Deploying An Application From Development To Production Environment: A Deployment Essay.

This project report is aiming to the process of deploying an application from a developing environment to a production environment that is also called as testing environment. Deployment plan is used to define the steps of all the operations that must be followed in order to deliver the required changes in the target environment. This plan must be approved before the deployment date. It will ensure the reduced chances of failure in the target system.

The objective of deployment plan is to do the necessary changes in the target environment in a well-structured and continuous way to minimize the risk factors. Following are the main points related with the scope and objective of deployment process:

The plan must be agreed by the stakeholders of company.

All the service components of the proposed operating system and DBMS software must be compatible with each other.

In operating system deployment, if company is considering windows operating system following are some of the pre-requisites:

Windows support both BIOS and UEFI firmware.

If case of UEFI firmware, SP2 is required

In case of windows 10 deployment, MDT Bundle is required with version 3.8.12 which must be created through MDT 2013 update 1 and integrated with WADK. ("Automate and manage Windows operating system deployments", 2017)

Operating system deployment process must need following system requirements:

For PCs Installation

We require DHCP server

Any other portable disk such as FDD, CD, DVD or any other drive (USB, flash or zip drive)

For Target Computer Systems we need:

Bootable drive, it may contain FDD, flash or USB

If there is requirement to boot OS from ManageEngine PXE server then PXE support must be supported by BIOS

For operating system deployment the minimum hardware requirements are: ("Hardware and Software Requirements for Installing SQL Server 2016", 2017)

Some of the compatible operating systems for the deployment server are as follows:

• .Net framework
• Network software
• Hard disk with 6GB free space
• Drive
• Monitor super-VGA(800x600) or higher resolution VDU
• Internet
• Memory recommendation is 1GB
• Processor speed x64 processor with 1.4GHz
• Processor type must be AMD Opteron, AMD Athlon 64 etc.

In operating system deployment process some of the security concerns are very important which must be handled appropriately such as:

• Implementing access controlling credentials for bootable disk
• Using secured location for creating media for OS images
• Protect certificate files using strong password.
• Never save business applications or any software which may contain some sensitive data in OD disk image

There may be multiple ways of deploying an operating system on production server. At the time of deployment process following points must be kept in mind: we must identify the device driver of operating system which is mandatory to run the boot setup of operating system. Boot image of OS must also be identified to start the target device. The image of OS must be captured that we want to deploy. On the destination device the boot image of OS and any other required contents must be copied.

We can deploy the DBMS in production environment using command prompt in following steps:

Install the .NET framework minimum service pack 1 including 3.5

Install the SQL server management studio

The deployment process of Microsoft operating system or database management system is complicated, little bit costly and very difficult to maintain the consistent results. It can be automated and manual. In case of automated deployment process of operating system and database we can face the challenges of:

The downloading of operating system, its drivers and all the necessary files those can be useful while deploying an OS on the hardware of organization. Creation of bootable image and after the installation of an operating system other applications can also be installed on production server. In this environment, contiguous attention towards OS and DBMS is key to success. The deployment process is repetitive and reliable in the process. ("IBM Knowledge Center Error", 2017)

System Requirements

Repackaging is a process of creating a customized installation program or setup files. This setup file will contain all the necessary files and also the registry keys in one place and can be accessible from the entire network of organization. In the process of repackaging sometimes the routine task may be complicated and error prone. It will be more crucial if the installation is to be done in a large enterprise environment. Using repackaging this problem can be easily resolved. This process is mostly as per the standard of organization. The outcome of repackaging is very frequent and reliable. Following are the advantages of repackaging:

• Installation is customized
• It will reduce the cost regarding support
• It will implement the features of windows installer such as repairing and resiliency.
• Automated installation
• Stability

Installation testing is done to ensure the success of proposed operating system and DBMS software. It is to be done in labs. The labs are very structured and represent the user group. If the number of groups is large and there is different hardware then we must create different labs. Before deploying operating system and DBMS, all the computers in lab must be tested for functioning as per the minimum requirements of OS and DBMS. The system functions of starting, connecting the system with Internet, disk space available etc. All the systems of network must be connected by using a strong check list. It is recommended that a backup copy of the data must be created which will be helpful in case of installation failure and we again install the original copy of database and operating system. In case of any bug, technical issue all the details must be recorded in a well-defined manner.

Just like the installation process, the uninstallation process must also be tested. In this process the software which was installed in the production server must be uninstalled. The uninstallation process may be different for operating system and the DBMS software. It is performed to ensure about the removal of all the components of application which were installed at the time of installation.

It is a combination of all the activities which make any software available for consumers. There are many interrelated activities in this process which will execute at the producer side or consumer side. In operating system deployment process security is another factor. One of the examples is that windows 8.1 have more security features such as secure boot, UEFI support.

Database deployment process can be described as the process of installation of software at the consumer side. At the time of development the software is provided to all the developers in isolated manner, in which every developer has to work in different environment. The accessibility of production server is restricted many times. The production server might contain some other databases which may be preserved. In other words when we deploy our DBMS, it is not compulsory that we have the right s to change the server settings in every case. A database may contain several database objects which may change by the database administrator. We can put the server objects in different folder to restrict the versioning. (Fritchey, 2017)

In the deployment process of any application, the application is firstly configured before the deployment. It may use a specific resource and tuning settings that can be best suited for the available resources on the production server. Configuration of application has several points in the application’s deployment life cycle. This configuration may be of different types, such as: configuration related with development, export, time and post deployment configuration etc. The primary motive of application configuration is to generate a new deployment plan for the production server which must be valid, appropriate and reliable. The deployment plan must hold all the issues which might occur at the different levels of deployment. The perfect configuration deployment plan can be determined by the frequency of different environments where we can deploy our application.

• The differences in these environment’s resources
• The probability of the expected changes
• The requirement of ownership for configuration implementation in different areas of application

In the trouble shooting step we may encounter some of the issues while we are creating, modifying, building or deploy any database software or operating system. Some of the issues which must be resolved in this step are:

• Erroneous database objects
• New Keywords introduced in latest version
• Dependencies
• Undo for pending changes
• Inconsistent state of database
• Performance issues
• Syntax errors
• Duplicate objects

In the same way the operating system deployment process can also be troubleshoot by using configuration manager. Some of the common possibilities for these types of issues can be non-availability of client GUID, network accessibility is unavailable, lack of reference program policy, invalid path may be entered etc. All these issues can be troubleshooting by using configuration manager. For this log files can be used, continuous monitoring of operating system deployment process can also be the way to minimize the chances of any problem.

References

Automate and manage Windows operating system deployments. (2017). Technet.microsoft.com. Retrieved 14 June 2017, from

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn818437(v=ws.11).aspx

IBM Knowledge Center Error. (2017). Ibm.com. Retrieved 14 June 2017, from

https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/SS63NW_9.5.0/com.ibm.bigfix.lifecycle.doc/Lifecycle/OSD_Users_Guide/c_system_requirements.html

Fritchey, G. (2017). Database Lifecycle Management: Deployment and Release - Simple Talk. Simple Talk. Retrieved 14 June 2017, from https://www.simple-talk.com/sql/database-delivery/database-lifecycle-management-deployment-and-release/

Hardware and Software Requirements for Installing SQL Server 2016. (2017). Docs.microsoft.com. Retrieved 14 June 2017, from https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/sql-server/install/hardware-and-software-requirements-for-installing-sql-server