Once a team has implemented a software solution, it's time to see that particular piece of software in action. To see the software in action, you basically need to install and run that software in an environment that's available to end users. Such a process is called deployment.
Deployment involves a lot of things. In the past, it was just a matter of copying a binary file somewhere and running it, probably using an FTP server and an SSH session.
As we described earlier in this book, software has changed drastically in terms of languages, capabilities, functionalities, and integration points. All software is connected using various protocols and systems. Thus, deploying a piece of software has become a complex process.
Today, especially in the microservices era, software is distributed in the cloud and every component needs to interact with others; this means a quick and dirty copy and paste of the binary is not a valid option anymore.
Software needs to be flexible, adaptable to business change, consistent, reliable, and performant, and it needs to respond quickly to new business needs. Therefore, software must be bug-free, and before you can deploy it to a production environment, you need to make sure it works properly both from a functional and infrastructure point of view, it integrates perfectly with the other systems involved, and it can be managed by a DevOps team. Testing is the key to success, and a proper platform to manage the entire process is mandatory.
As you can see, deploying a piece of code is a complex process, but fortunately there are lots of tools and patterns you can follow to automate the entire process and make sure your software is bug-free.
Fortunately, we have OpenShift, which is the right platform to manage such processes, leveraging the microservices in container deployment.
In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:
- Continuous integration and continuous delivery
- Blue-green deployment
- Canary deployment
- A/B testing deployment
- Rolling deployment