Top 10 DevOps Tools and Technologies that You Should Know in 2021

Introduction

The IT industry has seen many kaleidoscopic changes that shifted the way we see, use and know technology and how it functions in our world. With the advent of the internet, the spread of information and the rate of development of new technologies has seen exponential growth. One such has been Cloud computing that brought a shift in technology and still influences the way various businesses operate from banking, eCommerce to retail stores and even the video game industry. There is no doubt new technologies have been impacting the software industry but cultural shifts also bring cascading changes. Devops has been one such change that was the result of changing corporate culture as well as new technologies. It was all because of embracing open communication, clarity, and cross-discipline teamwork in the software industry that the process of automation and continuity were implemented effectively and efficiently. 

This is also made possible due to various Devops tools that software engineers swear by that has ensured that these two elements lead to increased production time, better communication, cost-effectiveness while avoiding any deployment failures.

So what are devops tools and their uses? What are the best Devops tools list to learn in 2021? What Does the top Devops tools list look like?

If you are also wondering about these questions then this blog is for you as we mention top 11 Devops tools list in 2021 you should know about and what are its features?

First, Let’s Know About DevOps’ History: How It All Started?

You can get a lot of information online or offline regarding what is DevOps and isn’t, what it does and it does not. We think before we answer: What are DevOps tools? We should understand DevOps in its entirety or what it is, so let us know a brief history of how DevOps came to be the buzzworthy idea it is today.

So what’s the story?

Initially, there had been a huge divide between development, and operations were often considered as two separate entities and were accountable for handling different aspects of a software cycle. This naturally led to various siloed challenges such as increased development time, low throughput, etc. So in a way, the DevOps movement started to take shape when IT and software development professionals raised concerns about this divide and started looking for ways to bridge this gap. 

So somewhere in 2007 and 2008, the resistance started shaping up against the traditional software development model or waterfall method- that was essentially a software development process working in a linear sequential flow. Meaning, any phase in the development process begins only if the previous phase is completely leading to chaos if there was any phase that needed change or modification--chaos in terms of long hours, error-filled launches, and unhappy clients and users. So with people like Patrick Dubois, Gene Kim, and John Willis joining the conversation for change led to the idea of DevOps. 

DevOps which has its roots in the agile methodology--which is a software development methodology where needs or solutions evolve via collaboration between self-organizing cross-functional teams--bridged that gap between software development teams and IT operations teams in the software development cycle. 

So what is DevOps exactly? What does it do?

DevOps is a set of cultural philosophies, practices, and tools that ensures the software development and operations work together to ensure continuous integration (CI) and delivery (CD). 

In the words of AWS, DevOps “increases an organization's ability to deliver applications and services at high velocity: evolving and improving products at a faster pace than organizations using traditional software development and infrastructure management processes. This speed enables organizations to better serve their customers and compete more effectively in the market.”

Now let’s know about the simmering top 11 DevOps tools in 2021 that you must know.

Top 10 DevOps Tools List that DevOps Engineers Swear By in 2021

DevOps tools are being increasingly adopted by companies across the globe but how to know what suits your business operations Relax, we have got you covered below we have curated the top 10 DevOps Tools list that you should know to make your career fly:

1. Linux

Linux is an open-source operating system that manages a system’s hardware and resources like CPU, memory, and storage. It offers the DevOps team the scalability and flexibility required to create a dynamic and smooth software development process.

Key Features:

• Linux source code is freely available. 
• It is a community-based development project. 
• It is a multiuser system that means multiple users can access system resources like memory/ ram/ application programs at the same time.
• Highly secured OS as each application needs to be authorized by the admin user and nothing can be executed on the OS without Admin’s permission. 

2. GIT

“Git is a free and open-source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency.” GIT makes it easy to track changes made by anyone in the DevOps team as it offers tracking code, version control, and effective management of code.

Key Features:

• It empowers collaboration and faster release cycles.
• It’s open-source and free and easy to use.
• GIT tool offers lightning-quick when compared to other version control tools.
• Every task in GIT can be done any number of times.

3. Maven

Maven is an automation and management tool written in Java language and helps in building projects in C#, Ruby, Scala, and other programming languages. It lets developers create projects, dependency, and documentation using Project Object Model and plugins.

Key Features:

• A large and growing repository of libraries and metadata to use out of the box
• Instant access to new features with little or no extra configuration
• Simple project setup that follows best practices
• Can also build any number of projects into desired output such as jar, war, metadata.

4. Jenkins

The Jenkins tool is used to repeat and execute various jobs and is one of the open-source leading automation servers. The automation engine enables DevOps teams to easily access and integrate the project changes and to quickly identify the problems.

Key Features:

• Hundreds of plugins for the Jenkins tool are available
• Continuous integration and delivery is available
• Java-based ready to run programs that can be run on Mac, Windows, OS X, and other Unix OS
• Can be easily set up and configured through a web interface

5. Docker

The Docker tool is used to ship, build and run distributed applications anywhere. The Docker tool is used to quickly work collaboratively and assemble apps from the components. The containers can be managed through an app as a cluster and single group and through these resources can be optimized and made highly available.

Key Features:

• Docker can work with any stack
• The container apps can be isolated to enhance security and eliminate conflicts
• DevOps operations can be streamlined and collaborated to get fixes and get features quickly for more production
• The apps can be managed, developed, tested, deployed and predicted through package dependencies through the app.

6. Ansible

The Ansible tool is designed for collaboration and the automation process can be easily scaled up, managed, automated, deployed and the productivity can speed up. IT processes can be simply automated and the entire application life cycle can be automated with the help of Ansible.

Key Features:

• Ansible can help to deploy multi-tier apps.
• Ansible helps in managing systems and avoiding complexity during the 
• It is designed to be very simple, reliable, and consistent for configuration management.
• It helps to mitigate risk due to a lack of sufficient knowledge of the IT infrastructure.

7. Kubernetes

Kubernetes or K8s is an open-source system that helps in automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications into logical units for easy management and discovery.

Key Features:

• Scales up web servers according to the demand for the software applications and degrades web server instances during downtimes.
• Kubernetes can scale without increasing your ops team.
• It runs on most on-premises, hybrid, or public cloud hosting services.
• Can also be used to scale web and mobile applications in production to the highest levels of web traffic.

8 Nagios

Nagios is one of the popular DevOps tools, which is used by IT infrastructure monitoring teams to rectify and provide the solution to any infrastructure-related problem. The tool has an extensively broad network, log monitoring, and server management features.

Key Features:

• Nagios Core is open source, hence free to use.
• It can scale and manage 1000s of hosts and servers.
• The in-depth look at network traffic sources is delivered by Nagios Network Analyzer and high-level information for potential security threats is also delivered by the tool.
• It can monitor network protocols, mission-critical infrastructure components, network infrastructure and system metrics.

9. Prometheus

Prometheus is an open-source system monitoring and alerting toolkit based on a time series data model. The monitoring process is utilized widely within cloud companies and DevOps teams. 

Key Features:

• It is easy to customize and produces metrics without impacting application performance.
• It has a flexible query language.
• IT features a Node Exporter that can be customized to fetch data from any client.
• It can keep tabs on hundreds of microservices.

10. Puppet

Puppet is an open-source tool and ensures that all the configurations are applied everywhere in developing software. That is why it is also considered a great DevOps program for managing multiple servers.

Key Features:

• It can work for hybrid infrastructure and applications.
• Provides Client-server architecture.
• Supports Windows, Linux, and UNIX operating systems.
• It supports several platforms including  IBM mainframes, Cisco switches, and Mac OS servers other than Linux and Windows.

Bonus Devops Tools because the more, the merrier!

Vagrant

Vagrant is an open-source software product that is used to build and manage virtual machine environments in a single workflow. It allows DevOps to share software running environments and test timely without setting up configurations.

Key Features:

• Open-source software so anyone can download it, modify it, and share it freely.
• It lets you separate your software code and infrastructure. The DevOps team did not have to know much about DevOps, infrastructure, servers, and configuration-management tools. 
• It makes it easier for the development team to share a base configuration.
• It keeps the development environment as close to the production environment.

If you think that there are any better DevOps tools that we missed or do you have your own DevOps tools list, don’t forget to mention them in the comment section below!

What Comes Ahead: A Career Path in Devops Job Titles, Roles & Salary

So you already know what DevOps tools are, and different DevOps tools list with their key features. Wanna start a career in DevOps tools in 2021? Because the demand for DevOps professionals and especially DevOps Engineers are soaring high, statistically speaking, the role of DevOps Engineer has seen a 225% jump in postings on Indeed. It is also one of the highest-paying jobs in the IT industry in 2020. Here are other DevOps job titles that you can look for if you want to start a career in DevOps tools:

• DevOps Engineer or Platform Engineers: They oversee and support the platform used for DevOps operation. 
• Build Engineer: They ensure that build and deployment requirements are met in a fast-paced CI/CD environment.
• Release Manager: This is sort of a managerial position where he/she collaborates with the Build Engineer and other teams to ensure that goals are met throughout the development process.
• Automation Architect: He/She is responsible for implementing automation, then integrating those systems with other existing automation & non-automation systems. 
• Product Manager: He collaborates with the dev team to ensure the product’s requirements are met to a high-quality standard in each sprint.
• DevOps Software Developer: They are responsible for developing, testing, deploying, monitoring, and supporting the code.
• Security Engineer: They develop and supervise data and technology security systems to help prevent cybercrimes or data theft.
• Data Analyst: They take real data from real users and transform it into actionable intelligence and often overlap with UI engineers and UX designers in a DevOps environment.

Who is a DevOps Engineer: One of the Highest Paying DevOps Role

There’s no formal career track for becoming a DevOps engineer. They are either developers who get interested in deployment and network operations, or sysadmins who have a passion for scripting and coding, and move into the development side where they can improve the planning of tests and deployment. 

The average salary for a DevOps Engineer is $1,01,524 per year.

Top Certifications to Become a Devops Engineer:

The Top 5 DevOps Certifications that make you stand out from the rest and gives an opportunity to enter the world of certified IT Professionals with high paying jobs are:

How Can I Learn Devops Tools and Shift My Career Into Devops Tools?

Here are a few things you should do to begin positioning yourself as a DevOps engineer.

• Learn: Learn about the DevOps culture from the online or offline community and familiarize yourself with essential tools and the DevOps environment.
• Training & Certifications: Go for Devops certifications and training to get practical industry-based learnings around DevOps tools & methodologies, their use around SDLC & cloud environments.
• Programming Language(s): As a DevOps tool professional you are skilled in the development and operations process so learn a programming language Python or Java.
• Practical Experience: Obtain practical experience by using your skills as a software engineer to build tools rather than software. Look at any of the open-source projects Netflix has written for examples/ideas.

Conclusion

DevOps tools are popular and in-demand because they have improved the efficiency of developers as well as operations teams by using Collaborative tools. There are so many DevOps tools that it can be difficult to pick any one of them. Of course, you will go for the one that suits your business requirements and needs. But if you already have detailed insights into DevOps tools with their salient features that surely will make choosing easier for you.  

In this blog, we listed the best DevOps tools in 2021 based on their relevance, reliability, usefulness, and security. As you can already leverage the DevOps tools only when you know what each of the DevOps tools does and how relevant it is to your requirement to execute complete organizational operations. We hope the list has helped you in selecting the best and most appropriate DevOps tools for your operations.

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