DevOps testing tools in 2021

May 27, 2021

Sneh Pandya takes a look at DevOps testing tools and frameworks available in the market that are popular among developers in 2021.

Publishing software products without DevOps and DevOps tools is nearly impossible today. People familiar with DevOps are important members of any R&D department aiming to efficiently produce and deploy software products. DevOps helps speed up release times and improve the quality of code as well as the effectiveness of developers, ops, security and testers.

What is DevOps?

DevOps is made up of the words “development” and “operations.” It involves the integration of processes and methodologies, the acquisition and deployment of new tools, and a cultural nexus of a sort. DevOps practices include collaborative development, continuous testing, release, deployment, monitoring, feedback and optimization.

According to GitLab’s Global Survey, the impact of DevOps is as follows:

It is the second-most practiced development methodology (after Agile/Scrum).
59% of respondents can now deploy even multiple times a day.
66% of respondents report having a greater ability to innovate.

Testing tools

In this article, we will look at devops testing tools and frameworks available in the market that are popular among developers in 2021 and are utilized in the DevOps lifecycle.

Sentry

Sentry is an open-source application monitoring and error tracking tool. It helps discover, fix and prioritize errors and crashes in real time. This provides visibility across the software stack and insights into errors that are affecting customers in production.

The key features of Sentry are as follows:

Enhanced stack trace collection with one-click integrations.
Support for all major frameworks and languages.
Exhaustive list of events and incident alerts and tracking.

UpGuard

UpGuard analyzes data about networks to calculate a single numerical value that provides a quick picture of security risk.

The key features of UpGuard are as follows:

Increases the speed of software delivery through the automation of multiple processes and technologies.
The procedures used to govern assets are as important as the configurations themselves.
Allows users to trust a third party with sensitive data.

Puppet

Puppet eliminates manual work for the software delivery process. It helps developers to deliver great software rapidly.

The key features of Puppet are as follows:

Real-time context-aware reporting.
Inspects and reports on packages running across infrastructure.
Desired state conflict detection and remediation.

Codemagic

Codemagic is a popular end-to-end CI/CD solution focused on mobile apps. With Codemagic you can run unit tests or test your apps on simulators, emulators or real devices as part of your continuous integration and delivery pipeline.

The key features of Codemagic are as follows:

CI/CD provides fast and reliable releases.
It brings better visibility across development processes.
Bugs can be detected at the early stages of the build process.
Feedback loops provide robust and powerful insights.

Useful articles:

Selenium

Selenium is one of the popular automated testing tools out there in the market. It is specifically designed to support automation testing of a wide range of browsers.

The key features of Selenium are as follows:

Supports parallel test execution, which reduces the overall execution time.
Lightweight and requires fewer resources than other testing tools.
Versatile and compatible with any operating system.
Native support for various programming languages, such as Java, Python, C#, Perl, PHP and JavaScript.

Appium

Appium is an open-source automation tool for mobile applications. It allows users to test all kinds of native, mobile, web and hybrid apps. It also supports automated tests on emulators and simulators. It is actively used in the DevOps process.

The key features of Appium are as follows:

Easy to set up and get started with.
Uses very little memory for running tests and processes.
An external SDK is not needed to test native apps. Appium offers standard automation APIs that can be used on all types of platforms.

Here’s an article on testing React Native apps on real devices using Appium.

PagerDuty

PagerDuty helps businesses to enhance their brand reputation. It is an incident management solution that supports a CI strategy. This DevOps testing tool helps teams to deliver high-performing apps.

The key features of PagerDuty are as follows:

Reliable and rich alerting facility that provides real-time alerts.
Provides visibility into critical systems and applications.
Easily detects and resolves incidents from development through production.
Allows scheduling and automated escalations, as well as full-stack visibility across development and production environments.

Kobiton

Kobiton is a continuous framework that prevents bugs before pushing code to test and improve mobile apps or websites with functional, performance and visual test automation. It helps resolve issues before releasing to production and rapidly runs tests with seamless CI/CD integrations.

The key features of Kobiton are as follows:

Allows you to test on real devices in the cloud.
Easy to integrate with Jenkins, Travis CI, CircleCI, etc.
Provides access to real devices within your IDE for rapid debugging.

AppVerify

AppVerify is a continuous testing solution designed for business applications. AppVerify allows you to test the entire business flow, including all third-party apps, without adding plugins or writing a single line of code. It facilitates continuous testing for Agile and DevOps Teams.

The key features of AppVerify are as follows:

Tests applications by reproducing the same user experience.
Replicates the users' interactions with the application and gives you valuable metrics, including screenshots of failures.
Scripts are created automatically when the application is in use and can be easily edited without coding.
Scripts can be easily applied to performance testing and available application monitoring modules.

Apache JMeter

Apache JMeter is an open-source load testing tool. It is designed to measure the performance of websites. This load testing tool can be used in the DevOps methodology.

The key features of JMeter are as follows:

Allows load and performance tests to be performed for various server types.
Stores its test plans in XML format, allowing users to generate the test plan using a text editor.
Can be used to perform automated and functional testing of applications.

Nagios

Nagios is a monitoring system that enables organizations to identify and resolve IT infrastructure problems.

The key features of Nagios are as follows:

Allows continuous monitoring of systems, applications, services and business processes.
In the event of a failure, Nagios can alert technical staff of the problem to begin remediation processes before outages affect business processes, end users and customers.

Splunk Phantom

Phantom, a part of the Splunk suite, is a security orchestration and automation platform.

The key features of Phantom are as follows:

Integrates existing security technologies, enabling users to automate tasks.
Allows security teams to support a broad range of security operations center (SOC) functions, including event and case management, collaboration and reporting.

TestComplete

TestComplete is an automated UI testing tool that ensures the quality of your application without sacrificing speed or agility with an easy-to-use GUI test automation tool.

The key features of TestComplete are as follows:

AI-powered object recognition engine and script or scriptless flexibility.
Allows you to test compatibility with every desktop, web and mobile application with ease.
Provides real-time information on the progress and status of your desktop, web or mobile UI tests as well as cross-browser tests from a single interface.
Easily separates test steps, objects, actions and data with a built-in keyword-driven testing framework.
Can execute desktop, mobile and web tests in parallel across multiple physical and virtual machines.

LoadRunner

LoadRunner is a simplified project-based performance load testing solution for quickly identifying abnormal application behavior. This testing tool is provided by Micro Focus and is a good choice among enterprises.

The key features of LoadRunner are as follows:

Supports performance testing for the widest range of protocols in the industry and 50+ technologies and application environments.
Quickly identifies the most likely causes of performance issues with a patented auto-correlation engine.
Accurately predicts application scalability and capacity with accurate emulation of realistic loads.

Stackify

Stackify is a lightweight DevOps testing tool. It shows real-time logs, error queries and more directly at your workstation. It is an ideal solution for intelligent orchestration for the software-defined data center.

The key features of Stackify are as follows:

Provides an instant feedback loop to check what .NET or Java web apps are doing.
Provides detailed traces of all types of web requests.
Offers flexible image management with a private registry to store and manage images. It provides secure access and configures image caches.
Docker Certified Plugins and Containers provide tested, certified and supported solutions.

Snort

Snort is a powerful, free, open-source tool that helps detect intruders. It also highlights malicious attacks against the system. Snort can perform real-time traffic analysis and packet logging.

The key features of Snort are as follows:

Performs signature-based detection of attacks by analyzing packets.
Performs protocol analysis and content searching.
Offers real-time traffic analysis, packet logging, buffer overflow detection, etc.

Conclusion

As we can see, there is a plethora of tools out there that can help you achieve your desired results with DevOps and testing.

Whether you’re looking to boost your internal capabilities in monitoring and incident response, testing, security or collaboration, there are many great options out there.

Useful links and resources

Here’s an article on testing React Native apps with Jest and Codemagic.
You can find more articles related to mobile apps testing here.
For discussions, learning and support, join the Codemagic Slack Community.

Sneh is a Senior Product Manager based in Baroda. He is a community organizer at Google Developers Group and co-host of NinjaTalks podcast. His passion for building meaningful products inspires him to write blogs, speak at conferences and mentor different talents. You can reach out to him over Twitter (@SnehPandya18) or via email (sneh.pandya1@gmail.com).

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