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What is DevOps: Practices, Methodology, and Tools

What is DevOps: Practices, Methodology, and Tools
Hostman Team
Technical writer
Infrastructure

A software development methodology is a set of principles, approaches, and tools used to organize and manage the software creation process. It defines how the team works, how members interact and divide responsibilities, how product quality is controlled, and more.

A methodology aims to regulate the development process and ensure the project is delivered according to the requirements, timelines, and budget.

Various software development methodologies exist, from the Waterfall model to Extreme Programming. One such methodology is DevOps.

In this article, we’ll explore what DevOps is, why it’s needed in software delivery, what problems it solves, and the core concepts behind the methodology. We’ll also cover the role of the DevOps engineer and their responsibilities within a team and development process.

What is DevOps?

DevOps is a relatively new software development concept rapidly gaining popularity and gradually replacing traditional development methodologies. In 2020, the global DevOps market was valued at around $6 billion. By 2027, according to ResearchAndMarkets, it’s expected to grow to $25 billion.

The definition of DevOps is broad and not easy to pin down, especially compared to other areas of IT.

What is DevOps in simple terms? It’s a methodology where Development, Operations, and Testing intersect and merge. But such a definition raises several valid questions:

  • Where do the boundaries of DevOps begin and end?
  • Which parts of development, testing, and maintenance fall outside of DevOps?
  • Why is it necessary to link these processes?

We’ll try to answer those below.

The Traditional Software Release Process

Development, testing, and operations are the three main phases of the software release lifecycle. Let’s examine them more closely.

Whenever we develop software, we aim to deliver a working product to end users. This goal is consistent across methodologies—whether it's Waterfall, Agile, or any other: the end goal is to create and deliver a product.

Let’s consider the traditional Waterfall model for application development — from idea to deployment:

  1. A software idea is born.
  2. The idea turns into a list of business requirements for the product.
  3. Developers write code and build the application.
  4. Testers verify its functionality and return it for revisions if needed.
  5. Once ready, the application needs to be delivered to users. For a web app, this includes building, configuring the server and environment, and deploying.
  6. After deployment, users start using the app. Ongoing support ensures the app is user-friendly and performs well under load.
  7. After release comes the improvement phase — adding features, optimizing, and fixing bugs. This cycle repeats with each update.

One of DevOps’ primary goals is to make this cycle faster and more reliable. Let’s look at the challenges it addresses and how.

Problems with the Waterfall Model

In the Waterfall model, teams may face several issues that slow down the process, require significant effort to overcome, or introduce errors.

1. Poor collaboration between developers, operations, and testers

As mentioned earlier, the release cycle involves development, testing, and operations. Each has its own responsibilities. But without collaboration:

  • Developers may write code that isn’t deployment-ready.
  • Operations may lack insight into how the app works.
  • Testers might face delays due to insufficient documentation.

These gaps lead to increased Time to Market (TTM) and higher budgets.

2. Conflicting priorities

Development and operations don’t work closely in the Waterfall model. Developers want to innovate, while operations want stability. Since operations aren’t part of the development phase, they need more time to assess changes, creating friction and slowing down releases.

3. Idle teams

One of the key characteristics of the waterfall model is its sequential nature. First, developers write the code, then testers check it, and only after that does the operations team deploy and maintain the application.

Because of this step-by-step structure, there can be idle periods for different teams. For example, while testers check the application, developers wait for feedback and issues to fix. At the deployment stage, testers might review the entire product rather than a small update, which takes significantly more time. As a result, some teams may find themselves without tasks to work on.

All these issues lead to longer release cycles and inflated budgets. Next, we’ll look at how DevOps helps address these problems—and how it does so.

How DevOps Solves Waterfall Problems

DevOps aims to minimize the above issues through automation, collaboration, and process standardization, making it easier and faster to integrate improvements.

DevOps combines approaches, practices, and tools to streamline and accelerate product delivery. Because the concept is broad, different companies implement DevOps differently. Over time, common toolsets and practices have emerged across the industry.

One common practice is introducing a DevOps engineer, responsible for creating communication and alignment between teams, and ensuring smooth product releases.

What Does a DevOps Engineer Do?

A DevOps engineer aims to create and maintain an optimized application release pipeline. Here's how they do that:

Automation and CI/CD

DevOps's cornerstone is the development, testing, and deployment automation. This forms a CI/CD pipeline — Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment.

Key DevOps stages and tools:

  • Code: Managed in a shared repository (e.g., GitLab), facilitating automation and collaboration.
  • Testing: Code changes are automatically tested using predefined test suites. If successful, the code moves to the build stage.
  • Build: Code is compiled into a deployable application using tools like npm (JavaScript), Maven or Gradle (Java).
  • Containerization & Orchestration: Apps are containerized (commonly with Docker) for consistent environments.For small setups, use Docker Compose; for large-scale setups, use Kubernetes. Artifacts are stored in repositories like Nexus or Docker Hub.
  • Deployment: Tools like Jenkins automate app deployment.

The result is a process where code changes are continually tested, integrated, and delivered to users.

Infrastructure Management

Thanks to CI/CD, teams can automatically deploy apps and updates to servers. Cloud platforms are often preferred over physical servers, offering better automation, scaling, and environment management.

Monitoring

Real-time monitoring ensures application availability and performance. Tools like Prometheus and Nagios track system metrics and availability.

Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

Instead of manually configuring infrastructure, DevOps uses IaC tools like Terraform to automate and standardize environments.

Scripts

Scripts automate adjacent processes like backups. Tools:

  • OS-specific: Bash (Linux), PowerShell (Windows)
  • Cross-platform: Python, Go, Ruby (Python is most popular)

Version Control

DevOps uses version control for application code and infrastructure (e.g., Terraform configs).

Important: Terraform stores sensitive data (e.g., passwords) in state files; these must not be stored in public repositories.

Cross-Team Collaboration

A major DevOps goal is to improve collaboration between departments. Shared tools, standards, and processes enable better communication and coordination.

For example, DevOps acts as a bridge between development and operations, unifying workflows and expectations.

Why Businesses Should Implement DevOps

Benefits of DevOps:

  • Speed: Automated testing, building, and deployment enable faster release cycles without sacrificing quality. This improves agility and market responsiveness.

  • Predictability & Quality: Frequent, automated releases mean more reliable delivery timelines and better budget control.

  • Lower Maintenance Costs: Automated infrastructure management and monitoring reduce downtime and labor, improving SLA compliance.

Challenges:

  • Organizational Change: Implementing DevOps may require cultural and structural shifts, along with training and adaptation.

  • Automation Risks: Poorly implemented automation can introduce new problems — misconfigured scripts, faulty pipelines — so thorough testing is essential.

  • Investment Required: DevOps needs upfront investment in tools, technologies, and training.

Conclusion

DevOps enables an automated, collaborative environment for development, testing, and deployment. It helps teams release apps faster, with higher quality and reliability.

If you’re considering integrating DevOps into your development process, Hostman offers services like cloud servers and Kubernetes, which can reduce your workload and streamline operations.

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Top Kubernetes Interview Questions and Answers

In today's tech landscape, the Kubernetes container orchestration platform is widely used across various projects. With its increasing popularity and widespread adoption, Kubernetes often comes up during interviews for certain IT roles, including DevOps, SRE, system administration, development, and operations. The questions can range from very simple ones about cluster components to more advanced topics like networking within the cluster and network policies. In this article, we’ll go over the top Kubernetes interview questions and provide detailed answers. What is Kubernetes? Kubernetes is an open-source platform for managing containerized applications. It enables the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized workloads and services. List the Main Components of a Kubernetes Cluster At the core of Kubernetes lies the Control Plane, which resides on the master node. The Control Plane includes the following components: kube-api-server – The API server processes REST requests and serves as the "brain" of the cluster. All interactions, including object creation and deletion, go through the API server, which also manages communication between cluster components. etcd – A highly available key-value store that saves configuration data and cluster state. It can be deployed externally for improved fault tolerance. etcd is an independent project maintained by a separate team. kube-scheduler – The component responsible for determining which nodes will run which pods. It monitors available resources on each node to balance workload distribution. kube-controller-manager – Runs controllers that monitor resources and ensure the cluster matches the desired state by making necessary changes. kube-proxy – A network service that acts as a load balancer. It distributes network traffic between pods and runs on every node in the cluster. What is a Pod in Kubernetes? 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20 May 2025 · 5 min to read
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Code Example controller from the official documentation: namespace App\Controller; class ArticlesController extends AppController { public function index() { $this->loadComponent('Paginator'); $articles = $this->Paginator->paginate($this->Articles->find()); $this->set(compact('articles')); } } 7. Flask Flask is an extremely lightweight Python backend framework perfect for building small to medium-sized web apps. Simplicity and minimalism are its trademarks—it offers just the essentials for web development, while remaining flexible and versatile. Details Programming language: Python Developer: Armin Ronacher First release: 2010 Features Compactness: Lightweight and fast, with no unnecessary components, making it very easy to learn. Flexibility: Does not impose a specific structure, allowing diverse architectural approaches. Audience Flask is ideal for small projects and feature-testing prototypes. It’s a great entry point into Python web development for beginners. Even as a hobby project grows into a complex commercial app, Flask’s flexibility and scalability can support the transition. Code Here’s a simple app with a router that renders content: from flask import Flask, render_template app = Flask(__name__) @app.route('/') def index(): return render_template('index.html') @app.route('/about') def about(): return render_template('about.html') 8. Spring Boot Spring Boot is a powerful Java backend framework built on top of the lower-level Spring framework. It is part of the Spring ecosystem and provides tools that streamline and accelerate development. While Spring itself requires complex manual configuration, Spring Boot simplifies this through auto-configuration and ready-made templates. Details Programming language: Java Developer: Rod Johnson, VMware First release: 2014 Features Auto-configuration: Automatically configures based on defined dependencies, reducing the need for extensive config files. Built-in servers: Includes embedded servers like Tomcat, Jetty, and Undertow, allowing apps to run directly from the IDE or CLI. Audience Ideal for beginners exploring the Spring ecosystem—it makes learning much easier. Great for building microservices due to fast deployment of individual app components. Also plays well with Docker and orchestration systems like Kubernetes. Code A basic Spring Boot app from the official docs: package com.example.springboot; import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.GetMapping; import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RestController; @RestController public class HelloController { @GetMapping("/") public String index() { return "Greetings from Spring Boot!"; } } 9. Koa Koa is a modern web framework for Node.js created by the same team behind Express.js. Naturally, it's written in JavaScript. Koa can be seen as a more expressive, minimalist, and flexible iteration of Express.js, removing many of its limitations and complexities. Details Programming language: JavaScript Developer: StrongLoop First release: 2017 Features Async-first: Designed for async/await from the ground up, making asynchronous code cleaner and more maintainable compared to traditional callbacks. Lightweight: Ships with no built-in middleware, so developers can pick and choose exactly what they need. Code A basic Koa app: 'use strict'; const Koa = require('koa'); const app = new Koa(); app.use(ctx => { ctx.body = 'Hello, Timeweb'; }); app.listen(3000); 10. Phoenix Phoenix is a modern web framework for the functional programming language Elixir. Programming language: Elixir Developer: Phoenix Framework First release: 2014 Features Performance: Uses Elixir and the Erlang VM, offering high performance and scalability via functional programming and concurrency. Clean code: Elixir's functional nature encourages clean, predictable, and maintainable code. Audience Best suited for developers who prefer functional programming, immutable data, and pure functions. It is also a great tool for Erlang developers who want to build web apps using familiar principles. Code A basic Phoenix router from the official docs: defmodule HelloWeb.Router do use HelloWeb, :router pipeline :browser do plug :accepts, ["html"] plug :fetch_session plug :fetch_live_flash plug :put_root_layout, html: {HelloWeb.Layouts, :root} plug :protect_from_forgery plug :put_secure_browser_headers end pipeline :api do plug :accepts, ["json"] end scope "/", HelloWeb do pipe_through :browser get "/", PageController, :home end end Conclusion We've looked at the most popular and well-established backend frameworks developers have relied on for years, and continue to rely on in 2025. Many of these frameworks are over 15 years old, which is a strong indicator of their maturity and suitability for various projects. They’ve all gone through numerous updates over time, adapting to technological changes and evolving developer needs. Their stability and robustness ensure they remain go-to tools for building modern applications.
19 May 2025 · 13 min to read

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