Day 47 of 90 Days of DevOps Challenge: What is CICD and why does it matter?

After successfully setting up Kubernetes, monitoring with Prometheus & Grafana, and logging with the EFK stack, I’ve built a strong foundation for a production-ready environment.

But having these systems in place isn’t enough.

What I now need is automation, the ability to continuously integrate changes, run tests, build images, and deploy them without manual effort every time.

This brings us to today's key concept: CI/CD.

What is CI/CD?

CI/CD stands for:

• Continuous Integration (CI)
  Developers frequently merge their code changes into a central repository. Each merge triggers automated builds and tests, ensuring the codebase remains functional.

• Continuous Delivery/Deployment (CD)
  Once the code is built and tested, it’s automatically delivered (or deployed) to production or staging environments. This ensures frequent, small, and safe updates.

Together, CI/CD enables a reliable, automated, and fast software release cycle.

Why Do We Need CI/CD?

Without CI/CD:

• Builds are manual, inconsistent, and slow

• Testing is often skipped or delayed

• Deployments are risky, complex, and error-prone

• Debugging production issues becomes painful

With CI/CD:

• Code is built, tested, and deployed automatically

• Bugs are caught early and often

• Every commit can potentially go to production safely

• Developers can focus on coding, not infrastructure

It brings speed, safety, and confidence to software delivery.

Tools Commonly Used in CI/CD Pipelines

Building a CI/CD pipeline involves multiple stages and tools. Here's a breakdown of popular choices:

Version Control

• Git (hosted on GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket)

Continuous Integration Tools

• Jenkins – Highly customizable and open-source

• GitHub Actions – GitHub-native automation

• GitLab CI/CD – Built into GitLab

• CircleCI, Travis CI, Drone CI

Build Tools

• Docker – Containerizes applications

• Maven, Gradle – For Java projects

• npm, yarn – For JavaScript projects

Testing & Code Quality

• JUnit, PyTest, Cypress, Selenium

• SonarQube – For code quality and coverage

Deployment Tools

• kubectl – CLI for Kubernetes

• Helm – Kubernetes package manager

• Argo CD, Flux – GitOps-based CD tools

Container Registries

• DockerHub

• GitHub Container Registry

• Amazon ECR, Google GCR, Harbor

CI/CD in a Kubernetes Environment

Now that I have Kubernetes up and running, the next step is automating deployments using CI/CD. Here's how it fits together:

1. A developer pushes code to GitHub

2. A CI tool (like Jenkins) builds a Docker image

3. The image is tested using automated test scripts

4. The image is pushed to DockerHub

5. Kubernetes pulls the new image and redeploys the application

6. Monitoring (via Grafana) and Logging (via EFK) keep an eye on system health

The goal is to automate, standardize, and ensure the reliability of this process.

Benefits of CI/CD

CI/CD bridges the gap between development and operations, ensuring smooth and frequent delivery.

GitOps vs CI/CD – A Quick Comparison

CI/CD is focused on automating the entire delivery pipeline.

GitOps, on the other hand, is a Kubernetes-native deployment approach where:

• The desired cluster state is stored in Git

• Tools like Argo CD or Flux continuously sync the cluster to match the Git state

Both aim for automation and reliability, but GitOps is declarative and Kubernetes-first.

Final Thoughts

While Kubernetes, monitoring, and logging provide the infrastructure backbone, it’s CI/CD that brings life to the workflow by enabling rapid, reliable, and repeatable deployments. It’s the engine that turns ideas into running software in production with minimal friction. Understanding how CI/CD fits into the broader DevOps pipeline is essential, but understanding isn't enough. It's time to build, test, and automate.

Starting tomorrow, I’ll dive into Jenkins, one of the most powerful and flexible CI/CD tools available. I’ll set it up, connect it to my source code, and use it to build Docker images, push them to a registry, and deploy to Kubernetes.