20 Essential Tools for DevOps Engineers and Senior Developers in 2023

Hello guys, If you are thinking to become a DevOps Engineer in 2023 or just want to take your DevOps skills to next level then here is a list of some of the essential tools for DevOps professionals. DevOps engineers and senior developers are responsible for managing and automating the software development process, from planning and coding to testing and deployment. To accomplish these tasks efficiently and effectively, they require a range of tools and technologies that can help them streamline their workflows and increase productivity. In this article, you will learn about 20 essential tools that every DevOps engineer and senior developer should have in their toolkit. 

These tools cover a variety of areas, including collaboration, code management, testing, deployment, monitoring, and more. By leveraging these tools, DevOps engineers and senior developers can optimize their workflows, improve collaboration, and deliver high-quality software faster and more efficiently.

A good knowledge of these tools will help you to achieve your goal. Along with Scrum Master and Solution Architect, DevOps engineer is also a good job for experienced programmers. Someone who has more than 5 years of experience in coding and integration can move to become a DevOps Programmer. 

Top 20 DevOps Tools to Learn in 2023

I have divided these tools into different categories so that you can learn them easily like one tool from each category.

Planning Tools

Here are popular planning tools which DevOps Engineer can learn in 2023

1. JIRA

Jira is a proprietary issue tracking product, developed by Atlassian. It provides bug tracking, issue tracking, and project management functions.You can also use it to create Sprint and Kanban dashboard in your Scrum mettings. It's an essential tool for both DevOps and Agile professionals. 

CodeBase Tools

Here are popular tools DevOps engineer can learn for code management, code commit, version control, and collaboration.

2. Git

Git is a version control system for tracking changes in computer files and coordinating work on those files among multiple people. It's distributed version control system and also the most popular one. 

3. SVN

Apache Subversion is a software versioning and revision control system distributed as open source under the Apache License. Software developers use Subversion to maintain current and historical versions of files such as source code, web pages, and documentation. 

Build Tools

Here are popular build tools DevOps engineer can learn in 2023

4. ANT

It's one of the most popular build tool for Java projects from early 2000. It allows you to fully customize your build e.g. you can pick source codes and resources from different location, build them and even deploy them to the directory you want. It's still very popular among Java projects. 

5. Maven

Maven is another popular build tools for Java projects. It brought together two essential concepts, "convention over configuration" and dependency management. So, while ANT gives you full control but at the same time rely on you for every information. Maven prefer conventions and provide a lot of default values, which means you need to provide less configuration. It can also download all required JAR by your project from Maven central repository, further easing work for Java programmers. 

6. Gradle

Another build tool for Java developers based upon Groovy programming language. Unlike Maven and ANT which uses XML to write build scripts e.g. build.xml and pom.xml, Gradle uses Groovy to create build scripts.

Testing Tools

Here are popular unit testing and automation testing tools DevOps engineer can learn in 2023

7. JUnit

IT's one of the most popular Java library which allows you to create unit tests for Java program. JUnit has been important in the development of test-driven development, and is one of a family of unit testing frameworks which is collectively known as xUnit that originated with SUnit.

8. Selenium

Selenium is a portable software-testing framework for web applications. Selenium provides a playback tool for authoring tests without the need to learn a test scripting language.

9. Spock Framework

Spock is a testing and specification framework for Java and Groovy applications. What makes it stand out from the crowd is its beautiful and highly expressive specification language. Thanks to its JUnit runner, Spock is compatible with most IDEs, build tools, and continuous integration servers

Continuous Integration 

Here are popular CI and CD tools DevOps engineer can learn in 2023

10. Jenkins

Jenkins is an open source automation server written in Java. Jenkins helps to automate the non-human part of software development process, with continuous integration and facilitating technical aspects of continuous delivery. It is the single most important tool for DevOps engineers.

11. TeamCity

TeamCity is a Java-based build management and continuous integration server from JetBrains, the company behind IntelliJ IDEA. Similar to Jenkins it is also a continuous build and integration tool and one of the most important for DevOps engineers. 

Deployment Tools

Here are popular tools DevOps engineer can learn in 2023 to deploy their apps in cloud as well as physical servers:

12. Puppet

Puppet is an open-source software configuration management tool. It runs on many Unix-like systems as well as on Microsoft Windows, and includes its own declarative language to describe system configuration. As a DevOps engineer, this is another important tool for you. You can work with UNIX engineers and Puppet expert to create Puppet manifests for Your application servers. 

13. Chef

Chef is the automation platform for DevOps. Achieve speed, scale and consistency by automating configuration and systems management. With Chef you can manage servers – 5 or 5,000 of them – by turning your infrastructure into code. Time-consuming activities like manual patching, configuration updates, and service installations for every server will no longer exist. And your Infrastructure becomes flexible, version-able, human-readable, and testable.

14. Docker

Docker is a tool for Deployment automation. Docker provides an additional layer of abstraction and automation of operating-system-level virtualization on Windows and Linux. Its main benefit is to package applications in "containers", allowing them to be portable among any system running the Linux operating system (OS).

15. Ansible

Ansible is software, written in Python and PowerShell that automates software provisioning, configuration management, and application deployment. It avoid writing scripts or custom code to deploy and update your applications— automate in a language that approaches plain English, using SSH, with no agents to install on remote systems.

Monitoring Tools

Here are popular monitoring DevOps engineers and senior developers can learn in 2023

16. New Relic

New Relic is a performance management solution, enabling developers to diagnose and fix application performance problems in real time. It provide tools for real time monitoring of mobile and web applications for both real-time and historical insights. 

17. Nagios

Nagios, now known as Nagios Core, is a free and open source computer-software application, written in C programming language that monitors systems, networks and infrastructure. Nagios offers monitoring and alerting services for servers, switches, applications and services.

18. Sensu

Sensu is a monitoring tool written in Ruby that uses RabbitMQ as a message broker and Redis for storing data. It is well-suited for monitoring cloud environments. Sensu connects the output from "check" scripts with "handler" scripts to create a robust monitoring and alert system.

19. Vagrant

Vagrant is an open-source software product for building and maintaining portable virtual software development environments, e.g. for VirtualBox, Hyper-V, Docker, VMware, and AWS. If you're a designer, Vagrant will automatically set everything up that is required for that web app in order for you to focus on doing what you do best: design. Once a developer configures Vagrant, you don't need to worry about how to get that app running ever again

20. Grafana

Grafana is an open-source data visualization and monitoring platform that helps you analyze and monitor your data from various sources in real-time. It allows you to create and customize graphs, alerts, and dashboards for your data.

Grafana supports various data sources, including databases, cloud services, and IoT devices. It also has a large number of plugins and integrations with other tools, such as Prometheus, InfluxDB, Elasticsearch, and more.

With Grafana, you can easily create and share interactive and customizable dashboards that display real-time data in the form of graphs, charts, and tables. You can also set up alerts to notify you of any anomalies or changes in your data, which can help you identify and resolve issues quickly.

Grafana is also used by a wide range of organizations, including startups, large enterprises, and government agencies, for monitoring and analyzing data across various industries, such as finance, healthcare, and IT.

That's all about  the essential tools for a DevOps Engineers and senior developers. Both DevOps engineer and experienced develops plays a crucial role in the software development process, and having the right tools in their arsenal can make all the difference in their success. The 20 essential tools outlined in this article cover a wide range of areas, from code management to monitoring and deployment. 

By utilizing these tools, DevOps engineers and senior developers can streamline their workflows, improve collaboration, and deliver high-quality software with greater speed and efficiency. 

With the rapidly evolving landscape of software development, it's important to stay up-to-date with the latest tools and technologies to ensure that you are maximizing your potential as a DevOps engineer or senior developer.