Top 10 DevOps Automation Tools in 2021
Automation reduces errors, drives reusability, and takes software development efficiency to new heights.
DevOps automation is the utilization of pre-built tools to make development and operation workflows reusable and enable an automated response to events, reducing human effort and delivery timelines. In a multi-billion dollar DevOps software market, how do you choose which tool is best for you? This article discusses the five must-have features to guide your decision and the top 10 DevOps automation products available right now.
Table of Contents
What Is DevOps Automation?
DevOps automation is the utilization of pre-built tools to make development and operation workflows reusable and enable an automated response to events, reducing human effort and delivery timelines.
DevOps automation tools replace traditional automation scripts that are authored from scratch. These tools can be deployed at any stage of the DevOps pathway – for example, to automate code fixes, to speed up feature delivery, to respond to operational incidents, to automatically provision resources, or any other task.
While there are a variety of DevOps automation tools available in the market, they must include five essential features to drive real value. These are:
Key Must-Have Features of a DevOps Automation Tool
1. Easy installation
The DevOps automation tool you choose should be easy to set up. Otherwise, it might make more sense to craft your own automation scripts from scratch, if the installation requires too much time, effort, and additional technologies. Further, DevOps processes are often executed on-premise, which might be a factor when selecting the best DevOps automation tool for your organization. Some vendors may be able to help you with tailored installation services for organization-specific use cases.
2. Integration flexibility
You should be able to integrate the DevOps automation tool with your existing software stack, including software development tools, production environments, and ITOps solutions. There are two ways these tools can be integrated — through native integrations and application programming interfaces (APIs). Ideally, the DevOps tool should support native integrations with continuous integration/continuous development (CI/CD) products through an integration marketplace with open APIs for the rest of your enterprise stack.
3. Widespread compatibility
The tool should support multiple coding languages, as well as different application environments. Look for compatibility with all major public clouds and virtual machine (VM) providers. Your team may use various programming languages like Python, Ruby, Node.js, Java, etc., for application development and operate out of a cloud or on-premise DevOps landscape. The automation tool must adapt to your needs, and no further effort should be necessary to configure it once you have selected and invested in your best-fit provider.
4. Community support
A community of developers with experience in that particular DevOps automation tool can dramatically increase the value you are able to derive from your investment. This also aids in innovation and breakthrough ideas. Community support is particularly useful for individuals, startups, and small teams that may rely on an open-source codebase to accelerate the DevOps lifecycle. A strong community can also help you troubleshoot basic issues in the initial months after implementation.
5. Enterprise-ready
Your DevOps automation tool has to be scalable for enterprise use. Different stakeholders across the team and organization should be able to use it meaningfully, and it must be able to handle complex digital environments. Small teams and startups often adopt DevOps automation tools in the early stages of growth. If the tool isn’t scalable, you may have to overhaul your entire development landscape later down the line.
Also Read: What Is IT Infrastructure? Definition, Building Blocks, and Management Best Practices
10 DevOps Automation Tools That Should Be on Your 2021 Checklist
SAP predicts that the DevOps software market will be worth over $6.5 billion by 2022, owing to the rising demand for software (especially software as a service or SaaS) products. DevOps automation forms a sizable portion of this as it makes DevOps processes more efficient and less effort-intensive.
Here are the top 10 tools that can help automate DevOps and improve your software development capabilities in 2021 and beyond, listed alphabetically:
Disclaimer: This list is based on publicly available information and may include vendor websites that sell to mid-to-large enterprises. Readers are advised to conduct their final research to ensure the best fit for their unique organizational needs.
1. Bamboo
Overview: Bamboo Server helps DevOps and CI/CD teams streamline software development and delivery using the power of automation, integrations, and workflow management. It is part of the Atlassian ecosystem of products and can be used in conjunction with your code pipelines in Bitbucket.
Meant for: Bamboo is ideal for mid-to-large-sized software development teams.
Key features: The key features of Bamboo include:
- Easy installation: Bamboo can be installed in your local servers in a perpetual license model. Keep in mind that some set-up effort may be required.
- Integration flexibility: It integrates with all Atlassian products natively and third-party apps (AWS CodeDeploy, Docker, OpsGenie, etc.) at various DevOps stages.
- Widespread compatibility: It works with all major coding languages and building platforms. Bamboo is available for Mac, Windows, as tarball files and as a ZIP archive.
- Community support: You get free support for the first 12 months while also gaining from a community of 3 million+ global Atlassian users.
- Enterprise-ready: It is suitable for large deployments with up to 1000 remote agents and unlimited local agents.
USP: Bamboo perfectly fits into cloud-based software development stacks such as AWS and has a wide range of automated tasks for build, test, and deployment use cases. You can gain from automation efficiency for regression testing, releases for different environments, and much more.
Pricing: Pricing starts at $1500 for one remote and unlimited local agents.
Editorial comments: Companies engaging in on-premise software development using their servers should consider Bamboo.
Also Read: What Is Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS)? Definition, Components, Providers, and Trends
2. Buddy
Overview: Buddy is a DevOps automation tool primarily meant for CI/CD workflows. It promises to speed up CI/CD adoption by 87% and reduce the average deployment time by 12 seconds.
Meant for: Small-to-mid-sized development teams can gain from Buddy.
Key features: The key features of Buddy include:
- Easy installation: It can be deployed on a SaaS model with free set-up for up to 5 projects and 120 pipeline runs per month.
- Integration flexibility: Buddy offers a vast library of integrations covering all major cloud providers, developer tools, and collaboration platforms.
- Widespread compatibility: It supports deployments for all major languages like Python, Ruby, etc. You can use Buddy for app development on AWS, Google, Azure, Kubernetes, and more.
- Community support: The solution boasts of a growing community of users, along with robust learning materials.
- Enterprise-ready: Buddy is sufficiently scalable to support deployments of every size, including on-premise ones.
USP: Buddy has a library of 100+ automated tasks and actions ready for use.
Pricing: Pricing for Buddy starts at $75 per month.
Editorial comments: Small to mid-sized organizations (or even independent software developers) can gain from Buddy’s impressive range of features, excellent support, security, and custom/pre-built automation aids.
3. Harness
Overview: Harness is an end-to-end software delivery platform that enables automation at key stages of the DevOps lifecycle. Not only does it aid in continuous integration and continuous delivery, but it also manages cloud costs and helps automate feature delivery.
Meant for: Harness is best suited for independent software vendors (ISVs).
Key features: The key features of Harness include:
- Easy installation: You can gain from use-case-specific deployment, with on-premise and SaaS options as needed.
- Integration flexibility: It integrates with all cloud providers, containerization tools, continuous integration (CI) tools, artifact repositories, log analytics, and more.
- Widespread compatibility: It is compatible with all major development environments, with support for infrastructure provisioning scripts.
- Community support: User communities for Harness are available on Slack and online.
- Enterprise-ready: Harness can be adapted to enterprise needs and use cases such as frequent feature releases, CI/CD, and cloud cost management.
USP: Harness has a unique capability called Feature Flags, which uses machine learning and automation to speed up your feature pipeline, enable standardization, and reduce the risk for each feature release
Pricing: Harness is custom priced per component, starting at $50 per developer.
Editorial comments: Enterprises, small teams, or even individuals working on independent software platforms can leverage Harness to remove bottlenecks and achieve DevOps success.
4. Octopus Deploy
Overview: Octopus Deploy applies automated workflows to streamline even the most complex software deployments. It uses automated deployment tools for developers and releases managers and automated runbooks to reduce efforts for operations teams.
Meant for: Companies with a sprawling application landscape could benefit from Octopus Deploy.
Key features: The key features of Octopus Deploy include:
- Easy installation: It can be quickly deployed as a service for up to 5000 deployment targets. On local servers, it supports unlimited deployments.
- Integration flexibility: It natively connects with major CI servers, operations tools, container platforms, etc., and you can integrate custom applications through APIs.
- Widespread compatibility: It supports all major development environments like Java, .NET, Node.js, Python, etc.
- Community support: Slack communities and discussion forums are available for Octopus Deploy, with active participation from users.
- Enterprise-ready: A dedicated offering called Octopus Deploy for Enterprise connects multiple teams, platforms, and software releases across the organization.
USP: Octopus has two major differentiators – ease of use and automation prowess. For example, you can quickly get tutorial guidelines for all major languages, build servers, and package repositories.
Pricing: It is free for up to 10 deployment targets and costs $7-9 per target per month on the cloud.
Editorial comments: Octopus Deploy offers a compelling set of features at a scalable and affordable price point, squarely focused on integrating and automating your DevOps landscape.
Also Read: What Is Application Security? Definition, Types, Testing, and Best Practices
5. Opsera
Overview: Opsera enables a low-code automation approach, allowing you to automate any CI/CD stack with zero coding. You can choose your tools via a GUI interface and also get detailed analytics on DevOps performance.
Meant for: Opsera can prove to be of enormous help for mid-sized to large DevOps teams working on complex projects.
Key features: The key features of Opsera include:
- Easy installation: It is available as a ready-to-use SaaS platform with modules for toolchain automation, pipelines, and unified insights.
- Integration flexibility: There is a large integration marketplace for different products types and CI/CD stages.
- Widespread compatibility: It works with all major cloud-based development environments on AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure, as well as on-premise infrastructure.
- Community support: A growing body of resources is available for Opsera customers, including monthly DevOps huddles and regular webinars.
- Enterprise-ready: It is purpose-built for multi-faceted development landscapes with a large number of tools, stringent security, and privacy built-in.
USP: Opsera’s USP is its unique approach to automation, which requires very little manual scripting from your DevOps engineers. You can deploy these integrated workflows on a public cloud, an on-premise server, or using Opsera’s own virtual private cloud environment.
Pricing: Opsera is custom priced.
Editorial comments: Opsera is relatively new in the DevOps automation segment but has enormous potential. It has won several awards and adoption by enterprises like Honeywell and Autodesk in the recent past.
6. Jenkins
Overview: When it comes to DevOps automation tools, Jenkins is among the leading solutions to consider. It is an open-source DevOps automation framework that serves as the bedrock for thousands of projects worldwide.
Meant for: Small businesses, research institutions, and even large enterprises can leverage Jenkins.
Key features: The key features of Jenkins include:
- Easy installation: It is ready to install out of the box as a self-contained program with packages for all major operating systems.
- Integration flexibility: Jenkins’ Update Center has 1800+ plugins, and it is infinitely extensible due to the very nature of its plugin architecture.
- Widespread compatibility: It works with Windows, Linux, Mac OS, and all Unix-like environments and is compatible with all major development languages.
- Community support: Jenkins has an enormous global community of users and special interest groups for different Jenkins applications, workshops, and requirements.
- Enterprise-ready: It is scalable for deployment in DevOps pipelines of varying complexity. The company offers a low-cost alternative for large-scale projects.
USP: The most significant USP of Jenkins is its vast community, which also powers thousands of different integrations. This means that you can use Jenkins along with nearly every CI/CD and DevOps tool.
Pricing: It is free for use.
Editorial comments: Jenkins is highly developer-centric. Therefore, companies with deep in-house expertise looking to improve software development processes should definitely consider Jenkins-based automations.
7. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Overview: Red Hat introduced the Ansible automation platform in 2019. It builds on Ansible’s open-source provisioning, deployment, and configuration management capabilities with added features for ease of use, analytics, and workflow reusability.
Meant for: The platform is best suited for large organizations with a complex application landscape and frequent DevOps requirements.
Key features: The key features of the Red Hat Ansible automation platform include:
- Easy installation: It operates as a subscription-based installation model with options for 24/7 support, maintenance, and upgrades.
- Integration flexibility: It integrates with nearly every platform and tool due to Ansible’s open-source architecture (no APIs required).
- Widespread compatibility: Red Hat Ansible works on all major operating systems, virtual machines, containers, and clouds.
- Community support: You get extensive community support from both Red Hat customer portal and support community and the Ansible global community.
- Enterprise-ready: There’s an impressive range of enterprise features like dashboards, remote execution, scheduling, pre-built automation workflows, audit trails, etc.
USP: The biggest advantage of using the RedHat Ansible automation platform is its value-adding features. You can not only automate key infrastructure workflows, but also enforce advanced security policies, get detailed visual inventory information, and overall simplify IT.
Pricing: It works on a custom pricing model.
Editorial comments: Ansible’s open-source architecture and Red Hat’s extensive industry expertise make this a compelling solution.
Also Read: What Is Incident Response? Definition, Process, Lifecycle and Planning Best Practices
8. Relay
Overview: Relay is a DevOps automation platform primarily focused on cloud operations. It is backed by DevOps technology veteran, Puppet, and offers DevOps engineers simple solutions for automating cloud-based workflows.
Meant for: Relay is a good fit for ISVs with cloud products and cloud-first enterprises.
Key features: The key features of Relay include:
- Easy installation: Relay is easy to deploy as a single platform, with tools to define event-based triggers and workflows.
- Integration flexibility: It has a large integrations library covering 50+ tools, triggers, and integration steps.
- Widespread compatibility: It works with all major development environments like Google Cloud, AWS, Azure, Docker, and Kubernetes.
- Community support: You get access to Puppet’s global community of users, which conducts camps, champion programs, and test pilots.
- Enterprise-ready: The dedicated enterprise edition supports 5000 active workflows, stringent security, and on-premise requirements.
USP: Relay’s most unique differentiator is that it is entirely cloud-first. Also, it supports both low-code automation workflows as well as code-based workflows to give you greater control.
Pricing: Pricing starts at $20 per user per month.
Editorial comments: Relay has an excellent library of ready-to-use integrations, event-based triggers, and automation recipes or steps that can help you get started with very little effort.
9. Shoreline
Overview: Shoreline is a fast-growing DevOps automation startup that automates fixes, from simple commands to more complex remediation loops. You can create bots that automatically act when an event occurs, easily orchestrating large environments and multiple systems.
Meant for: Shoreline is ideal for DevOps teams of every size, particularly IT professionals struggling with multiple tickets.
Key features: The key features of Shoreline include:
- Easy installation: Shoreline can be installed as a consolidated platform connected with your existing DevOps artifacts and deployment pipelines.
- Integration flexibility: It can be integrated with GitHub, Kubernetes tools, and hundreds of system endpoints to detect events.
- Widespread compatibility: It is compatible with all major technology environments, including virtual machines and AWS (Azure and Google support are on the roadmap).
- Community support: Shoreline provides support via an emerging community of users. The company’s leadership brings expertise from AWS, Oracle, and Cisco, among others.
- Enterprise-ready: It is tailored for enterprise DevOps orchestration with automated repairs and excellent reusability of every fix deployed.
USP: Shorelines’ biggest USP is that you can not only monitor the automation environment, but also make deep customizations to how actions are executed, who can create automations, and how your resources are influenced. All of this is distilled into audited workflows.
Pricing: Shoreline offers a custom pricing model.
Editorial comments: Emerging out of stealth in 2021, Shoreline has huge potential and could become the DevOps automation tool of choice for Teams who need granular visibility and control without compromising ease of use.
10. Vagrant
Overview: Vagrant by HashiCorp helps you deploy standardized workflows irrespective of dev, ops, design, or any other role. It makes production processes more consistent by driving reusability for your packages and configurations.
Meant for: Vagrant is perfect for mid-sized to large organizations operating across diverse production environments, with multi-role stakeholders.
Key features: The key features of Vagrant include:
- Easy installation: Vagrant offers quickstart installation for all major operating systems and VMware virtual machines.
- Integration flexibility: It integrates with configuration management systems such as Ansible, Chef, Docker, Puppet, and Salt to enable consistency across your production pipelines.
- Widespread compatibility: It is available for macOS, Windows, Linux, Debian, Centos, and ArchLinux, along with popular code editors, integrated development environments (IDEs), and browsers.
- Community support: Vagrant boasts of a large user community, thanks to the HashiCorp forum. There are user groups, event organizers, and the dedicated HashiCorp discuss the platform.
- Enterprise-ready: It is ready for deployment at scale and is used by global enterprises with hundreds of employees.
USP: Vagrant addresses a singular use case, which it solves very effectively. You can automate production workflows across environments to reduce inconsistency as well as scripting efforts.
Pricing: Vagrant is free for use.
Editorial comments: Companies looking for an open-source DevOps automation tool that can unify production and make life easier for software development stakeholders should consider Vagrant.
Also Read: DevOps vs. Agile Methodology: Key Differences and Similarities
All of these top DevOps automation tools meet the must-have feature requirements we previously discussed. Let’s understand how these solutions compare with each other.
| Easy installation | Integration flexibility | Widespread compatibility | Community support | Enterprise-ready | Pricing | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bamboo | Moderately easy – with technical support | Native support for Atlassian and 3rd party products | Yes | Yes, three million+ members in the Atlassian community | Yes | $1500 onwards for a perpetual license |
| Buddy | Very easy | Yes, supports all the necessary 3rd party products | Yes | Moderate – growing | Yes | $75 per month onwards |
| Harness | Easy | Yes, supports all the necessary 3rd party products | Yes | Yes, free-forever Community Edition also available | Yes | Custom pricing |
| Octopus Deploy | Very easy | Native for some third-party tools; APIs available | Yes | Yes, limited | Yes | $7 per deployment target per month onwards |
| Opsera | Very easy | Integration marketplace available | Yes | Moderate (as it is a new platform) | Yes | Custom pricing |
| Jenkins | Very easy | 1800+ and growing plugins; open-source architecture | Yes | Vast global community | Yes, but developer-centric | Free to use |
| Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform | Easy | Infinite integrations, thanks to open-source architecture | Yes | Yes, dedicated Ansible communities like Ansible Core, Ansible Galaxy, and AWX | Yes, highly enterprise-focused | Custom pricing |
| Relay | Very easy | Library of integrations, including automated workflows | Yes | Yes, highly active Puppet community with ongoing programs and workshops | Yes, empowers enterprises with low-code automation | $20 per user per month onwards |
| Shoreline | Very easy | Integrates with common tools; new integrations on the roadmap | Yes | Limited – due to its startup nature | Yes, designed for enterprises with multiple ITOps and DevOps roles | Custom pricing |
| Vagrant | Very easy | Integrates with production tools, editors, IDEs, and browsers | Yes | Yes, highly active HashiCorp communities and discussion forums | Yes, solves fragmentation from multiple stakeholders and environments | Free to use |
Final thoughts
As DevOps becomes the default methodology for product development, internal app maintenance, and infrastructure jobs, there is incredible pressure on DevOps engineers and operations teams. DevOps has always been effort-intensive, from quickly configuring code builds to aligning production for different environments, from addressing bug fixes to conducting tests. The above platforms mitigate this pressure and make DevOps both efficient and sustainable for the long term.
Have you leveraged a DevOps automation tool for your business? Comment below or tell us about your experience on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook. We would love to hear from you!
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