Python For DevOps: Guide & Tools

Programming is becoming an essential skill set for DevOps engineers. It doesn’t mean that DevOps engineers have to create fully-featured apps like other developers. But, it’s a little different for DevOps professionals.

For their help, there are various development tools available for use for seamless DevOps development. Moreover, DevOps uses different technologies like Python, effective techniques, and work procedures to improve the efficiency of the software development life cycle.

In this article, we will discuss why you can use Python for DevOps along with top DevOps tools. Also, we have assembled a roadmap on why Python is important for DevOps, and how to use it in DevOps.

Why Python For DevOps is Important?

Python is one of the popular technologies that is used with DevOps for modern and reliable development.

Here are some reasons that show the importance of Python for DevOps:

Python has extensive libraries that can be utilized for many features. It is an extremely popular and high-level scripting language that is used in the domains of data analysis, web development, mobile app development, data science, and game development. Developers use Python for developing automation scripts and it can be used with well-known open-source tools like Appium, Selenium, etc. Python has an immense support community, and there are a lot of guides for programmers to learn Python. This framework is excellent for using Machine Learning, & has specialized ML libraries such as SciPy and TensorFlow.

How to use Python in DevOps?

Python being a versatile framework, it can be used for different DevOps tasks like Continuous Integration and Continuous delivery, configuration management, monitoring, cloud automation, etc. Let’s understand each in detail:

Configuration management and Infrastructure provisioning: This framework is used for automating the configuration and provisioning of infrastructure like containers, cloud instances, and virtual machines. The well-known Python tools like Puppet, Ansible, etc., along with Python libraries like Boto3, Pyrax, etc. help in managing this DevOps task.

IaC (Infrastructure as Code): Python language can be used for automating infrastructure management. It has special libraries for IaC such as SaltStack & Ansible for automating this process.

Alerting and Monitoring: Python is used for monitoring and altering different aspects of apps and infrastructure like monitoring app performance, error logs, and system usage of resources. This language has various libraries like Prometheus used for monitoring and visualization is done by using the Grafana library.

Top 7 DevOps tools

Ansible

Red Hat is sponsoring this configuration management tool named Ansible. Ansible uses Python for automation and configuration management. The functionality of Ansible is similar to the DevOps automation tools like Chef and Puppet when they are on the deployment end of the CI/CD pipeline. Ansible comes in handy for configuring infrastructure and automating deployment.

The ease of use and the simplicity of this DevOps tool are the reasons behind its popularity. The popular approach of Infrastructure-as-a-Code from the Puppet DevOps tool is adopted in Ansible too. Ansible utilizes a very simple syntax named YAML (Yet Another Markup Language) which is used to define tasks.

Another popular feature of Ansible is Agentless architecture. It ensures that no agents or daemons run in the background. For configuration management automation, Ansible is the perfect DevOps tool to pick. It is secure, lightweight, and comes with multiple modules.

Chef

Chef is used to handle various types of configurations like removing or installing a service, adding an SSh key for the user present on multiple nodes, creating or removing a user, and so on.

Chef allows the developers to manage up to 10,000 nodes. The cookbooks and recipes are used to push these changes further. ChefServer, Nodes, and Workstation are the top three components of this tool.

All the details of the Chef infrastructure reside at the central point called the Chef server. Meanwhile, all the recipes and cookbooks that push particular configurations in the Chef infrastructure are stored in the Chef workstation. Lastly, Nodes are just simple machines that are configured through the Chef DevOps tool.

In addition to that, the Chef tool can easily utilize Infrastructure as a Code methodology with support from Rackspace, Azure, and AWS. Chef is an open-source and cross-platform DevOps tool that can automate the configuration process of the infrastructure.

Docker

Since its initial release in 2013, Docker has managed to remain a top container platform with continuous improvisation. Thanks to Docker, Containerization became popular in the tech industry. Distributed development became possible just because of this approach which is further helpful in automating the deployment process.

Developers use Docker to isolate the app into separate containers which makes it more secure and portable across the entire environment. Docker applications can run on any platform and operating system. So, if you are utilizing Docker containers then you don’t need to have any virtual machine like VirtualBox in your toolkit.

Moreover, you don’t have to bother yourself about dependency management when you are using Docker. Because it enables you to package all dependencies with the container of the app and then ship out the whole thing as a single independent unit. After that, you can run your application on any platform or device.

Jenkins

Jenkins is another popular and open-source DevOps tool on our list. This CI/CD server enables the DevOps teams to automate various stages of a delivery pipeline.

A large plugin ecosystem is a primary reason behind Jenkin’s popularity. Not only does this tool offer over 1800 plugins, but it can also be easily integrated with almost all DevOps tools like Puppet, Deploy, Docker, OCtopus, and more.

In addition to that, you can easily customize a CI/CD pipeline to match your project requirements. Getting started with Jenkins is very easy. It runs natively on Linux, MacOS X, and Windows.

Moreover, you can install Jenkins with Docker and just with the use of a simple web interface you can set up and configure a Jenkins server. If you are using it for the first time, you can opt for installation through plugins or just build a customized configuration yourself.

Kubernetes

Another container management tool for you on our list is Kubernetes. But this one takes container orchestration to the next level. Two Google engineers were looking for a way to handle containers at a large scale and built this DevOps tool. Kubernetes works flawlessly even when integrated with its alternatives like Docker to help you group your containers into separate logical units.

Although a container management platform is very important, you won’t need one if you only have a few containers. However, once you reach a complex level, you must scale up your resources. Kubernetes is one of those DevOps tools that can help you handle not just hundreds but thousands of containers.

If you are using Kubernetes then you no longer have to tie your containerized app to a single machine. Instead, you can deploy your app to a cluster of computers. The task of distribution and scheduling of containers across the entire cluster can be automated using Kubernetes.

Raygun

Raygun is your full-stack DevOps solution. It is an error and performance monitoring tool that can offer real-time actionable insights to enhance the quality of your web and mobile apps. Its offerings include a wide range of monitoring tools consisting of APM, used for monitoring the performance and error in your application.

Raygun helps developers get a grasp of metrics like throughput, latency, and response time to get insights into the app’s performance. So if there would be any performance issues or bottlenecks then they could be easily identified beforehand.

Using Raygun as your DevOps tool, you can get a detailed report on your app’s behavior and insights into transaction traces. This can come in handy to developers in pinpointing the root cause of a performance issue your app is experiencing. The DevOps teams can then quickly charge into action by diagnosing the issue and shortening the mean time to resolution.

Parting words

Finding a DevOps tool that fits your requirement criteria needs some exploring and experimenting on your part. Although open-source tools are free to use, they take some time to setup and configuration. Meanwhile, you can test the commercial tools through their free trials which allows you to test and evaluate the tool’s helpfulness without any cost.

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