The Best DevOps Tools for Automation, Monitoring, & More

Automation is a critical component of reducing the time between design and deployment, and supports continuous delivery and continuous integration (CI/CD) efforts. Employing automation improves efficiency, reduces errors, and allows DevOps teams to focus their talents on improvements and processes that can't be fully outsourced to machine learning. Consider implementing the following DevOps tools to automate software development processes: 

Jenkins is a Java-based build automation server that is celebrated for its wide-ranging versatility and impressive range of plug-in compatibility. As an open source CI/CD automation tool, Jenkins automates regular tasks in any combination of coding language and integrates easily with other preferred DevOps technology tools, such as Docker and Puppet.

Bamboo is Atlassian's CI/CD feature-rich DevOps tool that allows your team to automate the delivery pipeline with very little configuration time. Bamboo is a popular choice due to its user-friendly UI, built-in functionalities, and seamless integration with other Atlassian products, like Bitbucket or Jira.

Harness is a continuous delivery-as-a-service platform that uses artificial intelligence, automation, and data to streamline and verify the success of deployments. Secure the delivery process with the support of machine learning that rolls back faulty deployments. Measure performance through metrics that include lead time, MTTR, deployment frequency and change failure rate.

Configuration management ensures consistency, improves efficiency, and supports the ability to scale infrastructure without increasing workload or staff size. This is done by using automation to manage more targets without burdening current resources. The following configuration management tools can help contribute to the stability of your software and systems: 

Puppet is a robust configuration management tool that simplifies tasks and reduces the manual labor involved with software delivery by offering intelligent orchestration across multiple operating systems or multi-cloud infrastructures. Puppet is available as a free open-source tool or as an enterprise version with additional options that include real-time reporting, node management, or role-based access control. 

Ansible follows an infrastructure as code approach written in a simple YAML format that makes the configuration modules, known as "Playbooks" on this platform, easier to write. With a streamlined profile that doesn't add to the burden of a device's background resources, Ansible offers a clean and uncomplicated solution for configuration management, software provisioning, and orchestration. 

Chef is an open-source tool that can manage complex infrastructure on virtual or physical machines, as well as cloud computing environments, and uses Ruby as its scripting language. Due to its cloud-based system, Chef can be accessed from any device.

Infrastructure provisioning is a foundational element of the continuous delivery process. Just as software and application code must be built, tested, and deployed, the environment it exists in must also be continually evaluated and improved upon for maximum stability and optimal performance. The following tools are effective options to meet your infrastructure provisioning needs:

Terraform is an open-source configuration orchestration tool that operates across complex multi-cloud environments and supports immutable infrastructure. With a simple syntax that allows modularity, increased stability through the use of state files, and the ability to develop, change, and version infrastructure on either existing providers or in-house solutions, Terraform offers flexibility and ease of use that makes it a valuable DevOps tool. 

CloudFormation is a native AWS tool that uses simple code to create deployments, making it an appealing option for programmers regardless of where they fall on the spectrum of coding experience. With Cloudformation, you can write your own templates or use a drag-and-drop graphical user interface to design deployment resources. Since Cloudformation is specific to AWS resources, third-party services will require the integration of another tool. 

Heat is Openstack's primary orchestration program that manages the lifecycle of infrastructure across multiple cloud applications based on text file templates that are treated as code. Heat templates define resources and their relationships, as well as necessary software configurations, and requirement changes can be easily managed by editing the existing template. Resource usage can be adjusted dynamically to meet demands for maximum scalability. 

Monitoring tools provide critical insights to effectively maintain and scale your applications. Selecting a comprehensive solution is imperative to successfully implementing DevOps practices. Improve the visibility of your code builds and optimize workflows and processes with one of the following options for automated monitoring: 

Prometheus is an open-source event monitoring and real-time alerting toolkit that collects and records time series data. With modular architecture and source code available on GitHub, Prometheus has an active community of users and developers and a diverse ecosystem of exporters, which are the modules that capture metrics from third-party tools. 

AppDynamics offers a consolidated view of web applications, infrastructures, and supporting services across traditional and modern multi-cloud architectures. Collect, tag, and analyze cloud and microservice-related metrics and contextually evaluate the impact of releases on user experience and business outcomes. Auto-instrument applications and leverage insights to align your DevOps team's efforts with your organization's objectives.

Zipkin is a distributed tracing tool that was developed by Twitter and is currently an open-source project maintained by its community. Zipkin collects timing data which can then be queried based on trace IDs or other attributes to troubleshoot latency issues in service architectures. Zipkin supports all programming languages and major cloud providers including AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.