release management in tfs 2015

Daniel MannSenior Software Development Consultant

InCycle Software

Release Management in TFS 2015

We Help Customers

Achieve the Next Level of Success

Gold

Gold

ALM Senior Consultants and Azure Architects across North America

• What’s new in 2015?

• What’s coming?

• Why is it coming?

• How do I prepare for it?

• When it coming?

• Client-side performance improvements

• Client-side display tweaks (builds are ordered alphabetically)

• Ability to release “vNext” (task-based) Builds

• Release Management 2013 / 2015

vs

• Release Management Service

• Agent-based release template

vs

• vNext release template

Release Management Server is not going anywhere!

• Release capabilities natively integrated into Team Foundation Server

• Robust web UI – no more client software

• Some concepts will carry over, some will not

• Separation of Release and Deployment

Release:

• What software am I releasing?

• To what environment am I releasing it?

• Who is responsible for approving/validating the release?

• Release metrics (time between releases, length of release, etc)

Deployment:

• How do I configure this environment so it can run my software?

• How do I install my software?

Design

Approval

Workflow

Design

environment

configuration

Choose

build

artifacts to

release

Execute

Release

Capture

metrics

Design

Software

Installation

• Ease of use

• Tighter integration with TFS / VSO

• Huge focus on going cross-platform and cross-technology

• Existing RM deployment model was tightly coupled to Windows and .NET

• Plenty of other deployment tools out there that are already mature and feature-rich

• “Classic” release templates don’t scale well

• “Classic” release templates don’t enforce Configuration As Code

• Your environment configuration and deployment should ideally be:

Comprehensible (to everyone!)

Source-controlled

Versioned along with the application(s) being deployed

• Why?

Prevents configuration drift

Better auditing

Better understanding of environment capabilities

• If you’re using actions in “classic” (agent-based) release templates, avoid using that model for new projects

• Start deploying new projects with PowerShell scripts, DSC, or Chef

• Use Release Management to invoke those scripts and manage the approval workflows

• Consider redesigning existing releases using the above model

+ Easy to write (for developers)

+ Mature -- lots of documentation available

- Hard to write / understand (for non-developers)

- Not a configuration management tool

- Fundamentally still tightly coupled to Windows / Microsoft products

+ Easy to write and read for everyone

- May require additional education

- Limited resources out of the box for common tasks

- Linux support exists, but is in its infancy

- Difficult to discover new resources (PowerShell 5 helps with this)

+ Large community

+ Large repository of cookbooks for common tasks

- Chef server requires Linux

- Recipes are all written in Ruby

- Requires Chef client to be installed on all target machines

• Existing RM release templates cannot be imported to Release Management Service

• Guidance and tooling to help smooth the migration will be released

There is no specific release date.

Availability in VSO sometime in 2015.*

Available in on-prem TFS in mid-2016.*

Book Your TFS

2015 Upgrade

by December

31st!

Microsoft

Program

/InCycleSoftware @InCycleSoftware /company/incycle-software incyclesoftware.com/blog/

Contact us: info@incyclesoftware.com

1-(800) 565-0510

Upcoming webcasts:

What’s New & Why You Need to Upgrade – November 3rd 11am PT/2pm ET

TFS 2015 Upgrade Scenarios & How to Avoid Surprises – November 20th 10am PT/1pm ET