What Are Artifacts in DevOps?

If you are a beginner, you must have a question: What are artifacts in DevOps?

DevOps emphasizes improving collaboration and integration between teams that work on software development, Dev, and IT operations, known as Ops.

In DevOps, artifacts are important in a successful and efficient development workflow. Artifacts in DevOps refer to the output or intermediary files that software development and deployment produce.

Managing hundreds of disparate artifacts can be inefficient and unwieldy without artifact software.

This blog explores artifacts in DevOps, covering their types, roles, benefits, and processes. So without further ado, let’s get started!

What are Artifacts in DevOps?

DevOps teams rely on artifacts as the basic building blocks of the software development delivery process.

Simply put, artifacts meaning in DevOps is that they are files or packages containing everything to build, deploy, and run a software application.

Artifacts are crucial in ensuring the pipeline in DevOps operates smoothly and efficiently by capturing a snapshot of your application at a specific time.

Whether you deploy the application onto a testing environment, on a staging server, or directly in production, you're working with the same set of files across all environments.

This consistency reduces the chance of unexpected issues arising due to different environments.

The software development lifecycle generates these by-products, which teams should store in an artifact repository for easy access.

Common artifacts include container images, Docker in DevOps, meeting notes, risk assessments, and prototypes.

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What are the Types of Artifacts in DevOps?

Here are some of the major categories of Artifacts in DevOps:

Build Artifacts

Building a software application or system produces build artifacts as by-products of the coding and build process. These are also known as code artifacts.

Usually, a build artifact includes all the files and dependencies required to execute the application. Software developers create the biggest group of build artifacts.

Source Code

Source code is a type of foundation needed in any software application. Developers create source code using written instructions that define the software's specific behavior and functionality.

In the development cycle, developers write source code in various programming languages for app development, like Python vs Java or JavaScript.

In DevOps, source code files serve as fundamental artifacts and raw materials for creating executable binaries and other artifacts.

Pipeline Artifacts

Pipeline artifacts are specific digital assets in a DevOps pipeline, such as those in web application architecture systems.

It plays a vital role in the smooth flow of code and associated resources in the various stages of the development and deployment process.

They help as intermediate storage or transfer points in the pipeline to ensure efficient data handling and code most reliably.

Deployment Artifact

Deployment artifacts play a critical role in DevOps. In most cases, deployment artifacts present themselves as a publicly available system. They represent the output of the packaged and versioned system ready for deployment.

The CI/CD methods used in the DevOps process heavily rely on deployment artifacts. The type of artifact used depends on the tech stack, development process, and the type of application being deployed.

This applies to distributions in any format: deb, exes, tar.gz (single binaries), rpm, MSI, image, etc.

Azure Artifacts

Azure Artifacts is more of a specific software service than an artifact category, but worthy of note here because it fits into the Azure DevOps space.

Azure Artifact software supports Python, npm, and NuGet inside a typed package repository. Azure Artifacts is a paid artifact repository for repositories over 2 GB.

Project Management Artifacts

The Dev and Ops team members provide project management artifacts during active development so that all software components work in concert to meet the project requirements. The list of PM Artifacts includes:

👉 Risk Assessments

👉 Status Monitoring

👉 End-User documentation

Documentation

User manuals, API documentation, installation guides, and release notes are the components of documentation artifacts.

Documentation artifacts give insight into the software application's features, functionality, usage instructions, and related information.

Documentation artifacts assist in understanding how to use the software, troubleshooting problems, and introducing people to the new software.

In DevOps, up-to-date documentation is extremely important as it assures the software's successful deployment and operation.

Test Artifacts

Test artifacts include test cases, test scripts, test data, and results that development teams create during the software testing. They validate the software application's functionality, performance, and reliability.

Test artifacts in pipeline deployment facilitate automatic testing. Teams often use AI in quality assurance.

In DevOps, test artifacts in deployment pipelines facilitate automatic testing, that is, the continuous quality assurance of the application development process.

Test artifacts can identify defects, bugs, and vulnerabilities in a software application through continuous testing to ensure quality and maintenance.

Test artifacts can identify a software application's bugs, defects, or vulnerabilities and ensure its quality and robustness.

Database Artifacts

The parts or components that are put to use as integral parts of the DevOps process toward supporting databases are referred to as "database artifacts."

Database artifacts ensure consistency in the schema and data through all the phases, aligning with all the databases included in the list of databases for web applications.

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What are the Benefits of Artifacts in DevOps?

Here are some of the benefits of Artifacts in DevOps:

Efficient Deployment Processes

Artifact management effectively streamlines deployment by creating a centralized repository to store and version artifacts.

This has the advantage of teams accessing and deploying appropriate DevOps artifacts into environments, whether development, testing, or production, without manual intervention and delays.

Consistency

Artifact management maintains a record of all artifacts and their versions, thus allowing teams to reproduce the same deployment configurations and environments continuously.

It minimizes the chance of error regarding duplication, and variation between these different deployments is minimized.

Dependency Management

Artifact management teams manage dependencies by tracking and resolving inter-dependencies between artifacts.

Thus, all the dependencies are included in deployment packages without compatibility problems or version conflicts.

Version Control

Artifact management systems provide the functionality of version control that allows teams to see and track changes done over time on artifacts.

This version control plays a pivotal role in the system development life cycle, ensuring consistency from development to deployment.

Compliance

Artifact management ensures compliance with regulatory requirements and governance standards with support for audit trails and artifact-based access controls.

This way, organizations can track the artifacts flowing throughout the pipeline and demonstrate industry-level and organizational compliances.

Performance and Scalability

Effective artifact management systems are designed to handle large volumes of artifacts since they support high-performance deployment processes.

Such systems provide scalability and reliability features, including caching, mirroring, and distribution, thus providing fast and efficient access to artifacts across distributed teams and environments.

Continuous Integration and Continous Delivery

Artifact management is integral to implementing CI/CD practices within DevOps.

Automated storage, retrieval, and deployment for artifacts result in shorter release cycles, reduced lead times, and overall software quality.

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The Role of Artifacts in DevOps

So, the role of artifacts in the DevOps lifecycle is elementary. They are like the glue that binds the various stages of the software delivery pipeline into one.

Let's look at this in detail:

Development Phase

Development teams continually create and modify source artifacts during the development phase.

These artifacts symbolize the logic and functionality of the software similar to the way Solution architecture defines the foundation of system designs.

Developers work on these artifacts to add new features, fix bugs, and enhance the software capabilities.

Continuous Integration (CI)

In CI pipelines, build artifacts are created automatically. Developers conduct automatic tests to ensure the code is appropriate and works as it should.

Build artifacts generated here undergo automated testing to ensure compatibility with pipelines deploying systems like Spiral model workflows.

This step ensures that the newly written code doesn't break the existing functionality and adheres to coding standards.

Continuous Deployment (CD)

In CD pipelines, teams deploy artifacts to multiple environments, including development, staging, and production. These artifacts thus allow for consistent, reliable deployments.

Testing and Quality Assurance (QA)

Testing and quality assurance processes rely on artifacts, such as test scripts, test data, and test environments, to validate the application's functionality and performance.

Artifacts ensure that testing is done consistently and repeatedly.

Production Deployment

Teams deploy artifacts to environments ranging from development to production to ensure the application functions for end-users.

Artifacts play an important role in ensuring the right version of the application is deployed and that it functions reliably in a production environment.

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Meaning of Artifact Repository

Most DevOps teams will have an artifact repository that keeps all the artifacts secured and versioned. Development teams use build tools to manage dependencies and compile artifacts.

Popular artifact repository tools include JFrog, DockerHub, AWS CodeArtifact, Azure Artifacts, Helix Core, and Cloudsmith.

These tools help have a single source for packages, Helm charts, container images, and other artifacts to integrate well with CI/CD tools and advance the software development lifecycle.

An artifact repository is a central repository or storage system that keeps track of artifacts throughout their lifecycle.

It forms a secure, organized, and version-controlled resource for storing all artifacts, ranging from source code to build artifacts, binaries, container images, and documentation.

DevOps pipelines typically integrate artifact repositories. While in the software development process, it enables smooth retrieval and deployment of artifacts.

What are the Uses of Artifacts in Development?

Here are some of the key uses of Artifacts in software development:

Simplifying Development

Source code artifacts are structured development frameworks provided by artifacts.

Developers work with source code artifacts, creating, enhancing features, and resolving bugs. Code artifacts are repeatedly integrated and tested through pipelines of CI/CD.

These processes often benefit from cross-platform app development frameworks, both Android and iOS app development,  to ensure compatibility across diverse environments.

Automating Testing

Artifacts allow automated testing processes by ensuring a constant and reproducible test environment. Test scripts and data are also testing artifacts that verify an application's functionality and performance.

Deployment Automation

Artifacts simplify automated deployments by ensuring the correct application version and its dependencies reach the target environment.

In particular, container images have become famous for their release process automation capabilities.

Here is an image showing the benefits of Deployment Automation below:

This is especially useful in container-based deployments using cloud development platforms like Microsoft Azure or AWS.

Configuration Management

Teams use configuration artifacts like Ansible playbooks or Terraform scripts to manage or define infrastructure configurations. These artifacts are significant for provisioning and maintaining code(IaC).

Documentation and User Guides

Documentation artifacts are the ones involving user onboarding and support. User guides, API development resources and documentation, and system manuals inform users how to access the software.

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What is the Process of Artifacts in DevOps?

A typical artifact process includes steps such as:

Step 1: Artifact Creation

During the development lifecycle, many products are created, like source code, built artifacts, and other supporting materials.  These might include Rest API designs or functional templates.

Step 2: Versioning

Development teams assign version numbers or labels to artifacts as changes and updates occur. Versioning creates an artifact to change history.

Step 3: Storage

Artifact repositories, or the systems commonly referred to as the artifact management system, store artifacts securely. Developers store artifacts securely in artifact repositories.

Step 4: Access Control

Role-based access control (RBAC) controls access to artifacts to ensure that only authorized persons can view, modify, and deploy artifacts.

Step 5: Artifact Retrieval

Artifact retrieving takes place from repositories during the deployment phase. Teams retrieve the correct version of the artifact for deployment.

Step 6: Deployment

Artifacts deploy to environments ranging from development to production to make the application work for end-users.

Whether you're working on Android app development frameworks or iOS, the right artifacts make deployment smooth.

Step 7: Monitoring and Maintenance

After deployment, teams monitor and maintain artifacts to ensure consistent reliability and performance. However, this might add to the development cost as with other maintenance steps.

For example, Effective artifact usage can significantly impact the cost of developing the Hago app, as well as similar projects like Winzo or Zupee, by ensuring efficient resource utilization and streamlined deployments.

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What are the Best Practices for Artifact Management?

Organizations that want to get the most out of artifact management in DevOps should implement these best practices:

Use Version Control

All artifacts should be version-controlled to track the changes and facilitate peer collaboration. For the source code, a version control system such as Git or SVN should be used.

Advantages of using version control:

Other artifacts may be managed using artifact repositories such as Artifactory or Nexus.

Artifact Deployment Automation

Automate artifact deployments into other environments through CI/CD pipelines. Artifact management systems can be integrated with CI/CD tools like Jenkins or GitLab CI to automate the build, test, and deployment process.

Implement Access Controls

Define access controls and permissions for artifact repositories to limit access to sensitive artifacts and ensure security policies are followed.

Use role-based access control mechanisms to assign permissions to team members corresponding with their roles and particular responsibilities.

Artifact Lifecycle Management

Establish clear lifecycle policies for artifacts' creation, retention, and deletion. Define criteria for archiving or deleting old artifacts to avoid cluttering a repository and utilize the storage resources efficiently.

Artifact Usage Monitoring and Analyzing

Monitor artifact usage and performance metrics to identify bottlenecks to optimize storage utilization and improve deployment. Use analytics and reporting tools to track artifact downloads, deployments, and usage trends.

Regular Updating

Update artifacts regularly with patches and updates to address security vulnerabilities and performance-related issues.

Teams efficiently update artifacts across all environments using DevOps automation tools and procedures.

Artifact Signing and Verification

Make provision for artifact signing and verification mechanisms to ensure the integrity and authenticity of artifacts.

Teams can apply digital or e-signatures and checksums to validate artifacts before deployment, preventing tampering or unauthorized alteration.

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List of Top 20 Tools and Technologies for Artifact Management

Let us look at some of the most commonly used tools and technologies for artifact management:

Artifact Repositories: Artifact repositories are central hubs for storing and managing artifacts. They offer version control, access control, and metadata management features.

JFrog Artifactory: Artifactory is a universal artifact repository manager that supports various package formats, including Docker, Maven, npm, and NuGet. It offers robust version control, access control, and replication features.

Sonatype Nexus Repository Manager: Nexus Repository Manager is a repository manager that supports multiple repository formats, including Maven, npm, Docker, and PyPI. It provides powerful proxying, caching, and deployment capabilities.

Microsoft Azure Artifacts: This is a package management service provided by Microsoft Azure for supporting packages in formats like npm, Maven, NuGet, and Python. Artifacts in Azure DevOps integrate automatically within its pipelines for automated artifact management.

CI/CD Tools: CI/CD tools play a crucial role in automating the process of builds, tests, and deployment. More often than not, they usually contain artifact management tools for artifact repositories and deployment pipelines. They also integrate well with artifact repositories and support tools like trends in DevOps.

Jenkins: Jenkins is an open-source automation server supporting continuous integration and delivery. It has thousands of different plugins that can be used to integrate with artifact repositories and for deploying artifacts on different environments.

GitLab CI/CD: It is a part of the DevOps platform of GitLab that offers integrated CI/CD capabilities. It includes functions such as versioning artifacts, managing dependencies, and automating deployment workflow.

CircleCI: CircleCI is a cloud-based CI/CD platform for automated software development. It integrates with popular artifact repositories and provides seamless artifact management capabilities.

Configuration Management Tools: Configuration management tools manage the infrastructure configuration to ensure consistency across environments. Though that is their main goal, they are meant for infrastructure as code.

Ansible: Ansible in DevOps is an open-source automation tool enabling configuration management, application deployment and even orchestration. It can integrate into artifact repositories to download and deploy artifacts during provisioning.

Chef: Chef is a configuration management tool that automates infrastructure deployment and management. It can be used, often in combination with artifact repositories, for application deployments and dependencies.

Puppet: Puppet is a configuration management tool that automates infrastructure provisioning and management. It integrates with artifact repositories to ensure that the right versions of artifacts are deployed to target environments.

Container Registries: Container registries are specialized artifact repositories for storing and managing Docker images vs container artifacts. They possess elements like versioning, access control, and vulnerability scanning.

Docker Hub: Docker Hub is a cloud-based container registry from Docker. They host a grand library of public Docker images and include features for private image storage and management.

Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR): The Amazon ECR is a fully managed registry service for Amazon Web Services (AWS) that connects flawlessly with other AWS services like Amazon ECS and Amazon EKS to deploy containerized applications.

Google Container Registry (GCR): Google Container Registry is a container registry given by Google Cloud Platform(GCP). It provides secure, scaled storage of Docker images and integrates with the Google Kubernetes Engine(GKE) for orchestrating containerized workloads.

Package Managers: Package managers are tools that automate installing, upgrading, and managing software packages and dependencies. The features of resolving and downloading artifacts from repositories are included often.

npm: npm is the package manager for JavaScript, widely used in the Node.js ecosystem. Developers can install and manage the dependencies for their Node.js projects and publish packages to the npm registry.

Maven: Maven in DevOps is a build automation tool for Java projects, acting as a package manager. It manages the project dependencies and downloads artifacts from Maven Central, the official repository for Java libraries.

pip: pip is the package installer for Python packages. Developers can install and manage Python dependencies using pip, which pulls packages from the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository.

Wrapping Up!

So, this is the conclusion of the “What are artifacts in DevOps?” article.

Your team will create a lot of artifacts within the DevOps software development process.

These artifacts begin from container images to executables, software documentation, risk assessments, libraries, images, directories, archives, and more.

If your development team utilizes Azure, you could utilize the package management system called Azure Artifacts.

Otherwise, you can pick one of the excellent options outlined in this article; however, JFrog is the market leader.

Choosing the right artifact repository and properly managing these assets can give your team a much-needed edge over your competition while helping you develop the best software application possible.

Furthermore, you can contact Arramton Infotech, a giant in the DevOps Services providing field. Moreover, don’t hesitate to connect with us if you ever need web development, on-demand app development, or even cloud services.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. What are artifacts in CI/CD?

Ans: Artifacts meaning in DevOps CI/CD (Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment), refer to the intermediate or final outputs generated during the software development lifecycle. These outputs can include build files, test results, deployment packages, container images, and other resources needed to build, test, or deploy an application. Artifact management ensures these outputs are securely stored, versioned, and consistently available across various CI/CD stages.

Q. What is an artifact in a pipeline?

Ans: An artifact in a pipeline is a file or package created during the execution of a CI/CD pipeline. It is a key deliverable that transitions between stages, such as development, testing, staging, and production. Examples include build outputs (like JAR files for Java applications), test reports, or Docker images that the pipeline generates, validates, and deploys across environments.

Q. What are artifacts in deployment?

Ans: Artifacts in deployment are the packaged outputs ready for deployment to various environments, such as testing, staging, or production. These artifacts typically include application binaries, configuration files, container images, or any resource required to run the software in a target environment. Deployment artifacts ensure consistency and reproducibility, enabling teams to deploy identical application versions across environments.

Q. What are 3 examples of artifacts?

Ans: Here are three common examples of artifacts in DevOps:

Build Artifacts: Compiled application files, such as JAR, WAR, or EXE files, and their dependencies.

Test Artifacts: Test scripts, test data, and reports generated during automated or manual testing.

Container Images: Docker images or other container formats that package application code, libraries, and dependencies for deployment.