DevOps Explained: All You Want To Know About Development & Operations

What is DevOps?

DevOps (the merger of the words "Development" and "Operations") is a phenomenon that emphasizes the importance of communication and collaboration between software developers and production IT professionals, as well as automating the deployment of software and infrastructure changes.

What are the main values of DevOps?

Continuous release & deployment

Establishing a proper delivery workflow to facilitate continuous deployment of software to QA (staging) and then to production in an automated manner to assure that each and every change to the code is proven to be deployable at any time, thus, allowing systems to absorb rapid change.

Continuous testing

Enabling continuous testing of solutions, to ensure that the code functions and performs as designed, integrates with other components of the application.

Continuous monitoring

Collecting metrics about the software such as log output, server health, development milestones, vulnerabilities, deployments, user activity, etc. and delivering smart alerts enable all interested parties to be capable of reacting immediately to the quality of features being delivered.

Continuous feedback & optimization

Enabling to capture user behavior and find weak points of the software as they occur allow taking appropriate and immediate remedy actions quickly. It returns in solution improvements and enhanced user experience.

Who businesses need DevOps?

• Agile development companies with teams of all sizes need DevOps to have running and maintained CI / CD and IaC methodology.
• Companies that use the microservice approach to building architecture need DevOps for convenient deployment and maintenance of their applications.

What are the purposes of DevOps?

Security

Our DevOps help to modify security systems along the deployment process with cloud-based security automation, logging, and threat analysis.

Configuration

Our experts deploy custom scripts that optimize your cloud architecture for rapid scaling and instant failover.

Automation

We shift deployment automation to the cloud to reduce manual effort, streamline your QA and accelerate delivery.

What are the benefits of having DevOps for the business?

• Faster feature delivery
• Stable operating environments
• Spare time to add value

What will I get if I start implementing DevOps with ASAP Lab?

1. Basic infrastructure

• We'll calculate the required number of AWS instances, and the requirements for them;
• We'll help to integrate AWS services with your project.
• We will deploy a system for gathering statistics and for monitoring, backup system and other necessary components of the basic infrastructure.

2. A full description in accordance with the IaC methodology (Infrastructure as Code)

Rules will be created for deploying a basic part of the application infrastructure. Each application code contains rules for:

• Builds of Docker, and other layers with a description of such parameters as PHP, list, and versions of system dependencies, for application dependencies, the contents of the configuration of all necessary components.
• Deployment and interservice interaction.

3. GitLab installation (or relevant alternative) with imported data from integrated systems (GitHub, Bitbucket, etc.)

We will agree with you the workflows of Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery.

Following questions will be answered:

• What commits to collect?
• How, when and what tests to run?
• How many and what environments are needed (except for production)?
• Who rolls out, on what environment, in what order?

The result will be the workflow described in your application code.

4. Virtual machines ready for work

They will be used for the deployment of the components obtained in the previous steps, in accordance with the rules of the workflow and in the necessary number of environments.

5. Smart technical support

Constant support of development processes, rapid changes in the infrastructure, assistance to developers and team leaders on related issues, consultations on architecture. If you have your own development team we can provide documentation regarding the procedures requirements or even train them to match the required level of expertise.

6. Guarantees of fault tolerance and scalability of the infrastructure architecture

To summarize, after shifting to DevOps you will have a built-in system of automated develop & deploy processes that work stably and consistently achieve their goals.

How much does it cost to implement DevOps?

The cost of supporting projects using the DevOps methodology is individual because it depends on many factors, such as the existing processes and infrastructure, the scope of the project and the technologies used, the requirements for Continuous Delivery, development plans, etc.

In average the launch expenses vary between $2,000 and $5,000 as they include configuration services the cost of which depends on the project complexity. The average cost of maintenance is around $750 per month for a project. We can discuss the details of your project to calculate the cost precisely.

Why choose ASAP Lab for DevOps services?

• We are our own clients and have long ago integrated DevOps with all internal processes.
• We have a significant experience to maintain the entire infrastructure for Enterprise businesses
• We know how to provide development service by Agile methodology.
• Our experience in operating complex projects includes serving leading retailers globally. We know that operation is not only about providing support but also about planning, implementing the architecture of the entire infrastructure, scaling, technology consulting, etc.
• For years, we have been using Docker and know how to configure it correctly for projects of various sizes.
• We are serving different platforms using PHP.
• We have an in-house development department and a separate DevOps team.
• The infrastructure can be either deployed from scratch or transferred (migrated) from any existing.
• We provide services regulated by service agreement (SLA), under which we guarantee the required level of availability.

Make your first step towards DevOps transformation by discussing the details of your project with our DevOps team.