Network DevOps; Challenges and Best Practices
Collaboration is a very general word, and we all must have heard about it. But, the power this word has is not as simple as it sounds. It is the most prominent thing in the transformation of businesses. Yes, there are technology solutions, but they have become mainstream now. There are tons of businesses that do not have the capabilities and skills to achieve projects like digital transformation. That is where collaboration knocks on their doors, and they look outside their organization to leverage the power of collaboration. We can describe it as the most effective method of partnership that spans geographical and organizational boundaries.
It will be right if we say, no organization is perfect. All of them somehow leveraged the power of collaboration to reach where they are now. We can find it everywhere, in every sector of life. Collaboration can be both externally and internally. If we talk about the IT industry, DevOps is the one saving the day for them. It is a culture that preaches internal collaboration between different departmental teams. Precisely it would be the Development team and Operations team in the IT sector. Due to this culture, productivity is now much more than it used to be plus it is saving a lot of time as well. DevOps culture is now marching towards network engineering to introduce network automation.
Network DevOps
When we apply DevOps principles and its culture in network engineering and operations, it is called Network DevOps. It is about the automation of network engineering. As we are encountering new networking technologies every other day, it is about their development, integration, and deployment. As we know, the DevOps culture is all about cross-functional collaborations within organizations that are not so like the typical methods of networking.
DevOps is well known for some specific things like Failure rate is significantly low, the recovery process is very smooth and effortless, not only quantity but the quality of the product is also outstanding, security aspects of the process are also looked after, and it is very cost-efficient as well. If you want to know more about network DevOps, you can always join our training program. Let’s discuss talk about the challenges of bringing DevOps in network engineering.
Challenges of Network DevOps
Whenever we try to bring a change in something, there are some challenges we have to face for that. Same way, when we bring DevOps to network engineering, we have some challenges to meet. Some of those challenges are discussed here.
- Changing the Organization’s Culture
When implementing DevOps, there is one thing that will see a drastic change is the culture of the organization. As the existing working culture will collide with the DevOps culture. All we know is changes are hard, and all the employees will have to work hard to adapt to the new culture. As for definite, we can say cultural change is a long-term process.
- Innovating Faster While Reducing Risk
As for now, if an organization is processing manually, it is taking a lot of time in building, testing, and deployment. The best solution is automation, but it is hard to come to auto from the manual quickly. Automation takes time to implement, but it is very beneficial in the long run.
- Optimizing the Deployment Pipeline
Deciding how much of the process you can automate is another challenge. DevOps is all about continuous integration and delivery with a mix of minimizing time and cost.
- Transition to Cross-Functional Teams
Typically, every team works at their departments in complete isolation. Coming out of that and to work as a cross-functional team is a big challenge. To be honest, DevOps culture is all about this. We can learn all about it by taking DevOps training online, the best and most convenient way.
Best Practices for Network DevOps
As we know, the primary purpose of DevOps is to improve communication between different teams, which leads to better productivity. And for that, there are some best practices we can do to achieve that goal smoothly. Some of them are listed here.
- Automate the Infrastructure
One of the most important practices in DevOps is automating the infrastructure. As in agile development, there is a test of code now and then to make the quality better. With automatic infrastructure, it would take place in a time much lesser than doing it manually.
- Integrated Change Management
Integrated change management is one of the best practices of Network DevOps. Well, it refers to the changes made in the configurations to fulfill the new requirements.
- Integrated Configuration Management
Integrated configuration management is an important practice, just like change management. It refers to the management of configurations across all the servers that include automation, maintenance, and monitoring.
- Continuous Integration, Deployment, and Delivery
Continuous integration, deployment, and delivery are three things DevOps is based on. It refers to the continuous building process, continuous testing, and versioning that is done using different tools, and continuous delivery process that comes right after the previous two processes. These three stages make sure that building, testing, and releasing are taking place smoothly.
- Automated Dashboard
An automated dashboard is like a centralized hub with all the data insights. This is very helpful in the selection of appropriate automation tools. It also has all the history of configuration changes.
- Application Monitoring
Application monitoring is one of the best practices in DevOps. It is our way to optimize the performance and know if anything requires any change. Monitoring and consumer feedback are two things that help us in enhancing the performance of the application.
DevOps is a complete package and covers every aspect of any business, be it software development or network engineering. Due to all the features it has, the demand for DevOps is increasing day by day. If you need any more insights or information regarding Network DevOps, you can contact our experts at any time. Or, you can find answers to all your questions by taking DevOps training online.