A continuous and automated delivery cycle is the foundation of DevOps, enabling quick and dependable delivery.
As a result, appropriate continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) solutions are required. A “good” continuous delivery continuous integration technology may make the most of a team’s existing process to fully utilize the automation feature, build a strong CI/CD pipeline, and offer a team the boost they require to succeed.
If you’re new to the concept of continuous delivery continuous integration keep on reading the blog will be your guide.
What Is Continuous Integration And Continuous Delivery?
Development teams are encouraged to frequently implement tiny code changes and check them into a version control repository by the continuous integration coding philosophy and practices. Teams need a standard method to integrate and validate changes because the majority of modern applications require writing code utilizing a variety of platforms and tools.
A system of the automatic building, packaging, and testing of their applications is established via continuous integration. Developers are more likely to commit code changes when there is a uniform integration procedure in place, which improves cooperation and code quality.
Continuous delivery continues where continuous integration leaves off by automating the delivery of applications to a subset of environments, such as development, testing, and production environments. Automated code distribution to various environments is known as continuous delivery.
What Is The Difference Between Continuous Integration And Continuous Delivery?
Developers that use the continuous integration (CI) method check and make minor changes to their code. This process is automated because of the size of the demands and the sequence of activities needed to complete it, allowing teams to design, test, and bundle their applications in a dependable and repeatable manner. CI streamlines code updates, giving developers more time to make changes and contribute to better products.
The automated transmission of finished code to contexts like testing and development is known as continuous delivery (CD). Code delivery to various contexts is made automated and standardized via CD.
The next phase after continuous delivery is continuous deployment. There are numerous production deployments because every modification that passes the automated tests is automatically put into production.
Most businesses that are not bound by regulatory or other limitations should aim toward continuous deployment.
In a nutshell, in continuous delivery vs continuous integration, CI is a set of procedures used by developers while they are writing code, and CD is a set of procedures used once the code has been written.
What Are The Continuous Integration And Continuous Delivery Best Practices
We’ll go through some of the best practices of continuous integration and continuous delivery now.
- Rule 1: Keeping Version Control Use
Utilize tracking and version control technologies to monitor your CI/CD pipeline. This makes it simpler to communicate with the team and keep track of how your software is developing. To have a manual approval phase prior to anything being changed in production, however, make sure that every member of your team is taught your approval procedure for changes. Avoiding automated manufacturing modifications is always safer.
- Rule 2: Keeping Fast & Lean
Your deployment pipeline’s simplicity is the goal of CI/CD. As a result, you want to keep everything brisk and trim. If something takes a long time to do, the entire team may be slowed down. To accomplish this, you could:
- Make troubleshooting simple.
- Just use production for deployment.
- Utilize what is currently on hand.
- Rule 3: Keeping Testing On Priority
Even if you don’t have any tests ready right now, it’s a good idea to set up CI/CD. Nevertheless, using it as a deployment tool is a smart idea.
Use the CI/CD pipeline to upload to stages and test before deployment once tests are set up. If your CI/CD script fails during this phase, reject the entire pipeline. Without unintentionally altering the stable state, you want to be able to observe the issue clearly.
- Rule 4: Keeping Security Under Considerations
Always remember to be cautious about security. Never save your login information in your Git repository directly. By combining VPNs, strong two-factor authentication, and identity and access management, you may enforce the “principle of least privilege” (PoLP) and limit your exposure to risks.
- Rule 5: Keeping Things Monitored
No matter how thoroughly tested the code and infrastructure are, problems in production can still occur in your CI/CD pipeline. Over the years, we’ve discovered that troubleshooting operations in a CI/CD pipeline can be challenging and occasionally impossible.
What Are Continuous Integration (CI) And Continuous Delivery (CD) Tools?
We have briefly discussed the continuous integration and continuous delivery tools below;
- Jenkins
The central development and continuous integration process are carried out by Jenkins, an open-source automation server. It is a standalone Java program providing packages for Windows, macOS, and other operating systems that resemble Unix.
- CircleCI
A CI/CD technology called CircleCI promotes quick software development and publication. The user’s pipeline can be automated with CircleCI, from code development to testing and deployment.
- TeamCity
A continuous integration solution called TeamCity aids in developing and deploying various project kinds. TeamCity interacts with Visual Studio and IDEs and operates in a Java context. The program supports.NET and open-stack applications and may be installed on both Windows and Linux systems.
- Codeship
A hosted platform called Codeship allows for many early and automatic software releases. By streamlining the testing and release procedures, it aids software firms in producing better products more quickly.
- Bamboo
A continuous delivery pipeline is created by Bamboo, a continuous integration server, which automates the management of application software releases. Assigning versions, categorizing releases, delivering, and enabling new versions on deployment are all covered by Bamboo.
- GoCD
GoCD is an open-source development and software release solution from ThoughtWorks that supports contemporary infrastructure on CI/CD.
Conclusion
Businesses that often improve applications and need a dependable delivery procedure typically have continuous delivery continuous integration done. When the CI/CD pipeline is in place, the team can concentrate more on improving the applications rather than on the specifics of delivering them to different environments.
DevOps teams must work together on technology, procedures, and priorities before implementing CI/CD. Teams must come to an agreement on the best strategy for their industry and set of technology. The team should regularly adhere to continuous integration and continuous delivery procedures after a pipeline is set up.
