DevOps is an ongoing process requiring constant communication, collaboration, and automation. Teams must be able to move projects from conceptualization to release as quickly and as efficiently as possible. Not only do organizations need to have workflows in place to facilitate DevOps, but they also need the right tools.In this post, we present the 5 best DevOps tools that teams should use before deploying to production. These DevOps tools are designed to help tackle common efficiencies in workflows, allowing your teams to work more efficiently and reduce your time to market.

1. Slack

Slack is much more than just a messaging service. It's a complete communications platform providing independent groups and channels, file sharing, voice and video calls, and searching. Teams can organize into project-specific channels, collaborate with users outside of the organization, and even integrate with hundreds of other tools including source code management systems, continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) tools, and even logging services.For teams, Slack is one of the best DevOps tools provides a central location for receiving communications, notifications, and alerts. Engineers can communicate with one another, track automated activities, and be notified instantly in case of an error or failure in the DevOps pipeline. Slack also provides an API for providing additional functionality to users such as custom actions, webhooks, single sign-on, and chatbots.Slack paid plans start at $6.67 per user per month. For small teams, Slack also offers a free plan with a limited number of searchable messages and features.

2. Jenkins

Jenkins is an open source tool for automating software builds and deployments. It's capable of checking out source code from a version control system, compiling code, and deploying executables to a production environment. Engineers can define custom steps and scripts, run automated tests, and send alerts in case of an error. The result is a fully automated build process that guarantees quality while reducing the risk of errors making their way to production.Jenkins supports a wide range of languages, frameworks, tools, and platforms, giving DevOps teams complete control over the build and deployment process. Jenkins also integrates with Kubernetes and Docker Swarm to run builds, tests, and deployments more efficiently. As an open source project, Jenkins is available for free.

3. New Relic

New Relic is a comprehensive platform for monitoring application health, infrastructure health, and user activity. It collects metrics, traces, database transactions, and other data points in order to analyze the state of your entire stack at all times. Application performance management (APM) is a key component of New Relic, allowing you to quickly determine the performance and stability of your systems at a glance.In addition to monitoring deployments, New Relic can simulate user activity using New Relic Synthetics. This lets teams run usability tests on applications in each phase of the DevOps cycle, not just in production. This can significantly reduce the number of bugs experienced by users, identify potential performance bottlenecks, and provide actionable feedback directly to developers and engineers.Pricing for New Relic varies depending on the product, subscription level, and pricing model.

4. GitLab

Originally a source code management solution, GitLab has grown into a complete DevOps management solution. While it still provides tools for creating and managing Git repositories, it also provides tools for project management, code analysis, CI/CD, and even running serverless functions. GitLab lets DevOps teams manage each phase of the DevOps lifecycle in a single integrated platform, from planning and conceptualization to deployment monitoring.The core GitLab product is open source and available for self-hosting or as a hosted service. Paid plans offer additional features such as customer support, additional security options, stronger Kubernetes integration, and more project management tools. However, the open source Community Edition is still powerful and flexible enough to support the DevOps workflow for smaller teams.

5. LogDNA

No matter how well designed or well tested an application is, there's always a risk of problems happening in production. When this happens, DevOps teams need tools that can help them quickly pinpoint the cause and impact of errors. Many logging and monitoring tools become cost-prohibitive over time, require dedicated engineering resources to build and maintain them, or don't provide the speeds necessary for troubleshooting problems in production.LogDNA gives DevOps teams the means to process all of their log data in real-time, no matter the size of their deployment. Teams can search, filter, or live tail terabytes of log data in a matter of seconds from a web browser or command line interface (CLI). LogDNA scales automatically to meet demand, allowing teams to focus on making their product better without also having to scale their logging solution.LogDNA offers a flexible per-gigabyte pricing model, as well as the option to self host. Start logging for free in a fully featured 2-week free trial.

Conclusion

There are countless DevOps tools out there and finding the right one will depend on your specific needs and workflow. Each of the tools listed here are available for free, or offer free trials. Before deploying your code to production, consider giving these tools a try. Is there a tool you suggest we add to this list? Tweet us and let us know.