10 DevOps Best Practices for 2022 and Beyond
The past few years have seen increased digital transformation initiatives by enterprises worldwide. As such, it's no surprise that there is greater investment in eliminating the silos that have traditionally hindered the flow of information and collaboration between different parts of the organisation. DevOps has been a big part of this transformation, enabling developers and IT operations teams to deploy software and updates more quickly and efficiently. Global Industry Analysts, Inc. estimate that the worldwide DevOps market will balloon to $17.8 Billion by 2026.
The DevOps landscape is changing rapidly, with new technologies and practices emerging all the time. Here are ten DevOps best practices that will be important in 2022 and beyond.
1. Serverless Computing
While it has been around for more than a decade, many organisations have been hesitant to venture into serverless computing, fearing lack of industry support and unsure on the return on investment.
Serverless computing, where organisations acquire machine resources on-demand from a cloud provider, is a DevOps best practice due to the resulting efficiency and reliability. When you take away the burden of infrastructure management, DevOps teams can focus on developing and deploying applications.
3. Containerisation
Containers are becoming more and more popular, as they offer several advantages over traditional virtualisation. They are more portable, can be run on any platform, and provide better performance. As a result, DevOps teams are increasingly using containers to package and deploy their applications. DevOps teams can have applications up and running in minutes with a tool like Docker that comes with pre-built images.
5. Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
DevOps teams can achieve cloud applications' development, deployment, and scaling with increased speed, less risk, and lower cost through infrastructure as code (IaC).
This approach allows DevOps teams to provision and manage servers, operating systems, database connections, storage, and other infrastructure components automatically.
IaC is essential to the DevOps methodology because you can create and version infrastructure the same way you do your code.
7. DevSecOps Adoption
Security must be an integral part of the DevOps process to ensure safe and secure applications. DevSecOps is a set of practices that integrate security into the DevOps process. According to a study by RedHat, most companies (74%) have realised the need to adopt DevSecOps.
(Image source: RedHat.com)
By integrating security early in the development process, DevOps teams can avoid potential security issues later. DevSecOps also helps to speed up the development process by automating security testing.
8. Low-code Application Adoption
Low-code application development platforms allow DevOps teams to create and deploy applications without writing any code or only writing a minimal code.
These platforms allow DevOps teams to create applications by dragging and dropping components. This improves productivity by speeding up the application development process and increasing agility.
9. Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being used in DevOps for tasks such as automated testing and deployments. In addition, AI can help DevOps teams automate decision-making and speed up the process of identifying and fixing defects. In 2022 and beyond, AI will be an essential part of DevOps toolchains.
10. Adopting a DevOps Culture
DevOps only works best when it is part of the company culture. DevOps teams need to work together seamlessly with committed buy-in from management. Only with a culture of collaboration and cooperation can organisations reap the full benefits of DevOps.
Getting Started with DevOps
DevOps is a constantly evolving methodology, and the best practices listed here will change over time. By following these DevOps best practices, you'll be well on your way to success.
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6. Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)
The goal of CI/CD is to build, test, and deploy code continuously so that DevOps teams can iterate quickly and deliver value to the business faster.
CI/CD tools such as Jenkins automate the process of code testing and delivery, making it easier for DevOps teams to manage deployments. As a result, DevOps teams can deploy code faster and with fewer errors by automating the process.
4. Container Orchestration
For enterprises with large numbers of containers, orchestration takes containerisation to the next level.
Container orchestration automates the process of managing, deploying, and coordinating containers. Kubernetes has become the de-facto standard for container orchestration, with over 70% market share.
Orchestration is a DevOps best practice because it enables easy management of complex containerised deployments. By automating the process of provisioning and managing containers, DevOps teams can develop and deploy applications without worrying about the underlying infrastructure.
2. Microservices Architecture
Microservices are a popular architectural style for building applications and are well-suited to DevOps and serverless computing. They allow for easy modularisation of code, and each microservice can be scaled and monitored independently.
Microservices are more scalable and agile than monolithic applications when implemented correctly. Developers can scale each service segment independently according to the demands of the business rather than attempting to scale an entire application at once. Microservices also makes it easy to isolate and address a problem without affecting the whole application if something goes wrong.
DevOps teams should make use of microservices where appropriate to optimise their deployments.