GitLab is one of the most popular DevOps platforms, and provides an ecosystem for code and release management and the pipeline tools for end-to-end management. In this whitepaper, we discuss the methods and best practices to implement DevOps using the GitLab ecosystem, and cover its tools, branching strategy and design.
GitLab-based DevOps
GitLab Tools
GitLab is a full-fledged DevOps system that provides a software repository, CI/CD system, user management and monitoring from a single ecosystem as a Software as a Service (SaaS) offering with industry standard end-to-end security.
Apart from traditional command line tools, it provides webUI for both operations, maintenance and performing regular branching, tagging, merging and any other Git operations. These rich user interfaces are available for CI/CD pipeline monitoring, status check and configurations as well.
GitLab enables high flexibility to integrate most other third party tools such as SonarQube, build scripts for the most modern technology stacks and automation, as well as deployment plugins to cloud labs such as Firebase Cloudlab and BrowserStack. Apart from regular environment-based deployment in cloud hosting, it also supports multi-cloud based deployment.
The GitLab DevOps ecosystem ensures continuous feedback, which is a key need for agile development. We have depicted the GitLab ecosystem.
Plan & Create
As part of plan and create program, the manager plans the release and defines milestones. The business analysts author user stories and collaborate with team members.
Software Repository
A version-controlled software code management system that is easy to create and manage with workflows for each solution tenant in the architecture. The repository’s access is supported with industry standard security like user management with role-based access management, multi factor authentications and SSL handshakes. This code base can be configured with workflows and branching strategies, while code review stages can be defined by integration to internal or external tools.
GitLab Pipeline[CI/CD]
The crux of the solution support for a whole devops ecosystem is provided via the GitLab pipeline, where a continuous integration and continuous deployment is managed. Modern solutions such as a docker container-based scalable DevOps build pipelines are available with a flexibility of integrating a private runner or an on-premises / local build system. Multi-cloud-based solution deployment is supported with ease, while enough plugins and tools are available that will help assess the code quality. Additionally, automated test cases can be executed, while release management is supported via build deployment to environments or external distribution entities such as appcenter, testflight, Play Store and app stores.
Issue Tracking
Monitoring and issue tracking is supported, which helps tag/manage issues. The release supports continuous delivery in addition to continuous integration and deployment. It also has an automated issue tracking system that can help issue reporting at each stage of continuous development and deployment, which enables seamless tracking for continuous delivery that meets the defined quality standards.
Manage and Secure
As part of manage, we handle various phases of the program, and as part of security, we manage the overall security of the solution.
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