CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment) is one of the key principles of the DevOps approach. It allows to accelerate, make reliable and secure applications and deployments. DevOps is an approach to collaboration and company culture that aims to improve communication and collaboration between development and operations teams. 

And in practice, what is the CI/CD?

The goal of DevOps is to improve the application lifecycle by using tools and practices that promote automation and collaboration. CI/CD tools automate the development, testing and deployment process. Monitoring and oversight tools monitor applications and platforms in production.

CI/CD is a software development practice that aims to frequently integrate and deploy changes to a project. By using CI/CD, teams can continuously test and rapidly deploy new releases. In particular, CI/CD helps industrialize data platforms and automate and streamline the process of developing, testing and deploying these platforms.

By using CI/CD, development teams can integrate their work in a continuous manner: they can submit their source code changes at any time. These changes are then automatically checked and tested, ensuring that the code remains functional, of high quality and meets certain security requirements. In addition, CI/CD enables rapid deployment of new releases, which is critical for customers who rely on constant platform availability and quick response to changing needs.

Why is CI/CD important in DevOps?

With CI/CD, development teams test more efficiently and in real time. This allows errors to be proactively detected and corrected quickly, reducing the risk of failure. In addition, CI/CD allows you to accurately track changes to code and know exactly when and how each change was deployed. CI/CD is an asset to development teams in terms of collaboration and project management. By continuously integrating changes, developers can work efficiently and avoid code conflicts.

At JEMS, security is a critical aspect of CI/CD. By frequently integrating and testing changes, security vulnerabilities can be quickly detected and fixed before they are operated. In addition, by using vulnerability detection and penetration testing tools in the CI/CD process, it is possible to ensure that changes made to the code do not compromise the security of the applications.

CI/CD is therefore fundamental to industrializing data platforms. It automates and streamlines the development, testing and deployment process, ensuring high code quality and security as well as constant availability. It also improves collaboration and project management, making it easier for teams to work and collaborate, and enabling a DevOps approach.

What CI/CD solutions exist?

The following are the most common CI/CD solutions implemented by JEMS when building projects:

• Jenkins is a popular open source CI/CD solution. It automates development tasks such as code compilation, testing and deployment. It also offers many plugins to extend its functionality. One of the advantages of Jenkins is that it is free and easy to use, but it can be complex to configure and maintain.
• GitLab CI is a CI/CD solution integrated with GitLab release management software. It automates development tasks and offers seamless integration with the rest of GitLab. One of the benefits of GitLab CI is that it is easy to use and offers seamless integration with GitLab.
• Azure DevOps is a project management and CI/CD solution offered by Microsoft. It offers a wide range of features for project management, software development and deployment. One of the advantages of Azure DevOps is that it offers great flexibility and many features.
• GitHub Actions is a CI/CD solution integrated with GitHub that automates development tasks. It is especially useful for open source projects hosted on GitHub. One of the advantages of GitHub Actions is that it is easy to use and offers seamless integration with GitHub.
• Harness is a smart CI/CD solution that aims to simplify the development, testing and deployment process. It offers an intuitive interface and easy integration with many tools and systems. It offers pre-built modules for tools like Kubernetes or Terraform, which helps the lifecycle in these environments. Thanks to its AI, Harness can monitor the application in real time, which allows it to detect problems and react quickly. In particular, it can automate rollback in case of problems during or after deployment.

There are also many alternatives that we implement in JEMS projects, such as Bitbucket, CircleCI, Travis, TeamCity or the integrated solutions of each cloud provider. There are many CI/CD solutions available on the market, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. It is important to choose the solution that best suits the need, the project and the teams.

Christophe GOUTEIX – VP DevOps