Why You Might Not Need Yet Another Environment

Multiple environments are a staple of software development projects, but do they actually help us make better software? Do they help us get it into the hands of customers faster? In this talk, I look at the goal of every development team -- delivering quality software. I review how environments have historically helped achieve this goal as well as the problems they have caused along the way. Finally, I look at alternative techniques that can be used in lieu of environments.

Transcript

1. WHY YOU MIGHT NOT NEED YET ANOTHER ENVIRONMENT @bradgignac
2. Deliver Quality Software The Goal:
3. Development Production
4. Development Production Staging
5. What’s the big deal?
6. Environments drift.
7. Environments lie.
8. Environments multiply.
9. Development Production Staging
10. Development DI CI Test Staging Production Stable
11. Development DI CI Test Staging Production Stable Development DI CI Test Staging Production Stable Development DI CI Test Staging Production Stable Development DI CI Test Staging Production Stable Development DI CI Test Staging Production Stable
12. Environments are expensive.
13. We have more tools available. Good News:
14. Feature Flags if feature.IsEnabled("newWidget") { widget := widget.New() } else { widget := widget.Old() } widget.Render()
15. Team Shipping if user.IsInGroup("my-team") { widget := widget.New() } else { widget := widget.Old() } widget.Render();
16. Phased Rollout if user.IsInPercentage(10) { widget := widget.New() } else { widget := widget.Old() } widget.Render();
17. Parallel Code Paths Request Old Code New Code Compare Results Persist (Old Result) Graphite
18. Parallel Code Paths 0 25 50 75 100 2:00 2:30 3:00 3:30 4:00 4:30 5:00 5:30 6:00 6:30 7:00 7:30 8:00 8:30 9:00 9:30 10:00 Total Mismatch
19. Parallel Code Paths Request Old Code New Code Compare Results Persist (New Result) Graphite
20. Canary v1 v1 v1 v1 v1 v1 v1 v1 Standby DC Production DC Release
21. Canary v2 v2 v2 v2 v1 v1 v1 v1 Standby DC Production DC Release
22. Canary v2 v2 v2 v2 v2 v2 v2 v2 Standby DC Production DC Release
23. Blue-Green Deployments Load Balancer v1 v1 v1 v1 v2 v2 v2 v2 100% 0%
24. Blue-Green Deployments Load Balancer v1 v1 v1 v1 v2 v2 v2 v2 50% 50%
25. Blue-Green Deployments Load Balancer v1 v1 v1 v1 v2 v2 v2 v2 0% 100%
26. No Free Lunch Increased operation complexity. Automated deployment pipeline. Centralized logging and metrics.
27. Happy Accidents Everything is automated. Experimentation is built-in. Disaster recovery is built-in.
28. Lessons Learned Test everything. Measure everything. Feature flags by default. Operational viability matters. Team culture matters most.
29. DO YOU REALLY NEED YET ANOTHER ENVIRONMENT
30. Questions?