As a new engineer, understanding the concept of continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) is important for several reasons.
First, CI/CD is a key component of cloud native application development. It is the process of automatically building, testing, and deploying code changes as soon as they are committed to the code repository. By understanding how CI/CD works, you will be able to build, deploy, and manage cloud-native applications more effectively.
Second, CI/CD allows for faster development and deployment. By automating the build, test, and deployment process, it enables developers to make changes to the code and have them deployed to production faster. This facilitates faster innovation and time-to-market for new features.
Third, CI/CD promotes better collaboration and DevOps culture. By automating the process of building, testing, and deploying code changes, it becomes easier for different teams and developers to work together on the same application.
Fourth, CI/CD allows for better quality and reliability of the software. By automating the testing process, it ensures that code changes are tested as soon as they are made, which helps to catch any bugs or errors early in the development cycle.
In summary, as a new engineer, understanding the concept of CI/CD is important because it is a key component of cloud native application development, allows for faster development and deployment, promotes better collaboration and DevOps culture, and allows for better quality and reliability of the software. It is a powerful tool for building and deploying applications in a cloud environment and is essential for any engineer working in the field today.
Learning Materials
Here’s a list to get you started learning about CI/CD. Note that some of these links may not be free and may require a subscription or payment. I receive no affiliate payments for these links.
Beginner:
- “A Beginners Guide to Understanding CI/CD” by Nicholas Murray: https://medium.com/geekculture/a-beginners-guide-to-cicd-6a6c0a32cb98
- “CI/CD Pipeline: Learn with Example” by GURU99: https://www.guru99.com/ci-cd-pipeline.html
- “A beginner’s guide to CI/CD and automation on GitHub” by GitHub: https://github.blog/2022-06-03-a-beginners-guide-to-ci-cd-and-automation-on-github/
Intermediate:
- “CI/CD Pipeline Jenkins Step-by-step” by k21academy: https://k21academy.com/devops-foundation/ci-cd-pipeline-using-jenkins/
- “Continuous Integration and Deployment with GitLab” by GitLab: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/
- “How to Build Your first CI/CD Pipeline with Travis CI” by lambdatest: https://www.lambdatest.com/blog/build-your-first-ci-cd-pipeline-with-travis-ci/
Advanced:
- “Best Practices for CI/CD” by TeamCity: https://www.jetbrains.com/teamcity/ci-cd-guide/ci-cd-best-practices/
- “Continuous Integration and Deployment in Kubernetes” by The New Stack: https://thenewstack.io/continuous-integration-and-deployment-in-kubernetes/
- “Cloud-Native Continuous Integration and Delivery: Build, test, and deploy cloud-native applications in the cloud-native way” by Onur Yilmaz: https://www.amazon.com/Cloud-Native-Continuous-Integration-Delivery-cloud-native/dp/1789805651
Videos to Watch
The Foundations of Continuous Delivery
Continuous Delivery is a revolutionary approach to software development that focuses on efficient feedback, strong engineering discipline, reducing the amount of work, and cycle time reduction. Automation is essential to reducing cycle time and the deployment pipeline is used to prove that changes are fit for production.
Possible Learning Path
Hands-on experience: Start by setting up a simple Kubernetes cluster and experimenting with different CI/CD tools such as Jenkins, Travis CI, and GitLab CI/CD. This can be done by following tutorials and guides and deploying these tools on a cloud platform like AWS, Azure, or GCP.
Theoretical learning: Once you have a basic understanding of CI/CD, you can begin to explore the underlying concepts and technologies such as pipeline management, version control, and testing. This can be done through online resources such as tutorials, courses, and documentation provided by CI/CD tools, as well as books and blogs on the topic.
Understanding the principles and best practices: CI/CD is an important aspect of modern software development, so it’s important to understand the key principles and best practices of CI/CD such as automation, testing, and deployment.
Joining a community: Joining a community of CI/CD enthusiasts will help you connect with other people who are learning and working with CI/CD for Kubernetes. This can be done through online forums, meetups, and social media groups.
Practice, practice, practice: As with any new technology, the best way to learn is by doing. The more you practice deploying and using CI/CD tools in a Kubernetes cluster, the more comfortable and proficient you will become with the technology.
A Note from the Architect
I’m about to tell you how I used to publish my websites way back in the day. You see, back then, many of us actually kept a really powerful server under our desks. I had such a server. This server had a network card with two different IP addresses bound to it. One was a Public IP address. Yes, I had a public IP address bound directly onto the network card of the server sitting under my desk. I also had a private IP address so that I could share the website’s folder on the network for the whole company.
Ok, stop laughing, you’re making me feel bad. I haven’t even mentioned the fact that I edited my Active Server Pages directly from that folder. That’s right, changes went directly from development to the internet with no steps in between. I had lots of files that were named things like, “about-us.asp.old, about-us.asp.older, about-us.asp.donotuse.’
Well, luckily those days are behind us. Today we use CICD (Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment).
CICD is a software development practice that involves automatically building, testing, and deploying code changes. The basic idea behind CICD is to catch and fix errors as early as possible, which helps to prevent bugs and other issues from making it into production. This is accomplished by integrating the code changes into a central repository and then running a series of automated tests and builds.
It’s more popular now because it helps to improve software quality, increase collaboration among developers, and reduce time to market for new features. It also helps to ensure that software is always in a releasable state, which makes it easier to roll out new features and bug fixes.
One of the key enablers of CICD is version control. Version control is a necessity for modern development because it allows developers to track changes to the codebase over time, collaborate with other developers, and roll back to a previous version if something goes wrong. There’s no longer a need to append extra extensions onto files you might want to keep as backup.
Pipelines help to ensure quality by automating the process of building, testing, and deploying code changes. This makes it easier to catch and fix errors early in the development process, which helps to prevent bugs and other issues from making it into production. It can also help with security by establishing a software supply chain. When code changes are automatically built, tested and deployed, it’s easier to track, identify and isolate any malicious code that may have been introduced in the codebase.
Basically, CICD is a software development practice that involves automatically building, testing, and deploying code changes. It helps to improve software quality, increase collaboration among developers, and reduce time to market for new features. Version control is a necessity for modern development, and pipelines help to ensure quality and can help with security by establishing a software supply chain.
