While the basics of deployment are simple, in reality, deployment is a complicated process. The goal of a deployment is “Making an application available to end users”. This means that for the end user to open the browser and hit “www.xebia.com”, the application must be fully functional behind the scenes to serve the request. Let’s follow the end user’s browser request and see what components it hits; First it hits a firewall, then an http server, another firewall, the application server and finally the application running in the application server which uses a database to retrieve some data. In total there are 5 components involved to get the application successfully available. We need to not only configure all 5 components but also place some data on some of those components and make sure they are (re-)started in the correct order to get the pretty picture to the end-user. Thus in a nutshell the application deployment consists of installing the application, configuring resources, configuring middleware components, starting/stopping components, maintaining the correct order and repeating the same steps with different configurations across DTAP environments. Most of the times we tend to do this process manually. The manual process as the name suggests is usually time consuming, not predictable and un-reliable. This causes frustrations for, and between, developers and deployers, not supporting the business needs and therefore too expensive. This session would explore ways to automate the deployment process in order to make it repeatable, defect free, less taxing and less expensive.

1. Automating JEE Deployment Process
Vikas Hazrati
www.xebiaindia.com

2. Challenges Of Deployment Are Getting Tough
Everyday

3. Enterprises and System Administrators are
Juggling with Deployment Challenges

4. On Average Enterprise is Spending
$852,187 Per Year for Deployments

5. Bringing Down This Cost is an Achievable
Goal

6. Automating the Deployment Process is
the Key

7. ===== Act II, Scene 1

8. Earlier
Those were
the days

9. Enterprise JEE Deployment is a Complex
Task

10. For Each Application There are Multiple
Deployment Categories

11. Configuring the Deployment Categories is
an Involved Process
Installing the Application
Configuring Resources
Configuring Middleware Repeating the same
Components Steps across
environments
Starting / Stopping
Components
Maintaining the Order

12. Support for Multiple Deployment Categories
Report on the status of each category

13. Amount of Infrastructure Increases as
Business Grows

14. Data Centers are Around the World

15. Manual Deployment or Home Grown Scripts
Often Fall Short

16. Suggest Deployment steps based on different
Easy to write / plugin deployment scripts
Deployment categories
Suggest Deployment steps based on different
Deployment categories
Standard deployment steps should be overridable

17. Workload Associated with Managing
Applications is Growing

18. Reasons for Increase in Workload
Complexity is
Little or no Tooling is
Often
Automation limited
ignored

19. ===== Act II, Scene 2

20. Enterprise JEE Deployment is Expensive

21. Large Number of Specialized Staff Required
for Deployment and Script Writing

22. AD Can Help by Reducing the Cost

23. Time Spent on Configuration Issues is High

24. Should have the capability to use separate configuration
files for DTAP environments

25. Downtime Leads to Lost Money

26. ===== Act II, Scene 3

27. Enterprise JEE Deployment is Unpredictable

28. Too Much Dependent on People

29. Configuration Drift

30. Should show the current state of the deployment
Preview of changes
Should maintain a history of deployment changes
Log all changes

31. Should show the current state of the deployment
Version the configuration changes in source control
Transaction Boundries and Rollback ???

32. Possible Solution

42. ===== Act III

43. Enterprise Deployments are Marred With
Challenges and High Costs

44. Deployment Automation is the Key to IT's
Future

45. Start With One of the Products and Take
One Bite at a Time

46. Automating Deployment – Makes You Feel
Better

47. References & Credits

48. For More Details
vhazrati@xebia.com
http://blog.xebia.com
http://xebee.xebia.in