What is DevOps?
Imagine you are building a sandcastle. DevOps is like having a team of friends who not only help you build the castle, but also help you repair it quickly if something goes wrong and make it bigger and better every time. In the real world, those friends are a combination of people, practices, and tools that help us build and improve our software.
Integration and Continuous Delivery
Suppose you have a bunch of buckets of sand (your code updates) ready to add to your castle. You don't want to add them all at once, in case some don't fit well and destabilize your castle. Instead, you want to add one bucket at a time, check that everything is okay, and then add the next one. That's what we call continuous integration (CI). Now, imagine that you can have those buckets of sand delivered to the castle automatically once they're ready—that's what we call continuous delivery (CD).
Infrastructure as code
Think about a drawing you made of your sandcastle. This drawing shows you exactly how the castle should look and where each bucket of sand should go. In the world of DevOps, that drawing is what we call “infrastructure as code” (IaC). It allows us to describe what our system should look like and then use tools to automatically build it, just as we drew it.
Monitoring and Recording
If something goes wrong with your castle, you need to know about it as quickly as possible so you can fix it. That's what we do with monitoring and logging. It's like having security cameras and a logbook for your castle. If a wall falls down or a crab tries to dig a hole, you'll know about it right away!
Containers and Docker
Finally, imagine that each bucket of sand you add to your castle comes in its own little box that keeps it safe and in the right shape. These boxes are like containers in DevOps. Docker is a tool we use to create and manage these boxes, ensuring that every part of your code arrives safely and in the right shape at your software castle.
And so, with DevOps, we can make our software projects like incredible sandcastles: robust and always ready to grow.