Application Release Automation with Zero Touch Deployment™
Today's agile organizations pose operations teams with a tremendous challenge: the ability to deploy new releases to production, where they can be reviewed by users and potentially generate revenue, immediately after successfully completing development and testing. In other words, the deployment process should be fully automatic and transparent as soon as it is activated. This integration of the deployment station to the iterative and incremental approach that characterizes the agile development and testing stations is also known as 'Zero Touch Deployment™'.
In its extreme form, Zero Touch Deployment™ depicts a process whereby release to production is automatically triggered by the successful promotion of a new build from the acceptance testing station. Tailor-made deployment manifest files are often created to enable Zero Touch Deployment™ for complex releases.
Manifest deployments separate the dynamic elements of the application release from the fixed processes. This involves putting all the dynamic, changeable elements of a deployment in an xml file, or other data source, including such details as: which application resources should be taken, their specific location and version number. These details can be changed quickly and easily per release. The simple fixed processes, directing how the release process should be executed, are kept separate and can be employed and repeated time and time again. These processes enable a deployment station which supports the agile life cycle by clearing an open passage to the production environment and customer for every iteration.
Nolio has successfully enabled fully automated deployments in the Hudson Continuous Integration (CI) system and Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010.
Learn more about Zero Touch Deployment™ in Hudson CI
Learn more about Zero Touch Deployment™ in Microsoft TFS 2010
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