Best DevOps Tools You Must Try in 2022

The global DevOps market has witnessed incredible growth in recent years. Between 2021 and 2026, the global DevOps market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 21%. The focus of DevOps has moved beyond product delivery, and businesses are leveraging it to add more value to their offerings. So, what are the best DevOps tools in the market that you should be using for your organization? Read on to know.

Gartner defines DevOps as a change in IT culture that focuses on rapid service delivery through the adoption of agile and lean practices. DevOps prioritizes people and culture and aims to improve collaboration between the development and operations teams.

If you are new to DevOps practices, figuring out the best DevOps tools for your team could be a challenge.

To simplify things for you, we have put together a DevOps tools list that will help you make an informed decision about the tools you should include in your stack.

The Popular DevOps tools

DevOps tools include all the tools, platforms, servers, and other apps used in the entire software development lifecycle. DevOps aims to automate as many processes and tasks as possible, enhance the speed of development and scalability, and make frequent software releases possible. Depending on your business requirements, you will most likely need multiple DevOps tools to make communication and collaboration easier.

So, which DevOps tools are in demand? There are various DevOps tools and technologies available that could get overwhelming. It could lead you to wonder, “What are the DevOps tools I should include or avoid?”

Don’t worry. We have made it easy for you.

Companies worldwide use various DevOps tools for different purposes, such as test, communication, cloud computing, containerization, and more. Depending on your business requirements, here are the best DevOps tools you must know. To help you understand better, we also have the DevOps tools explained. 

Best DevOps tools for communication and collaboration

It is essential for organizations to invest in DevOps tools that enable team members to communicate and collaborate with each other seamlessly.

Here are some of the best DevOps tools you can try:

 Slack

Slack is an extremely popular DevOps collaboration tool. It started off as a communication tool but has now become the preferred choice for collaboration among organizations across the world.

Whether it is project discussions or sharing important documents, Slack can be a useful tool for your team members. You can also conduct video and conference calls on Slack, and it also integrates well with other apps.

Pros

• Can create multiple channels within the organization
• Easy to share and collaborate in real-time
• Great security
• Can be used on desktop as well as a mobile app

Cons

• Minimum file storage
• Conversations get deleted after a couple of weeks

Jira

Atlassian’s Jira is not only a project management software, but can also be a great tool for collaboration. The tool is designed to discover, assign, and prioritize tasks to improve project execution.

Pros

• Great for agile and scrum management
• Excellent bug tracking software
• Can be customized to fit any business requirement

Cons

• Can be hard to set up
• Complicated user-interface
• No built-in timeline to track progress

 Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is a platform that allows all your team members to be in touch with each other through video calls and chat. If you want privacy, the platform offers the feature of creating private groups or channel-based communication to keep data security and privacy intact. With Microsoft Teams, you can ensure that all your team members are on the same page instead of breaking the conversation over emails and other communication mediums.

Pros

• Integrates several tools in a single place, such as chat, video and audio calls, meetings, and more
• Offers seamless backup, file search, and collaboration
• Helpful bots to save time

Cons

• No unified search tool for all products
• High consumption of storage

 Asana

Asana helps organizations steamline work management so that your team members can focus on projects and goals. The tool allows users to set deadlines and priorities, assign tasks, and share details at a unified place. Asana allows teams to review and prioritize their tasks simply by dragging and dropping them as needed. It can also be used to file, track, and resolve bugs.

Pros

• The free plan is great for teams on a tight budget
• Can integrate easily with several third-party apps and software
• Built-in admin controls for greater security
• Customizable dashboards helpful in tracking each task separately

Cons

• Limited exporting functionality
• No time-tracking

 Basecamp

Basecamp is a collaboration app that enables people to manage their work and communicate with each other. With Basecamp, you can keep track of files, tasks, discussions, deadlines, and work-related announcements. Chats and to-do functions make organizing plans and communication flows seamless. You can also browse all important data and communication in one place.

Pros

• Easy to learn and use
• Ability to create client-specific projects
• Plenty of communication options
• Can be integrated with several add-ons and extensions to expand its capabilities

Cons

• Does not offer a time-tracking feature
• Limited customization options

Best DevOps tools for testing

There are several open-source tools and testing frameworks available for DevOps. Some of the best DevOps tools for testing include:

ZAPTEST

Are you looking to automate your software testing processes or back-office operations? Do you want an automation solution for testing applications cross-platform? ZAPTEST is a good software automation solution that can help you develop a seamless and revolving automation framework. With ZAPTEST, you can test any GUI-based software on any modern operating system, including Windows, iOS, Mac, Linux, Android, Blackberry, and Winmo.

Pros

• Rich feature set
• Lower testing costs
• High-quality work
• Cross-platform automation
• Better ROI

Cons

• Inadequate help documentation

 Jenkins

Jenkins is an open-source automation tool in DevOps that could be used to automate all tasks in building, testing, and deploying software. It allows developers to quickly find and resolve defects in their code so that they can automate the testing of their builds.

Pros

• Simple architecture to deploy
• Several available plugins for high-level customizations
• Offers greater economies of scale
• Can be easily deployed for multiple teams
• Free and open-source

Cons

• Lot of redundant plugins
• A well-maintained YAML interface is not available for Jenkins Pipelines

mabl

mabl is an intelligent test automation tool built for agile teams. It makes creating, executing and maintaining reliable tests easier. With mabl, software teams can increase test coverage, accelerate development, and improve app quality.

Pros

• Fast and easy setup
• Auto-healing tests
• Fully managed
• Machine driven regression testing

Cons

• Can be slow to load scripts
• No comparison feature for differences

 Kobiton

With Kobiton, IoT DevOps and Continuous Testing become a reality. With this tool, you can prevent bugs before pushing code to test, perfecting your website or mobile app with Functional, Performance, and Visual test automation. Kobiton also helps you resolve issues before you release software to production, allowing it to be deployed faster. The tool also offers seamless CI/CD integrations.

Pros

• Rich test logs
• Public, private, and hybrid cloud support
• Manual and automated tests on real devices
• Support for almost all CI/CD tools and processes

Cons

• Slow response

Apache JMeter

The Apache JMeter is an open-source software designed to load test functional behavior and measure performance. It allows performing load and performance tests for various server types.

Pros:

• Easy installation
• User-friendly interface
• Ability to extract data from HTML, XML, JSON, and other textual formats.
• Readily available plugins

Cons:

• High learning curve
• High memory consumption in GUI mode
• Does not support JavaScript

Best DevOps tools for cloud computing and storage

Several companies worldwide are adopting cloud computing due to the numerous benefits it offers.

If you are looking for help with cloud computing and storage, you should consider these DevOps tools.

AWS

AWS DevOps is a component of Amazon Web Services and comes with a set of integrated DevOps tools that enable you to manage your entire software development lifecycle. Although AWS is mainly used in the cloud, you can also use it to run the tools on-premise.

Pros

• Diverse array of tools
• Easy to use
• Unlimited server capacity
• Reliable encryption and security
• Pay-as-you-go pricing model

Cons

• Amazon’s EC2 limits
• Billing can be confusing

Azure

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

Microsoft’s Azure DevOps allows you to manage your entire DevOps cycle from one integrated platform. It is a cloud DevOps tool that you can use as a SaaS platform and also to run your tools on-premise.

Pros

• High availability
• Enhanced data security
• Scalability
• Cost-efficient

Cons

• Requires platform expertise and management
• Data transfer fees

Google Cloud Platform

 Google Cloud Platform allows you to build, deploy, and scale websites, applications, and services on the same infrastructure as Google. This platform, just like Azure and AWS, offers effective cloud computing, hosting, and storage facilities.

Pros

• Cost-efficient
• Different storage classes for different requirements
• Easy to integrate with other Google Cloud services such as Compute Engine and Kubernetes Engine

Cons

• Fewer features compared to other cloud platforms
• Limited support for enterprise use cases

Best DevOps tools for continuous monitoring

Continuous monitoring empowers DevOps teams with enhanced visibility of application performance, security threats, and compliance concerns over the entire DevOps pipeline.

Here are some of the best DevOps tools for continuous monitoring:

Akamai mPulse

Akamai mPulse is a RUM (Real User Monitoring) tool that allows DevOps teams to collect and analyze behavior and experience data from people who visit their app or website. It is easy to deploy and real-time user activity information is available on system dashboards.

Pros

• Single page application support
• Real-time alerting
• Advanced and custom metrics monitoring

Cons

• No error tracking support
• Tends to be slow at times

AppDynamics

AppDynamics from Cisco is a continuous monitoring tool that supports network, infrastructure, and application monitoring of both cloud and on-premise computing environments. It allows you to capture data from database transactions, infrastructure components, end-user sessions, applications, and other sources to maintain complete visibility into the tech stack. If there are performance issues, it allows you to resolve them before they negatively impact the customer experience.

Pros

• Real-time intelligent alerting
• Self-learning platform
• Dynamic performance baselining

Cons

• Pricey

BMC Helix Operations Management

The BMC Helix Operations Management tool makes effective use of predictive analysis to monitor the availability and performance of IT services on cloud, on-prem, or hybrid environments. Its features include anomaly detection, event monitoring, and advanced event management. It also has intelligent alerting capabilities powered by AI and probable cause analysis giving your DevOps teams a headstart when it comes to responding to potential events.

Pros

• Best for management and service tracking for all types of enterprises
• Top-notch support team
• Smooth and fast navigation across the UI
• Detailed report generation to effectively manage tickets

Cons

• Limited customization options in some UI
• Upgrade process is a little complicated

Dynatrace

Dynatrace gives you a single interface that gives you the ability to monitor the entire technology stack and DevOps environment. Your teams can use this tool to gain visibility into web and mobile applications, databases, services and transactions, network, and hosts infrastructure. It also supports the monitoring of cloud-native PaaS and container technologies, including Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, Docker, Kubernetes, and more.

Pros

• Mobile monitoring breakdowns
• Interactive interfaces and reports for tracking ROI
• Intuitive non-technical dashboard usability

Cons

• Slightly complicated UI
• Pricier than others

Splunk

Splunk is a single platform that offers IT and DevOps teams the power to effectively monitor the entire enterprise application lifecycle. Its real-time monitoring features offer everything that an observability platform should have – from infrastructure monitoring to real user monitoring.

Pros

• Collects data from multiple data sources and correlates
• Ability to create custom dashboards
• Real-time insights

Cons

• Steep learning curve
• Pricey

Best DevOps tools for container orchestration

Container platforms are quite popular these days to package applications based on microstructure architecture. Containers can be created on-demand and are highly scalable. Container orchestration tools help manage the container lifecycle, especially when the numbers increase with demand.

Here are some of the best DevOps tools for container orchestration:

Kubernetes

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

Kubernetes is open-source and supports both automation and declarative configuration. This tool can help you automate the deployment, management, and scaling of containerized services and workloads. Kubernetes API can also support communication between users, cluster components, and external third-party components.

Pros

• Improves productivity
• Makes your applications more reliable and stable
• Cheaper than other available alternatives

Cons

• Can be complex
• Transition to Kubernetes is cumbersome

OpenShift

The OpenShift Container Platform is offered as a PaaS by RedHat. It supports the automation of apps on secure and scalable resources in hybrid cloud environments. It also provides a comprehensive platform for creating, deploying, and managing containerized applications.

Pros

• Great container image management
• Extensive security features
• Excellent user experience

Cons

• Not very flexible
• Difficult to understand logs

Docker Swarm

Docker is one of the most preferred containerization tools by organizations worldwide. With Docker swarm, you can automate application deployment and it also provides agile operations and integrated security for cloud-based and legacy applications.

The advantage with Docker is that it offers the ability to package dependencies. Docker uses a container to package an app with all its elements and dependencies before sending the entire container as a single package. It also promotes an automated and reliable supply chain, as well as supporting new and existing applications run with AWS and Google Cloud.

Pros

• ROI and cost savings
• Rapid deployment
• Enhanced security
• Simple and fast configurations

Cons

• Missing features
• Inadequate backup and recovery strategy

 Cloudify

Cloudify is a cloud orchestration tool that is used for deployment, automation, and managing life cycles of microservices and containers. It is open-source and provides features, such as auto-healing, clusters on-demand, and scalability at the infrastructure level.

Pros

• Easy to set up
• Plugins available for all cloud platforms
• Development and testing of templates is easy

Cons

• API could be enhanced
• Inadequate documentation

Rancher

Rancher is also open-source and allows you to leverage container orchestration services, such as Mesos, Swarm, and Kubernetes. It also provides the necessary software required for managing containers so that organizations do not need to build container service platforms from scratch.

Pros

• Easy to use
• Free and open-source
• Feature rich
• Includes load balancing and health check

Cons

• Long running queries could slow down performance

The next step

We have curated the list above from general reviews from users on the Internet that are ideal for the DevOps teams. However, knowing more about what is DevOps and accessing the tangible value of the tools is a must before selecting the tools that are ideal for companies that take up DevOps or even DevOps as a Service. Let us help you get started with choosing the right tools for onboarding your DevOps journey.