Deployment within a traditional IT environment

Building line-of-business web applications for clients with traditional IT departments brings its own set of challenges when it comes to DevOps. In particular, the IT department adds additional constraints that you may not see in more forward-thinking companies. Rob Allen explores these complexities and shares some solutions he and his team came up with in order to use modern development practices in nontraditional environments. You’ll learn how CI tools with appropriate scripting enable reliable delivery of a quality product on IBM i and Windows. Rob also covers the organizational and technical challenges encountered when IT departments are not used to developers having a say in the server environment and shows you why it’s worth spending time getting them on board.

Presented at Velocity, Amsterdam, November 2016

Transcript

1. Deployment Within a Traditional IT environment Rob Allen akrabat.com ~ @akrabat ~ November 2016
2. What? Software deployment is all of the activities that make a software system available for use. Wikipedia Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
3. Traditional IT environment Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
4. Not in this talk • Cloud deployments • Provisioning of servers • Continuous Delivery • Chat Ops Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
5. Fundamentals Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
6. Development processes Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
7. Code organisation • Isolate work • Work on branches • Always have a way to bugfix live Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
8. Feature branches Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
9. Git flow Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
10. Automatic testing Automatically test every PR • Coding style • Unit tests • Functional tests • Acceptance tests Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
11. DB schema management Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
12. Migrations • Schema changes stored in individual files • delta files with UP and DOWN functionality • It really doesn't matter which tool you use Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
13. Configuration data Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
14. Context awareness Each instance needs different configuration • Environment variables (12factor.net/config) • Local configuration file Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
15. Deployment Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
16. Manual deployment Simply copy the files to the right place (S)FTP / rsync / Remote Desktop Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
17. Manual deployment • Slow • Inconsistencies between each deploy • Failures in production • No records. Who deployed what, when (or where)? Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
18. It's more than just code Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
19. Other things to think about • File permissions • Preserve user uploaded files • After upload • Stale cache? • Cache priming? • Keeping records Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
20. People aren't machines! Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
21. Automation People: good at creative judgement Machines: good at doing the same thing over and over Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
22. Benefits • Deferred deployments • Self-service deployments • Automatically triggered deployments • Smoke tests • Automatic rollbacks Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
23. Scripts • Provide consistency • Provide a platform for additional abilities • No need to wait for other people • Faster and less hassle. Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
24. Deployment checklist • Copy files & folders • Database schema & content updates • Configuration updates • File permissions • Clear caches Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
25. Tooling • Simple script • Make-like tool • Specialist tool Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
26. Simple script • Bash • Powershell • Usually runs on the server Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
27. Make-like tool • Abstracted script • Easier to make cross platform • Make/Phing/Ant/Rake • More likely to push to server Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
28. Specialist tools • Fabric/Capistrano • Ansible/Chef/Puppet/Salt • Deploybot • More likely to be automated Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
29. Challenges Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
30. Technical Infrastructure challenges • Platform • Permissions Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
31. Political • What is acceptable? • What are you allowed to do? • Does IT change things for you? • Does IT change things unexpectedly? • Change request documentation? Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
32. Case studies Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
33. Case study 1: Internal • Self-hosted by client • Within company network • Windows/IIS/SQL Server Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
34. Case study 1: Internal Multi-script solution 1. Script to tag code & build tarball 2. Ship tarball to UAT server via VPN 3. IT copy tarball from UAT to Live 4. Script to untar & run deploy steps Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
35. Case study 2: Minicomputer • Self-hosted by client • Some access to Internet • IBM i-series/DB2 Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
36. Case study 2: Minicomputer • CI tooling • Checklist • Manual tag creation for release • Automatic script to deploy Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
37. Final thought Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
38. Rob Allen ~ @akrabat
39. Thank you! Feedback: http://oreil.ly/2f2vuCH Rob Allen ~ akrabat.com ~ @akrabat