Best DevOps Practices to Enhance Application Performance

    Best DevOps Practices to Enhance Application Performance

    DevOps principles can foster strong cooperation and communication between development and operations teams, increasing the delivery and reliability of the developed apps.

    Replacing manual and error-prone processes with advanced automation tools is essential to streamline the designing, development, and deployment stages.

    To achieve this, firms must integrate automation in the CI/CD pipelines to standardize configurations. They must design and implement DevOps best practices to increase app reliability and boost monitoring capabilities.

    Here are a few DevOps practices to enhance app development performance.

    1. Implement the Best Security Practices in the Early Stages 

    Security issues in the app can impact the UX and cash flow. Hence, DevOps teams must design, develop, and deliver apps without security gaps before implementation.

    One of the most efficient DevOps strategies is to focus on a shift left security approach. This approach demands collaboration with SecOps teams to evaluate the code for vulnerabilities in the CI/CD pipelines.

    The app development and operations must design and enforce stringent security practices. Moreover, when developing new apps with advanced functionalities, DevOps teams must ensure they have tight threat detection and mitigation policies. This will help to secure the app against threats and DDoS attacks.

    A report by Sonatype,” SANS 2023 DevSecOps Survey Report,”

    • DevSecOps is now seen as a business-critical issue.
    • 53% of respondents said their organizations test the security of their business critical apps at least weekly, with 31% testing them at least daily.

    Robust security practices in the early stages of app development will help develop high performing apps.

    For better security:

    • Integrate security tools and practices at the earliest stages. This includes code analysis and threat modelling.
    • Use automation to scan for configuration issues and compliance violations.
    • Provision infrastructure via code
    • Track relevant regulatory standards and ensure practices meet these standards.
    • Regularly perform threat modelling to determine security issues
    • Conduct risk assessments to prioritize security efforts.

    2. Manage Logs Centrally

    Logs should be managed centrally as they are essential for a program. They must be simple to read and understand. End to end logging is beneficial since it makes it easier to assess a program from a user’s perspective.

    Centralized logs for apps speed up debugging and even prevent a significant outage with predefined alarms. Examining logs as graphs, tables, and pie charts is possible. Practice log rotation to prevent having too many records that are hard to manage.

    3. Integrate Better Observability and Continuous Testing

    Firms that want to design, develop, and deploy high-performance applications must have a strategic approach right from the start.

    The DevOps teams must be agile and have strategic work processes to improve the app’s performance. They must integrate continuous testing processes before they increase their deployment frequencies.

    Moreover, the teams must employ service virtualization to evaluate the micro services and third-party APIs. Furthermore, they must have transparent CI/CD pipelines to strengthen fault detection and isolate pipeline challenges.

    4. Adopt a Data-driven Approach

    The DevOps team’s primary focus must be performance; assessing factual data can help achieve that. Continuous performance revision is the foundation of DevOps. Share app graphs and trends with the team to understand everyone’s thinking.

    Scalability, testing, and deployment should all be used to streamline the procedure. Development and operations teams must collaborate and use a unified, continually improved strategy to establish and enhance app performance.

    5. Gather Continuous Feedback

    Continuous feedback ensures team members have all the details needed to do their duties on time. This also means that the developers are alerted to any pipeline failures immediately. As for product management, continuous feedback makes the team aware of any production failures or reported bugs.

    Also Read: 7 Key Reasons Why DevOps Fails

    6. Embrace Cultural Changes 

    DevOps demands collaboration, transparency, trust, and empathy. With firms embracing these values, it will become fairly easy for them to adopt DevOps practices. If not, they will need to develop these qualities. Furthermore, the most common organizational structures are siloed, resulting in minimal cross-team communication or collaboration. For DevOps to succeed, these challenges must be eliminated by adopting the “you build it, you run it” principle. This principle brings developers into contact with the day-to-day operation of their software and with the customer. This feedback loop is essential for enhancing the quality of the service.

    Conclusion

    DevOps will become even more ingrained with advancements in AI, ML, and unprecedented levels of automation and predictive analytics.

    As per a recent report by Gitlab,”2023 Global DevSecOps Report Series,” developers used AI/ML to-

    • to check code (62%)
    • testing process (53%)
    • to review code (36%)

    Integrating DevOps practices into current business models will be crucial as tech evolves. For many firms, this means forming a robust DevOps team to explore the complexities of modern software delivery and tailor these practices to their unique goals.

    As DevOps evolves, it will continue to pave the way for faster and more secure software delivery that aligns with the needs of the changing digital landscape.

    Check Out The New TalkDev Podcast. For more such updates follow us on Google News TalkDev News.