Release Validation

Challenge: "Release and Pray"

Watch Release Validation Demo (3:13)

Multiple transitions between environments exist along the application lifecycle, including the most challenging one: release into production. Those releases are highly visible and typically entail stabilization periods and can even cause downtime with direct impact on revenue and profitability.

A number of factors frustrate the roll out of new releases:

• Platform Complexity
  An evolutionary and ever increasing complexity of platforms on which these systems run, makes it clear there are many moving pieces that must fit together seamlessly to guarantee the success and long-term value of a product or project
• Agile Software Development
  Agile software development methodologies have driven the number of releases radically higher. The increase of release events  means increased pressure on release management teams, further compounding the task of IT Operations to maintain stability while tracking and executing these releases
• Greater Distribution
  As software systems, the development process, and resources become more distributed, this reality contributes to less visibility and adds to the management challenge.

It doesn't take much to create an outage or instability.  Here are some common examples:

• In the distribution of files to multiple servers,  one file does not reach a particular server, creating periodic issues that are very hard to reproduce
• A connection string that defines the connectivity between application and database is not changed, leaving the production application to point to the test database
• A change made in the production configuration prior to release is overwritten by the new release, creating a problem in the production environment

When any little change can be the impetus for a high impact incident, it is not surprising to experience painful stabilization periods after releases and even production outages. Release, Deployment and IT Operations teams are faced with the added challenge of ensuring accurate error-free release of applications and appropriate configuration during promotion and software deployment, taking into account configurations that are inherently different between pre-prod and production.

To improve application deployment and software deployment success, reduce risk and gain certainty, Release, Deployment and IT Operations teams need to:

• Increase release visibility: gain detailed visibility of what is being released down to the most granular level of the configuration parameter
• Authenticate release reliability: Guarantee accurate validation to confirm that execution adheres to the release plan
• Ensure that pre-production emulates sufficiently production: synchronize changes introduced directly to production with the validated release

Solution: Guarantee Accuracy During Releases

Evolven Change Monitoring takes on the dynamics and complexity of the modern data center and cloud, in a way that was never available before, drilling deep and uncovering the most minute mis-configuration, which many times are the root causes of high impact environmental incidents occurring following a release.

Evolven makes Configuration Management easy, by analyzing environment configuration information, comparing environments or a single environment to a historical snapshot or a golden baseline, playing a critical role in ensuring accurate, error-free releases.

To prevent outages and minimize downtime, Evolven Change Monitoring helps in:

• Assuring integrity of pre-production environments
• Providing visibility into release content
• Ensuring that the release is transitioned as expected

 To this goal, Evolven Change Monitoring empowers Release, Deployment and IT Operations teams to:

• Compare production and pre-production environments prior to release in order to ensure that pre-production sufficiently emulates production
• Detect changes introduced by release in pre-production to ensure that testing and release teams are aware of the exact release content
• Compare production and pre-production after release to verify the accurate transition of release content and configuration

Evolven Change Monitoring is powerful:

• Covers the entire IT environment - wide variety of applications and their underlying infrastructure, including: applications, front-end servers, middleware, databases, messaging layer, operating systems, virtualization layer, and hardware
• Dives to granular level – drills down to the most granular level of the individual configuration parameter in any configuration source, including configuration files, registry, database schema, stored procedures, and reference data held in the database
• Delivers actionable information – applies powerful analytics to classify configuration changes by impact and criticality
• Realizes value quickly –relies on groundbreaking analytics to delivers initial value in hours, not days or months

Results: Releases with Confidence

With the increasing complexity of IT systems, combined with meeting the fast changing demands of the business, it is a major challenge for the Release, Deployment and IT Operations teams to ensure smooth releases.

With any little mis-configuration of a single parameter possibly instigating a high impact incident, releases end up in long, drawn out stabilization periods, even resulting in production outages.

By assuring integrity in environments, providing visibility into the release content and ensuring that the release is transitioned as expected, Evolven Change Monitoring brings certainty to releases and reduces the high-impact risks associated with them.