In the world of DevOps, working smarter, not harder, should always be a top priority. While it’s true that every project will be unique unto itself, this over-arching theme prevails. The more efficiently you can do something from the start, the more likely you are to come in on time and on budget. This is why optimizing resource allocation is so important.
While it’s true that there are many different highly technical approaches you can take, it should also be noted that there are more practical ones as well. As you streamline your DevOps processes and manage elements like cost, peak performance becomes a forgone conclusion.
Kubernetes Multi-Tenancy Integration
One of the best ways to focus on optimizing resource allocation in DevOps has to do with the concept of leveraging Kubernetes multi-tenancy integration – something that can offer a new approach to managing ephemeral environments. Now, DevOps teams can operate multiple teams, projects, or purposes within separate namespaces.
This is a perfect example of optimizing resource utilization because it also helps to enhance isolation between applications. That way, what one developer or team is working on won’t impact what everyone else is working on.
Containerization Efficiency
Another critical step to take toward optimizing resource allocation is focusing on containerization efficiency. At a bare minimum, your DevOps team should implement containerization technologies (with Docker being a prime example) to package applications and their dependencies together.
Not only does this help streamline the development process, but it also enables better communication (and ultimately innovation).
Automated Resource Scaling
By its nature, automated resource scaling is a great way to do more with your resources while creating an environment where innovation can thrive. Automation tools can dynamically scale resources up or down based not on gut instinct or intuition but on actual workload demand.
This helps make sure that efficient allocation is practiced at all times. It also avoids the downtime and frustrating issues developers often face while waiting for the necessary resources to be manually allocated.
Continuous Monitoring
An old saying reminds us, “You can’t improve what you’re not monitoring,” so continuous monitoring should be a default best practice for all DevOps teams. You should implement robust monitoring and alerting systems to gain real-time visibility into how resources are actually being utilized.
This gives team leaders the insight they need to make proactive adjustments. You don’t have to wait for something to happen to react to it – you can adequately prepare beforehand so that all team members can keep going without being hindered.
Load Balancing
Employing load balancers is another common DevOps best practice because it helps to distribute not only traffic but workloads as well evenly. This is another technique that helps prevent resource bottlenecks that often stop productivity in its tracks. This optimizes the performance of the resources your team members are utilizing and the development process itself.
In addition to optimizing resource usage, load balancing enhances system reliability and fault tolerance by redirecting traffic during server failures. By distributing workloads effectively, load balancers ensure a smooth and uninterrupted user experience.
Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
Commonly referred to as IaC for short, Infrastructure as Code refers to how infrastructure is managed and provisioned not through manual processes like in a traditional environment but through code instead. The significant benefits are that it helps to improve the entirety of the software development process in three key ways: by improving visibility, enabling scalability, and helping with cost-related issues.
Using Infrastructure as Code principles can be a way to better provision and manage your team’s existing resources. Again, this enables quick and consistent setups that help keep things moving along at a necessary pace, all while going a long way towards reducing (or outright eliminating) waste.
Cost Analysis and Optimization
There are software development teams that only think about cost in two ways: whether they came in over budget or right on target. In reality, running a cost analysis isn’t something you only do at the beginning of DevOps to determine what you need or at the end to figure out what happened. You should be regularly analyzing the cost of your resources whenever possible.
At a bare minimum, this will help you quickly identify underutilized assets so that you can ask yourself why. Is there a problem that you should have been aware of that is keeping people from using these resources? If so, it should be investigated and addressed to improve the total lifetime value of those assets. Is it that they are ultimately unnecessary expenditures? Then, they should be removed as soon as possible, freeing up valuable money from the budget that can be utilized elsewhere.
All this can and should be accomplished while maintaining performance across the board.
Collaborative Resource Planning
Finally, understand that a DevOps team needs to be precisely that – a team in every sense of the term. But collaboration doesn’t begin once development does – it can and should be invited into the planning phases whenever possible.
To get to this point, create an environment where collaboration between development and operations teams is embraced by all involved. This will help ensure resource allocation aligns with project needs and business goals. The moment one of those things falls out of alignment with the others is typically when budget overruns (or frustrating delays) start to rear their ugly heads.
Make the Most of Your DevOps Resources
While the aforementioned best practices are all unique, they’re all in service of the same goal: achieving resource optimization as much as possible. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or are new to the DevOps landscape, every one of these insights can help create the actionable roadmap you need to fine-tune your resource allocation moving forward.
The lessons you learn won’t just pay dividends on this project as you guide things through to success. They’ll continue to apply to the next one, the one after that, and so on.