POWERING CONTINUOUS DELIVERY
Application Release Automation
Integrating Configuration Management
into your Application Release
eBook
Using the right tool for the job
Have you ever used a shoe to drive a nail
or broom to crush a bug? It may work, but
it’s more efficient to grab a hammer or use
pesticide. There is little distinction between
using the wrong tool and using the right tool
the wrong way. In both instances, you may be
able to achieve your desired outcome, but you
are likely to invest more time than you need
and the end product may not be all that great.
DevOps practices increase collaboration to
give teams shared visibility and control of
critical software pipelines. While there are no
tools that can magically help you “achieve
DevOps,” having the right tools facilitates
organizational agility. And while virtualization,
monitoring and continuous integration servers
are largely understood, there appears to be
a lot of confusion in the market surrounding
Configuration Management (CM) and
Application Release Automation (ARA) tools.
This e-book examines guidelines for using
these two different yet complimentary types
of technologies in the most effective way.
What are “DevOps Tools?”
The DevOps movement is rooted in the understanding that
every business is a software business and that software agility
drives a competitive advantage.
Over the past decade there’s been an explosion of “DevOps
tools.” While you don’t need to have tools in order to practice
DevOps, having the right tools can streamline the process.
Virtualization and Containerization
reduces the effort required to provision infrastructure.
Configuration Management (a.k.a “Infrastructure as Code”)
increases environment consistency to minimize errors.
Continuous Integration
increases velocity and quality of software being built.
Release and Deployment Automation
promotes product into production predictably, quickly
and safely.
There is little
distinction
between using the
wrong tool and
using the right tool
the wrong
way.
Configuration Management,
or, “Infrastructure-as-Code”
Servers (especially virtualized servers) have become
a commodity. In this landscape, treating each server
like a “work of art” and lovingly hand-crafting each
configuration is a waste of time. Instead, creating
infrastructure should be as repeatable and automated
as possible. Configuration Management tools like
Ansible, Capistrano, Chef, Fabric, Puppet, and
SaltStack provide a simple way to configure and
manage systems. This is done by effectively turning
infrastructure into code, making configurations
versionable, testable, and repeatable
– just like application code.
As teams gain success with configuration management
for infrastructure, many are tempted to use these same
tools to perform application deployments. However, a
lot of problems emerge in organizations that put these
tools into practice.
CM App Deployment Challenges
Sprawling masses of
configuration management
code
Hard-coded values leads to
brittle scripts and
lack of re-use
Per-project code duplication
eliminates sharing of
best-practices
Lack of shared understanding
of how everything works
together
Undocumented dependencies
between scripts lead to fear of
change and experimentation
Wild hacks and fragile
workarounds littered
with circular or transitive
dependencies or version
conflicts
These issues happen because tools are being used in
the wrong way and for the wrong purpose. Configuration
Management tools are declarative in nature, built to ensure
consistency, but not to automate sequential or branchedlogic processes.
CM solutions struggle, however, when applications are
introduced that have dependencies amongst applications,
networks, databases; or when they have configurations
which require temporal logic.
de·clar·a·tive
pro·ce·dur·al
/di`klerətiv/
/prə-ˈsē-jə-rəl/
adjective
adjective
denoting high-level programming languages that
can be used to solve problems without requiring the
programmer to specify an exact procedure to be
followed
the sequence of logic-driven processes through
which a piece of software passes from initiation to
completion.
Application Release Automation
Application Release Automation (ARA) solutions
are built for process automation, which help
ensure process fidelity rather then just focusing
on configuration consistency. As such, their main
functionalities include workflows that predictably
automate and orchestrate deployment release building
blocks.
ARA solutions may also provide packaging of
versioned application artifacts and configurations,
environment definition and tracking, notification
and triggering capabilities, rollbacks and various
integrations to the numerous auxiliary systems used by
both developers and IT operations teams.
PROCESS-AS-CODE:
WORKFLOWS
Workflows are designed to
accomplish specific tasks.
ARA solutions should provide builtin plugins to carry out these actions
appropriately regardless of the
underlying technology.
This allows commands like
STOP {AppServer}
START {AppServer}
to tightly integrate with WebSphere,
Tomcat, or JBoss without requiring
the workflow designer to know ahead
of time what the target will be at run
time.
Which path should you choose?
Promotion paths, audit
trails, and composite
releases belong in an
ARA solution...
...infrastructure consistency belongs
in configuration management...
and can be an integral part of your
Application Release flow.
A Tale of Two Tools:
Procedural vs. Declarative
For a typical 3 tier application (web, app
server, database) – how do deployments
and capabilities differ between CM and ARA
solutions?
Let’s find out by looking at four main areas:
• Setting up for the deploy
• Running the deploy
• Confirmation of completion
• Governance and Audit
1
Setup for the Deploy
Configuration Management
Application Release Automation
“Declare your way to your desired state”
“Model apps and connect the dots”
CM solutions are declarative, which means there
is no framework for procedural logic during a
deploy process.
ARA solutions allow modeling of apps and
environments to abstract out complexities
and simplify the deployment of any app to any
environment.
CM solutions depend on coding of individual
scripts that define and configure each tier of
the application. In total, these scripts may be
hundreds of lines of code with potential for
syntax errors and misuse of specific CM API
calls.
ARA solutions drive pipelines through custom
workflows with branching and error handling
ARA solutions often call CM tools within
deploy processes to configure infrastructure
efficiently.
2
Running the Deploy
Configuration Management
Application Release Automation
“Fire and Forget”
“Shared control and visibility”
CM solutions typically have a ‘fire and forget’
approach to deployment. During actual
execution, there is little visibility into the
progress, leaving the operator guessing on what
the outcome will be.
ARA solutions provide real-time progress for
each step of the deploy process. Operators are
able to see exactly what step their process is
executing and look back on details of previous
steps (success, failure, skip, etc).
Manual gates and approvals or simple logic
flows based on prior return codes allow
releases to accurately reflect the business
processes required to promote applications to
any environment.
3
Confirming Success
Configuration Management
Application Release Automation
“Manual troubleshooting”
“Traceability and transparency”
Verifying success of CM deploys requires a
combination of manually checking target servers
and scripting tests and notifications within the
CM configuration files. When troubleshooting
failed deploys operators assume the burden
of relying on scripts or logs to identify problem
areas.
ARA solutions provide direct visibility into
applications installed in any target server
environment. When problems arise, ARA
solutions provide traceability into the failed
process with call-outs to problematic steps and
access to associated logs and post-processed
summaries.
4
Governance and Audit
Configuration Management
Application Release Automation
“Ensure your configurations are compliant”
“See the Who, What, Where and How”
CM tools are focused on the infrastructure and
as such they can provide assurance that a given
policy (such as password requirements) has
been enforced on a set of servers.
ARA tools allow you to see who authorized
or approved a deployment, what was being
deployed, where the deployment happened,
and how (using which set of credentials/
impersonation).
POWERING CONTINUOUS DELIVERY
Summary
Can you deploy an application with an Infrastructure as Code tool?
Yes, but it’s awkward. Can you ensure configuration consistency with
an ARA solution? Yes, but it’s awkward.
The key is not what you CAN do with each type of technology
but what you SHOULD be doing, and knowing how to use the
best tool for the job. The blueprint is really simple: codify the basic
infrastructure layers using your selected CM solution and adopt an
ARA solution to automate processes and orchestrate activities.
To learn more about ARA solutions from Electric Cloud visit:
http://electric-cloud.com/ara
About Electric Cloud
Electric Cloud powers Continuous Delivery. We help organizations developing mobile,
embedded systems and enterprise web/IT applications deliver better software faster
by automating and accelerating build, test, and deployment processes at scale. Industry
leaders like Qualcomm, SpaceX, Cisco, GE, Gap, and E*TRADE use Electric Cloud
solutions and services to boost DevOps productivity and Agile throughput.
For more information, visit electric-cloud.com.
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