Case Study: Jeweler’s Mutual Insurance Streamlines Complex Application Deployments With CA Release Automation

World®
’16
Case Study: Jeweler’s Mutual Insurance
Streamlines Complex Application
Deployments With CA Release Automation
Tim Dallmann - Platform Engineer - Jewelers Mutual Insurance Co
DO5X07S
DEVOPS

2 © 2016 CA. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.@CAWORLD #CAWORLD
Agenda
INTRODUCTION
WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?
RESULTS
THE JEWELERS MUTUAL SOLUTION
RELEASE AUTOMATION CHALLENGES
CA-RELEASE AUTOMATION: OUR IMPLEMENTATION
1
2
3
4
5
6

Introduction
Who Is Tim Dallmann?
Professional
30+ Years in IT
Developer
Architect
Manager
Personal
Husband
Father
Drummer
Brewer

Introduction
Who Is Jewelers Mutual?
Company
> 100 years
Neenah, WI
Employees:
250 Overall
60 in IT
Commercial
Lines
Jewelry
Store
Craftsman
Personal
Lines
Wedding
Sets
Earrings
Watches

The Jewelers Mutual Technical Landscape
Many Environments to Manage
DEV01 DEV02 DEV03 DEV04
TEST01 TEST02 TEST03 TEST04 TEST05 TEST06
STAGE
INTEGRA-
TION
PROD

Complex system integrations
Dependencies that impact
deployments
A large inter-dependent system

A diverse set of artifacts to deploy

What’s the Problem?
Developers spending 60%
of their time managing
environmental issues
Releases are large and
complex – only deployed
once each month
Environmental Stability and Complexity
RESULT: Inability to
respond quickly to change

A Team is Born!
“Environment Stabilization Team”
1 Created a foundation for continuous delivery:
§ Unit testing in Jenkins for .Net and Java applications
§ Automated lengthy regression test scripts with HP UFT
2 Realized the need for automation tools:
§ UpGuard: to compare environments and detect unauthorized changes
§ Puppet: to automate the infrastructure
§ CA Release Automation: to automate deployment activities
3 Created a dashboard to display environment status

Release Automation Challenges
All applications are part of a larger
dependent system
Any release could include any set
of applications, requiring
coordinated deployment activities
§ Shutdown
§ Queue suspension
§ Backup
§ Deployment
§ Startup
What makes our deployments complicated?
Same image as original file
but in different colours than
version on 123RF. Brand

Release Automation Challenges
Other goals
Notifications of
pauses, failures and
release progress
Health check of the
environment
Rollback
capability
Validation
testing
Pauses for manual
operations
Tokenization of
configuration files

Release Automation Implementation
§ Less than 7 weeks to go from
zero to Deploy!
§ Remote-led POC prior to
implementation
– Segregated lab environment
§ Servers and agents installed
prior to Services arrival
Planning for success

Jewelers Mutual CA Release Automation Implementation
Getting Started
1 Take inventory of all deployable artifacts
2 Examine how they are deployed today (before automation)
3 Determine where each one originates
4 Group them based on deployment similarities
5 Create a flow diagram for each type of artifact

Example Deployment Flow Diagram

Single-Application Approach
Coordinate activities between all
artifact types:
§ Shutdown process
§ Backup
§ Deployments
§ Restart process
§ Notifications
§ Automated testing
Modelling the entire system as one deployment application
1 2
34
5

All artifacts are part of a single CA Release Automation “application”
Components alignment:
Modeling the entire system as one deployment application
Component à Artifact Type à Artifact Definition à Server Type(s)
Guidewire à WARFile à PolicyCenter à PC_Batch, PC_Online
.Net à IISApp à PLPortal à WAP
.Net à WinApp à DashboardCons à BAT
.Net à WinSvc à PaymentService à EAS
Ratabase à RBDistro à RBDistro à RAT_Primary

The “General” component:
§ Provides common flows used in
multiple processes
§ Health-check activities for all servers
§ Gathering credentials from KeePass
§ Manual stops in processes
§ Deployment-level notifications
Common “shared” actions and flows

Error Handling and Logging
Check Deploy Status
Handle Pause
§ Log it
§ Email It
§ User Operation
Handle Fail
§ Log it
§ Email it
§ Stop deployment
Handle Log Messages
§ Log it
Handle Dash Messages
§ Build REST Operation
§ Send to Dashboard
Handle Error Messages
§ Log it
§ Email it
§ User Operation
Asynchronous Process

Deployment Notifications
Self-subscribing to various events:
§ Deployment about to start (warning message)
§ Deployment started
§ Deployment steps complete (pre-validation)
§ Deployment complete (post-validation) with
status
§ Test results
§ Database Deployment failures
§ Deployment paused
Configurable by environment
Communicating what is going on

Rollbacks
Pre-deploy
§ Get the latest installed version of each
artifact
§ Create a package with those artifacts
§ Create a deployment plan using that package
§ Create a rollback deployment and attach to
the current deployment
On failure – rollback deployment
manually invoked
Recovering from disaster

Health-Check
§ Run during Pre-Deploy
§ Each component has it’s own health-check flows
§ Some “general” health-check flows run for all
server types
§ Validates things like:
– MSDeploy is installed
– Tomcat instances are running
– IIS running
– Enough disk space for deployment
Ensuring the environment is ready for deployment

Dynamic Step Adjustment
§ Based on artifacts in
package
§ Removes deployment
steps that are not
needed
§ Why? Even un-used
process steps take time
Removing Unneeded Process Steps
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5
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9

The Deployment Template
Package Creation
Health Check
Remove Steps
Create Rollback
Initialization
Start Error Handler
Send Notifications
Shutdown
Backup
Deploys
Start Guidewire
GW Admin Imports
Start Queues
Web Apps Online
Notifications
Stop Error Handler
Deployment
Validation Testing
Integration Testing
Post-Deploy
Major steps to release

Pros and Cons of the Single-Application Approach
Provides a framework for all other
deployment types
Complex dependencies, including manual
steps, are accounted for
Logging and error handling are consistent
across all artifact deployments
Workflows get large and complex
Application parameters = no shared
components
Breaking the workflow means you’ve
broken it for all deployments
PROS CONS

Task
Enablement
Developers, QA Analysts, and
even business users have the
ability to run their own
deployments, allowing the
deployment team to focus on
growing and enhancing release
capabilities.
Environment
Issues
Developers rarely need to
address issues with
environments, and can focus
on “real” work instead.
Release
Frequency
What used to be a single
monthly release involving
many man-hours of effort has
evolved to 1-2 releases each
week, with only a handful of
people spending 45 minutes of
their time.
Results
The Impact of CA Release Automation

Recommended Sessions
SESSION # TITLE DATE/TIME
DO5X12S
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Customer Network Set Top Boxes with CA RA CDE
11/17/2016 at 01:45 pm
DO5X14S
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Release Automation
11/17/2016 at 03:45 pm
DO5T19S
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Delivery Practice
11/17/2016 at 04:30 pm

Must See Demos
Modernize
App Delivery
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Theater 5 - DOV501P
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Test Data Manager
Theater 5 - DOV511P
Deliver
Better Apps
Service Virtualization
Theater 5 - DOV507P
Orchestrate
Your Release
Release Automation
Theater 5 - DOV513P

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Thank you.

DevOps – Continuous Delivery
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Case Study: Jeweler’s Mutual Insurance Streamlines Complex Application Deployments With CA Release Automation