What are DevOps Artifacts and Its Best Practices in 2024?

Artifacts in DevOps not only help produce the final software but also help the team of developers by storing all the necessary elements in the artifacts repository, where the developers can easily find them and perform necessary operations (add, move, edit, or delete) with them. Thus, the artifacts save the developers valuable time from finding and gathering resources from different places, improving their productivity. 

Now, let’s use this blog to learn more details about artifacts. 

What Are Artifacts?

The artifacts meaning in DevOps refers to the fundamental blocks that become mandatory in the entire software development and delivery process. They are the by-products that help the DevOps teams to build, run, and deploy a piece of software. These artifacts can be essential documents, files, or packages. 

Types of DevOps Artifacts

• Build (Code) Artifacts

Build artifact is a delegated Azure name in the world of DevOps artifacts. This name becomes useful for all by-products of the build and coding process. Outside the Azure, it’s known as the code artifacts. They are the biggest artifacts that come from software builds, and they are the type of files that your team uses for testing or deploying the apps. The files can be executable, database files, .dll files, or data models.  

• Pipeline Artifacts

DevOps pipeline artifacts in Azure are the new form of the build artifacts. It refers to the by-products in the build, but the pipeline artifact is better than the build artifacts. Why? Because it reduces the time required for upload and download. But in this case, you have to use it with the YAML pipelines.

For instance, you can consider Bitbucket pipeline artifacts. You can make a configuration file in this pipeline with YAML. Then the file name must be bitbucket-pipelines.yml.

• Azure Artifacts

From this name, you can assume that Azure artifact is a service from a specific software. It becomes useful in the field of Azure DevOps. Azure artifact supports packages like npm, NuGet, and Python.

 If your artifact repositories exceed 2GB, you have to use the paid service of Azure artifacts. 

• Project Management Artifacts

During the active development process, the DevOps teams create the project management artifacts. The aim behind creating these artifacts is to ensure that all the components of the software are working together properly to meet the ultimate requirements. These artifacts can be end-user documentation, status monitoring procedures, case studies, or risk assessment strategies.   

Learn more details about these artifacts in DevOps from the DevOps Engineer Course.

The Artifact Process

• Creating the artifacts: Before beginning to code for software, the team in charge needs a plan of action, source code, assess risks, identify use cases, and diagrams. These are all examples of artifacts. These artifacts are mandatory for your software development process. 
• Versions: The DevOps teams assign version numbers to track the updates in the DevOps build artifacts. These also help them to maintain the records of the changes in the artifacts.
• Storage: Next, the teams store the artifacts in an artifact management system or an artifact repository.
• Access control: Only authorized people can view the DevOps artifacts in the repository. So, the artifacts will be secured with role-based access control. 
• Retrieval of artifacts: The teams retrieve the artifacts during the deployment phase. However, they need to ensure that they are retrieving the correct version of artifacts. For this, they need proper DevOps training. 
• Deployment: Next, the teams will deploy artifacts to several environments to make the app available to end users.
• Monitoring and maintenance: Finally, they need to monitor and maintain the artifacts in DevOps to improve their performance. 

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Why Are Artifacts Important?

From the above section, you can understand that the software development process will be affected without the artifacts in DevOps. For instance, when a company assigns a project to a new developer, he/she must understand how the software will work, what problems it will solve, and who the target users are. So, they need some artifacts to get an idea about these matters. Otherwise, the whole process becomes cluttered. That’s why artifacts become the undividable parts of all the DevOps projects. 

Are DevOps Artifacts Useful?

If a team starts developing the software without these artifacts, that means they are building a house without a proper structure or blueprint, to be more precise. As a result, the process will be muddled with waste of time and resources. Thus, a development team must start their coding after preparing these artifacts. So, in this stage, they will build the actual program for software. This help to overcome complex DevOps real-time scenarios.

What is an Artifact Repository?

An artifact repository is a centralized location where all the artifacts are stored for software development. It’s hosted in a cloud or a local server which provides easy access for the developers. It helps the developer to find out all the resources easily without searching other locations. It also allows the developers to add, delete, or move the artifacts. 

There are three types of artifact repositories –

• Remote repository: It’s hosted on a remote URL. Even a third-party company can host it.
• Local repository: A dedicated server that is stored in-house.
• Virtual repository: It’s a combination of the remote and local repository. It’s located under one URL and stores both the local and remote files. 

What are Artifacts Management Tools?

Organizations use different types of artifact management tools to manage artifacts. They provide features like versioning support, user permissions, access control, license filtering, and more. Here, you will learn some useful tools for managing your DevOps artifacts –

• Docker Hub: It’s a cloud-based registry that stores Docker container images. It also offers a huge collection of public images.
• AWS CodeArtifact: It’s a managed artifact repository service. It supports packages like Maven, Python pip, and npm. 
• JFrog Artifactory: It’s a popular artifact management service that supports several artifact types and offers integration with popular CI/CD tools. 

Examples of Artifact Use in Software Development

These are the common DevOps publish artifact examples – 

• Software documentation and user guides:  Software documentation describes the features and properties of software. User guides help the end users to understand how to interact and utilize that software. 
• Prototypes: These are the basic structure of software. Based on these structures, the development teams build basic versions of the software.
• Meeting notes: These artifacts record the full or partial transcripts from the meetings. 
• Diagrams and images: Diagrams help the developers identify and understand the structure of software. The images work as references during the development process. 
• Risk assessments: These provide the solutions for the potential risks to the developers. 

Conclusion

Artifacts in DevOps are crucial elements of software development, as they provide the needed details to ensure faster and more organized software development and delivery. Additionally, using these artifacts, teams can also focus on software maintenance and improvement. So, all in all, they work like the foundation of every software, and the best artifacts pave the way for the most revered software.

You can now access the DevOps tutorial or learn more about software development with guidance from experts through the best courses from Edureka. 

FAQ

• What is the use of artifacts in DevOps?

Artifacts in DevOps maintain the consistency of software development and deployment by streamlining and automating several processes.  

• What are artifacts in CI/CD?

CI/CD artifacts are the by-products that are produced through the CI/CD pipeline actions. They can be application code, scripts, etc. 

• What are artifacts in AWS DevOps?

AWS artifacts is an artifact retrieval portal where users can access and download AWS security and online agreements. 

• What are artifacts and types?

Artifacts are the by-products or outcomes generated in the software development and deployment process. The types of artifacts are build, pipeline, Azure, and project management. 

• Can I get artifacts from automation testing?

Yes! Your automation test data and scripts are considered as the artifacts from the automation test. They become useful to validate the performance and functionality of an app.