Continuous Integration and Zero Touch Deployment
Continuous Integration (CI) is used in agile release management to speed time-to-delivery while maintaining high quality. It is a a software engineering practice in which isolated changes are immediately tested and reported on when they are added to a larger code base. CI enables developers to swiftly integrate changes to projects and generate numerous builds a day. Productivity is greatly increased by the automated, continuous build process.
With CI, changes go immediately into the build loop and you end up with lots of builds. But what do you do with them? Nolio Application Release Operations Suite provides the solution, with application release operations to enable Zero Touch Deployment. Nolio's integration with CI tools enables agile deployment and sanity testing with every build. Continuous deployments are realized and development teams can easily deploy multiple times a day.
The Challenge of Continuous Deployment
When using CI, the quickest way to detect errors is by verifying each integration by an automated 'build and test'. However, due to the complexities of today's applications, standard continuous integration 'build and test' models are no longer enough to ensure the software will be fully operational. The only way to truly ensure the application will be free from errors is by deploying it into an environment. To work in accordance with agile methodologies, many small iterations must be released frequently and applications are continuously deployed. To guarantee error-free application deployments, the user needs to include deployment automation within the continuous integration practice. However CI tools are typically unable to adequately facilitate deployment automation and this often leads to bottlenecks, delays and errors.
The Importance of Traceability
Traceability is vital. Manual errors in CI tools are frequent due to the size and complexity of the system; it is very easy for users to make mistakes while attempting to retrieve the correct artifacts from the right drop location in a library teeming with resources. It is therefore essential that the user can easily determine the precise location, status and version of every application component at all times. However, CI tools typically do not currently record exactly what is being deployed where at any given time.
Nolio processes offer full traceability. The precise locations of all build versions can be tracked at any moment in time so, if an error does occur, the source can be swiftly located and rectified. Automation also eliminates the risk of errors, reduces bottlenecks and increases time-to-market.
Support for Leading CI Tools
Nolio offers out of the box plugins for leading CI tools including Hudson, Jenkins, Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS), TeamCity, and others.
