XebiaLabs’ DevOps as Code approach allows teams to define deployment packages, infrastructure, environments, release templates, dashboards, and more in YAML files that they can store in source control alongside their application code. But DevOps as Code doesn’t stop there. It also includes blueprints: an easy way to build everything you need to execute fast, repeatable, scalable releases and deployments.
A blueprint guides you through a process that automatically generates YAML files for your applications and infrastructure. The blueprint asks a short series of questions about your application and the type of environment it requires, and the XebiaLabs command-line interface (CLI) uses your answers to generate YAML files that define configuration items and releases, plus special files that manage sensitive data such as passwords.
After the YAML files are generated, you can apply them to your XebiaLabs DevOps Platform installation with a single CLI command and then check them into your source control management system. You can go from initial setup to a running release in a matter of minutes.
Blueprints make it easy to on-board teams
Blueprints are an ideal way to on-board projects, applications, and teams across the enterprise to the CI/CD toolchain, without a lot of administrative overhead. A DevOps team can design blueprints that help other teams start taking advantage of the build, test, provisioning, deployment, and release orchestration tools in the toolchain, even if those teams aren’t familiar with every tool.
Using blueprints to on-board teams means that you can spread best practices for automated testing, code analysis, and application deployment across the enterprise. For example, you can create a blueprint that helps teams add static code analysis tools such as Black Duck, Fortify, SonarQube, and Checkmarx to their release pipelines, so they can benefit from automated security and compliance analysis for their application code.
Blueprints help teams move to the cloud
Migrating applications from on-premises infrastructure and legacy middleware systems to cloud-based platforms requires a level of expertise that’s hard to find. Development teams that haven’t had a chance to develop deep cloud knowledge may find it hard to adapt their applications and design cloud-based architecture in a way that scales for long-term, enterprise-level storage, bandwidth, and security requirements.
Blueprints help DevOps teams share cloud knowledge, lessons learned, and best practices across the enterprise. A team with a high level of cloud expertise can create blueprints that guide other teams through the configuration process, abstracting away the need to manually set up network interfaces, public IP addresses, network security groups, virtual networks, security rules, subnets, route tables, and more.
Want to run a demo featuring Amazon EKS? Check out the tutorial here. If you aren’t using the XebiaLabs DevOps Platform yet, sign up for a free trial to get started.
