Are you aware of the core differences between various CI/CD processes in DevOps? Thanks to the digital revolution, today’s software development is about Continuous Deployment, Integration, and Delivery. These three pillars of DevOps pipelines serve different purposes in the software delivery lifecycle.
So, if you are driving your DevOps teams for agile development, you must know what differentiates these three DevOps processes and how they combine various DevOps practices. Today’s discussion concerns discovering the technicalities of Continuous Integration vs. deployment vs. Continuous Delivery in DevOps. Continue reading to learn more about the three continuous development practices.
Understanding The Continuous Integration (CI) Process
Assuming you have a team of developers, they all work on the same code and make updates using various pieces of code. At some point, they are required to update all their code changes to the main codebase. That’s where the Continuous Integration process comes into play!
This DevOps Practice allows developers to merge their code updates continuously with the main branch. Thus, developers can frequently update the code without tampering with the actual code base.
Essential Elements Of The CI Process In DevOps
- Use Source Control: Developers use a version control system like GitHub to centrally maintain the main code base and subsequent branches.
- Commit Early & Often: With Source Control, your developers can simultaneously commit their codes early and frequently without worrying about who’s doing what.
- Run Automate Tests: With CI tools, your QA testers can continuously test the code builds within the CI/CD pipelines before the ultimate production deployment.
- Build a DevOps Culture: The CI process marks the first step to creating a team culture in which every developer is responsible for fixing broken builds or failing tests.
What Are The Benefits Of Following Continuous Integration Practice?
- Reduces the likelihood of bugs in production by catching regressions early through automated tests.
- Simplifies the release process by resolving integration issues early in the SDLC.
- Minimizes context switching so that developers can address build failures and maintain focus on their tasks quickly.
- Executing test cases rapidly reduces testing costs and frees the QA team from the burden of manual testing.
Considering all these ingredients, the Continuous Integration (CI) process is a must-have in DevOps for maintaining continuous code builds and faster code updates!
Exploring The Continuous Delivery (CD) Process
Continuous Delivery comes after the CI process in the DevOps software development lifecycle. So, the extension of CI automates the delivery of code changes to a test/stage environment. That’s why it is ideal for faster and more reliable deployments.
Every code change is automatically tested and prepared for the ultimate production release in the CD process. Thus, your code remains deployable, and your developers can do production release updates much faster without manual intervention.
Essential Elements Of The CD Process In DevOps
- Build Once & Automate Deployments: Your developers can promote the same build artifact through the CI/CD pipeline and run auto-deployments in each environment.
- Store Configuration In Source Control: You can maintain a centralized repository of the configuration files using source control tools and maintain consistency.
- Manage Multi-Environment Deployments: Your developers can make deployments across environments while maintaining isolation and run clean-ups once the work is done!
- Maintain Deployment Pipelines: Ask your developers to manage the flow of code changes using automated pipelines and control the various validation stages.
What Are The Benefits Of Following Continuous Delivery Practice?
- Avoid the risks of failures by deploying smaller changes more frequently and resolving deployment issues early.
- Increase the testing speed of the release cycle for quicker delivery of new software features and updates.
- Run higher-quality releases as the QA teams perform thorough testing and validation of the product increments.
So, it’s now clear that Continuous Delivery (CD) comes after Continuous Integration within the DevOps delivery pipelines to drive faster releases.
Finally, Explaining The Continuous Deployment Process
Even though Continuous Deployment isn’t an extension of the CI process, it takes the Continuous Delivery practice one step further. It brings automation to the highest level by automatically deploying every code change that passes all pipeline stages. This means code changes are prepared for release and deployed to production without you doing anything!
Continuous Deployment keeps your software in an always-releasable state, allowing you to immediately deliver new features and improvements to users. This DevOps practice is ideal for a fast-paced, agile development environment!
Essential Elements Of The Continuous Deployment Process In DevOps
- Auto-Run Prod Deployments: With Continuous Deployment, your DevOps developers get the confidence to run production deploys automatically using the CI/CD pipelines.
- Monitor Production: After you complete production deployments, continuously monitor the production environment to confirm whether everything works as expected.
- Canary Release: Use feature toggles to control the release of new features and deploy changes incrementally to a small subset of users before a full rollout.
Streamline Your CI/CD Pipelines: If anything goes wrong, immediately roll back to the previous version and maintain consistency across the DevOps delivery pipelines.
What Are The Benefits Of Following Continuous Deployment Practice?
- Enables immediate delivery of new features based on end-user responses.
- Minimizes development error and speeds up the deployment process with automation.
- Follows user feedback to make quick adjustments and roll out the latest changes.
It’s safe to say that if you adopt Continuous Deployment, your DevOps pipeline will achieve full automation power to deliver higher-quality software.
Continuous Integration Vs. Deployment Vs. Delivery: What’s The Connection?
Now that you know each DevOps process and its contribution to streamlining agile software development, let’s explore the connection between Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Delivery (CD), and Continuous Deployment!
These three processes form a cohesive pipeline that enhances software releases’ speed, quality, and reliability. Here’s how the continuous processes interconnect:
- Continuous Integration: As the ultimate DevOps foundation, it’s all about frequent code changes so multiple developers can merge code within a shared repository.
- Continuous Delivery: It follows the CI foundation for automating the code deployment processes across stage, development, or testing environments.
- Continuous Deployment: It furthers the automation by automatically deploying scripts to the production environment.
So, they all work cohesively to drive end-to-end software delivery following DevOps principles and practices. The main difference lies in the ultimate purpose of each process:
- Integration and Testing: CI helps developers track all code changes centrally to catch issues early. This constant validation is the bedrock that supports both CD processes.
- Deployment Readiness: CD automates the preparation and validation of code for production, ensuring it is always in a releasable state. It reduces the manual overhead and risks associated with deployments.
- Full Automation: Continuous Deployment eliminates the manual steps, automating the production release process. This approach maximizes the benefits of CI and CD by ensuring rapid and reliable delivery of new features and fixes directly to users.
Key Takeaways: Which Process Should You Follow?
Now, when you are all set to build your DevOps culture, you must choose the right process for achieving efficient and reliable software delivery. Here’s a breakdown to help you decide:
- Start with Continuous Integration → It’s ideal for teams starting with DevOps or those needing to establish a stable testing and integration process.
- Advance to Continuous Delivery → It’s perfect for businesses aiming to increase deployment speed and reliability while maintaining control over the release process.
- Adopt Continuous Deployment for Full Automation → If you already have a mature DevOps team, drive them to embrace full automation to speed up release processes.
Lastly, you must confirm that your development, QA, and operations teams are ready for the transition. Consider investing in DevOps training on the latest tools that support these practices. Thus, you can transition to an agile-driven organization implementing CI, CD, and other DevOps practices!
FAQs
What is CI/CD in DevOps?
CI/CD, short for Continuous Integration and Delivery, comprises the leading software development phase of the DevOps lifecycle. The CI process involves automatic testing and integrating code changes into a shared repository. The CD extends this by automating the release of these changes to testing or production environments.
What is Continuous Delivery in Agile?
It is a DevOps Practice that automates the product release process. It deploys code changes to test or stage environments after they pass integration tests, ensuring the code remains deployable and allowing developers to trigger new releases quickly and frequently.
Which Continuous DevOps Practice is Right for You?
If you are switching to DevOps as a beginner, you should start with Continuous Integration and Delivery. Once you reach the advanced phase, you can introduce deployment automation with Continuous Deployment. So, decide on a suitable continuous process that fits your team’s capacity.
Is continuous deployment part of the CI/CD pipeline?
Yes. Continuous Deployment belongs to the CI/CD pipeline. It extends the automation beyond Continuous Integration and Delivery by deploying code automatically to production once it passes all tests. So, consider it a mandatory practice for agile software development.
How is Continuous Delivery different from Continuous Development?
Even though both sound the same, they serve different roles in the DevOps pipeline. Continuous Delivery automates moving code changes through stages up to the testing environment. Conversely, continuous deployment takes automation further by deploying code across all testing stages. In short, Continuous Delivery prepares code for deployment, while Continuous Deployment automatically releases it to end-users.
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