Automating Releases through Continuous Delivery (CD) Pipelines

This standard mandates the use of fully automated Continuous Delivery (CD) pipelines for all releases, ensuring safe, repeatable, and error-free deployments while minimizing manual intervention and risk.

1. Automated Releases via Continuous Delivery (CD) Pipelines:

All deployments to production must be executed through automated CD pipelines, designed to eliminate manual steps and ensure consistent, reliable, and safe releases.

• 1.1 Safe, Repeatable, and Error-Free Deployments:
  • 1.1.1 Automated Deployment Pipelines:
    • Implement automated CD pipelines to deploy code changes to production environments.
    • Ensure pipelines are idempotent, producing consistent results regardless of the environment's initial state.
  • 1.1.2 Automated Configuration Management:
    • Automate the management of environment configurations using tools like Ansible, Chef, or Puppet.
    • Ensure configurations are consistent across all environments.
  • 1.1.3 Automated Deployment Verification:
    • Integrate automated verification steps into the CD pipeline to validate successful deployments.
    • Implement health checks and smoke tests to ensure application stability post-deployment.
• 1.2 Advanced Deployment Strategies:
  • 1.2.1 Feature Flags:
    • Implement feature flags to enable or disable features dynamically without requiring code deployments.
    • Utilize feature flag management tools to control feature rollouts and experiments.
  • 1.2.2 Canary Releases:
    • Implement canary releases to deploy changes to a small subset of users before rolling out to the entire user base.
    • Monitor key metrics during canary releases to detect potential issues.
  • 1.2.3 Blue-Green Deployments:
    • Implement blue-green deployments to minimize downtime during deployments.
    • Switch traffic from the old (blue) environment to the new (green) environment after successful testing.
• 1.3 Automated Rollbacks:
  • 1.3.1 Automated Failure Detection:
    • Implement automated monitoring and alerting to detect failures in production.
    • Utilise metrics and logs to identify anomalies and performance degradation.
  • 1.3.2 Automated Rollback Mechanisms:
    • Implement automated rollback mechanisms to revert to previous versions in case of failures.
    • Automate rollback triggers based on predefined thresholds and error rates.
  • 1.3.3 Rollback Validation:
    • Implement automated validation steps to ensure successful rollbacks.
    • Verify that the system is stable and functioning correctly after a rollback.
• 1.4 Zero Manual Intervention:
  • 1.4.1 Fully Automated Deployments:
    • Enforce a policy that all deployments to production must be fully automated, with no manual steps required.
    • Eliminate manual approvals and interventions from the deployment process.
  • 1.4.2 Automated Pipeline Triggers:
    • Automate pipeline triggers based on successful CI builds and test suites.
    • Implement automated triggers for scheduled deployments and emergency rollbacks.
• 1.5 Pipeline Observability and Monitoring:
  • 1.5.1 Pipeline Logging and Tracing:
    • Implement comprehensive logging and tracing for CD pipelines.
    • Utilize tools to visualise pipeline execution and identify bottlenecks.
  • 1.5.2 Deployment Metrics:
    • Track deployment metrics such as deployment frequency, lead time, and failure rates.
    • Use metrics to identify areas for improvement in the CD pipeline.
  • 1.5.3 Real-time Monitoring:
    • Implement real-time monitoring of deployed applications and infrastructure.
    • Set up alerts for critical events and performance degradation.

By implementing these automated CD pipelines, organisations can achieve faster, more reliable, and safer releases, minimizing risks and maximizing efficiency.