5 Unsung Tools of DevOps

by Azhar Uddin Technical Architect

Most of us are always trying to optimize our work so we’re constantly looking for new and improved tools. Plus playing with new tools is fun.

The tools we use play a critical role in how effective we are. In today’s ever-changing world of technology, we tend to focus on the latest and greatest solutions and overlook the simple tools that are available. Constant improvement of tools is an important aspect of the DevOps movement, but improvement doesn’t always warrant replacement.

Companies of all shapes and sizes are adopting DevOps principles today. And while a constant improvement of tools as new ones become available is an important aspect of DevOps, it doesn’t always warrant replacement of existing tools that work.

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So here are five tools that we must use almost every day. They either provide insight into or control over the environment around us while requiring minimal installation and configuration. They are not the flashiest tools, but they are time tested and just work.

RANCID: A suite of utilities that enables automation retention of your configurations in revision control.
Cacti: A round robin database-based statistics graphing tool primarily targeted at network equipment using SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol).
lldpd: One of the most underutilized, yet extremely useful, networking protocols that shows you exactly which port a server is plugged into.
IPerf: A network testing tool designed to measure the throughput between two points and run as a client/server pair.
MUltihost SSH Wrapper: A shell script wrapper around SSH that allows you to execute the same command across multiple hosts either in sequence or parallel.

The thing these tools all have in common is that they allow developers to get better access to their systems so they can get access to machines, get logs and run any relevant processes.