The 5 Components of Azure DevOps

In the search to accelerate and simplify the DevOps process, we take a look at Microsoft’s Azure DevOps, a hosted service providing development and collaboration tool that was formerly known as Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS). Last year, Microsoft split VSTS into five separate Azure-branded services, under the banner Azure DevOps for a complete offering in public cloud that makes it easier for developers to adopt portions of the Azure DevOps platform, without requiring them to go “all in” like the former VSTS.

Azure DevOps supports both public and private cloud configurations — the services include:

• Azure Boards — A work tracking system with Kanban boards, dashboards, and reporting
• Azure Pipelines — A CI/CD, testing, and deployment system that can connect to any Git repository
• Azure Repos — A cloud-hosted private Git repository service
• Azure Test Plans — A solution for tests and capturing data about defects
• Azure Artifacts — A hosting facility for Maven, npm, and NuGet packages

Each of these Azure DevOps services is open and extensible and can be used with all varieties of applications, regardless of the framework, platform or cloud. Built-in cloud-hosted agents are provided for Windows, Mac OS and Linux and workflows are enabled for native container support and Kubernetes deployment options, virtual machines, and serverless environments.

With all five services together users can take advantage of an integrated suite that provides end to end DevOps functionalities. But, since they are broken up into separate components, Azure DevOps gives users the flexibility to just pick which services to employ without the need to use the full suite. For example, with Kubernetes having a standard interface and running the same way on all cloud providers, Azure Pipelines can be used for deploying to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), or clusters from any other cloud provider without requiring the use of any of the other Azure DevOps components.

Embracing Azure DevOps

One of the main benefits for teams using Azure DevOps is developers will be able to work securely from anywhere and in any format and embrace open-source technology. Azure DevOps addresses the vendor lock-in problem from its early version by providing extensive integration with industry and community tools.

With the many integrations available, users can log in using SSO tools like Azure AD or communicate with their team via Slack integration while accessing both cloud and on-premises resources.

Azure Pipelines offers free CI/CD with unlimited minutes and 10 parallel jobs for every open source project and many of the top open-source projects already use Azure Pipelines for CI/CD, such as Atom, CPython, Pipenv, Tox, Visual Studio Code, and TypeScript.

Benefits of Azure DevOps

Azure DevOps use cases include:

• Planning — Azure DevOps makes it easy for DevOps teams to manage their work with full visibility across products and projects, helping them keep development efforts transparent and on schedule. Teams can define, track, and layout work with Kanban boards, backlogs, custom dashboards and reporting capabilities using Azure Boards.
• Developing — Allows teams to share code and collaborate together with Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code. Users can create automatic workflows for automated testing and continuous integration in the cloud with Azure Pipelines.
• Delivery — Helps teams deploy applications to any Azure service automatically and with full control. Users can define and spin up multiple cloud environments with Azure Resource Manager or HashiCorp Terraform, and then create continuous delivery pipelines into these environments using Azure Pipelines or tools such as Jenkins and Spinnaker.
• Operations — With Azure Monitor, users can implement full stack monitoring, get actionable alerts, and gain insights from logs and telemetry.

Pricing

As for Azure DevOps pricing, there are a lot of open-source tools that can be combined to deliver the functionality that Azure DevOps promises to provide, but the basic plan for open source projects and small projects is free up to five users. For larger teams, the cost can range from $30 per month for 10 users to $90 per month for 20 users and so forth.

In summary, Azure DevOps is an all in one focussed project tracking and planning tool mixed with Developer and DevOps tools for writing, building and deploying code that’s relatively quick and easy to use. But, while maintenance cost is decreased, developers only need an active subscription to have constant access to the latest version. Azure DevOps will indirectly utilize Azure Storage and compute services that will increase usage and impact costs.

Originally published at www.parkmycloud.com on November 14, 2019.