What is a Devops Platform? Automated Deployment Management & CI/CD

Today’s IT organizations need to implement DevOps best practices to bring together development, testing, operations and line of business stakeholders to foster continuous integration, application monitoring and delivery of their app portfolios.

The Mendix platform acts as our app delivery hub by enabling continuous delivery with built-in DevOps capabilities, or through integration with Jenkins, Gitlab CI or your existing DevOps toolset.

You can version, provision, and stage cloud-native apps and deploy to the cloud of your choice or on-premises. And you will reduce downtime with built-in monitoring and automated alerts.

Automated Deployment Management

1-Click Deployment

The one-click deployment mechanism in Mendix makes it easy to deploy apps from the Mendix Portal to one or multiple app environments.

From a deployment perspective, an app is defined as a versioned deployment package that contains all the artifacts needed to run the application.

Version Management

The platform includes a version control system with branching and merging, allowing you to isolate development into a main line and multiple branch lines.

For example, a development team can work in the main line to develop new functionality, while another team simultaneously fixes bugs in the currently deployed app version via a branch line.

The merge capability supports multiple revisions when porting changes between lines.

Automated Testing

Mendix offers an Automated Tested Suite (ATS), a comprehensive suite of tools for creating, refactoring and automating reusable end-to-end tests based upon the user stories of your apps.

In addition, the core platform includes a test framework for unit testing and automated UI testing based on Selenium that can be easily integrated with third-party testing solutions through platform APIs.

Continuous Integration

Mendix supports the DTAP cycle by sequencing and automating deployment into the app environments associated with the Development, Testing, Acceptance and Production stages of the cycle.

Automated testing and quality monitoring can be applied to any stage of the process.

Platform APIs allow you to integrate with Jenkins, Gitlab CI or other tools and services within your existing DevOps toolset.

Multi-Cloud Deployment

Based on Cloud Foundry as well as deployable on Docker containers orchestrated by Kubernetes, Mendix gives you the widest array of cloud deployment options available of any Low-Code platform on the market.

You can deploy on Mendix Cloud, our public cloud service hosted on AWS across multiple regions and availability zones. Mendix Cloud provides on-demand vertical and horizontal scalability and out-of-the-box high availability (HA). Or you may choose to host your solutions on nearly any public or virtual private cloud (VPC), including AWS, Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud, Pivotal and SAP—or in your own data center.

The DevOps Platform

Monitoring and Alerting ›

The Mendix low-code platform contains built-in monitoring and alerting of system faults, system performance (including hardware and network, database and Web Server performance) as well as basic application performance.

An optional Application Performance Monitor is available to instrument apps more deeply, for example timing the execution of business logic, to provide a comprehensive, real-time, multi-dimensional view of application performance metrics.

And of course, you can integrate with any additional monitoring and management tools you may use, such as New Relic or AppDynamics through our platform APIs.
Log Management ›

All relevant events – both within your Mendix apps and on the platform level – are logged and these logs can be viewed and downloaded from the Mendix portal.

Platform-level events regarding configuration, provisioning, deployment, start and stop of apps, back-up, etc. are logged with time stamp and user ID.

Application-level events like login and logout and specifically defined actions in the application model, such as calls to external systems like SAP, are also logged.
Backup and Disaster Recovery ›

Your apps and data are automatically backed up either daily or on demand from your acceptance and production environments.

You can download all backups through the Mendix Portal. In addition, backups are stored in secure, geographically dispersed locations within your region (backup locations are in the same region to comply with local regulations).

In the rare event that a disaster strikes, your apps and data is can be easily restored in another location.

What is DevOps?

DevOps is a broad and increasingly popular concept for application development and delivery. An extension of Agile and Lean methodology, DevOps is a set of practices that combines software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) to shorten the cycle to build and deliver features, fixes, and updates to end-users while keeping solutions reliable, scalable, and secure.
Which tools can be used to implement DevOps?

The DevOps practice typically involves multiple tools/technology stack to manage the entire lifecycle from planning, modeling, building, continuous integration (CI/CD), deploying, to monitoring applications/software solutions. For instance, organizations can use tools like Jenkins, GitLab-CI for CI/CD, Datadog, New Relic, and AppDynamics to monitor application performance, or Docker and Kubernetes for containerization. Alternatively, companies can leverage a low-code platform like Mendix that supports DevOps or easily integrates with any of the third-party DevOps tools.
How does DevOps work?

The approach to DevOps differs for different companies – it’s not one process fits all.
From the process perspective, DevOps brings together developers and operations teams to work across the entire lifecycle from application development to testing to deployment to monitoring. To achieve this, teams can use a low-code platform like Mendix that supports the end-to-end DevOps process or can integrate with third-party tools like Datadog, Jenkins, Docker, Kubernetes, etc. Alternatively, the team can use a DevOps technology stack that comprises of tools for the different stages of app development and deployment. For instance, GitLab-CI for CI/CD. Ultimately for DevOps to work, it’s not just about having the right business process and technology in place but also about creating the right company culture and mindset. Learn how the DevOps team at this company is changing the way it responds to customer requests.
How does DevOps help businesses?

With 90% of organizations having implemented or planning to implement DevOps to ensure the success of their digital projects, DevOps is not just a buzzword. In the times of changing business and customer expectations, DevOps enables rapid delivery of quality applications by removing obstacles that have historically stood in the way of solution development and deployment. Furthermore, by increasing collaboration between developers and operations, DevOps also brings about a positive culture change in the organization.
What is the difference between DevOps and BizDevOps? DevOps vs BizDevOps?

While DevOps breaks down siloes between the technical departments of developers and operations teams, the process lacks collaboration with business stakeholders – reducing the business viability of the application/software built by IT. BizDevOps bridges this gap by bringing together the non-technical business users, developers, and operations teams into the rapid delivery of customized solutions that align with business and market requirements. Read this blog to learn more about BizDevOps.
Who uses DevOps? Which teams or companies use DevOps?

DevOps is a methodology that is used by the developers, operations, and testers who want to deliver and deploy quality applications, features, fixtures, updates to the end-users – rapidly and at scale. DevOps is a cross-functional way of working that can be used by companies in any industry (manufacturing, finance, insurance, logistics, education, public sector, etc.). Learn how a leading insurance company uses DevOps.
How does the Mendix low-code platform support DevOps?

Mendix low-code platform enables development teams to embrace the DevOps way of working. This means that a single team can both develop applications and maintain and support those apps in production while adhering to enterprise requirements (for compliancy or high availability, for example). Learn more about how Mendix supports DevOps.