In 2020, poor software cost the U.S. economy $2.08 trillion. Businesses can lose up to $1.3 million per year. Where is the loss coming from? Inefficiencies. Many of these inefficiencies arise from human error, time constraints, and resource limitations.
There is, after all, so much involved in developing, tracking, and deploying software. Fortunately, DevOps-managed services exist to cut those inefficiencies way down, if not eliminate them altogether. Here are some DevOps examples that highlight this case.
What Is DevOps Automation?
DevOps automation is the process of automating software development and IT operations. It brings development (Dev) and operations (Ops) teams together, enabling better collaboration and faster software delivery.
DevOps automation shifts repetitive tasks away from human labor and onto computer systems trained to perform them. This shift allows humans to focus on mission-critical work like creativity, interpreting user needs, and critical thinking.
26 Real-World DevOps Automation Examples
You might be wondering where this need arises and whether it actually applies to your specific field. To that end, we’ve come up with 26 real-world examples to showcase the impact of DevOps automation.
1. Continuous Integration (CI)
During the software development process, developers will merge their code changes into a shared repository several times a day. With each merge, automated testing is triggered to ensure the changes are ready for deployment. This early bug detection helps prevent costly issues down the line.
The more quickly bugs can be detected, the more time and money are saved in resolving them. This is because undetected bugs tend to have a domino effect, creating more bugs and more problems the longer they survive.
Automating continuous integration (CI) relieves developers of the need to merge their codes and instead automatically pulls the information for them, allowing developers to stay in creative flow.
2. Continuous Integration (CD)
The CD side of continuous integration is the continuous delivery, deployment, or both. Traditionally, developers would need to run tests on each new set of codes. With automation, the trained system will run the tests automatically upon receiving new changes.
Again, in this scenario, developers will never have to break their workflow unless notified by the system that a bug has been detected.
3. Automation Testing
Testing on software, in general, is inherently better when performed by AI. Allowing computers to perform repetitive testing tasks without the need for human intervention will speed up the process and provide better results. You can train your automated system to be:
- Faster
- More accurate
- Efficient
- Integrated with continuous integration and continuous delivery
You can automate testing on various levels, including:
- Unit testing
- Integration testing
- Performance testing
- Functional testing
- Regression testing
Developers, on average, spend 10% to 25% of their time on testing. Handing this process over to automation allows the product to get to market much more quickly.
4. Microservices Deployment
Microservices is one of the areas where DevOps automation can really come in handy. Why? Because the application process here is broken down into smaller services that can be worked on and managed independently of the whole.
Container technology is typically used for DevOps-managed services, allowing developers to automate updates and deployment of multiple microservices across different environments.
Without automation, a significant portion of the developer’s day would be spent managing these processes.
5. Collaborative Development
Collaboration is essential in the development process. Often, it requires team members working in different areas of development to communicate and integrate each other’s work. This teamwork improves communication, quality, and productivity.
Automating collaboration means streamlining communication by
- Breaking down silos
- Providing continuous feedback loops
- Offering shared visibility
- Standardizing processes
Because teammates are no longer depending on each other or waiting on each other for updates and manual intervention. This fosters more trust and cooperation.
6. Release Management
Release management is the process of moving software through the entire lifecycle of planning, scheduling, testing, deploying, and controlling updates. The goal is for the process to be smooth and flawless by improving the quality and efficiency of creation and collaboration.
DevOps automation in release management automates repetitive tasks and creates continuous testing and deployments. This significantly reduces human error and speeds up the time to market.
7. Faster Feedback Loops
A fast feedback loop is a repeating cycle developers utilize that allows them to share information, analyze it, update it, and cycle it through again. The quicker they can move through the cycle, the more quickly the product can get to market. This becomes challenging because of human error and exhaustion, of course, which allows for more bugs and flaws.
Automating faster feedback loops with DevOps-managed services ensures quicker:
- Writing code
- Testing codes
- Getting feedback
- Adapting changes
It eliminates human error and ensures developers are free to continue the creation process as they receive feedback.
8. Cloud Infrastructure Management
Managing and overseeing all the components involved in a cloud computing environment is a big job. It requires ongoing attention, bug detection, and efficiency. Managers must monitor servers, software, network devices, and services. It is virtually impossible to perform cloud infrastructure management effectively without automation.
Automation in DevOps streamlines repetitive tasks like configuration, scaling, and deployment, not to mention provisioning. This reduces the risk of manual errors and promises consistently across the platform.
9. App Performance Optimizations
App performance optimization is an area where automation is inevitable. The entire goal is to enhance the speed and performance of an application. DevOps automation allows for better optimization of code, network requests, data management, and image loading. It does this by:
- Providing rapid feedback loops
- Streamlining the deployment process
- Quickly identifying performance bottlenecks
- Automating testing and analysis
DevOps automation fosters collaboration, communication, and problem resolution among teams, ensuring performance improvements.
10. Faster Incident Management
The goal of incident management is to ensure rapid response to issues with software when they do arise. DevOps automation will catch issues more quickly, bring essential parties to the table to resolve the issues and automate repetitive tasks to be performed during the resolution period.
This allows for root cause analysis and a streamlined workflow, which means future incidents should be minimized.
11. Terraform for Automated Infrastructure Provisioning
Infrastructure as a code tool, terraform is used by developers to automate the entire infrastructure spanning multiple public and private clouds. It automates infrastructure provisioning with scripts, which makes it easier to work with and faster to manage. It also helps manage complex systems much more safely.
DevOps automation ensures open communication and collaboration among teams while automating the translation of physical resources into code. As a result, development teams can automatically manage those resources.
12. Ansible for Configuration Management
Ansible is just one example of an open-source configuration management tool. It enables the set-up and maintenance of configurations across several systems at the same time. It establishes a single defined state for servers and then makes sure they maintain that state throughout automated tasks.
Without DevOps, this level of complexity would be impossible as it requires both automation of development and collaboration of operations teams to be efficient.
13. Automated Security Scanning
The world of cybersecurity is perhaps the area where DevOps automation is needed most. Continuous monitoring, removal of friction, and early integration of security checks ensure systems are well-maintained in the most efficient manner with the highest level of security. Automation will:
- Identify vulnerabilities quickly
- Stop vulnerabilities before they reach production environments
- Improve application security overall
It also allows for faster feedback loops between security teams and their development partners.
14. Policy-as-Code for Compliance
Defining and managing security criteria through code is no easy task. It requires policy to be written into code and then that code to be integrated into the system to ensure compliance is maintained at all levels. DevOps automation allows for automatic integration of police as code into the software development lifecycle.
15. Automated Performance Monitoring
Performance monitoring at the level of software development without automation would require a massive team of software engineers on full alert around the clock.
Like with security, automation, especially aligned with DevOps managed services, is the ideal approach to performance monitoring because you can train the system to continuously monitor the program and raise alerts when abnormalities are discovered. You can also train it to automatically implement preapproved responses.
16. Self-Healing Infrastructure
DevOps automation is perhaps at its best when it comes to self-healing infrastructure. Development teams can automate both the monitoring of performance and the triggered responses when something goes wrong. Automating self-healing:
- Reduces downtime
- Improves system resilience
- Reduce operational costs
- Reallocate resources
- Restart services
This allows teams to move seamlessly through their workflows without having to spot-check and fix any issues that arise. Human labor will only be called upon when the system is out of options.
17. Unit & Integration Testing
The tasks involved in unit and integration testing are long and laborious. Each step along the way must be challenged for bugs, and if bugs are detected, they must be redeveloped and retested. Then, the integration process must be run at each point along the way.
Automating this process streamlines it, and DevOps ensures silos are broken down so all necessary teams are kept in the loop.
18. Load Testing & Performance Benchmarking
Like unit and integration testing, load testing requires developers to ensure a system can handle a realistic user load. It aims to identify bottlenecks in the event of high traffic and evaluates what can be done during system failure.
This testing, alongside performance benchmarking, which compares the system’s performance against a standard, prepares software for the market.
Automating load testing & performance benchmarking allows for automated execution each time code is changed, cutting out the necessity for human labor, which will save hours of manpower.
19. Kubernetes for Container Orchestration
This open-source platform automates the management, deployment, scaling, and networking of containerized applications across several servers clustered together. Basically, Kubernetes handles the entire lifecycle of containers. DevOps automation is an integral part of this process that allows for the efficient management of these incredibly complex applications.
20. Automated Rollbacks
One of the most challenging areas in software development is the downtime that occurs when a system fails. With DevOps automation, automation rollbacks are put into place and all essential team members are alerted in real-time. This way, the system can fall back to a more stable version of itself while detected bugs are worked out.
21. Auto-Scaling Infrastructure
As a response to systems being overloaded, DevOps automation can install auto-scaling infrastructure, which ensures the number of servers in service always matches the workload. That way, the application in question will always have the resources necessary for the task when they need them.
DevOps also jumps in to optimize costs and performance in these situations because they ensure only necessary resources are used at any given time.
22. Spot Instance Automation
Spot instances are ideal for companies looking to save money that can allow for occasional disruption to their services. However, spot instances would be impossible without the advent of automation in the DevOps field.
DevOps automation ensures automation scaling, provisioning, and replacement of spot instances when those services are interrupted. They can also jump from providers based on cost-effectiveness and save companies even more money.
23. Self-Service DevOps Portals
These self-service portals allow development teams to build and deploy software applications independently. They enable:
- Standardization of tools
- Security protections
- Software builds
- Reduced interruptions
- Centralized projects
DevOps automation with these self-service portals speeds up production and development time and breaks down silos between development and operations teams, creating a seamless process.
24. Automated Documentation Generation
Teams across the board save time and money with automated document generation. From a DevOps perspective, this automation can function across teams, so everyone from marketing and sales to development and data knows which docs are going out, when, and why.
This keeps everyone on the same page and the entire workflow progressing without bugs and bottlenecks caused by miscommunication and mishandling.
25. Containerization for Faster Deployment
Like with Ansible above, containerizing tasks ensures faster development, and automating this part of the lifecycle is a no-brainer. It allows for a single package to be created for an application with all of its dependencies, thereby ensuring consistent execution regardless of the environment.
DevOps automation will significantly speed up the deployment process involved in containerization.
26. Backup & Disaster Recovery Automation
Like with rollbacks, automating backup and disaster recovery, and including DevOps to break down silos, will reduce downtimes and increase efficiency. Particularly when your system is automated to include rollbacks in backup services, teams can expect rapid response and recovery, saving time and money.
How DuploCloud Automates DevOps
It’s the most logical thing to automate every single possible process so your teams are free to be creative, collaborative, and productive. You don’t need specialized expertise or elite training. You can work from a single, simplified platform and move your software applications into automation mode.
We’ll also help you keep your teams communicating so operations and development become a single unit, working toward the same goals.
It’s a development dream come true: a faster, more efficient system that values the humans who work so hard for you.
Ready to learn more? Book a demo with DuploCloud now.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s the difference between DevOps automation and traditional DevOps?
Traditional DevOps works to break down the walls between developers and operations teams. DevOps automation uses specific automation tools to get that done.
What are the most common use cases for DevOps automation?
DevOps automation is used most commonly to automate repetitive tasks and reduce errors in software development.
What industries benefit the most from DevOps automation?
Software and technology are the industries most benefiting from DevOps automation.
How does security automation fit into DevOps?
DevOps removes the need to remember to run security tools and checks, improving relationships among development and security teams.
How difficult is it to transition from manual DevOps to automation?
It can be challenging if you’re not working with a team equipped to simplify the transition. That’s what DuploCloud is here for.
