Training: "Implementing a Continuous Delivery Pipeline: From Commit to Deploy"

Track: Tutorial

Time: Tuesday 09:00 - 12:00

Location: Seacliff C

Abstract:

Continuous Delivery is the practice of releasing high quality, business value to customers frequently and rapidly. Doing this effectively requires combining various practices and technologies in a highly automated way culminating in what we characterize as a “continuous delivery platform.” Many teams and organizations want to do continuous delivery, but find that combining the right pieces together in the right way is not so straightforward. What technologies are available and what can be used? How do you combine and structure them to create an effective continuous delivery pipeline?

This tutorial shows participants in a hands-on setting how to implement a working continuous delivery pipeline using key technologies—source control, build system, pipeline workflow system, tests, configuration management, and automated deployment—to release a new feature into “production.” We will use Git, Ant, Thoughtworks GO, xUnit, Selenium, Opscode Chef, and Amazon Web Services as representative technologies. As a bonus, we will also share some of our experiences dealing with cultural, organizational, and technical challenges while implementing a large-scale continuous delivery platform at Ancestry.com.

This tutorial is a great follow-on to Jez Humble’s “Continuous Delivery” tutorial on Monday. After learning from Jez about the fundamentals of continuous delivery, see how to implement a fully working pipeline from the architects of Ancestry.com’s large-scale continuous delivery platform.

Dan Gilmer, Ancestry.com, Manager of AppOps (DevOps)

 Dan  Gilmer

When I heard of the idea of “Infrastructure as Code” it made me rethink how I should look at my profession. I have been an engineer in both operations and development in my 12 plus years in this field. Blending agile processes into operations is the future of IT. Anything that can be automated - should be automated.

Ancestry was looking for a way to automate “build”, “server creation”, “server configuration”, “code deploy” and “server scaling” easily. The DEVOPS team finished this requirement by using OpsCode “Chef” and Thoughtworks “GO” tools. Ancestry.com now has a continuous delivery system that enables 120+ development groups to push code anytime.

John Esser, Director of Engineering Productivity, Ancestry.com

 John  Esser
John is currently the Director of Engineering Productivity and Agile Development at Ancestry.com. His team’s mission is to accelerate engineering’s ability to deliver value to the customer. He is the architect of Ancestry’s transformation to Agile development and continuous delivery. John has more than 25 years software development experience working for such companies as IBM, Corel, Callware Technologies, and Control4. His spare time is gobbled up by his beautiful wife, four teenage sons, reading lots of books, and fly-fishing for trout on the Provo River.