What is DevOps?
By Stephen Bucaro
DevOps is short for Development and Operations. In the past the development, testing,
deployment, and administrating of a network and network software was done by different specialists.
For business organizations, employing different specialists for different phases of a network
operation is both complicated and expensive. Business prefers to employ what we used to call
the "jack of all trades".
A DevOps engineer has to know software development, testing, deployment, network operations,
and system administration. Not to mention business organization and management. If an application
doesn't work as it's supposed to, the system administrator doesn't call the software developer,
the DevOps engineer handles it all themselves.
If the network goes down in the middle of the night, the operations supervisor doesn't call a
system administrator. The DevOps engineer is the operations supervisor and system administrator.
If the organization needs the database to do something else, they don't call the database
administrator, the DevOps engineer does it all. A DevOps engineer needs needs not only to be
a technical expert, but also a great manager and a great communicator.
Of course, depending on the size of the organization, there may be more than one DevOps engineer,
but no DevOps individual is allowed to specialize, every one must be competent at development and
deployment of applications, monitoring and administering the network, and working with the
organization, including communicating and working with the other DevOps engineer(s). In fact,
there are specific DevOps tools to help the DevOps engineers collaborate and share responsibility.
The currently most popular DevOps tool is Jenkins. Jenkins is an open source automation
server written in Java. Jenkins helps to automate the non-human part of the software development
process, facilitating technical aspects of software delivery.
One of the main features of Jenkins is it's ability to use plugins. Plugins add new functionality.
There are plugins available for integrating Jenkins with many build tools, version control systems,
testing and generating test reports, bug databases, and much more.
More Network Troubleshooting and Support Articles: • Built-in Utilities for Network Troubleshooting • Network Notepad Free Network Diagraming Tool • Network Design and Proof of Concept Testing • The Case for Making the Transition from Sysadmin to DevOps Engineer • How to Make a Network Cable • Network Schematic Symbols • Network Maintenance • How Snort's Stealth TCP Port Scanning Works • What is DevOps? • Structured Cabling - A Detailed Tutorial and Even More!
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