Microsoft Azure DevOps is the combination of operations and development to help teams work together efficiently in order to create value to the customer. Some of the practices involved in this application lifecycle include continuous delivery, continuous integration, agile planning and monitoring of applications. By lifecycle, we mean the creation of applications, tracing it from beginning to end. It's a difficult endeavor, but DevOps achieves it through its extensive and proven strategies to help your team move along smoothly. Azure DevOps also comprises of many extensions found on Visual Studio.

This guide will focus on Azure DevOps to help answer questions that you might be asked during an interview or test. An Azure DevOps Certifications, like the ones found here at CloudInstitute.io, could also help you gain the right skills in Azure DevOps or other areas

Let's go over the basics and then delve deeper with common questions asked relating to Azure DevOps.

Differences Between Azure DevOps Server vs. Service

Azure DevOps Service or Azure DevOps Server can be used to create and deploy applications. Service is cloud-oriented and the Server is on-site. For scope and scale, Azure DevOps Services offer projects and organization while Server offers deployment, projects, and project collections. Services are dealt with over the public network and Server over the intranet. For services, the access level is assigned to each person but in Server, it depends on the license.

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DevOps Services

Azure DevOps Services is comprised of the following:

• Azure Boards
• Azure Pipelines
• Azure Repos
• Azure Artifacts
• Azure Test Plans

Azure Pipeline combines continuous integration with continuous delivery to create mobile, web, and desktop applications. It can be deployed on the cloud or on-premises.

• It automates everything so you don't have to worry about all these minor details here and there.
• It can use many languages, such as Java, Ruby, Python, PHP, .NET, C/C++, Node.js, and other things.
• Pipelines can also run on many platforms, such as macOS, Windows, and Linux.
• Another advantage is its open-source and free, which makes continuous delivery and continuous integration fast and simple.
• Kubernetes and containers and the ability to use Docker Hub and Azure Container Registry are helpful resources. Kubernetes helps store containers, and containers are what is used to create apps.
• The deployments of Azure Pipeline are flexible. Serverless, Kubernetes, or VMs can be used for your deployment strategy. You can also use Jenkins for deployment.

Azure Boards helps you track your work across all the teams. All ideas are kept track of from beginning to end of the lifecycle.

• Keeps track of code for team members to make changes and fix any mistakes that may arise during the process.
• Built-in Scrum boards make it easier to run sprints, plan meetings, and do stand-ups.
• Analytical tools show the results of the process so you understand how things are going.
• Over 1,000 extensions can be found on the marketplace, and other tools of your choice can be integrated into Azure Boards.

Azure Repos helps track changes during the lifecycle. It is part of version control tools, and it can take a picture of your code to save later if it’s needed. Repos also saves your code and helps show the team all the changes made.

• It helps you stay organized, fix bugs, and add new features.
• Version control keeps track of all changes so that you can go back if something is wrong.
• Git is the most popular choice for version control; it's grown to be the standard when it comes to version control.
• Git is simple to use and makes use of a distributed version control system, so a copy of the code is stored in the repository.

Azure Artifacts helps share packages within your team. Package management can be implemented in your continuous delivery/integration pipeline.

• Share Python, Maven, npm, and NuGet package no matter if it's a private or public source.
• Azure Artifacts can be used for small and large teams.
• Better organization and security help you know where everything is and that your data is safe.

Azure Test Plans enable you to test your apps. Test Plans focus on improving the quality of the code and making sure there are no defects before deployment. Quality is the main goal of Azure Test Plans, but it takes a lot of effort to achieve quality. Planned manual testing, exploratory testing, user acceptance testing and stakeholder feedback are all part of Azure Test Plans. In this way, even sales and marketing test out the software to make sure it's working efficiently and accurately.

• Code quality improves from exploratory and planned to test.
• Azure Test Plans help you find defects in the code before everything is deployed.
• It also allows you to test if the code works across different desktops and web apps.
• Test plans, suites, and cases are the three main test management artifacts. They are listed as special work items in the repository.