In the last post, I gave you a brief introduction to DevOps, along with NoOps, DevSecOps, and GitOps. There are other forms of the “Ops family,” but in the end, DevOps is more popular because it offers the most comprehensive approach to improving workflows and is therefore widely used.
DevOps vs. ITOps
Next, we’ll take a closer look at ITOps. Many developers see ITOps as a more traditional version of DevOps, but it’s actually more than that. ITOps is very similar to DevOps in many ways. This approach sees software development and IT infrastructure management as a unified pipeline, and in addition, IT seeks to improve that pipeline and drive greater flexibility.
ITOps differs from DevOps in how IT manages the IT infrastructure. This is where ITOps is more traditional, as it is responsible for delivering and maintaining services, applications, and the underlying technologies necessary to operate and maintain the business. ITOps typically includes positions such as system administrator, network administrator, and help desk.
ITOps is more about stability and long-term reliability than it is about agility and speed. IT infrastructure is treated as the foundation for a pipeline of success, so IT is no surprise to see this approach seen as more rigorous when IT comes to infrastructure management.
ITOps best practices prefer to build the infrastructure — including hardware — using reliable, highly tested commercial software and solutions, since ITOps tends to focus on physical servers and networks. The ITOps pipeline often includes off-the-shelf commercial software or COTS.
The higher rigidity of this approach also means that updating infrastructure components is more difficult. ITOps makes stability a top priority, so it is not always possible to quickly change the configuration of the cloud and internal environment. However, ITOps does work well for internal deployment of applications and services.
This does not mean ITOps are obsolete. Some industries rely heavily on the long-term sustainability of ITOps, such as banking and finance in general. These industries don’t always need rapid, sudden change, which makes ITOps a more logical approach to continuous delivery.
One might think that DevOps cannot be implemented in these types of environments because they are not cloud-based. This is not the case, and you can still reduce wIP and storage on bare-metal servers.
DevOps vs. CloudOps
While ITOps shifts infrastructure to the more traditional side of the equation, CloudOps does the opposite. Again, this approach is very similar to DevOps, but with a shift in focus on infrastructure management. As the name suggests, CloudOps attempts to make more use of cloud-native capabilities offered by modern service providers such as Amazon.
CloudOps has three main elements: distribution, statelessness, and scalability. Distributed development and deployment means there is no single point of failure. The entire cloud environment becomes more reliable and can maintain uptime. At the same time, at least in some parts of the workflow, the ability to be stateless is a huge advantage for cost efficiency.
Since it is stateless, scalability is not an issue. You only pay for the resources you actually use and the duration of their use, so with a little tweaking, you can minimize overhead costs associated with the cloud. Cloud native applications deployed using the CloudOps approach tend to have good uptime and low latency.
These advantages are further augmented by the level of automation now offered by cloud service providers. However, this approach requires fully automated resource allocation, which can mean added complexity when configuring CI/CD pipes. To take full advantage of CloudOps, you must correctly configure CloudOps.
DevOps vs. CIOps
Continuous integration Operations (CIOps) is the last branch on our list. CIOps requires a CI operator or administrator to configure the IT infrastructure needed to support new code before continuing deployment. CI systems are designed to run builds and tests, and then deploy at different levels of complexity depending on the complexity of the pipeline.
Since manual input is still required (to ensure that each CI job is configured correctly to deploy to the right location), CIOps has both advantages and disadvantages. The main advantage is fine-grained control over the infrastructure itself. Unlike the predefined parameters in methods such as GitOps, the two deployments can have different infrastructure configurations.
Manually configuring the cloud environment and resource configuration can make CIOps more suitable for smaller developments; In development projects, automation is a nuisance rather than a useful tool. This is why CIOps is often found in smaller projects with simpler cloud infrastructures.
However, the main drawback here is that the artificial concept of the system increases the risk of human error. You also need to provide the CI tool of your choice for the API (Travis CI and CircleCI are popular), which is a big security risk.
CIOps also lacks a full audit trail and additional flexibility compared to DevOps. This approach focuses on CI rather than CI/CD, so it does not always cover the entire process. While it gives developers some flexibility in configuring their cloud infrastructure, it takes a lot of effort to run CIOps smoothly over a long period of time.
Why DevOps?
As you can see, DevOps has multiple branches and subsets, all based on unique approaches and interesting ideas. To speed up your CI/CD cycle, any of the methods discussed can be very useful. Choosing between the two is about finding an approach that best suits the application you are developing and the cloud infrastructure you are using.
That said, DevOps still offers the most comprehensive approach to improving workflows, as it addresses both technical processes while adopting cultural improvements. Both are equally important in a successful transition. These approaches tend to focus only on the technical aspects, and some even focus on specific platforms, ways of managing the infrastructure, or specific tools.
Ultimately, this is why DevOps is still the most widely implemented of all approaches. This is a proven way to create an efficient and technically improved CI/CD pipeline while supporting an innovative and collaborative environment.