List of Best Devops Tools

 

Development Environment Tools

Development environment tools are essential for maintaining consistency in software configurations and versions. They ensure reproducibility in minutes in case of a crash, increasing developer productivity.

• Virtual Box (Open Source): A powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use.

• Qemu (Open Source): A generic and open source machine emulator and virtualizer.

• Vagrant (Open Source): A tool for building and managing virtual machine environments in a single workflow.

• Docker Desktop (Open Source): An application for MacOS and Windows machines for the building and sharing of containerized applications.

• Minikube (Open Source): A tool that makes it easy to run Kubernetes locally.

• Minishift (Open Source): A tool that helps you run OpenShift locally by running a single-node OpenShift cluster inside a VM.

• Podman Desktop (Open Source): A daemonless container engine for developing, managing, and running OCI Containers on your Linux System.

• Rancher Desktop (Open Source): Rancher Desktop is a tool that enables developers to manage and deploy Kubernetes clusters effortlessly on their local machines.

• kind (Open Source): kind is a tool that uses Docker containers as nodes to facilitate the creation of local Kubernetes cluster primarly used for local development and testing.

• k3d (Open Source): k3d is a lightweight wrapper to run k3s in Docker and makes it easy to create single and multi-node k3s clusters.

Source Code Management

In the DevOps world, everything is treated as code (e.g., code, shell script, configurations, etc.). Robust source code management tools are a must.

• Github (Free & Paid): A web-based hosting service for version control using Git. It offers all of the distributed version control and source code management (SCM) functionality of Git as well as adding its own features.

• Bitbucket (Free & Paid): A web-based version control repository hosting service owned by Atlassian, for source code and development projects that use either Mercurial or Git revision control systems.

• Gitlab (Free & Paid): A web-based DevOps lifecycle tool that provides a Git-repository manager providing wiki, issue-tracking and CI/CD pipeline features, using an open-source license.

• AWS CodeCommit (Free & Paid): A fully-managed source control service that makes it easy for companies hosting their own repositories to collaborate on code in a secure and highly scalable ecosystem.

• Google Cloud Source Repositories (Free & Paid): Fully-featured, scalable, private Git repositories hosted on Google Cloud.

• Azure Repos (Free & Paid): Provides Git repositories or Team Foundation Version Control (TFVC) for source control of your code.

• Codeberg (Free & Paid): Cloud-based instance of Forgejo.

• Forgejo (Open Source): Open-source fork of Gitea.

• Fossil (Free): Open-source distributed SCM that includes a wiki, issue management, and other features. Not compatible with git.

• Gitea (Open Source, Free, Paid Support Available): Open-source fork of Gogs.

• Gogs (Open Source): Open-source git-based SCM, loosely based on Github's UI.

Build Tools

Build tools are essential for automating package creation or deployable artifacts.

• Maven (Java) (Open Source): A software project management and comprehension tool, primarily used for Java projects.

• Gradle (Java, Kotlin, Groovy, Scala, Python, C++) (Free & Paid): An open-source build automation system that builds upon the concepts of Apache Ant and Apache Maven.

• npm (Javascript): A package manager for JavaScript, used to install, share, and distribute code.

• Rake (Ruby) (Open Source): A software task management and build automation tool for Ruby.

• MSBuild (.Net) (Open Source): The build platform for .NET and Visual Studio.

• Pybuilder (Python) (Open Source): A software build tool written in pure Python mainly for Python applications.

Continuous Integration Tools

Continuous Integration provides continuous feedback on code integrations, helping solve issues faster and decreasing time in software release cycles.

• Jenkins (Open Source): An open-source automation server, helps to automate parts of the build, test, and deployment process. Java-based, with Groovy-based pipeline definition.

• Github Actions (Free & Enterprise): A CI/CD solution that integrates with GitHub repositories to run a series of commands automatically.

• Gitlab CI (Free & Enterprise): A continuous integration service included with GitLab that builds and tests the software whenever the developer pushes code to the application. YAML-based pipelines. Can be self-hosted or use the cloud offering.

• CircleCI (Free & Paid): YAML-based CI/CD hosted in the cloud.

• Drone (Free & Paid): YAML-based CI/CD that is container-first. Can self-host or use the cloud version.

• TeamCity (Free & Enterprise): A build management and continuous integration server from JetBrains.

• Travis CI (Open Source): A cloud-based continuous integration service that automatically builds and tests code changes in GitHub repositories.

• Bamboo (Free & Enterprise): A continuous integration and deployment tool that ties automated builds, tests, and releases together in a single workflow.

• RazorOps CICD (Free & Paid): YAML-based CI/CD that is container-first SaaS cloud version and On-Prems with large Enterprise.

• Buildkite (Free & Paid): YAML-based CI/CD.

Code Analysis Tools

Code analysis tools are a crucial component of any DevOps toolkit. They scrutinize the code before deployment, pinpointing potential issues. This allows developers to enhance the quality of the software by making necessary modifications.

Code analysis can be categorized into two types:

• Static Analysis (SAST) – This method inspects the source code without executing it, identifying bugs, security vulnerabilities, and quality issues.

• Dynamic Analysis (DAST) – This approach involves running the code to uncover performance bottlenecks and behavioral anomalies.

Here are some notable tools in this category:

• Sonarqube (Free & Enterprise): SonarQube offers a comprehensive suite for continuous code quality inspection. It automates reviews with static code analysis to detect bugs, code smells, and security vulnerabilities.

• Checkmarx (Enterprise): Checkmarx is a leading solution in software security, adept at identifying, tracking, and rectifying both technical and logical security flaws in the source code.

• PMD (Open Source): PMD is a versatile static code analyzer. It can detect a wide range of programming flaws across multiple languages.

• Acunetix (Enterprise): Acunetix is a proprietary web vulnerability scanner capable of autonomously crawling and scanning web applications to identify diverse security concerns. It comes under DAST tools.

Continuous Delivery & GitOps Tools

Continuous Delivery is more of an approach rather than a toolset, aiming to ensure that software can be reliably and immediately deployed at any time. While there's no specific tool labeled solely for continuous delivery, several process-oriented tools can be leveraged to achieve this goal within your projects.

GitOps, a subset of DevOps, uses Git as a single source of truth for declarative infrastructure and applications. Here are some prominent tools that align with Continuous Delivery and GitOps principles:

• Jenkins (Open Source): A widely-used open-source automation server that supports building, deploying, and automating any project.

• Argo CD (Open Source): A declarative, GitOps continuous delivery tool for Kubernetes.

• Flux CD (Open Source): A tool that automates the deployment of containers to Kubernetes, following the GitOps principles.

• Go CD (Open Source): An open-source continuous delivery server designed to model and visualize complex workflows.

• Gitlab CD (Free & Enterprise): GitLab's continuous delivery solution, allowing automated deployment and monitoring of applications.

• Weave GitOps (Enterprise): An enterprise-grade GitOps solution, providing a set of best practices for deploying and managing applications and infrastructure.

• Jenkins X (Open Source): An open-source project that provides automated CI/CD for Kubernetes, with preview environments and promotion across environments.

• Tekton (Open Source): A powerful and flexible open-source framework for creating CI/CD systems, allowing developers to build, test, and deploy across cloud providers and on-premises systems.

Infrastructure Provisioning Tools

Infrastructure provisioning tools play a vital role in automating the setup of computing infrastructure. This includes the creation and management of virtual machines, networks, storage, and various cloud resources. By automating these processes, these tools enable more efficient and consistent infrastructure deployment.

Here are some of the leading tools in this category:

• Terraform (Open Source & Enterprise): Terraform is an open-source tool that allows you to define and provision a datacenter infrastructure using a declarative configuration language. It supports various cloud providers and offers an enterprise version with additional features.

• Pulumi (Open Source & Enterprise): Pulumi provides a way to create, deploy, and manage infrastructure using programming languages you already know. It offers both open-source and enterprise solutions.

• CloudFormation (AWS Service): An AWS service that helps you model and set up Amazon Web Services resources. It allows you to use a template to describe all the AWS resources you need, automating the provisioning process.

• Azure Resource Manager (Azure Service): Azure Resource Manager enables you to work with the resources in your solution as a group. You can deploy, update, or delete all the resources for your solution in a single, coordinated operation.

• Bicep (Azure Service): Azure Bicep is a simple and user-friendly domain-specific language (DSL) for describing Azure cloud resources. It helps to create, deploy, and manage Azure resources more easily and efficiently compared to traditional ARM templates. Bicep simplifies the process by offering a cleaner and more concise syntax, making it quicker to write and maintain Azure infrastructure code.

Backups and Restoration Tools

Backup and restoration tools helps in making periodic copies of data and applications to a separate, secondary device and then using those copies to recover the data and applications.

• Velero (Open Source ): Velero is an open source tool to safely backup and restore, perform disaster recovery, and migrate Kubernetes cluster resources and persistent volumes.

• Kasten K10 (Free & Enterprise): Kasten K10 is a data management platform that provides robust Kubernetes backup and disaster recovery solutions for seamless containerized application deployment and data protection.

• Cloudcasa (Free & Enterprise): CloudCasa is a cloud-native backup and disaster recovery solution designed to protect and manage data for Kubernetes applications seamlessly.

Configuration Management Tools

Configuration management tools are pivotal in both application and infrastructure deployment. They assist in managing the state of servers and applications, ensuring that configurations are applied consistently and idempotently. By automating these configurations, these tools enhance the reliability and efficiency of deployment processes.

Here's a look at some of the widely-used configuration management tools:

• Ansible (Open Source & Enterprise): Ansible is a versatile automation tool that can handle configuration management, application deployment, and task automation. It uses a simple, human-readable language, allowing for easy adoption.

• Chef (Open Source & Enterprise): Chef is a powerful automation platform that transforms complex infrastructure into code, automating how infrastructure is configured, deployed, and managed across your network.

• Puppet (Open Source & Enterprise): Puppet is designed to manage the configuration of Unix-like and Microsoft Windows systems declaratively. It provides a way to automate repetitive tasks, quickly deploy critical applications, and proactively manage infrastructure.

• Saltstack (Open Source & Enterprise): SaltStack is an intelligent IT automation platform that can manage, secure, and optimize any infrastructure. It's built on a unique and responsive remote execution engine, allowing for control over thousands of systems with no performance degradation.

Containerization Tools

Containerization Tools enable the encapsulation of an application and its dependencies into a 'container.' This ensures that the application runs the same way, regardless of where it's deployed. By isolating the application in a container, these tools provide a consistent environment that's abstracted from the host system.

Here are some popular tools in this category:

• Docker (Open Source & Enterprise): Docker is a platform that enables developers to create, deploy, and run applications in containers. It's widely used for its ease of use and integration with various orchestration tools.

• Podman (Open Source): Podman is a daemonless container engine for developing, managing, and running OCI Containers on your Linux System. It provides a Docker-CLI-compatible command-line front end and can use many of the same commands.

• Buildah (Open Source): Buildah is a tool that facilitates building OCI container images. It's a complementary tool to Podman and allows for more fine-grained control over image creation and management.

• rkt (Open Source): An application container engine developed for modern production cloud-native environments, emphasizing simplicity, security, and composability.

• CRI-O (Open Source): CRI-O is a lightweight container runtime specifically for Kubernetes. It allows Kubernetes to use any OCI-compliant runtime as the container runtime for running pods. It provides an optimized performance for Kubernetes workloads and is known for its simplicity and reliability.

Container Orchestration Tools

With the widespread adoption of containerization technologies like Docker, Container Orchestration Tools have become indispensable in microservices-based deployments. These tools manage the lifecycle of containers within clusters, automating tasks such as deployment, scaling, networking, and availability.

Here are some of the leading tools in this category:

• Kubernetes (Open Source): Kubernetes is the de facto standard in container orchestration. It automates the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications across clusters of hosts.

• OpenShift (Open Source & Enterprise): OpenShift is a Kubernetes-based container platform that provides developer and operational tools. It extends Kubernetes by adding features such as a web console, monitoring, logging, and more.

• Nomad (Open Source & Enterprise): Nomad is a flexible and easy-to-use orchestrator to deploy and manage containers and non-containerized applications. It integrates seamlessly with popular DevOps tools and provides a lightweight solution for container orchestration.

• k3s (Open Source): k3s is a certified Kubernetes distribution which is highly available and designed for resource-constrained production workloads.

Policy Management Tools

Policy Management Tools enable organizations to define, enforce, and manage security policies across their cloud-native environments. They provide a framework for policy definition and evaluation, ensuring compliance with organizational and regulatory requirements.

• Open Policy Agent (Open Source): A general-purpose policy engine that unifies policy enforcement across the stack.

• Kyverno (Open Source): A policy engine designed for Kubernetes, providing validation, mutation, and generation of configurations.

• Cloud Custodian (Open Source): A rules engine for managing public cloud accounts and resources.

Monitoring & Observability Tools

Monitoring & Observability Tools provide insights into the performance, availability, and overall health of applications, infrastructure, and business processes. They enable proactive monitoring, alerting, and troubleshooting, ensuring optimal performance and reliability.

• Prometheus (Open Source): An open-source monitoring and alerting toolkit designed for reliability and scalability.

• Thanos (Highly Available Prometheus Open Source Tool): A set of components that can be composed into a highly available metric system with unlimited storage capacity.

• Cilium (Open Source & Enterprise): eBPF-based Networking, Security, and Observability.

• Falco (Open Source & Enterprise): Cloud Native Runtime Security.

• Calico (Open Source & Enterprise): Pluggable eBPF-based networking and security for containers and Kubernetes.

• Sensu (Open Source & Enterprise): A comprehensive monitoring solution for your entire infrastructure and application stack.

• Grafana (Open Source & Enterprise): A leading open-source platform for monitoring and observability, allowing you to query, visualize, alert on, and understand your metrics.

• Kibana (Open Source & Enterprise): A free and open user interface that lets you visualize your Elasticsearch data and navigate the Elastic Stack.

• Tableau (Enterprise): A leading data visualization and business intelligence platform that helps people see and understand their data.

API Tools

• Postman (Free & Enterprise): A collaboration platform for API development.

• Hoppscotch (Open Source): Open-source API development Ecosystem.

• SoapUI (Open Source & Enterprise): The world's leading automated testing tool for SOAP and REST APIs.

• Swagger (Open Source & Enterprise): A framework for API specification that includes a suite of tools for auto-generating documentation, code generation, and API testing.

• HTTPie (Open Source): HTTPie (pronounced aitch-tee-tee-pie) is a command-line HTTP client. Its goal is to make CLI interaction with web services as human-friendly as possible

Collaboration Tools

The following are the collaboration tools that you could use in your DevOps toolchain. These tools support both messaging and video calling:

• Slack (Free & Paid): A collaboration hub that connects your work with the people you work with.

• Cisco Webex Teams (Free & Paid): A collaboration app that helps you create, meet, message, call, whiteboard, and share, regardless of whether you’re together or apart.

• Flock (Free & Paid): A communication and collaboration platform designed to boost productivity and foster teamwork.

• Google Hangouts (Free & Paid): A communication platform that includes messaging, video chat, and VOIP features.

• Flow Dock (Paid): A team collaboration app for desktop, mobile, and web, working seamlessly alongside your existing tools.

Planning & Project Management Tools

Following are the planning tools that you could use in your DevOps toolchain:

• Jira (Free/Paid): A popular project management tool for agile teams.

• Trello (Free/Paid): A collaboration tool that organizes your projects into boards.

• Asana (Free/Paid): A web and mobile application designed to help teams organize, track, and manage their work.

• Backlog.com (Free/Paid): A project management and collaboration tool for teams that want higher productivity.

• Monday.com (Paid): A work operating system that powers teams to run projects and workflows with confidence.

IDE Tools

• Visual Studio Code (Free): A free source-code editor made by Microsoft.

• Sublime Editor (Free): A sophisticated text editor for code, markup, and prose.

• Notepad++ (Free): A free source code editor and Notepad replacement.

Test Automation/Performance Testing Tools

Another important pillar in the CI/CD pipeline is test automation tools. The following are the automation/performance testing tools that top our list:

• Selenium: A suite of tools to automate web browsers.

• UFT: Unified Functional Testing tool for automated functional testing.

• Appium: An open-source tool for automating native, mobile web, and hybrid applications.

• Jmeter: An open-source software to test performance both on static and dynamic resources.

• Blazemeter: A continuous testing platform for performance testing, monitoring, and more.

• Tosca: A software testing tool that leverages the TOSCA standard. Tricentis Tosca is an enterprise-level, continuous testing platform that uses model-based test automation to enable accelerated testing.

Cloud Providers

Cloud service provider is an information technology (IT) company that provides its customers with computing resources over the internet and delivers them on-demand. CSPs are well-suited for organizations and individuals who don’t want the responsibility of installing software, hardware or network resources — and maintaining them until the end of their life cycles.

• AWS: World’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud, offering over 200 fully featured services from data centers globally.

• Microsoft Azure: The Azure cloud platform is more than 200 products and cloud services designed to help you bring new solutions to life.

• Google Cloud Platform (GCP): A suite of cloud computing services offered by Google. Its technical offerings range from infrastructure and platform services to computing power and database hosting.

• IBM: It has one of the most in-depth and highly developed portfolios of enterprise solutions of any

• provider across the tech sector. As a cloud provider, it has a global footprint offering its IaaS and PaaS solutions from data centers from all over the world.

• Oracle: It specializes in developing and marketing computer hardware systems and enterprise-grade software products. It offers a wide range of cloud-based database solutions including its own database-as-a-service offering.