Configuration Management Best Practices: Practical Methods that Work in the Real World

Chapter 6. Deployment

Chapter Overview

6.1 Why Is Deployment Important? 87

6.2 Where Do I Start? 87

6.3 Practices and Examples 87

6.4 Conducting a Configuration Audit 91

6.5 Don’t Forget the Smoke Test 92

6.6 Little Things Matter a Lot 92

6.7 Communications Planning 92

6.8 Deployment Should Be Delegated 93

6.9 Trust But Verify 93

6.10 Improving the Deployment Process 93

Deployment is the final step in the code promotion process. Deployment involves taking the packaged release and promoting it into the target environment, which is likely production or perhaps QA. Deployment is also responsible for rolling back a promotion if something goes wrong. If you can seamlessly deploy and roll back if necessary, you will be able to significantly reduce ...