So, here’s the deal: DevOps is practice, but you can’t do it without some tools to help you implement it. Getting the DevOps teams to talk and trust each other when it comes to software and tech can be a real headache.
But with the right DevOps tools, you can make things run like clockwork, automating processes and getting everyone on the same page. The challenge here is finding the best DevOps tool for your organization.
We’re here to help!
In this blog, our goal is to provide you with the best DevOps tools to use in 2024 so that you can continue optimizing and streamlining your development processes!
How Can a DevOps Tool Help in the Development Process
IT companies worldwide are increasingly incorporating DevOps into their operations, including both established enterprises and newly-founded start-ups.
But what exactly can a DevOps tool do for you?
DevOps tools can help in several ways throughout the development process. From development to operation and deployment, the tools simplify the process and make it more efficient.
Here are some of the ways a DevOps tool can help with:
Agile Software Development
DevOps tools can greatly enhance the Agile software development approach by enabling faster and more efficient collaboration, automation, and feedback loops among teams. DevOps tools like Jenkins can help support this by automating the build, test, and deployment process and providing real-time monitoring and logging capabilities.
Collaboration and communication
DevOps tools can help facilitate collaboration and communication between different teams involved in the software development process. For instance, tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams can allow team members to communicate in real-time and share information effortlessly.
Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)
DevOps tools can help automate software build, testing, and deployment processes. Tools like Jenkins, Travis CI, or CircleCI can help automate the integration and delivery process, ensuring that the software is tested and deployed consistently and quickly.
Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
DevOps tools can help manage IaC, allowing for easier application deployment and scaling. Tools like Terraform or Ansible can help automate the deployment and management of infrastructure.
Monitoring and logging
DevOps tools can help monitor the performance and availability of applications. Tools like Prometheus can provide real-time monitoring and logging capabilities, allowing teams to detect and respond to issues quickly.
Now that you know how a DevOps tool can help the development process, let’s look at some of the best DevOps tools for different aspects of development to use in 2024.
DevOps Tools for Automation and Testing
Automation aims to reduce human intervention in tasks, using technology to execute them automatically, especially repetitive tasks. Essentially it saves time and reduces the chances of errors.
These are the best tools for automation and testing in 2024:
1. Selenium
Selenium is a leading open-source testing framework designed for web applications released in 2018. It is compatible with all major platforms and is versatile in integrating with various programming languages, including Python, C#, Ruby, Java, JavaScript, PHP, PERL, and several other test automation frameworks.
Why we like it:
- It’s compatible with most web browsers and OS such as Windows, macOS, and Linux
- Licensed under the Apache License 2.0
- Supports parallel automated tests
- Integrates with various third-party tools such as Docker, Jenkins, and Maven
- Widely adopted by leading tech companies such as Google, IBM, Salesforce, and Cognizant
2. Ranorex Studio
Whether you’re a beginner or an expert in automated testing, Ranorex Studio is a powerful tool that can easily help you test desktop, web, and mobile applications. Its user-friendly capture-and-replay tool and drag-and-drop UI objects make it simple for beginners to use, while its code modules for keyword-driven testing provide advanced functionality for experts.
Why we like it:
- Access the Ranorex core automation framework entirely within the C# and VB.NET development environment without having to switch to a separate tool
- Provides comprehensive XML-based test report
- Get all the tools you need for test automation with a single license
- Test your applications on either real devices or simulators/emulators
- Integrates with existing development and testing ecosystem easily, including CI servers, issue-tracking tools, and more
3. Test.ai
As a user, you can leverage Test.ai‘s AI-powered software test automation tools to speed up the release of your applications with high quality. Their bots build tests, scale them across multiple platforms, and maintain them as your applications evolve—all without the need for scripting or coding.
Why we like it:
- Create tests without the need for coding or scripting
- Speed up testing to match the pace of DevOps
- Expand testing to any platform or application
- Automatically maintain tests and enhance quality across the board
DevOps Tools For Configuration Management
Configuration management tools are the backbone of the DevOps lifecycle, enabling teams to keep track of all the components that make up complex IT systems, like servers, networks, storage, and applications. The process of configuration management ensures that changes to these components are carefully tracked, implemented, and controlled.
The best DevOps tools for configuration management in 2024 are:
4. Chef
Chef is one of the top DevOps tools that has been around for a while. This open-source configuration management solution was first released in 2009. With Chef, you can simplify the configuration and upkeep of your servers, as it works well with many cloud-based solutions.
Why we like it:
- Easily integrates with cloud-based solutions such as Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform
- Allows deployment changes easily to multiple servers without requiring much human interaction
- Handle a wide range of technologies, including legacy desktop applications that are challenging to automate
- It can run either in server/client mode or as a standalone configuration tool
5. Ansible
Ansible is a top-rated open-source tool that simplifies automation and configuration management for software provision, deployment, and lifecycle management. It enabled IaC and was released in 2012 by Michel DeHaan, written in various languages like Python, Shell, Ruby, and PowerShell.
Ansible is considered one of the top configuration management tools in the DevOps market and helps streamline software development automation throughout its lifecycle.
Why we like it:
- Supports operating systems such as Windows, macOS, Linux, and Unix
- With 750+ pre-built modules, easily automate, configure, deploy, and orchestrate your IT infrastructure
- An agentless system to make management and storage easier
- Offers a lightweight alternative to Puppet that is ideal for small teams
- Seamlessly integrates with other tools like Jenkins
- Reduces repetitive tasks with the use of YAML templates
6. Puppet
Puppet is a powerful software configuration management tool that was created by Luke Kanies in 2005. It is a popular DevOps automation tool that simplifies the management of various software lifecycle stages, including provisioning IT infrastructure, patching, and configuring and managing software components and operating systems across cloud infrastructures and data centers.
Why we like it:
- Works with Windows, Linux, and Unix-like OS and written in C++, Ruby, and Clojure
- Model-driven—requiring limited programming language usage
- Uses its own declarative language to define system configuration
- Reduces manual errors and scales teams with infrastructure as code and agentless automation
- Commercial software includes reporting, node management, orchestration, support, and access control
DevOps Tools For Continuous Integration & Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)
The automated process of building, testing, and deploying software is known as the CI/CD or DevOps pipeline. It plays a crucial role in successful DevOps implementation as it emphasizes the automation of the software delivery pipeline. Reducing errors and speeding up time-to-market enables teams to deliver a high-quality product with improved customer experiences.
For 2024, here are the DevOps pipeline tools that you should know:
7. Jenkins
Jenkins is one of the popular DevOps tools for continuous integration (CI) because of its versatility. It is an open-source CI server built in Java that can be customized with internal and plugin extensions. It can be run on multiple operating systems, including Windows, macOS, and most Unix distributions, and can also be deployed on cloud-based platforms.
Why we like it:
- Contains 100+ plugins that seamlessly integrate with various tools in the CI/CD toolchain (e.g., Git, Amazon EC2, Maven)
- User-friendly web interface with built-in error checks and assistance
- Can be easily extended with plugins to perform a wide range of additional functionalities
- An extensible tool that can serve as a CI/CD solution for any software development project
8. Circle CI
CircleCI is a cloud-native CI/CD tool that provides reliability and speed for your development process with continuous delivery cloud support. It allows for developing and deploying high-performance software quickly and at scale, whether on your infrastructure or in the cloud. Founded in 2011, CircleCI now handles around 35 million monthly builds and is trusted by industry leaders like Spotify and Samsung.
Why we like it:
- Runs your CI/CD pipeline in a virtual machine or container, simplifying testing
- Integrate with Bitbucket and GitHub to create pipelines for code commits
- Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, and supports Docker
- Supports many languages and frameworks, including Javascript, C++, PHP, Python, .NET, and Ruby
- Powerful caching options speed up pipelines and optimize performance
- Provides unmatched security with full VM isolation, LDAP user management, and more
9. GitLab
GitLab is one of the best DevOps tools on the market that offers a powerful platform for collaboration and automation throughout the software development lifecycle. Its CI/CD tool is highly scalable, allowing teams to efficiently manage code repositories and easily build, test, and deploy their applications. While the GitLab combo of version control and CI/CD is powerful, similar integrations are also available for GitHub using tools like CircleCI.
Why we like it:
- Allows you to manage projects effectively with a single interface, conversation thread, and data store, providing a single source of truth
- Can achieve robust, scalable, end-to-end automation with CI/CD
- Ensure smooth DevOps processes with built-in Automated Security, Code Quality, and Vulnerability management functionality
- Handle all tasks, from planning and source code management to delivery, monitoring, and security
DevOps Tools for Version Control
Version control is a crucial DevOps practice that helps development teams collaborate more efficiently by managing code in multiple versions with revision and modification history. This practice ensures the safe storage of code, facilitates task division among team members, simplifies conflict resolution, enables easy merging of changes, and provides the ability to roll back code changes if necessary.
These are the version control tools that your DevOps teams should use this 2024:
10. Git
Git, an open-source version control software, is one of the best DevOps tools. It was released in 2005 and written in various programming languages. Git is a distributed source code management (SCM) tool that helps track changes in files, coordinate work among programmers, and increase speed, support, and data integrity. It allows each Git directory to have complete version-tracking capability and history.
Why we like it:
- Runs on various operating systems, including Windows, macOS, Linux, Solaris, and AIX
- Uses the GPL v2 license
- Offers competitive features such as staging environments, multiple workflows, commits, check-ins, and local branching
- Integrates with GitHub or Bitbucket for easy task assignment and collaboration
11. GitHub
GitHub is a widely trusted platform that millions of companies and developers use to build, manage, and deliver software. It offers version control with Git, web hosting, and other features. It has become one of the most popular and largest development platforms since its launch in 2008. GitHub is written in several programming languages and is free to use. GitHub is a go-to choice for hosting open-source projects and can be integrated with numerous DevOps tools.
Why we like it:
- Allows unlimited private and public repositories to be created
- Share projects using GitHub packages and npm
- Features a mobile app for merging or reviewing codes, browsing repositories, managing notifications, and more
- Compatible with Windows, macOS, and Linux, and can be utilized through GitHub CLI or desktop.
12. Bitbucket
BitBucket is a popular tool among the top DevOps tools used for managing project code throughout the software development cycle. It offers features like private repositories and reduced costs compared to GitHub. The platform is limited to code management and allows teams to plan projects, collaborate on code, test, and deploy from a single platform.
Why we like it:
- Seamless integration with Jira and Trello
- Inbuilt CI/CD capabilities to automate the building, testing, and software deployment
- Efficient code review approval with pull requests
- Ensures code security in the cloud through IP whitelisting and 2-step verification
DevOps Tools for Container Platforms
Container platforms enable developers to create self-contained environments for building, testing, and deploying applications. Each container contains everything needed to run the application, including libraries, source code, configurations, and dependencies. These platforms also provide orchestration, automation, security, governance, and more features.
For container orchestration tools, here are what you should use this 2024:
13. Docker
Docker is a top DevOps tool used by over 11 million developers worldwide. It helps DevOps teams build, package, and deploy code easily and quickly via containers, eliminating mundane configuration tasks and promoting effective collaboration. Docker ensures a consistent software development environment across every stage of the DevOps cycle.
Why we like it:
- Docker uses OS-level virtualization to package applications in containers that are isolated from each other, enhancing security and transferability
- Works seamlessly with GCP and AWS to simplify cloud migration
- Supports Windows, macOS, and Linux operating systems
- Integrates with deployment pipeline tools such as CircleCI and GitHub.
14. Kubernetes
Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration system developed by Google and maintained by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. It automates container-based software deployment, management, and scaling for applications packaged with many containers. With Kubernetes, developers can isolate and package container clusters logically for easy deployment and create Docker containers automatically based on demand and scaling needs.
Why we like it:
- Provides container clusters IP addresses and DNS names
- Offers multiple storage options and places containers
- Supports batch workloads, IPv6 & IPv4 addresses allocation, and horizontal scaling based on CPU usage
- Features self-healing capabilities that restart containers on failure
15. Mesos
Apache Mesos is a distributed systems kernel allowing efficient resource management and scheduling across the data center and cloud environments. As a DevOps tool, it facilitates the management of computer clusters.
Why we like it:
- Natively launches containers using Docker and AppC images
- Supports cloud-native and legacy applications to run in a single cluster with customizable scheduling policies
- Cross-platform and runs on Linux, OSX, and Windows
- Easily scale to tens of thousands of nodes
DevOps Tools for Continuous Monitoring
A DevOps tool for continuous monitoring provides ongoing and real-time server performance monitoring to help development teams detect and diagnose issues before they become significant problems. By providing timely feedback on system performance and code quality, these tools enable teams to make data-driven decisions and resolve issues quickly and efficiently.
16. Prometheus
Prometheus is a widely-used open-source monitoring software for DevOps teams that was released in 2012. It is written in Go and helps monitor server performance and track bugs by storing instantaneous metrics in a time-series format, allowing for efficient alerting and bug-fixing capabilities monitoring.
Why we like it:
- Records metrics in real-time using powerful queries and dimensional data models
- Offers to scale through functional sharding and federation
- Allows easy service instrumentation with its numerous client libraries.
- Powerful reporting capabilities thanks to PromQL
17. New Relic
New Relic is a technology company founded in 2008 that helps produce better-performing software by analyzing, troubleshooting, and optimizing the overall software stack. It provides real-time status of the developmental processes, helps fix issues, accelerates deploy cycles, and manages related tasks, making it a useful DevOps tool.
Why we like it:
- Centralizes telemetry data for AI-driven insights and full-stack observability, improving service reliability and speeding up time-to-market
- Store logs, events, traces, and metrics if you use Grafana or Prometheus
- Adopting a data-driven approach to enhance customer experience
- Supports full stack alerting and makes queries on the basis of metric names and metric data
18. Nagios
Nagios is one of the best DevOps tools for monitoring IT infrastructure, systems, and networks. It’s open-source, free software that provides alerting and monitoring services for applications, servers, logs, and switches. The tool aims to notify users of issues and alerts them when they’re resolved.
Why we like it:
- Works on multiple platforms, including Linux and Unix systems
- Uses a GNU GPL v2 license
- Monitors various network services (HTTP, FTP, SSH, etc.) and host resources (disk usage, processor load, etc.) using agents
- Monitors hardware such as temperature and alarms
- Comes in multiple versions, including Nagios XI, Core, Log Server, and Fusion
DevOps Tools for Security
A DevOps tool for security is essential to ensure end-to-end security as it is a shared responsibility in DevOps. It plays a crucial role in automating some security checkpoints, preventing workflow slowdown. Therefore, it is one of the most important DevOps tools.
For comprehensive security, here are the best DevOps tools to consider in 2024:
19. Lacework
Lacework provides a cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) that delivers comprehensive end-to-end threat detection, behavioral anomaly detection, and compliance for enterprises using cloud services. The platform offers infrastructure-as-code security, posture, compliance, and vulnerability management as a service.
Why we like it:
- Works with major cloud providers
- Deployable on multi-cloud environments, containers, workloads, and Kubernetes
- Flexible deployment options with pre-built integrations
- Uses patented Polygraph® technology to detect suspicious behavior in cloud activity, including unknown threats
20. Splunk SOAR
Splunk SOAR, formerly known as Splunk Phantom, is a tool that combines security orchestration, automation, and response capabilities. With Splunk SOAR, a development team can easily orchestrate security workflows, automate repetitive security tasks, and respond to threats quickly.
Why we like it:
- Offers 100+ pre-built apps/connectors for security and IT systems
- Enables security infrastructure orchestration, playbook automation, and case management
- Supports a subset of Phantom REST APIs and SAML2 authentication
21. UpGuard
UpGuard is a robust cybersecurity tool that provides protection for sensitive log data and allows customers to trust a third party safely. It analyzes your attack surface and provides detailed asset monitoring along with effective configurations. With UpGuard, you can confidently manage third-party risks by having complete visibility into your attack surface.
Why we like it:
- Integrates with automation platforms like Puppet and Chef
- Provides comprehensive visibility into your security posture
- Uses AI-assisted engine to detect and notify of data leaks
