WHITE PAPER

Pushbutton Application Deployment and Change

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Pushbutton Application Deployment and Change

Introduction
IT is becoming infinitely more complexsoftware is increasingly diverse, the number of systems that need to be managed is exploding, and change is accelerating up and down the stack, particularly as a result of Agile and other iterative approaches to software development. According to industry analysts, 70-80% of IT spending is operating expense, and half of it is attributable to application deployment and deployment-related tasks. This is particularly true for Microsoft Windows environmentswhich make up 74% of the data center server market1 where complexity is at an all-time high, and growth is faster than any other platform. IT organizations need a new approach to automating the deployment and change of their applications. rPath provides this new approach. It uses deep system modeling and version control to industrialize automation, and to standardize and automate the software supply chain and the business service lifecycle. rPaths approach to automation relieves IT from the classic tradeoff between speed and control. It enables IT organizations to deliver applications much fasterin minuteswhile maintaining control. While rPath delivers pushbutton deployment for applications built on Linux and other platforms, the focus of this whitepaper is automating the deployment and change of .NET and other Windows applications.

rPath: Automation for On-Demand IT

rPath automates software system construction, image generation and lifecycle management of standardized software components and stacks across physical, virtual and cloud environments. Think of rPath as the service factory for on-demand IT for enterprise IT organizations, ISVs and managed service providers. rPath enables: 1. Pushbutton software deployment and change for agile IT operations; 2. On-demand reuse of standardized software stacks for self-service IT; and, 3. Dynamic workload deployment and retargeting for private and hybrid clouds.

Ronni Colville, Vice President, Gartner, Inc., 2010.

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Pushbutton Application Deployment and Change

Figure 1: rPath is the service factory for on-demand IT.

There are two key aspects of rPath that make it unique. Deep System Modeling The system model is about creating a blueprint for how systems should look and using that as the basis for constructing and maintaining systems over time. rPath automatically analyzes and deeply models entire software stacksfrom the application through the OSand every layer in between. The result is a deeply modeled system inventory, which describes the desired state of every file, binary, application component, and software stack on every production system, including information about policies that must be adhered to, the entire dependency chainincluding OS components, middleware and librariesand the impact of change. These models are stored as version-controlled system manifeststhey provide deep system transparency, and serve as a basis for conflict-free deployments, updates and managing the complete lifecycle of deployed systems. System Version Control System version control is about describing systems over timeeasily roll the system forward, back or reproduce itexactlyacross release lifecycle stages. rPath is not a source code management systemits an operational management platform that applies the principles and disciplines of source code control to the management of deployable software systemssystem manifests, packages, binaries, policies and configurations. System version control is the technological foundation that allows a complex system to be defined by a single version number, ensuring systems can be quickly reproduced, patched and updated, rolled back and reported on.
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Pushbutton Application Deployment and Change

rPath uses deep modeling and version control to industrialize automation, and to both standardize and automate the software supply chain and the business service lifecycle. rPath system automation is a way to bring consistency, control and scale to .NET and Windows production environments. In particular, there are two scenarios for using rPath within Windows data centers: 1. 2. Windows application deployment and change .NET and Windows release automation

Windows Application Deployment

Why is .NET such a popular platform for in-house development? A key reason is Microsoft's optimization of .NET for the developer experience. .NET programmers have a broad, consistent platform at their fingertips and excellent integrated tools, including version control, team collaboration, and a single-click ability to deploy a fresh application directly to a system. Thats a tremendous advantage for application developersbut what about IT operations? If you're responsible for deploying, updating, maintaining, and troubleshooting .NET and other Windows applications in production, you have few tools to choose from and very little automation available. Many real-world Windows production environments are diverse assemblies of scripts and manual processes cobbled together by harried IT operations engineers trying to cope with unstable, rapidly changing applications and exploding scale. The result can be a massive bandwidth mismatch. Development can generate .NET application changes much faster than operations can consume them. This is exactly why rPath has extended its automation capabilities to Windows environments. With rPath, here's how a typical Windows deployment scenario works: Developers run a simple integration that imports each new complete application build into the rPath repository where it is automatically analyzed for missing dependencies. QA uses rPath to deploy the application to a staging system (where that staging system was provisioned from the same manifest of OS and patches production is using). When ready to deploy, the release manager updates the production system manifest to a new version in the repository, and rPath ensures it is dependency-complete and ready to run. When the maintenance window opens, IT operations personnel use the rPath management console to mass-update the production systems to the new manifest version. On each system, rPath makes an incremental, transactional change to install the new software.

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Pushbutton Application Deployment and Change

The result is a tremendous improvement in the speed, control and predictability of Windows application deployments and updates. It allows IT to get their heads above water and to meet the volume of new applications and application changes with a deployment platform suited to the task. rPath features for automated Windows application deployment include: Automatic analysis of Windows and .NET application dependenciesrPath analyzes .NET assemblies for runtime dependencies and stores that dependency information with the imported software. That supports automatic dependency resolution and conflict detection when assembling the software into a complete system manifest. Model-driven deployment of .NET and other Windows applications to physical, virtual or cloudA system manifest is a complete model for the software and configuration that should be on a system, without depending on a particular target format. You can generate (or regenerate) images for physical, virtual, and cloud-based systems from the same versioned manifest. Import of .NET and other Windows applications from MSI, compressed archives, directories of files, and source controlrPath supports all common formats for software handoffs.

Windows Release Automation

rPath delivers the same breakthrough release automation features for both Linux and Windows, automating three key uses cases: application deployment, application change and application lifecycle management.

Automated Application Deployment

rPath automates deployment of complete software stacks to development, test, and production teams. This provides the repeatability and speed of image-based provisioning without giving up the flexibility of model-driven system builds. For Windows, rPath constructs systems starting with a WIM (Windows Imaging Format) image, which can be a base Windows Server operating system or a customized build for your environment. rPath layers patches and software on that WIM image according to the version-controlled manifest for the system, and generates images for physical, virtual, and cloud deployment. Benefits for automated Windows deployment include: Model-driven deploymentUnlike golden images, which are opaque and difficult to reproduce, rPath manifests are models that can regenerate images on demand. Images are simply provisioning accelerators.

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Pushbutton Application Deployment and Change

Target independencerPath separates system construction (choosing operating system, middleware, application, and configuration) from system deployment (deploying an image to physical, virtual, and cloud systems). That avoids duplicate effort and wasted time maintaining separate builds for separate targets. WIM basisWIM is a well-known, established, easy-to-manage standard for base Windows systems.

Automated Update and Patching

rPath manifests serve two primary purposes: generating images for rapid provisioning, and driving updates. The rPath model for changing systems is: 1. Add the new software artifacts to version control. 2. Update the system manifest in version control to refer to the new artifact. 3. Automatically and incrementally update the system to match the new manifest. To deploy software and updates to existing systems, rPath uses a completely agentless model. To update a system to a new version of a manifest, rPath: 1. Computes the new files, packages, and applications required to move the system to the new version. 2. Creates MSI packages to encapsulate the new content. 3. Installs the MSI by driving the system over WMI. Key benefits for automated Windows provisioning include: Flexible software importThe rPath repository can import software via GUI, API, CLI, and Microsoft Visual Studio/Team Foundation Server integration. rPath can consume .NET assemblies, MSI installers, ZIP archives, and raw files. Hierarchical modelManifests can derive from other manifests. For example, you can define a base Windows manifest to capture common policy for your Windows systems, and derive a database system manifest to capture policy that is specific to database systems. That lets you update once, at the right level of the hierarchy, and cascade changes across the environment. Surgical update targetingSince the manifest describes what software is on which systems, manifest updates automatically target changes to only those systems that need them. MSI basisrPath takes advantage of standard, built-in functionality (the MSI installer) for making software changes, making rPath management easy to adopt. For example, experienced Windows system administrators can see the rPath changes in the MSI registry.

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Release Lifecycle Management

rPath uses system version control to drive standardization across the release lifecycle. The process starts with software (from in-house or external software development) and OS artifacts from system engineers. When artifacts, applications stacks, or entire systems are ready for testing, developers explicitly promote the versions to the next stage. Role-based access control makes the new versions available to testing only when promoted. This lifecycle applies to all content in system version control, including .NET and other Windows applications, and system manifests. Two key benefits for release lifecycle management include: Elimination of driftSince versions are immutable, rPath guarantees that QA is testingand production is deployingthe right artifacts. Closing the loopFrequently, applications flow downstream from development to IT operations, but platform, patch, and security standards flow upstream. A common version control repository makes it easy to define standard systems in operations and use them in development and testing.

Conclusion
Todays IT organizations are under pressure to deliver applications much faster and with fewer resources. Meanwhile, IT is getting infinitely more complexits the age of massive scale and change! rPath, the service factory for on-demand IT, provides a new approach to automating the deployment and upkeep of enterprise applications and business services. This enables IT to deliver applications much fasterin minuteswhile maintaining control. In addition to providing strong support for Linux, rPath now offers pushbutton deployment and change for .NET and other Windows applications.

About rPath
rPath is model-driven system automation and control for enterprise IT, ISVs and on-demand service providers. rPath uniquely provides full lifecycle management of software components, configured systems and orchestrated business services for rapid provisioning, conflict-free change, and consistent and compliant IT systems. rPath models and manages the entire software stack, from the application through the OS; and back through the software supply chain, from the deployed system to the source of software content and change. The result is a low-overhead solution for consistency and control in software systems construction, deployment and change across physical, virtual and cloud-based environments.

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Copyright 2010 rPath, Inc. All rights reserved. rPath, rBuilder and the rPath logo are registered trademarks or tradmarks of rPath, Inc. All other brands and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. Information supplied by rPath is believed to be accurate and reliable. rPath assumes no responsibility for any errors in this brochure. rPath reserves the right, without notice, to makes changes in product design or specications.