Deploy changes with automation

Controlled changes are essential for deploying new functionalities and ensuring that workloads run known software versions. Implementing automated deployments and patching enables organizations to reduce negative impacts, ensuring predictable and stable updates to their environments, ultimately enhancing reliability.

Best Practices

Implement Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) Pipelines

• Utilize CI/CD tools like AWS CodePipeline, Jenkins, or GitLab CI to automate the build, test, and deployment processes. This allows for consistent and repeatable deployments, reducing human error and enhancing reliability.
• Incorporate automated testing at each stage of your pipeline to ensure that only code that meets defined criteria gets deployed, which minimizes the risk of introducing bugs into your production environment.
• Set up automated rollback mechanisms to revert to a previous stable state in case a deployment fails, thus minimizing downtime and maintaining service reliability.

Use Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

• Implement IaC with tools such as AWS CloudFormation or Terraform to manage and provision your infrastructure through code. This ensures that your infrastructure is versioned, repeatable, and consistent across environments.
• By describing your infrastructure in code, you can automate the deployment process for changes, which helps to enforce controlled and predictable changes.
• Regularly review and test your IaC templates to ensure they stay up-to-date and function as expected, thereby improving reliability and reducing deployment failures.

Automate Monitoring and Alerts

• Integrate monitoring tools like AWS CloudWatch, or third-party solutions, to automatically track the performance and health of deployed changes. This ensures that any issues can be detected and addressed promptly.
• Set up automatic alerts based on predefined thresholds so that teams can respond quickly to any potential reliability issues caused by new deployments.
• Use logging and monitoring insights to continuously improve the deployment process, making adjustments as needed to enhance reliability and performance.

Implement Blue/Green Deployments

• Utilize blue/green deployment strategies to minimize downtime during changes. Maintain two identical environments, directing traffic to the ‘green’ version while updates are made to the ‘blue’ version, allowing for a seamless transition.
• This strategy not only enables quick rollbacks and testing in production but also reduces risk by ensuring that updated versions of applications can be fully tested before being made live.
• Monitor application performance and user feedback during and after the switch to ensure reliability is maintained.

Questions to ask your team

• Do you have automated deployment processes in place for your workloads?
• What tools or platforms are you using to automate deployments and patching?
• How do you ensure that automated deployments do not introduce errors into the system?
• What testing or validation steps are integrated into your deployment automation?
• How do you handle rollbacks in case of a failed deployment?
• Is there a monitoring system in place to verify the success of automated changes?
• How often do you review and update your deployment automation processes?

Who should be doing this?

DevOps Engineer

• Design and implement automation frameworks for deployments and patching.
• Monitor deployment processes to ensure they are functioning as intended.
• Collaborate with development teams to integrate automated testing into deployment pipelines.
• Document automation processes and maintain adherence to best practices.

Site Reliability Engineer (SRE)

• Ensure service reliability and uptime during deployment changes.
• Establish monitoring and alerting for deployment processes.
• Conduct post-deployment reviews to assess impact and performance.
• Work with teams to create rollback plans in case of deployment failure.

Product Owner

• Prioritize features and changes based on business value.
• Coordinate with stakeholders to ensure alignment on deployment schedules.
• Review and approve deployment plans and rollback strategies.
• Facilitate communication between teams during and after deployment.

Quality Assurance (QA) Specialist

• Develop automated testing scripts to validate new functionality before deployment.
• Conduct performance testing to ensure reliability post-deployment.
• Work closely with DevOps to integrate quality checks into the CI/CD pipeline.
• Review test results and provide feedback to development teams.

Change Manager

• Oversee the change management process to ensure controlled changes.
• Document deployment and patching plans, including risk assessments.
• Facilitate change advisory board (CAB) meetings to review major changes.
• Ensure compliance with organizational standards and procedures.

What evidence shows this is happening in your organization?

• Automated Deployment Pipeline Template: A CloudFormation or Terraform template that sets up a CI/CD pipeline to automate deployment processes for applications, ensuring that all deployments are version-controlled and reproducible.
• Deployment and Change Management Policy: A formal document outlining the organization’s policies for managing changes, including guidelines for automation, testing, and rollback procedures to minimize risks associated with deployment.
• Automated Change Management Playbook: A comprehensive playbook detailing the processes involved in automating change management, including roles, responsibilities, and tools to be used for deployments and patching.
• Reliability Automation Dashboard: A real-time dashboard displaying metrics related to deployment frequency, change failure rate, and recovery times, giving visibility into the effectiveness of automated deployment processes.
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Best Practices Guide: A guide that outlines best practices for using IaC to automate infrastructure provisioning and changes, ensuring consistency and reliability in the deployment of workloads.

Cloud Services

AWS

• AWS CodePipeline: Automates the build, test, and release process for applications, enabling continuous integration and delivery.
• AWS CloudFormation: Allows you to define and provision infrastructure as code, enabling consistent and repeatable deployments.
• AWS Elastic Beanstalk: Automatically handles the deployment, from capacity provisioning, load balancing, and auto-scaling to application health monitoring.

Azure

• Azure DevOps: Provides a set of development tools for CI/CD, enabling teams to plan, develop, deliver, and monitor applications.
• Azure Resource Manager: Enables you to create, update, and delete resources in your Azure account using templates.
• Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS): Simplifies the deployment, management, and operations of Kubernetes for containerized applications.

Google Cloud Platform

• Google Cloud Build: A CI/CD platform that enables you to build, test, and deploy applications quickly and reliably.
• Google Cloud Deployment Manager: Allows you to create, configure, and deploy Google Cloud resources using templates.
• Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE): Managed Kubernetes service that automates the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.

Question: How do you implement change?
Pillar: Reliability (Code: REL)