Overview

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In order to build and deploy an application there are multiple tasks which need to be executed by different teams at different stages of the development lifecycle. For example - The developers build the code, then the code is extracted and verified, then this code is deployed in a demo environment for the QA team to test. The testing of the code itself has multiple tasks which are performed by the QA team, for example - automated testing, manual testing, etc.

Now let us imagine a scenario where you are the release manager and using Spinnaker for the Continuous Integration and Deployment of the application. For one release cycle of the application you will have multiple pipelines with multiple stages and substages of the pipeline from different teams.

For example -

• Pipeline 1 is from the developers where they have built and integrated codes from different team members.

• Pipeline 2 is for code analysis and integrated unit testing.

• Pipeline 3 is from the QA team, in which the code is extracted and deployed in the test environment.

• Pipeline 4 is where the testing happens.

• And finally, Pipeline 5 is for the product deployment.

All these above pipelines will have multiple small tasks as stages and substages of the pipelines. Wow! This is already confusing me while I am thinking of such an example. Moreover, the permutations and combinations of pipelines have no limits, instead of 5, there can be any number of pipelines for ONE release cycle of an application.

This is where the Add Service Pipelines of OES will help you to simplify such a complex situation. In OES, you can sync or import the Spinnaker application and group the similar pipelines as one. To understand better let us simplify the above example which has five pipelines.

• The first two pipelines are from the engineering or the development team with tasks related to the development of the code. You can easily combine the first two pipelines as one. So after combining, Pipeline 1 is code build and integration of codes from + code analysis and integrated unit testing.

• Similarly, Pipeline 3 and 4 are tasks from the QA team. So after combining Pipeline 2 is code extraction and deployment + testing.

• Pipeline 5 is for product deployment. Let’s keep the same as this is a unique task. So Pipeline 5 is now pipeline 3.

Please note, we have instantly reduced the load from 5 pipelines to 3 pipelines. This is how grouping or combining service pipelines feature of OES will help you to simplify the release cycles and will make your life a lot easier while facing complex scenarios. Next we will learn how to add service pipelines.