How to enforce deployment workflow(DEV->QAT->STG->Live)

[Service.Delivery]

Hi,

In my deployment process I want to make sure an application is deployed in DEV, QAT, STG and Live environments in that order.

Is there any way to enforce that flow in ROC/Nolio?

I tried using Release Parameter to store “last deployed environment” value and read the value of that parameter at the beginning of process to let user proceed or stop but Nolio doesn’t let me updated release parameter from process?

One another solution is maintaining state in shared file but I am not inclined towards this approach. 

Kind Regards,

Deepak

[Anon Anon]

Hi Deepak,

 

While there is nothing in RA that forces this, you can design it as part of your content, which is what you're trying to do.  Now you can't update a Release parameter after the Pre-Plan Initialization step has run because Release parameters are designed to be static for a Deployment Plan.  To implement this, I used an Environment parameter where I specified for in each environment what the next environment should be.  For example, I set my parameter (I call mine Next Environment) in DEV to the value QAT and then as part of a Post Deployment step/process, I create a deployment to that next environment.

 

Thanks,

Tom

[Service.Delivery]

Hi Tom,

 

Thanks for reply.

 

That's what we have done at the moment (Creating release for next environment at Post release).

 

Problem with this approach is user can by pass any environment by navigating to deployment plan then deploy to any environment he/she has got access to.

 

CA - suggested me to used ROC - Update Deployment Property Value to update value of release parameter, i will try it and update this post .

Thanks,

Deepak

[Anon Anon]

Hey Deepak,

 

I agree...as I mentioned in the previous post, RA doesn't do any enforcement so users can manually bypass this.  Another option you could look at is to implement a Previous Environment concept instead of Next Environment.  As part of the Pre-Deployment Initialization, you could check to see if the Deployment Plan was successfully deployed to the Previous Environment and if not, cancel the deployment (or maybe request and approval and proceed based on that).  In any case, both of these are workarounds and I'm hoping we see this enforcement built into the product soon.

 

Thanks,

Tom

[Service.Delivery]

Hi Tom,

 

We may see enforcement built into the product in Nolio 5.5.

 

Approach you suggested would work if we have a action to check deployment status of Deployment Plan in an environment.

I know only one action "ROC - Get Deployment Status" that can check status but this doesn’t take environment as input so can't check deployment status of other environment.

 

Do you know any action that can be used could check to see if the Deployment Plan was successfully deployed to the Previous Environment?

Kind Regards,

Deepak

[Anon Anon]

Hey Deepak,

 

While the REST API provides this functionality, there are no out of the box actions to do this.  But I did just add this action to a field developed action pack and posted it here:  CA Release Automation Field Action Pack.  The action is called Get Deployment Plan Deployments.  It can be configured with an environment filter and configured to fail if a successful deployment is not found.

 

Thanks,

Tom

[Service.Delivery]

Hi Tom,

 

Thanks a lot for developing "Get Deployment Plan Deployments" action quickly, we will give it a go and let you know.

 

Kind Regards,

Deepak

[Anon Anon]

Hi Deepak, was your problem solved with the above action?

Thanks,

Yael

[Service.Delivery]

yes, action Tom developed work fine.

At the moment I have to pass

 

1) Base RA URL

2) UserName

3) Password

 

Would be nice if action get those values  implicitly like other ROC actions does e.g "ROC - Create Deployment form Deployment Plan"

  

is it possible to do that?

 

-Deepak

[Anon Anon]

Hi Deepak,

 

The SDK does not provide access to the mechanism that uses those implicit values.  I’ve brought this up with engineering as an enhancement idea for the SDK.

 

Thanks,

Tom

[Service.Delivery]

Thanks Tom.

 

I wonder if we develop custom actions extending com.nolio.platform.shared.datamodel.Action instead of implementing NolioAction, we might be able to access those values implicitly.

don't  know what would be the risk in terms of update etc... because jar containing datamodel is not part of actionlib but that is in agent lib folder.

 

Kind Regards,

Deepak

[Anon Anon]

You may be able to access it by going down that route but since it is not a publicly available API, there is the risk that a change in a future release of RA will break the action.

[Service.Delivery]

Hi Tom,

 

Thanks for the reply, I am not going that route, will wait for enhanced SDK.

 

Kind Regards,

Deepak

[Anon Anon]

Hi,

Since this post seems to be Older, we would like to know if this workflow has been addressed in Latest RA Version 552? I