and deployment on IaaS and PaaS. 
  • Cloud Security Manager will set up and manage access to cloud resources via groups, users, and accounts. This team member configures, maintains, and deploys security baselines to a cloud platform. 
  • Compliance Specialist ensures that your organization meets the privacy requirements. 

Step 2.Choose cloud service model 

There are several types of cloud platforms. Each of them provides different services to meet various business needs. Thus, you need to define your requirements for a cloud solution and select the one with the intended set of workflows. However, this step is challenging, especially if you have no previous experience with cloud platforms. To make the right decision, receive a consultation from experienced cloud developers. But, to be on the same page with your cloud migration team, you need to be aware of essential types of cloud platform services, such as SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, and the differences between them.

  • SaaS (Software as a Service)

Chose SaaS to receive advantages of running apps without maintaining and updating infrastructure. SaaS providers also offer you cloud-based software, programs, and applications. SaaS platforms charge a monthly or yearly subscription fee. 

  • IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)

This cloud model suits businesses that need more computing power to run variable workloads with fewer costs. With IaaS, you will receive a ready-made computing infrastructure, networking resources, servers, and storage. IaaS solutions apply a pay-as-you-go pricing policy. Thus, you can increase the cloud solution’s capacity anytime you need it. 

  • PaaS (Platform as a service)

Chose this cloud platform type for adopting agile methodology in your development team, since PaaS allows the faster release of app updates. You will also receive an infrastructure environment to develop, test, and deploy your apps, thus increasing the performance of your development team.

cloud migration cloud service models

Step 3. Define cloud solution type

Now you need to select the nature of your cloud solution from among the following:

  • Public Cloud is the best option when you need a developing and testing environment for the app’s code. Yet, the public cloud migration strategy is not the best option for moving sensitive data. Public clouds include high risks of data breaches. 
  • Private Cloud providers give you complete control over your system and its security. Thus, private clouds are the best choice for storing sensitive data.
  • The hybrid cloud migration strategy combines both public and private cloud solutions characteristics. Chose a hybrid cloud to use using a SaaS app and get advanced security. Thus, you can operate your data in the most suitable environment. The main drawback is tracking various security infrastructures at once, which is challenging.

Step 4. Decide the level of cloud integration

Before moving to cloud solutions you need to choose the level of cloud integration among shallow and deep integration. Let’s find out what the difference is between them. 

  • Shallow cloud integration (lift-and-shift). To complete shallow cloud migration, developers need to conduct minimal changes to the server infrastructure. However, you can not use the extra services of cloud providers. 
  • Deep cloud integration means adding changes to an app’s infrastructure. Chose this strategy if you need serverless computing capabilities (Google Cloud Platform services), and cloud-specific data storage (Google Cloud Bigtable, Google Cloud Storage).

Step 5. Select a single cloud or multi-cloud environment

You need to choose whether to migrate your application on one cloud platform or use several cloud providers at once. Your choice will impact the time required for infrastructure preparation for cloud migration. Let’s look at both options in more detail. 

Running an app on one cloud is a more straightforward option. Your team will need to optimize it to work with the selected cloud provider and learn one set of cloud API. But, this approach has a drawback – a vendor lock-in. It means that it will be impossible to change the cloud provider. 

If you want to leverage multiple cloud providers, choose among the following options: 

  • To run one application set on one cloud, and another app’s components on another cloud platform. The benefit is that you can try different cloud providers at once, and choose where to migrate apps in the future. 
  • To split applications across many different cloud platforms is another option. Thus, you can use the critical advantages of each cloud platform. However, consider that the poor performance of just one cloud provider may increase your app’s downtime. 
  • To build a cloud-agnostic application is another option that allows you to run the app’s data on any cloud. The main drawback is the complicated process of app development and feature validation.

Step 6. Prioritize app services

You can move all your app components at once, or migrate them gradually. To find out which approach suits you the best, you need to detect the dependencies of your app. You can identify the connections between components and services manually or generate a dependencies diagram via a service map. 

Now, select services with the fewest dependencies to migrate them first. Next, migrate services with more dependencies that are closest to users.

Step 7. Perform refactoring

In some cases, you will need to make code refactoring before moving to the cloud. In this way, you ensure all your services will work in the cloud environment. The most common reasons for code refactoring are: 

  • Ensuring the app performs well with different running instances and supports dynamic scaling 
  • Defining the apps’ resource use dynamic-cloud capabilities, rather than allocating them beforehand

Step 8. Create a cloud migration project plan

Now, you and your team can outline a migration roadmap with milestones. Schedule the migration according to your data location and the number of dependencies. Also, consider that, despite the migration, you need to keep your app accessible to users. 

Step 9. Establish cloud KPIs

Before moving data to a cloud, you need to define Key Performance Indicators. These indicators will help you to measure how well it performs in the new cloud environment. 

In our experience, most businesses track the following KPI’s:

  • Page loading speed
  • Response time
  • Session length
  • Number of errors
  • Disc performance
  • Memory usage

And others. You can also measure your industry-specific KPIs, like the average purchase order value for mobile e-commerce apps.

Step 10. Test, review, and make adjustments as needed

After you’ve migrated several components, run tests, and compare results with pre-defined KPIs. If the migrated services have positive KPIs, migrate other parts. After migrating all elements, conduct testing to ensure that your app architecture runs smoothly. 

Download Free E-book with DevOps Checklist

Download Now

Cloud migration checklist from The APP Solutions

Cloud providers provide different services to meet the needs of various businesses. You need help from professionals to choose the right cloud solution. 

We often meet clients who have trouble with selecting a cloud provider. In these cases, we do an audit of a ready-made project’s infrastructure. Next, we help clients to define their expectations for the new cloud environment. To achieve this, we show a comparison of different cloud providers and their pros and cons. Then, we adopt a project for a cloud infrastructure, which is essential for a successful migration. 

When looking for a cloud provider, consider the following parameters: 

  • Your budget, which means, not only the cost of cloud solutions but also the budget for cloud migration
  • The location of your project, target audience, and security regulations (HIPAA, GDPR)
  • The number of extra features you want to receive, including CDN, autoscaling, backup requirements, etc. 

Migration to a cloud platform is the next step for all business infrastructures. However, you need to consider that cloud migration is a comprehensive process. It requires, not only time and money but also a solid cloud migration strategy. To ensure your cloud migration is going right, you need to establish and track KPIs. Fill in the contact form to receive a consultation or hire a certified cloud developer.

the app solutions google cloud partner

Why You Should Migrate to Amazon Web Services

Posted on by Pavel Tantsiura
In this issue:

The past decade has seen Amazon Web Services (AWS) grow to become the leader in cloud computing. The internet retailer has managed to gain over $12.2 billion in revenue as of 2016, after working with some of the biggest organizations including the C.I.A and Netflix.

So large is Amazon’s growth that the fourth quarter of 2016 saw the AWS account for at least 40% of the public cloud service market in the entire world. Amazon’s competitors such as Microsoft only accounted for 11% while Google and IBM had 6% each as reported by the Synergy Research Group.

The Race for Public Cloud Leadership

Considering that cloud computing is still in its early growth stages all over the world, the choice of services is still the one most businesses find hard to make. There are some things that you should consider and which make AWS data migration services the number one choice for the provision of these services.

What do most businesses look for when they need cloud migration?

Recent times have forced almost all businesses to consider data migration. There are many benefits to be accrued from such a move. However, successful migration requires a well-planned strategy to avoid having the business’ physical infrastructure crammed into a virtual environment with no plan for their optimal use.

When looking for cloud migration services, businesses consider:

  • Return on investment.
  • The individual requirements of each asset being moved to the cloud – most businesses would have knowledge of the assets they have and would seek to move some of them to the cloud; prioritizing which are most critical. During cloud migration, the business would be looking for a partner who can prioritize the assets and applications in order of their Recovery Time Objective (RTO).
  • The amount of support that the service provider can avail. Each step taken by a company while moving to the cloud is unique, most businesses would look for a service provider that is versatile enough to accommodate the unique requirements.

The best process of migrating to the cloud is one that is personalized to accommodate the unique challenges of the business. A partner who understands that there is no one-size-fits-all migration strategy is usually the best choice.

AWS migration tools that are guaranteed to benefit your business

From privately linking your data center to an AWS region directly and migrating data to the cloud in batches to working with S3 for different geographical distances, Amazon’s data migration services provide the following tools:

  • Unmanaged Cloud data migration tools that are simple methods of moving data to Amazon’s cloud in small batches. They include:
    • Glacier command-line interface (CLI) which moves customer data to Glacier vaults
    • RSYNC which when opened along with a 3rd party filing system, copies data directly to S3 buckets
    • S3 command-line interface (CLI) which moves data directly to S3 buckets using commands
  • Cloud data migration tools managed by AWS. There are some AWS migration tools that are made by Amazon to enable your business to manage the move more effectively. They are grouped into two:
    • Optimizing the Internet, including methods that enable the movement of large archives, oceans of data, and for businesses that have unrealistic data volumes and bandwidth requirements.
    • Interfaces that are friendly to S3 include methods that simplify the use of S3 along with the company’s existing applications. As opposed to simply shifting huge sets of data at one time, these interfaces assist a business to be able to integrate their existing processes directly using cloud storage.

Download Free E-book with DevOps Checklist

Download Now

Why you should choose Amazon’s cloud migration services for your business

AWS migration service offers a wide range of benefits to businesses looking to migrate their data. The following are some key benefits of migrating to the cloud using AWS:

  • Ease of use. AWS cloud migration is specifically structured to enable application providers, vendors, and ISVs to host all your business’ applications efficiently and safely regardless of whether they are native or new and SaaS-based. AWS also has a management console that can be used in accessing AWS’s hosting platform.
  • As earlier mentioned, each business requires a unique strategy. AWS allows you to choose not only the programming language but also the operating systems, database, and web application platform you require when performing your migration to AWS cloud.
  • Cost-effectiveness. AWS has made its services as cost-effective as possible for all businesses. Each client is only required to pay for computing power and storage along with any resources used without having to get into any contracts or making commitments up-front.
  • Amazon.com has been a leading online business for more than a decade, accumulating a secure infrastructure for global computing that is not only reliable but highly scalable and influences AWS reliability as well.
  • This is always a number one concern for most businesses that are looking to migrate data. AWS employs an extremely secure end-to-end strategy that includes operational, physical, and software measures to secure infrastructure. By choosing AWS, you are guaranteed that your data is in safe hands.
  • Scalability and high-performance. A combination of Auto Scaling, AWS tools, and Elastic Load Balancing allows all your applications to scale either up or down by the demand. This along with AWS’s infrastructure gives you unrestricted access to many resources for computing and storage whenever you need them.

From all of these benefits, it is easy to see how AWS has managed to grow so rapidly over the years and continue to provide excellent services to its clients from moving data to the cloud to cloud transfer.

Research from IDC, 451 research, Forrester, and Gartner all reveal that 50% of companies that attempt cloud migration end up exceeding their budget, take a longer time than expected, and result in the disruption of business. Choose to migrate to AWS today and enjoy scalability, efficiency, and reliability all at the most affordable prices.

Want to receive reading suggestions once a month?

Subscribe to our newsletters

Top-Rated DevOps Software Based on 2016-17 IT Reports

Posted on by Pavel Tantsiura
In this issue:

Every year, more and more DevOps tools appear to satisfy various needs of engineers and businesses. Effective collaboration between development and operations teams is one of the key success factors any business should consider when trying to improve performance. This article stresses the importance of careful selection, benchmarking, and ongoing improvement of the DevOps software.

 

DevOps Process

Since 2012, a group of business researchers has been investigating the role of DevOps in the work of more than 25,000 technical professionals across the globe. Most of the observed companies are US-based. As a result, the 2017 State of DevOps Report was obtained with the main results of the recent five years. Several factors were considered while evaluating the performance:

  • Lean management practices
  • App architecture
  • IT managers responsibilities
  • Diversity
  • DevOps transformation
  • Diversity
  • Deployment pain
  • Burnout

The basic findings proved that businesses should invest equally in their staff and DevOps tools.

DevOps Automation Tools: Recent DevOps Statistics and Findings

The study by Puppet.Com and other IT resources has covered some of the essential key DevOps tools. To understand their role, it is important to highlight the major findings:

  • Businesses with high performance significantly outperform their lower-performing colleagues. They deploy two hundred times more often, with 2,555 times quicker lead times, recover 24 times faster, and demonstrate significantly lower failure rates.
  • A technology transformation is an effective method to obtain vivid returns for any business.
  • Changing approaches to product development to try something new often leads to higher performance.
  • Key tools of DevOps are helpful in most cases, but it’s important to pick them smartly.

There are very few things businesses can do without in-depth research. As far as the main goal of this article is to uncover the best DevOps tools, we have also searched for the latest surveys based on the questionnaires fulfilled by the field experts. The choice was made once we have collected enough feedback concerning DevOps barriers and advantages. More than 50 survey completions made it possible to decide on the main features of DevOps tools as well as the top-rated tools themselves.

DevOps Adoption Up in 2016

Major Features of Good DevOps Deployment Tools

How should you understand whether your organizations would benefit from adopting tools for DevOps? Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) go on adopting DevOps because of its effectiveness. According to ECS Digital, 67% of SMEs have adopted DevOps in 2017. In contrast, fewer Enterprises (47%) have done the same. However, only 11% of all enterprises reject ever to adopt DevOps – the rest are just searching for the best tools. Those who have successfully adopted the practice name better collaboration and overall performance as the main advantages of using DevOps software.

The process of choosing the right DevOps tools is not an exception. They should be 3-in-1: reliable, secure, and time-tested. While collecting feedback from DevOps engineers and practitioners, our team has decided on the features every good tool must possess. Those are:

  • Relevant and helpful functions
  • Support for several languages
  • Compliance with different operating systems (OS)
  • Reliability
  • Safety
Enterprise Adoption of DevOps

Before moving to the list of the top-rated DevOps automation tools, it is critical to say a few words about the DevOps demands of any development team.

Why Businesses Need Monitoring Tools in DevOps and DevOps deployment tools

First of all, the tools allow automating building and deployment. Let’s say an organization ABC has a virtual machine named George. It’s doing virtual builds thanks to George. The opportunity to access it distantly, break down the most recent source code, build and deploy artifacts from it makes this instrument an example of a good DevOps tool. Provisioning the servers and other “junk” takes plenty of time, so it is better to leave such tasks to the DevOps deployment tools instead of bothering personnel.

Next, it’s all about provisioning servers. It’s up to the company to choose whether provisioning or deploying to servers comes first. Anyway, the process of provisioning requires the understanding of the application’s type and the way business hosts it. Most organizations set up new services rarely. A massive scale allows adding new services frequently. As a result, such apps obtain more traffic.

Finally, the development team needs optimization and monitoring of the app performance. Most of the developers focus on the following six factors:

  • APM – code level app performance visibility
  • Transaction tracing to see what the code is doing
  • Metrics monitoring
  • Logs (aggregation, observation, and management)
  • Errors (reporting & alerting)
  • Alerts themselves (robust monitoring)

Based on these needs, it is possible to define the most popular software each DevOps engineer may try. The list you will find below includes the best instruments for logging, configuration management, safety, control, and automation.

Collaboration, Integration, Communication in DevOps

8 Examples of the Most Preferred Open Source DevOps Tools

There is no certain order in our list – each tool is equally useful.

Nagios and Icinga

Nagios

Nagios is one of the first monitoring solutions ever. Thanks to the all-time expanding community of contributors who develop plugins for it, Nagios is extremely effective. Icinga is a fork of Nagios. The updated version provides an up-to-date user-experience as well as a range of new abilities. Most of the businesses who apply this tool stay satisfied with its scale and excellent performance. It is recommended to switch to Icinga in the closest future.

Monit

Monit

To continue the discussion on open-source DevOps tools, we should include this one on the list. The tool is rather simple in usage. The main purpose is to make sure that each process runs correctly and smoothly. In case there is a failure in Apache, the team can see this software to relaunch the process. Monit is recommended for multi-service architecture to handle multiple micro-services. Avoiding the problem is not enough. However, control each restart to solve problems by finding proper ways out. Just monitor the tool’s log files and stay alerted to every relaunch.

GitHub

GitHub Octocat

Perhaps, it’s one of the most known and spread DevOps technologies. It is a web-based Git and internet hosting service often used for code. The tool is perfect for source code management (SCM). It also allows a distributed version control. The main features of the software include bug tracking, feature requests, task management, and guidelines for each project.

New Relic

New Relic

New Relic should be on every upgraded DevOps tools list. The tool provides reliable and integrated data for every phase of the DevOps trip. The usage of New Relic guarantees increased business agility and higher speed. Shared visibility and detailed metrics are the major benefits of this software. In case your business decided to change its current DevOps structure, New Relic may assist in transitions of that kind.

Jenkins

Jenkins

Many businesses call this one a leader in DevOps automation. The primary goal of the instrument is to control executions of repeated assignments. The main advantage is the simpler project changes integration as well as the ability to determine the problems faster. Jenkins appears in the shape of a Java-based program compatible with Windows, Mac OS X, and more Unix-like OSs. It is easy to install and configure using a web interface.

Consul.io

Consul.io

Consul is another tool that allows configuration in most recent apps that are constructed specifically for microservices. It provides internal DNS names for services. DevOps engineers who have any problems with registering names would enjoy Consul.io. As a result, it becomes possible to get service names instead of specified machines. The tool is convenient when working with clusters. What we mean is when there are multiple machines joined in one cluster, it is better to sign up them as one whole entity to access it at any moment without any problems.

Chef

Chef

Among all best DevOps tools, it is possible to notice Chef somewhere on the top of the list. The tool takes care of various aspects, including IT automation and configuration management. The software is known for its excellent security. Chef allows original managing configurations thanks to the variety of recipes and resources. The tool checks nodes from a single server, updating them for DevOps team. The instrument integrates with all main cloud providers.

Vagrant

Vagrant

Vagrant established by HashiCorp assists in creating and configuring lightweight, renewable, and transferable development environments. The tool has simple-to-use workflows and is focused on automation. The installation process is fast and easy. It will run on Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. With a single command, Vagrant will combine your entire development environments to let DevOps team participants have identical environments.

See also: How and Why DevOps Benefits the Business Process

Download Free E-book with DevOps Checklist

Download Now

What’s Next?

Out of all tested tools, Chef and Jenkins remain the most popular. However, it does not mean your business can’t try other monitoring tools in DevOps.

They are all a bit different from their goals, prices, and key features, but each is helpful in its unique way. Most of businesses do not support a “choose one” approach.

Thus, we recommend deciding on more than one configuration tool to meet your business goals and the DevOps team’s needs in particular.

Want to receive reading suggestions once a month?

Subscribe to our newsletters

Business Process Benefits of DevOps

Posted on by Pavel Tantsiura
In this issue:

The modern market is a thing full of twists and turns at every corner that requires flexibility and the ability to adapt to the ever-changing state of things. “Agility” is the word that best describes what it takes to be competitive in the modern world.

You simply won’t get anywhere if you aren’t ready to adjust according to the situation and bend it to your benefit. It is true for most industries, but especially so in software development. Cue DevOps. 

If you are thinking about developing a web or mobile product, agility is the means to tangible results: speed of the work process, implementation of the new features, team efficiency, optimization of the product, and so on. Basically, being agile becomes a strategic advantage for a company and the product both in the short run and in the long run. 

It is even more apparent when it comes to an outsourcing segment where everything lives and dies on how they are able to adapt and go beyond. DevOps approach implementation is one of the means to be more flexible and adaptable thus more competitive.

But let’s begin with definitions. 

What is DevOps?

DevOps is a cross-functional approach to the process. DevOps model is a combination of two distinct parts of the software development process – development and operations (AKA infrastructure management).

Basically, it is a result of streamlining the organization in order to make it more flexible, dynamic, and ultimately effective. This streamlining was necessitated due to ever-growing, sprawling organizations that take too many resources and hold down the overall flexibility of the development team.

Devops meme, devops diagram, devops images

As such, DevOps is more of a mindset than anything else. It is about tight collaboration, being on the same page and delivering to the common goal — improving every element of the product and acting as fast as possible to the emerging situations and morphing requirements.

In other words, let’s quote Daft Punk: “Work it, make it, do it. Make it harder, better, faster, stronger”. That’s what DevOps is about.

Why is DevOps is needed?

Two words — mobility and flexibility. Customer feedback and testing is a big deal when it comes to making a good product that will outlast the initial splash. Because of that, it makes sense to adapt according to order to keep the product adequate and capable of doing its work. However, it is not exactly the easiest thing to pull off due to long iteration cycles and scaling large team to the cause.

The main task of a DevOps engineer or specialist: make sure the software works both from the developers’ standpoint as well as an infrastructure standpoint.

When you implement a DevOps culture, it enables to implement changes effectively and on time. The result — overall better product that does better business.

DevOps Benefits

Dynamic Iteration Cycle / Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery

The biggest benefit of DevOps from a business point of view is obvious — it is all about the speed of delivery.

Due to significant streamlining and reorganization of the workflow — the very process transforms into more dynamic and efficient. That, in turn, makes iteration shorter and much more responsive while avoiding the danger of breaking things while moving too fast.

A combination of automation and thorough testing drastically charges the pace while lessening the overall workload.

Basically, it means faster moving in shorter steps i.e Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (aka CI/CD). As such, it allows to gradually implement small changes that contribute to the whole.

In addition – shorter iterations mean that even if there are some fails – their scope will be much smaller and that means it would easier to deal with them. The nightmarish notion that everything will break down at once is practically non-existent with this approach.

A Better Environment for Technical Scalability

Scalability is one of the top priorities for any kind of project. If the product is able to take a load and get on with it — it is a sign that it works well. If not — you know what it means. With the rise of cloud computing, it became a big deal.

DevOps implements certain practices to secure better scalability. In essence, scalability is not just what servers and networks are able to carry on — it is also the tools that make it happen.

It is important to configure the system in a flexible manner so that when necessary it will be able to increase the resource consumption and also scale it down when the load is lesser.

The thing with these tools is that they need continuous optimization — changes in server, bandwidth, and storage capacity.

See also: Best PHP Frameworks to Use 

Superior Communication: Everyone on the Same Page

One of the most obvious benefits of implement DevOps principles is a significant streamlining of communications. It is always a good thing when everybody is on the same page and every member of the team is able to contribute to the process.

Since collaboration and communication are at the center of the DevOps approach — implementation of it manages to set a much more creative environment that can positively affect the quality of the product.

For instance, streamlined communication eases getting the team on the same page. It also helps with onboarding new members of the team. It is also helpful in describing the priorities of the current moment.

DevOps automates certain routine elements of the development process and allows developers to focus on other more demanding and important elements.

DevOps Process Means Better Team Scalability

As a direct result of tighter communication — team scalability makes a significant leap forward. Most of the time, people need some time to get acquainted with the project. When the DevOps approach is implemented right, it shortens the time people need for adjustment because everything works like a well-oiled machine. 

Because of that, you don’t have to worry about the fact that you face the need to scale your team and it might break the workflow. DevOps makes this process much more efficient and easier. 

Read more about DevOps Team Structure.

Process Automation

The development process is riddled with repetitive routine tasks that just need to be done. It takes time and greatly affects the motivation of those who are tasked with such things. While important, these routines often take precious time that could’ve been used for something more important.

DevOps makes it almost a non-issue with the help of automation. Not only it creates a more efficient workflow but it also helps with keeping everything monitored and reported. It is especially important for testers who can’t afford to miss something in the sea of code.

The decrease of manual actions leads to much more time to dedicate to more important things.

Documentation / Code Synchronicity

Writing coherent project documentation is something that some businesses neglect, but at The APP Solutions, we put stress on this part of the project’s lifecycle. But no matter how good your initial technical specification is, it is often an evolving entity, especially for bigger and more complex projects.  

No matter how hard you will try to describe everything to a tee — things change when they get done and that should be reflected in the technical documentation. Otherwise, nothing will make sense and ultimately everything might fall apart. Because of that, there is a lot of backtracking and adjusting the code and documentation to one another.

How can the DevOps approach and specialists help? Due to the transparent and highly organized structure of the code — there is lesser dependence on the documentation. Everything can be understood through the code itself. Which makes tech documentation more of solidification of the fact that a herald of things to come.

The Transparency of the Infrastructure

The other big advantage of a DevOps approach is a significant clarification of the code infrastructure.

The code is what makes the product. However, the product is made by humans, many humans, sometimes they err and sometimes the parts they made don’t fit well together (despite the fact the developers are seniors and Quality Assurance people are professionals as well.)

How DevOps make the save? DevOps enables the unification of the code: it cleans the code up, makes it more transparent and easier to operate with. It also solves any emerging issue connected with the legacy elements.

On a side-note — transparency also greatly simplified the onboarding of new members to the fold. When everything is clear as a whistle, it is easier to get involved, which is a strategic advantage in terms of team scalability (see the point above.)

Infrastructure as Code

Infrastructure is what ties together numerous elements of operation — networks, virtual machines, load balancers, and so on into a comprehensive mechanism that ticks like clockwork. 

The project’s infrastructure, like the tech specification, evolves with the product and often gets muddied up over time if no specific measures are taken to prevent this. As a result, this might seriously affect the quality of performance and effectiveness of the operation. This is the case not only for cloud storage but also for dedicated infrastructure.

However, manual configuring of infrastructure is time and resource-consuming. DevOps makes it a non-issue by switching from manual interaction to programmatic and implementing several methodologies, such as continuous integration and version control. This drastically decreases the possibility of getting funny bad things in the system and eliminates the element of unpredictability.

Programmatic interaction with the infrastructure is standardized and streamlined to the essentials — there is a set of patterns the system follows. It enables testing as soon as possible which enables adjustments and fixes early on.

Another important element of the Infrastructure as Code approach is Code Review. This gives clarity of the situation and provides a perspective for the team over the infrastructure changes. This is important in keeping everybody on the same page perfectly synchronized.

Simpler Security Maintenance

Last, but far from least benefit that comes from transparency and the organized code is a vast simplification of implementing security measures.

Usually, security is the hardest element to pull off as it is always somewhat detached from the main system. This process starts from assets inventory and goes all the way through access inventory to the implementation of security measures such as system scans.

However, with the structure crispy clean accessible and most of the processes automated — it is not a big deal to keep the thing safe.

In conclusion

According to the statistics, it is clear that DevOps has lived up to all the expectations the developers had. The only thing that hasn’t quite hit the mark is the increase in income but this is expected to change.

DevOps Benefits seen or anticipated

DevOps is one of the most exciting practices of the current moment. It is slowly but surely spreading its influence over the software development industry and establish itself as a standard operation.

It is a good thing because order and clarity are amongst the things every project is striving for. That is why DevOps methodology matters and why you should implement its practices in your project.

Download Free E-book with DevOps Checklist

Download Now

What is DevOps and how to implement it?

Posted on by Pavel Tantsiura
In this issue:

Successful implementation of the DevOps approach isn’t a matter of a few days. And as this term has become an overloaded buzzword, lots of companies struggle to get a handle on it. This article will unveil the mystery of this approach and guide you through the important milestones.

devops implementation

[Source]

What is the DevOps approach?

Developers and operators collaborating is the key for successful continuous delivery. By its nature, the DevOps team structure is an evolution of the agile model that is great for gathering requirements, developing, and testing out your solutions. DevOps was created to address the challenge and gap between the dev and ops teams. 

Thus, we bring together the operator and developer teams into a single team to provide a way of seamless collaboration. They are integrated to be able to brainstorm solutions that are being tested in a production-like environment. The operations team is then able to focus on what they’re really good at, which is analyzing the production environment and being able to get feedback to the developers on what is successful.

What is the difference between DevOps and traditional development?

Traditional development is not compelling since it doesn’t presuppose scaling. Besides, it has restricting methods of reasoning which hinder collaboration. As innovation business keeps on developing, greater adaptability is required. 

Every DevOps team structure is a seismic shift that enables associations to react to ever-changing and extending market demands. At the point where development and operations teams meet together by seeing each other’s interests and perspectives, they can create and convey strong programming items at a quick pace.

There are also a couple of core things that differentiate the Dev and Ops approach from traditional product development. The most notable differences include:

  • Focus on flow value, instead of conforming to the project plan
  • Production-first mindset
  • Shared ownership and cooperation
  • Rapid iteration with fast feedback loops
  • Infrastructure is considered as a flexible resource

In general, the DevOps approach allows cutting the time and handling problems faster. It is all about improving things, rather than fixing things. This, in turn, helps recover from failures faster, and present apps faster.

How does building a DevOps team benefit your organization?

Improve job satisfaction

For a business, measuring the job satisfaction level in systems is hard. And there is nothing worse for the final result and working process than unproductive and inconsistent employees. However, with a high-performing DevOps approach, it is easier to improve worker experience at a big or small organization. A DevOps team is more focused on the process than on the end goal, which helps derive more joy and content in their development jobs. And when your team is happy, it offers the prospect of retention rates and motivates other bright minds to cross their paths with your business.

Save time on operational activities

Since the DevOps team structure calls for rethinking and advancing existing cycles and advancement tasks, there’s a pattern towards improved efficiencies. As teams hope to improve their whole activity, they move toward frameworks, procedures, and practices that offer improved efficiencies. Good judgment directs that, generally, the whole association would see efficiency boons as a result.

DevOps principles and practices

  • Infrastructure as Code

Nowadays, you will likely fail without automating your infrastructure, as apps can be deployed into production bazillion times per week. Also, infrastructure is nimble and can be provisioned or de-provisioned in response to load. Here is when infrastructure as code comes in. 

In simple words, it is focused on automating all tasks end to end, instead of doing them manually. All the knowledge and expertise of system administrators and operations teams is packed into various programs and apps that carry out all these tasks. Infrastructure as Code, or IAS, is a concept that makes use of such apps as Terraform, Puppet, or Ansible. However, no infrastructure IaS tool can do everything.

  • Continuous Integration

Continuous integration is a development practice of code integration into a shared repository. In simple words, CI means combining the code of several developers into a common code base intended for deployment. Each integration is verified by an automated build and automated tests. The CI process includes such aspects as developing and compiling code, performing unit tests, integrating with databases, performing pre-production deployment, and others. As you understand, CI is more than just one developer working on a code and committing it to a feature branch. Instead, the developer has to make sure that he or she writes a unit test that exercises each line of code written.

  • Continuous Delivery

Continuous delivery is a development practice where the created software can be released to production at any time. Continuous delivery or CD is one of the essential principles of modern application building, as it continues the practice of continuous integration. CD ensures that all changes to the code, after the build phase, are deployed in the test and/or working environment. The value of CD lies in the fact that the record is ready to be deployed all the time.

Continuous delivery allows devs not only to automate unit-level testing but also to perform multiple checks for application updates before deploying them to end-users. This may include testing the user interface, loading, integration, API reliability, etc. All this allows devs to check for updates more thoroughly and identify possible problems in advance. Unlike legacy on-premise solutions, the cloud environment makes it easy and cost-effective to automate the creation and replication of multiple test environments.

What are a DevOps engineer’s responsibilities?

Dev and Ops engineers together are rightly called the ‘special forces’. They have to be able to juggle workload, be flexible, and handle various tasks simultaneously. At an IT organization, an engineer can be responsible for:

  • Documentation

He or she compiles specifications and data for the server-side features.

  • Systems analysis

He or she studies the technology being implemented and produces plans and processes that require improvement and expansion.

  • Development

A DevOps engineer should be able to develop programming as well as automate and configure operating environments within organizations.

  • Project planning

Sometimes he or she also has to take on project management. Engineers take a lead handling the whens, wheres, whos, and hows of a project, briefing everyone on the objectives.

  • Testing

Strong testing ability is one of the most indispensable skills for a DevOps engineer to ensure each function does its job as intended. This refers to all stages from building to deployment.

  • Deployment

Additionally, a DevOps engineer should have expertise in code deployment. He or she should be able to automatically deploy updates and fixes into the prod environment.

  • Maintenance

Responsibilities also include IT structure maintenance, which comprises hardware, software, network, storage, and control over cloud data storage. A DevOps engineer should be able to run regular app maintenance to guarantee the production environment operates as intended.

  • Performance management

Based on staff size, the DevOps engineer may also be in charge of coordinating other engineers.

DevOps team roles

The ideal DevOps team structure looks like a myth for most companies. Usually, the organizational structures consist of devs and IT operations personnel collaboration, who work as a team with test engineers, database administrators, security teams, and other related parties. Each team has its unique needs, that is why it is better to analyze different models. The DevOps team structure facilitates the ideals of the DevOps culture.

 A typical team DevOps structure can include the following positions.

  • The DevOps evangelist. 

This person should be both the front runner of the organization and the leader for teams that are passionate about the process and the company as a whole. He or she should also determine the key values that IT can offer to the business. An evangelist needs to make sure that the product is highly available in the pre-production and production system and is being released frequently.

  • The release manager. 

Release managers are responsible for managing, planning, scheduling, and controlling the software dev process through different phases and environments. DevOps as a culture stresses that the cooperation and communication of devs and IT specialists is a dependency of the release cycle. Therefore, release managers play a huge role as discipline holders in a crew.

  • The automation architect. 

A DevOps Architect is in charge of the design and implementation of enterprise apps. The DevOps Architect is also responsible for analyzing, implementing, and streamlining DevOps practices, monitoring technical operations as well as automating and facilitating processes.

  • The software developer/tester. 

In general, testers check whether the actual results match expectations and the final result is bug-free. Software devs are responsible for building a feature, fixing bugs, continued learning, as well as communication and product issues.

  • The XA (experience assurance) professionals. 

The XA professional should be adept at providing suggestions and solutions to improve and enhance productivity. One of the most important responsibilities of the QA specialists is to guarantee that the built product is up to the company’s quality standards. These detail-oriented specialists are also in charge of the building and implementation of inspection activities along with the apprehension and resolution of defects.

  • The security engineer. 

A security engineer is responsible for designing and maintaining infrastructure security using the approved automation and CI or CD tooling. He or she detects security-lacking areas within the cloud platform. A security engineer is also in charge of developing detection techniques and addressing security requests.

  • The utility technology pro. 

Utility technology players play an important role in DevOps culture as they are a new kind of IT Operations or System Administrators. These are savvy, versatile, and brisk learning people who perform multiple tasks, settle issues, adjust rapidly, and make sense of things. Their main responsibility is to make sure that the QA, resources, and security are considered as top concerns.

When to implement DevOps

Dev and Ops operate separately

Dev and Ops team structure is the literal and metaphorical combination of development and operations. For quite a long time, these two gatherings have been isolated by social and information limits, especially inside bigger venture IT organizations.

This partition was clear. At one time, dev specialists centered on coding and tasks taking that code and ensuring it remained running. The total disengage between these two gatherings prompted long Quality Assurance cycles and rare creation arrangements inspired by a paranoid fear of letup or breaking something.

Today, Dev and Ops team structure has empowered a serious extent of standardization, making productive methods of conveying, designing, and running numerous servers with only a couple of tools as opposed to depending on human intercession.

With these instruments, a dev could make an independent, automatic depiction of how to run an application. What used to take a long time of manual arrangement and tuning by profoundly gifted experts, is now possible in only hours.

Insufficient coverage by tests

Insufficient coverage by tests can result in major problems. Inadequate test coverage is generated from a small number of tests written for each user story and insufficient visibility into code that was updated. 

However, a DevOps team altogether makes it easier to agree on the features to be presented, hence creating tests for each feature is made quicker. Also, it allows coding and testing done simultaneously to guarantee the crew is ready to test each feature once it’s published to Quality Assurance.

High probability of post-release errors

Post-release crashes are often the result of testing gaps, as continuous testing does not happen within each phase of the software building process. Besides, test engineer teams might not be able to simulate the bugs in the testing environment. As a result, companies have to condone the uneven and unpredictable pace of software building. However, the majority of IT companies have exited this endless loop by implementing DevOps transformation.

Time-consuming updates and fixes

As team cooperation isn’t sufficiently proficient, it may take up to a month to distinguish and fix bugs or actualize and discharge minor changes. Such a long holding-up period is particularly unsafe when programming is being built and created to uphold or change basic business tasks such as Customer Relationship Management software.

devops software development approach

[Source]

Best Practices for a Successful DevOps Implementation

Organize a DevOps initiative

To get started with the approach, a CIO puts a DevOps initiative into an IT department. This will help the IT teams alter the dev and operating activities be less troublesome for the whole company. Then, the CIO picks a program manager who will lead the design and implementation of the effective strategy and assign responsibilities and roles. The CIO will be put in charge of funding and personnel in the most optimum way.

Build the DevOps strategy

To formulate a productive DevOps strategy, a program manager has to implement the best practices that will better the interdepartmental collaboration and empower better ways for foundation provisioning, programming advancement, and testing. 

These practices include placing a building, operating, design, testing, and other professionals in a shared environment and applying the Infrastructure as Code approach. Another indispensable practice for a successful DevOps shift is automating all stages to accelerate the development-testing-releasing process.

Implement Containerization

Containerization is lightweight virtualization and isolation of resources at the operating system level. It allows the application and the minimum system libraries to run in a fully standardized container that connects to the host or anything external to the host using specific interfaces. The container is independent of the resources or architecture of the host on which it runs.

All components needed to run an application are packaged as a single image and can be reused. The application in the container runs in an isolated environment and does not use the memory, processor, or disk of the host operating system.

Containerization made possible, with such a tool as Docker, streamlines the process of creating packaging, distributing, and using software on any platform. It facilitates better process isolation and cross-platform movement.

Apply CI/CD tools for infrastructure automation

The Containerized app, in its turn, should be handled correctly. Infrastructure automating tools like Chef or Kubernetes are combined with CI/CD tools like Jenkins for effective structure handling and programming deployment.

Integrate automated testing

Manual testing is carried out by a person sitting in front of the computer who carefully performs the tests. Automated testing, on the contrary, presupposes using automating tools to execute your test case suite. The main aim of automating is to cut the number of test cases to be done manually. Opposed to automated testing, manual testing is time and cost-consuming, error-prone, and cannot be run unattended. It will increase the speed of test execution and test coverage and means faster delivery.

 Ensure application performance monitoring

Application monitoring ensures that the DevOps-related teams are well aware of all the performance problems such as slow reaction and memory leaks. The issues might be uncovered during application server checking, user experience observing, and so on. Application performance monitoring will give important information about the customer experience.

APM also permits distinguishing, organizing, and detaching application errors before clients discover them, just as finding the main drivers of the defects rapidly with the utilization of APM programming like Zabbix or Nagios.

Implementing DevOps approach: the final word

Without a DevOps approach, there are often problems between releasing new features and stability. In a DevOps environment, on the contrary, the entire team is responsible for delivering both new features and stability. Thanks to the surefire mix of a shared codebase, CI, test-based methods, and automated tools, it is easier to find defects earlier in the process. On top of this, DevOps teams ensure a streamlined workflow, a more stable infrastructure, and various cultural benefits.

Download Free E-book with DevOps Checklist

Download Now

The Best Practices for Cloud Security You Can Choose from

Posted on by Pavel Tantsiura
In this issue:

Ever since the great discovery of the Internet, the world has never been the same. A lot of technology has made available due to this single discovery, with the most recent one being the cloud. Cloud technology has aided some business transaction and entertainment opportunities thanks to the dynamic cloud computing strategies and the numerous file-sharing opportunities. However, security in the cloud remains one of the major concerns businesses and organizations have to face at one point in time.

The idea of running your business operations and storing data on a virtual network that you have little control of is not only economical but also manageable. However, this is not the case. According to last year’s statistics on cloud security, CloudPassage found out that cloud security is still the number one concern in this industry. According to the research findings, at least 53% of the individuals interviewed noted that “general security risks” is the number one impeding factor for adopting cloud technologies. 91% percent of those surveyed were either “very concerned” or “averagely concerned” about this technology.

From the above observation, it is evident that cloud security is a pain to most businesses and organizations. Therefore, to ensure that everything runs smoothly, business CEOs and CTOs are advised to adopt best practices for cloud security in their business. The following article seeks to explain why this is important and also educate all stakeholders on the best cloud security strategies to adopt in 2017.

Why is the security of cloud computing so important to business?

Currently, at least 90% of businesses have taken their businesses to the cloud. While this number is slightly higher for large- and medium-scale businesses compared to the small business enterprise, the benefits of cloud computing are equally important to both divides if the security of cloud computing is guaranteed. The following are some of these benefits:

Helps your business reduce IT costs

Most businesses are moving their operations to the cloud to reduce the huge costs associated with running a business. Move your operations to the cloud only if you have invested in the latest cloud security models. Thanks to the secure cloud computing services, you can save money by:

  • Reducing the wages of staff as you will employ fewer IT experts compared to the manual system
  • Minimizing your energy expenses as you will use fewer computers as storage systems
  • Reducing operational time lags in your systems
  • Reducing the frequency of upgrading your IT systems

Scalability

One of the main objectives of the business is to grow and increase both in size and in operations. Thanks to cloud computing, businesses can achieve this with much ease. A secure cloud hosting platform means that your business can adjust to its growth thus helping it save money, time and other resources that could have been spent on improving the manual IT systems.

Promotes flexibility

A secure cloud computing service means that you can work from anywhere and at any time. Thanks to cloud technologies, data is stored online and can be accessed from any place using any device. Cloud database security, on the other hand, guarantees that the data you are storing online is always secure and cannot be corrupted or interfered with at any time.

Download Free E-book with DevOps Checklist

Download Now

The best cloud security practices to adopt

Cloud technologies are rapidly changing nowadays. Due to the rapid changes in technologies and the numerous cloud computing vulnerabilities, businesses are left with no option but to improve their cloud security strategies as well. The following are some of the practices you will find handy in 2017.

Understand your model

When planning cloud security, this is one of the most important factors to consider. Arguably, security in the cloud is a shared responsibility that both the business owner and the service provider need to pay attention to.

Different individuals define cloud computing technology differently. The following diagram is a representation of how you need to approach your computing security issues as explained by Platform as a Service (PaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Microsoft Azure, and Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Cloud Security Best Practices

Data encryption

Data encryption is one of the most recent security features for cloud computing you will come across in 2017. With the many instant messaging applications that exist in the market today, your data might not be safe. Make use of the latest encryptions and encrypt your data while in storage and also during transit.

Carry out audit and test your strategy

When considering cloud computing and information security, you need to know that even the most robust strategy is highly vulnerable to the ever-evolving hackers. Therefore, once you have chosen the most suitable security of cloud computing, you will need to check and ensure that you are duly covered. Test your strategy and then stop at the strategy that offers you maximum protection.

With the direction most businesses are taking towards cloud computing, it is undeniably true to say that cloud technology is the future of business. While this is true, threats from different angles are continually causing a challenge to most businesses. To be able to enjoy the numerous benefits of cloud computing, cloud security is key.

Want to receive reading suggestions once a month?

Subscribe to our newsletters