20 open source DevOps tools: The ones to know

🔨 Build and packaging

First let’s take a look at the build and packaging tools.

These utilities and projects will help you build or compile your code, and bake it into a format that’s ready to be deployed onto a server or into the cloud.

These tools also help with downloading and sharing libraries and packages.

Docker

Docker is a set of tools for building and running software in containers.

Nutrition information

Nutrition information

Initial release	2013
Backed by	Docker, Inc.
License	Apache 2.0
Download link	Docker Desktop (for Windows/Mac desktops), Docker Engine (for Linux)
Source code	https://github.com/moby/moby

Packer

Packer helps you to create virtual machine images from code.

Nutrition information

Nutrition information

Initial release	June 2013
Backed by	Hashicorp, Inc.
License	Mozilla Public Licence 2.0
Download link	https://www.packer.io/downloads
Source code	https://github.com/hashicorp/packer

Sonatype Nexus

Nexus is an artifact repository (or ‘artefact’ if you’re a Brit!).

Nutrition information

Nutrition information

Also known as	Nexus, Nexus3, Nexus Repository OSS
Initial release	2008
Backed by	Sonatype, Inc.
License	Eclipse Public Licence 1.0
Download link	https://www.sonatype.com/products/nexus-repository
Source code	https://github.com/sonatype/nexus-public

Jfrog Artifactory

Artifactory is an artifact repository.

It’s very similar to Nexus: it’s a bucket for storing software packages that are consumed or produced by your applications.

Nutrition information

Nutrition information

Also known as	Artifactory, Artifactory OSS, Jfrog
Initial release	Some time before 2010
Backed by	Jfrog, Ltd.
License	GNU Affero General Public License
Download link	https://jfrog.com/community/download-artifactory-oss/
Source code	https://releases.jfrog.io/artifactory/bintray-artifactory/org/artifactory/oss/jfrog-artifactory-oss/

---

🎺 Application orchestration

These tools are designed to help you run applications, keep them up and running, and scale them up when you need to handle more load.

Kubernetes

Kubernetes is an orchestration tool for managing your applications running in containers.

As well as plain old “vanilla” Kubernetes, there are other distributions available. OKD is a distribution of Kubernetes which comes with extra features and DevOps tooling.

Nutrition information

Nutrition information

Also known as	Kubernetes, K8s
Initial release	June 2014
Backed by	Google, Cloud Native Computing Foundation
Developed in	Go
License	Apache License 2.0
Download link	https://kubernetes.io/releases/download/
Source code	https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes

Nomad

Nomad is a tool for managing your applications, whether they run in containers or not.

Nomad can start and run instances of your applications on a cluster of servers.

Nutrition information

Initial release	September 2015
Backed by	Hashicorp, Inc.
License	Mozilla Public Licence 2.0
Developed in	Go, JavaScript
License	Apache License 2.0
Download link	https://www.nomadproject.io/
Source code	https://github.com/hashicorp/nomad

Docker Swarm

Docker Swarm is a tool for managing Docker containers running on a cluster of servers.

Nutrition information

Initial release	2014
Backed by	Docker, Inc.
License	Apache 2.0
Developed in	Go
Download link	https://docs.docker.com/get-docker/
Source code	https://github.com/moby/swarmkit

---

🏗 Infrastructure automation

These tools are designed to automate the work involved in setting up infrastructure – this means things like servers, firewalls, network components, and so on.

Terraform

Terraform is a tool for creating and managing cloud resources with code.

Nutrition information

Initial release	2014
Backed by	Hashicorp, Inc.
License	Mozilla Public Licence 2.0
Developed in	Go
Download link	https://www.terraform.io/downloads
Source code	https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform

Ansible

Ansible is a tool for automatic configuration of infrastructure - e.g. installing packages, configuring web servers, creating user accounts, and so on.

Nutrition information

Initial release	2012
Backed by	Red Hat
License	GPL 3.0
Developed in	Python
Installation instructions	https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/installation_guide/intro_installation.html
Source code	https://github.com/ansible/ansible

Pulumi

Pulumi is a tool for creating and managing infrastructure in the cloud.

To create infrastructure with Pulumi, you use the Pulumi API for your preferred programming language – available for Python, Go, JavaScript and C# – and Pulumi creates your services in the cloud for you.

Nutrition information

Initial release	2019
Backed by	Independent start-up
License	Apache 2.0 License
Developed in	Go (+ others)
Installation instructions	https://www.pulumi.com/docs/get-started/install/
Source code	https://github.com/pulumi/pulumi

---

⛳ CI/CD

GitLab

GitLab is a tool for managing application source code and automating the build and release of your application.

GitLab’s built-in CI/CD feature lets you create workflows to build, test and deploy your applications.

Nutrition information

Initial release	October 2011
Backed by	Independent start-up
License	MIT
Developed in	Ruby + JavaScript
Installation instructions	https://about.gitlab.com/install/
Source code	https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab

Jenkins

Jenkins is an automation server for running software build and testing jobs, and much more.

Jenkins is a bit of a stalwart and has a mixed following. (Some people love it, some people hate it!)

Nutrition information

Initial release	February 2011, a fork of the Hudson project from 2005
Backed by	CloudBees
License	MIT
Developed in	Java
Download link	https://www.jenkins.io/download/
Source code	https://github.com/jenkinsci/jenkins

Argo CD

Argo CD is a continuous delivery tool for Kubernetes, which uses the principle of GitOps.

GitOps is the principle of using Git as the single source of truth for application deployment information, and ensuring that the state of a cluster is the same as the state which is defined in Git.

Nutrition information

Initial release	2018
Backed by	Used in Red Hat OpenShift GitOps
License	Apache 2.0
Developed in	Go
Download link	https://argoproj.github.io/cd/
Source code	https://github.com/argoproj/argo-cd

Tekton

Tekton is a tool for running pipelines inside Kubernetes.

With Tekton, you can create CI/CD pipelines on Kubernetes, to build, test and deploy your apps.

Nutrition information

Initial release	2018
Backed by	Google, Red Hat
License	Apache 2.0
Developed in	Go
Download link	https://tekton.dev/
Source code	https://github.com/tektoncd

---

🛂 Testing & quality

These tools help to run tests against your software, and ensure its quality.

Sonarqube

Sonarqube is a code-quality checking tool.

Nutrition information

Initial release	2007
Backed by	SonarSource S.A
License	LGPL 2.0
Developed in	Java
Download link	https://www.sonarqube.org/downloads/
Source code	https://github.com/SonarSource/sonarqube

Selenium

Selenium is a browser automation tool. It’s used to simulate interactions with websites, fetch information, and perform tests.

Nutrition information

Initial release	2004
Backed by	Software Freedom Conservancy (non-profit)
License	Apache 2.0
Developed in	Java, C#, JavaScript & others
Download link	https://www.selenium.dev/downloads/
Source code	https://github.com/SeleniumHQ/selenium

Cypress

Cypress is a testing tool for anything that runs in a browser.

With Cypress, you can write and run end-to-end tests for your web applications.

Nutrition information

Initial release	~2015
Backed by	Independent
License	MIT
Developed in	Java, C#, JavaScript & others
Download link	https://on.cypress.io/installing-cypress
Source code	https://github.com/cypress-io/cypress

---

📈 Logging & monitoring

Prometheus

Prometheus is a monitoring and alerting toolkit.

Prometheus consists of a time-series database and some tools to collect metrics from applications or servers.

Nutrition information

Initial release	November 2012
Backed by	Cloud Native Computing Foundation, initially developed at SoundCloud
License	Apache 2.0
Developed in	Go
Download link	https://prometheus.io/download/
Source code	https://github.com/prometheus/prometheus

Grafana

Grafana is a dashboarding tool. Grafana lets you create visual dashboards from data stored in different places, including Prometheus.

Nutrition information

Initial release	2014
Backed by	Grafana Labs
License	AGPL 3.0
Developed in	TypeScript, Go
Download link	https://grafana.com/get/
Source code	https://github.com/grafana/grafana

Elasticsearch

Elasticsearch is a search engine which is usually used to analyse log files and other huge archives of data.

It’s often combined with Logstash and Kibana to gather logs from servers and applications, and produce dashboards. When these three tools are combined it’s called the “ELK stack”.

Elasticsearch is based on the Apache Lucene library.

Nutrition information

Initial release	February 2010
Backed by	Elasticsearch B.V.
License	Server Side Public License
Developed in	Java
Download link	https://www.elastic.co/downloads/elasticsearch
Source code	https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch