Continuous Delivery: Know its Tools and Best Practices

In today’s age, wherein software development is elevating many businesses, Continuous Delivery (CD) is necessary for a reliable, faster, and frequent software release. 

Companies need this approach to automatically build, test, and release code changes to production. In this blog, we have discussed the needed tools and best practices to implement Continuous Delivery. 

Are you looking to execute the process of software test data management? The right test data management tools will help you get test data on time.

What are the Best Practices to Implement Continuous Delivery?

Companies need several best practices to develop software seamlessly and effectively through Continuous Delivery. Some of the best practices include: 

Create Service Level Objectives

When you have a service level agreement (SLA) with your client, you can define the service level objectives (SLOs) to keep the entire process efficient. Establishing a multi-level environment based on the SLOs will help you direct your CD workflow and deploy with confidence.

Automate repetitive steps

A Continuous Delivery pipeline reflects the software delivery life cycle and needs consistency. So, you must automate your builds, end-to-end testing, and deployment. Doing so will help you minimise the time wasted on repetitive tasks and reduce the chances of human error.

Streamline Your Testing

As you increase the usage of certain tools, the pipeline becomes more complex. To manage the entire process appropriately, you must streamline various tasks related to the final product checks. Ensure that you run database testing and other tests in the fastest to slowest order priority. This will give you quicker feedback to make the needed changes as soon as possible. 

Commit Regularly 

Committing and sharing your changes regularly ensures prompt feedback from the automated system and helps your team know the real-time code state. Such practice aids developers to work in collaboration and on a proper foundation. It also builds a stronger team and reduces the likelihood of disorganised merge conflicts when integrating big changes.

Monitor the Pipeline Consistently

Establishing end-to-end observation is vital for a highly dynamic CD pipeline so that the SRE and DevOps teams can deliver applications as per the SLOs. Statistics from various tests like database testing can help diagnose sections with potential issues and help troubleshoot them immediately. Monitoring must be continuous, automatic, and flexible to meet frequent updates.

Best Continuous Delivery Tools

Continuous Delivery tools are needed to build, commit and deploy the software. Here are a few of the CD tools you can use:

• Codefresh: Codefresh, based on Argo and GitOps, is a modern CI/CD toolchain. It provides vital enterprise features, including enterprise-class secure execution, a unified user interface, and end-to-end checkout ability.
• Argo CD: Argo CD uses GitOps and is an open-source CD tool used for managing and deploying applications on Kubernetes. It continuously ensures that the desired application state defined in the Git repository matches the cluster's live state.
• FluxCD: FluxCD is an open-source Continuous Delivery tool built for Kubernetes. It supports canary releases, rollbacks, and multiple deployment strategies. FluxCD can also be integrated with different tools in the Kubernetes ecosystem.
• Spinnaker: Spinnaker is a multi-cloud and open-source CD platform that aids software release changes quickly. It provides a pipeline-based approach to Continuous Delivery to help developers visualise and automate the complete software delivery process.
• GitLab: The web-based Git repository manager, GitLab, provides continuous integration, source code management (SCM), and more. With this tool, your teams can track bugs, host and manage source code repositories, and collaborate with others.

Conclusion

Apart from the tools and best practices mentioned above, you must also have the most suitable test data management tools to ensure timely and efficient software testing in Continuous Delivery. With this blog, we are sure you will efficiently implement Continuous Delivery and enhance the work of your software teams.