There's lots of documentation and a kludgy console to set up continuous deployment in Cloud Foundry, but I haven't found any documentation on what the artifacts inside a repository need to be.
I don't want to cut-n-paste flows from the node red editor. If that's the only way, then IBM is not ready for prime time. I also am aware of most everything about my flows being in the Cloudant nodered db.
A node red application is more than the flows though. What about my _design docs for my dbs?
I need device info and other stuff from the Watson console, Cloudant info and my flows packaged up into something deployable.
Has anyone scripted this?
What I mean by this is I can clone a Docker project, an npm project and all sorts of projects that implement a build->test->push mechanism. They employ a configuration script of some sort (e.g. package.json) and contain a bunch of source files for the actual application, test scripts, db scripts, whatever is necessary to deploy the application and its environment into a host. I see lots of documentation on the toolchain and its features, but I'm not clear on if it's possible to make use of it for my hosted node red application. Or if I have to write the scripting mechanisms to offload flow info from the nodered db and query all my other dbs for their respective _design docs and all the other configuration information required to set up an IoT node red application.
I forgot to mention, the copy/paste method loses information; you get no tab level metadata. The only way to get all the flow stuff is to pull if from the nodered flow record.
Node-RED will release a new version in a couple of days that will introduce projects, so you'll be able to use GitHub and all the usual tools to handle your app: https://twitter.com/NodeRED/status/956934949784956931 and https://nodered.org/docs/user-guide/projects/
While it doesn't address your short-term needs, I think it's the best long-term solution. Hopefully that helps.
Related
Every time I deploy the solution to the target the changes are not reflected for the Cloud flows so below step I followed to activate the flows.
Remove the unmanaged layer from the Could flow solution.
Import the solutions to target the environment
Check for the all the cloud flows and make it off and on to see the connections are properly added or not.
these steps are manual for me. Need help how to automate these steps as the number of the flows are more.
To turn flows on / off - active / inactive one can use the Microsoft.PowerApps.Administration.PowerShell and Microsoft.PowerApps.PowerShell modules. They are thoroughly documented and these can be used to turn cloud flows on and off again. With powershell you can automate this process.
Importing solutions to the target environment can be automated by using the package deployer tool.
I am not sure how one is able to automate the removal of the unmanaged layer from the cloud flow solution. If I figure that out I will post back here.
Can somebody bring some light in IBM Cloud deployments tools / platforms whatever?
I am new to it, so I am looking at their docs, watching videos and still i am confused.
What I want to achieve is typical scenario fetch code from repo, build it, test it, deploy it to cloud. I found strategies / platforms how to achieve that and i still can't see differences advantages / disadvantages between them.
So we have:
toolchain
cloud foundry
code engine
Continuous Delivery (service)
and maybe something more? :)
I am looking at Cloud Foundry explained video and the guy is saying if you want to do not care about the bottom part like networking, security, containers you can choose deploy using K8S service. Wtf? So from total automatic thing you can now handle something in the cloud foundry by yourself. So for me its total mix of everything together and i don't know now which tool / platform / strategy to use.
Any comment is appreciated.
It all depends on your requirements.
IBM DevOps/Continuous Delivery/Toolchanis is set of services that can build and deploy your application to given runtime. You can find various tutorials here - https://www.ibm.com/cloud/architecture/courses/toolchain-tutorials. These tutorials shows you various things that you can embed in your build pipelines (like code scanning with CRA, image scanning, signing etc)
These runtimes can be different depending on your requirements:
CloudFoundry, where you deploy app using a buildpak, but this is rather fading technology, so I wouldn't recommend that
as docker image in K8s/OpenShift cluster - use this if your organization is planning or already utilizing Docker/Kubernetes/OpenShift. You will need to create K8s/OpenShift cluster first.
as serverless app, using the IBM Code Engine
If you are just starting and just want to deploy simple, single app to the Cloud I'd consider using IBM Code Engine and not investigate Toolchains for now. Check basic demo here - How to deploy source code with IBM Cloud Code Engine
overflowers!
Can someone please advice me on the best way to continuously deploy PHP code from github to GCP Compute Engine? Specifically to GCP Marketplace LAMP Stack, which is the Google Click to Deploy VM? Here is the link to the market place
Your advice is greatly appreciated!
Click to Deploy (C2D) is an excellent way to test drive solutions but I'm (admittedly somewhat naive but) skeptical that it's a good approach to combine C2D with customization.
That said, the C2D solutions are published and you could, with some work, customize the solution as the basis for your own solution.
In other words, I'd recommend not combining the C2D as-is but to customize the tools that it uses (!) for your needs.
The README explains how the LAMP VM is built (Cloud Build, packer, chef).
Without wishing to in any way impugn your approach, please consider alternative ways to deploy PHP to Google Cloud Platform. Running Apache and MySQL on a VM may be entirely appropriate for your needs but you will need to maintain the OS, Apache, MySQL etc.
If you're goal is to deploy a PHP (web) app that needs a MySQL-compliant database and you want to be more "cloud native", you could consider using:
App Engine or Cloud Run to host your PHP app (see link)
Cloud SQL for the database (see link)
The above would require more initial work but, if you want more flexibility, resilience and less "chore", I think you'd benefit from the investment.
In addition opening up the app like this would facilitate leveraging Cloud Monitoring, Logging, Debugger etc
What is the best way to achieve DevOps with XPages.
Multiple Developers working as a team, On Premises Servers [Dev, QA,
Prod] can we replicate to Bluemix? Source Control Automated Testing UI
/ Application, Unit testing business logic with testing framework, Automated Deployment
IDE/Tools
Domino Designer; are there other ways?
Note: Use of Views when the data is in a NSF, otherwise data is in the cloud, or SQL. No Forms or other classic Notes design elements.
What are your approaches to this?
This is a high level overview of the topics required to attempt what you're describing. I'm breezing past lots of details, so please search them out; I've tried to reference what I'm currently aware of as far as supporting documentation and blog posts, etc. of others. If anyone has anything good to add, I'm happy to add it in.
There are several components involved with what you're describing, generally amounting to:
scm workflow
building the app (NSF)
deploying the built app to a Domino server
Everything else, such as release workflow through a QA/QC environment, is secondary to the primary steps above. I'll outline what I'm currently doing with, attempting to highlight where I'm working on improving the process.
1. SCM Workflow
This can be incredibly opinionated and will depend a lot on how your team does/wants to use source control with your deployment / release process. Below I'll touch on performing tests, conceptually, during/around the build step.
I've switched from a fairly generic scm server implementation to a GitLab instance. Even running a CE instance is pretty fantastic with their CI runner capabilities. Previously, I had a Jenkins CI instance performing about the same tasks, but had to bake more "workflow" into the Jenkins task, whereas now most of that logic is in a unified script, referenced from a config file (.gitlab-ci.yml). This is similar to how a Travis CI or other similar CI config file works.
This config calls some additional helper work, but ultimately revolves around an adapted version of Egor Margineanu's PowerShell script which invokes the headless DDE build task.
2. Building an NSF from Source
I've blogged about my general build process, with my previous Jenkins CI implementation. I followed the blogging of Cameron Gregor and Martin Pradny for this. Ultimately, you need to:
configure a Windows environment with Domino Designer
set up Domino Designer to import from ODP (disable export), ensuring Build Automatically is enabled
the notes.ini will need a flag of DESIGNER_AUTO_ENABLED=true
the Jenkins CI or GitLab CI runner (or other) will need to run as the logged in user, not a Windows service; this allows it to invoke the "headless dde" command correctly, since it runs in the background as opposed to a true headless invocation
ensure that Domino Designer can start without prompting for a user's password
My blog post covers additional topics such as flagging the build as success or failure, by scanning the output logs for being marked as a failed build. It also touches on how to submit the code to a SonarQube instance.
Ref: IBM Notes/Domino App Dev Wiki page on headless designer
Testing
Any additional testing or other workflow considerations (e.g.- QA/QC approval) should go around the build phase, depending on how you set up your SCM workflow. A lot of the implementation will revolve around the specifics of your setup. A general idea is to allow/prevent deployment based on the outcome of the build + test phase.
Bluemix Concerns
IBM Bluemix, the only PaaS that runs IBM XPages applications, will require some additional consideration, such as:
their Git deploy process will only accept a pre-built NSF
the NSF must be signed by the account owner's Bluemix ID
Ref:
- IBM XPages on Bluemix
- Bluemix Docs: Building XPages apps for the Bluemix Runtime
3. Deploy
To Bluemix
If you're looking to deploy an XPages app to run on Bluemix, you would want to either ensure your headless build runs with the Bluemix ID, or is at least signed with it, and then deploy it for a production push either via a git connection or the cf/bluemix command line utility. Bluemix's receive hooks handle all the rest of the deployment concerns, such as starting/stopping the server instance, etc.
To On-Premise Server
A user ID with appropriate level credentials needs to perform the work of either performing a design replace/refresh or stopping a dev/test/staging server, performing the file copy of the .nsf, then starting it back up. I've heard rumors of Cameron Gregor making use of a plugin to Domino Designer to perform the operations needed for OSGi plugin development, which sounds pretty useful. As most of my Domino application development is almost purely NSF based, I'm focusing more on an approach of deploying to a staging/dev/test server, which I can then perform a design task on to do the needed refresh/replace; closer to the "normal" Domino way of doing things.
Summary
Again, there are a lot of moving pieces involved here, some of which gets rather opinionated rather quickly. For example, I'm currently virtualizing my build machine, so I can spool up a couple virtual machines of it, allowing for more than one build at a time. If there are major gaps in the process, let me know and I'll fill it what I can.
I have some questions around the best mechanism to deploy MVC web applications to different environments. Previously I used setup projects (.msi's) but as these have been discontinued in VS2012 I am looking to move to an alternative.
Let me explain my current setup. I currently have a CI setup using TFSBuild 2010 with Team Foundation Server for source control.
A number of developers work on their local machines and check in to the TFS Server. We regularly deploy to a single server dev environment and a load balanced qa environment with 2 servers. Our current process includes installing an msi which carries out some of the following custom actions:
brings current app offline with the app_offline.htm file
run in database scripts (from database project in the solution)
modifies web.config (different for each web server of qa)
labels the code
warmup each deployed file via http request
etc
This is the current process. Now I would like to make some changes. Firstly, I need alternative to msi's. From som research I believe that web deploy via IIS and using MsDeploy is the best alternative. I can use web config transforms for web config modifications. Is this correct and if so, could I get an outline of what I need to do?
Secondly I want to set up continuous delivery via TFSBuild, I have no idea how this may be achieved, would it be possible to get an outline of how it can be integrated in to my current setup? Rather than check in driven, I would like it to be user driven following check in. Also, would it be possible for this to also run in database scripts from a database project in the solution.
Finally, there is also a production environment, but I would like to manually deploy this - can my process also produce an artifact that I can manually install?
Vishal Joshi has some information on his blog that is reasonably good, http://vishaljoshi.blogspot.com/2010/11/team-build-web-deployment-web-deploy-vs.html. It does have the downside that your deployment password is include in the properties you pass to msbuild.
Syed Hashimi has also posted some information on this in another questions Team Build: Publish locally using MSDeploy.