Applications have numerous stakeholders — and sometimes those stakeholders come into conflict.
To address ever-changing customer and business needs, Developers typically want to push out new applications, new updates and new features as fast as possible. DevOps, on the other hand, wants to ensure that every new rollout is as stable, secure and functional as possible. When these priorities clash, the departments may find themselves at odds with each other.
Unfortunately, a rift between Development teams and Ops teams can cause serious inefficiencies for your business. Thankfully, you can use modern Kubernetes workflows to create a more seamless development process.
For developers, managing the intricacies of Kubernetes can be time-consuming and overwhelming. With so much flexibility in the infrastructure, it can be challenging for them to anticipate how their applications might behave in production.
For example, a developer could build an app that works perfectly on their own machine, but once it gets pushed into the cluster, a number of unanticipated problems can appear. These problems could be as minor as visual errors, or as serious as security loopholes, malfunctioning databases, and memory leaks.
As a result, the code would need to be sent back to the developer for improvement. This process can quickly add up to a lot of unnecessary time spent on avoidable errors.
To overcome this issue, you’ll want your developers to be able to test their work in an environment that is as similar to the application cluster as possible. Tools such as Minikube allow developers to create a mini cluster on their local computer. Building within this mini cluster, developers will be able to rollout applications that are less buggy from the start. But, as we'll see below, you can go even further by providing cluster environments.
In the current landscape, DevOps teams spend most of their time putting out fires. Ideally, this time would be spent architecting a more stable, secure infrastructure and streamlining the deployment process.
To free up your DevOps team to get back to doing the work that matters most, you’ll need to set up systems that increase visibility and communication throughout the development process.
One of the easiest ways to do this is to leverage the power of Kubernetes cluster environments. For example, DevOps can configure a staging environment that allows developers to view how their application will look and operate before it is officially pushed into production. This allows developers to troubleshoot issues on their own without roping in the DevOps team for support.
Within these staging environments, DevOps can limit the permissions of developers so they’re able to dig around and discover problems, but can’t break anything in prod. In effect, the staging environment becomes a “sandbox” for your developers to test their applications without adding any risk to your DevOps infrastructure.
Even though striving for efficiency is an important goal, some processes just take time — and they should. Efficiency should never eclipse the importance of ensuring security and quality in your applications.
For example, each programming language has its own intricacies and gotchas, so it's worth familiarizing yourself with these nuances and double-checking for security at every stage of development with this in mind.
Similarly, it’s important to thoroughly QA your applications before rollout to ensure they work as intended across multiple devices and under numerous circumstances. You don't want your end-users to be the ones discovering glitches!
The secret to efficient application development is to increase collaboration between developers and DevOps through the strategic use of Kubernetes best practices.
By leveraging tools such as staging environments and local clusters, you can empower each team to spend less time fixing errors and more time improving your applications and operations.
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