Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is a multistep process starting from the source code, through software testing & packaging, and beta, and finally to deployment and production. The entire process requires a collective effort from developers and IT operations equally. This is where the concept of DevOps comes from.
The organizations have started adopting the DevOps practice because they recognized that their websites/apps could be run better when deployment and operations were done in collaboration. But the responsibilities of system administration has evolved into something fundamentally different.
DevOps vs System Administration
What is DevOps?
If you ask a few people to define DevOps, you’ll likely get multiple answers from them. The reason is that many folks confuse DevOps with DevOps tools. Then, “What is DevOps?”
DevOps is not exactly a role or thing, it’s a way of doing a thing. It is a culture, a world wherein developers, system administrators work more closely together than in traditional work conditions.
The following figure represents the lifecycle of DevOps.
What is SysAdmin?
A system administrator (or sysadmin) is a person responsible for the configuration, upkeep, and reliable operation of computer systems like servers.
There is a clear separation of duties between IT and Development in the system administration model. On the other hand in the DevOps environment, both the IT and Development team members work closely together, enhancing speed and accuracy.
Adopting DevOps in the real world
DevOps is a set of rules and cultural values that aims to decrease the barriers between development and operations teams.
The term DevOps was introduced by P Debois while working as a consultant helping to deploy applications. He noticed that Developers and Operations people of the organization were often mistrustful of one another, and this often led to delays and problems in the end result. This is where DevOps was born.
The worlds of system administration and development have evolved into something fundamentally different. Things like scalability and redundancy are critical for sysadmins and their success often is gauged by uptime.
On the other hand, developers have a different way of approaching their jobs. They need to consider things like efficiency, security, stability, and features.
Thus to deal with those problems, businesses adopting DevOps!
The practice of DevOps is focused on making the SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) as smooth and effortless as possible. DevOps is a summation of ideas, practices and tools that improve an organization’s ability to deliver products or services with maximum efficiency. It aims to eliminate the silos in the organization.
DevOps encourages innovation that promotes automation across various processes in an organization. Automation is the key to active collaboration and tight integration between development and operations teams so that they can work together to build, test and deploy software faster.
Conclusion
DevOps may not be an alternative to system administration, but system administration also cannot survive in its present form persistently. A DevOps Engineers may replace the system admin, or a sysadmin can be a DevOps engineer.
With the advancement of technology, job changes, ways of doing business change. Thus sysadmin needs to upgrade themselves and learn new skills to sustain themselves in this competitive world.
Want to speed up your Software Development Life Cycle and improve software reliability without heavy expenses? Our DevOps consultants will help to implement the DevOps concept within your organization. Get in touch with our experts!