Both business and computer operations have a lot of buzzwords that sometimes mean very little to people outside this field. DevOps, best practices and scaling are three such buzzwords.
The term DevOps derives from development and operations, which are sometimes two mutually antagonistic departments. Development acquires words like “agile” meaning that they can meet a need quickly. Operations, however, deals with the day-to-day activity required for the production of whatever sort. Often development sees operations as slow to adopt change, while operations might see development as a wildcat department with little connection to reality. DevOps is a meeting place where the two come together – innovation serving real needs and making a real difference. Best practices are the procedures that help make that process run smoothly.
These five best practices are as follows:
Automate repetitive activities. Whether it’s the beginning or set up part of a set of programming code or whether it’s pushing out updates, if you can automate it you cut down on human error as well as maximizing use of human labor hours. It also makes it easier and less risky to implement the needed changes.
“Use Containers to drive Microservices.” This is a direct quote from Infoworld. For your average computer user, this quote doesn’t mean anything. When broken down, however, what it means is to contain an activity by setting up expectations and limitations. For example, an instructor might say to the school technologist, “I want a program that will allow me to enter my attendance one time, and have it go to the main office, the lunch room, the guidance counselor and to any other teachers who will see that student during the day.” This creates a container for a microservice, which is letting all involved parties know if a student is in school on a given day and whether he or she should be considered when making lunch or class activity plans.
Monitor DevOps Pipelines and Applications. Not every innovation or deployment will work efficiently or as expected. Monitoring processes and providing opportunities for feedback creates a method to evaluate functionality, and to tweak problem segments of the operations. For example, to discover whether a student has left school between first and second hour, it might be necessary to take role at the next class and report it.
DevOps consultation can bring DevOps best practices to your organization, no matter how large or how small. A DevOps consulting team can manage the interface between development and operations, integrating the results smoothly into your day-to-day processes.
