DevOps vs CI/CD: A Comprehensive Comparison

Every tech enterprise nowadays that aims to achieve maximum operational efficiency and top-notch product quality understands the importance of DevOps and CI/CD. Custom software development teams around the world use CI/CD best practices to deliver code changes reliably and quickly. Meanwhile, the collaboration of operations teams with development teams focuses mainly on streamlining every aspect of product development with the help of DevOps principles.

Key Differences Between CI/CD and DevOps

1. Definition

CI/CD

Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery is now popular practice in the software industry. It allows developers to deliver code changes smoothly and efficiently. CI/CD practices advocate the continuous monitoring and automation of the product lifecycle spanning from testing to deployment. CI/CD practices, when implemented, are referred to as ‘establishing a CI/CD pipeline’ which is a popular best practice of the DevOps teams.

DevOps

When two terms, development and operations are combined, you get DevOps. This isn’t just the combination of two terms but rather the combination of the working cultures of both teams that enables you to streamline product development. DevOps ensures the delivery of high-quality products by driving the focus of both operations teams and development teams toward effective collaboration, communication, and integration.

2. Scope

CI/CD

CI is used obviously to integrate the set of codes developed by the team members more frequently. Automation tools are used for testing and building software products to establish a software-defined lifecycle. A successful CI practice ensures that the integration efforts are kept to a minimum and if any errors are found, they should be dealt with quickly.

Similar to CI, CD aims at increasing the efficiency of the packaging and deployment activities. If you implement continuous delivery practices for the design and development of software then you can reduce the costs and increase automation.

DevOps

The prevailing culture of stovepiping and overspecialization has doomed both development and operations teams to respond rapidly to production issues when they arise. Implementing DevOps principles will help you render a rapid and effective response instead. Fluid communication channels and cross-training will help you break down the barriers between both development and operations teams. With effective communication and collaboration, DevOps practices give these team members a working idea of how another team functions.

3. Purpose

CI/CD

Every update of the code can be compiled in a single repository using CI/CD to conduct automated tests on them to ensure that the product is ready to get deployed. The main purpose of the CI/CD is to allow the swift and automatic rollout of product updates without any defects.

DevOps

The major purpose of DevOps practices is to bring two teams together who in most organizations stay disconnected. Filling that gap of communication and merging the functions of both teams can help beget a streamlined and agile software development process.

Having a shared working culture and business processes can help the team members achieve common business goals.

4. Process

CI/CD

CI practices enable the developers to integrate their code changes into the main software application as quickly as possible without waiting for the app to be released. The code changes will be tested thoroughly before they are validated to merge with the main build.

CD or Continuous delivery is said to be an extension of CI where the teams get to test and deploy the product just with the single tap of a button as they are automated.

DevOps

DevOps methodologies are used to automate every aspect of the software development process. It also enables the developers to increase the speed and frequency of deployment through iterative development. DevOps employs continuous testing to find issues and improve them before they are deployed. Fostering collaboration and communication between both teams enhances the quality of the end product.

5. Implementation

CI/CD

Jenkins is an open-source automation server that is popularly used to implement CI/CD pipelines. Make sure that Jenkins is configured properly for all the necessary dependencies. Let us now discuss how you can implement CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins in a Windows Environment.

DevOps

The implementation of DevOps is to ensure maximum benefits and minimum disruption.

An ideal DevOps environment is where every stage of the development process is completely automated and agile.

6. Stages

CI/CD

There are four main stages in a CI/CD pipeline. Successful completion of the previous stage is necessary to move to the next stage. Every stage is monitored continuously for bugs and issues. If it is detected, feedback is sent to the delivery time.

DevOps

In comparison, to CI/CD, DevOps has more stages in its lifecycle.

Takeaway

The goal of both DevOps and CI/CD principles is rather the same, to make the software development process more robust yet swift. Meanwhile, CI/CD pipeline mostly covers the core activities of the delivery process, and DevOps practices are focused on enhancing the quality of the development process.

As we saw in this article, there are a few overlaps between both concepts, but there lie significant differences between both of them in terms of their scope, purpose, process, and implementations. I hope this article has been helpful to you. Thanks for reading!

Original Source Link: Click Here