Continuous Delivery Pipeline on Google Cloud Platform

Introduction to Continuous Delivery Pipeline

It is the release of software at high speed without the need to sacrifice on the respect of a security or the quality. GCP ( google cloud platform ) is a developer tool that helps us for an end to end continuous delivery, covering the development of software in multiple clouds based setups such as in the multi-cloud, hybrid cloud, and also on the premises environments. Here we come across a term multi-cloud, which is a group, or we can say a combination of two or more computing services. It generally refers to a mix of public infrastructure environments, which is Iaas.

Examples are amazon web services, Microsoft Azure, and more. Here also comes a term hybrid cloud, which is integrated cloud services using both public and private clouds to perform different functions in the same organization. Organizations can maximize their benefits using the public cloud for all the non-sensitive operations and private cloud when they require it can be for sensitive information. It ensures seamless integrity. For On-Premises environment, which is installed and running of the software on the premises of the persons or organization. So, this is called continuous delivery.

A strategy in which the development teams ensure the software is reliable to release at any time. Click to explore about, Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery

How does Continuous Delivery Pipeline work on Google Cloud?

In waterfall model, suppose if we have a client and if our client says we want you to build our project, it may take some time to do a project maybe 6 months , maybe 1 year and its not good to say to our client that wait for 6 months or maybe 1 year, we will give you the project because things are changing right now, and client cannot wait for it as client requirement might change or maybe there is some miscommunication i.e., client is asking for something else, and we are giving something else. So, for need continuous feedback, a different approach is used which is agile, in which ready product is rolled out every two to three weeks, i.e., not the entire product but part of it which means modules of it. If there are ten features, one or two features can we rolled out early with continuous feedback.

For a project, which has individual modules, and have multiple developers to work on it, and one module is assigned to each developer, so when we write our code and its working fine and then the unit testing is done but in testing we have one more thing that is integration testing because all these developers will work together because when they work together, they have to integrate in somewhere so that our operation takes place, and operational team is responsible for making our project and deploying it on server, but we have missed our integration testing and who is responsible for it.

Continuous Delivery is the core principle of DevOps. It includes predictable deploys, reduced risk with new features, shorter feedback cycle with the customer and overall higher quality of software. Click to explore about, Continuous Delivery Best Practices

So there are automation test things for it but what if something goes wrong, for this continuous integration is enabled, put code on our repository and commit and every time we invest there will be an automation testing that means write, determine and test and at the end we will have a ready project which is tested and suppose our client wants the work done till now of the project we will deploy on a box service that is a fake server, client will be happy to see his project working and that is continuous delivery. So, you are not deploying currently on the actual server, but you are keeping it ready, i.e., when you want, you can deploy it. So, when you push your code on the actual server, that's Continuous Deployment.

What are the Stages of a CI/CD Pipeline Deployment Pattern on Google Cloud?

The continuous Delivery pipeline consists of these following stages -

Test Automation as well as CI

This is a stage where all the new features and prototypes that we have made are prepared, and the code is integrated with the base. With the help of a Continuous Integration tool and platform, the unit test occurs.

Build Automation

This is the stage where developers push a Docker image to the repository.

Alpha Deployments

At this stage at which the developer checks for his code. It's a place for developers to see the changes they have made and how they interact with each other and also rectify the bugs if any are there.

Beta Deployments

This is the place where testers who do the testing do manual testing. Manual testing is required to see the perfection of the code by end-user apart from Continuous Integration tools.

Production Deployments

This is the final stage in which the app goes live in the form of Continuous Development.

Continuous Integration (CI) is a process where developers combine their changes back to the main branch and detect integration errors as quickly as possible. Click to explore about, Continuous Integration vs Continuous Deployment

What are the Benefits of Continuous Delivery on Google Cloud?

The benefits of Continuous Delivery is listed below:

Deliver software with lower risk and fewer bugs - When we release our software with smaller changes more frequently, we tend to get bugs in the lower stage of development and can be fixed asap moreover we have automation testing at every stage of development so that our code will not pass test cases and will not go to next step.
Release new features to market more frequently - Working on agile models that are getting regular feedback and updating our software helps us in the project being developed according to client requirements, and we can release new features more frequently by using continuous delivery.
Respond to market conditions more quickly - we live in a dynamic environment, and as soon as we know like our new product is losing money or our website being accessed by more from smartphones than from laptops, so we can optimize our site and give it to the client using continuous delivery as soon as possible.

What are the Principles of a Continuous Delivery Pipeline?

The principles of Continuous Delivery Pipeline are described below:

The process of releasing software must be repeatable and reliable: It means that we should release builds frequently, maintaining quality and security, and according to the client's demands.
Automate Everything: We should automate everything we do regularly and repeatedly. What can be described can be automated.
If something is difficult, painful, do it more often: It means that working on a project which lets us think is difficult, when we work on it, improve it, automate it, it feels comfortable.
Improve continuously: don't sit idle like let the system be outdated then we will work on it, we should continually work on it improve it, fix vulnerabilities, make it more secure reliable and less memory and time Consumption.

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Why is Google Cloud Platform Important for Continuous Delivery?

Ships Faster - It eliminates the manual process to build and development cycles with the automated build; it is testing so that developers can focus on writing code, not debugging scripts.
Reduces Risk - With open-source tools like Kubernetes, GCP provides a secure, traceable environment to provider lock-in.
Improve Quality - It improves quality by traffic splitting, blue-green deployments.
Scale quickly - GCP developer tools lets do scaling efficiently whether it respects performance or scale.
Run-on Hybrid or multi-cloud - For deploying GCP on-premises servers or other cloud platforms.
Build and Deploy Securely - GCP identifies package vulnerabilities in our container images, and container image is one in which our packages and its dependent libraries are put for use.

A Holistic Strategy

Continuous Delivery pipeline is an implementation of Continuous patterns, where automated builds are performed, its test and deployments are orchestrated as one release. In other, it is a set of steps the code changes which we have written will go through to make there a way to production. A CD pipeline delivers quality products frequently from test to staging to production. The focus is on three concepts quality, continually, and predictably. This allows teams to make small incremental changes without causing significant damage in production. Predictably implies that releases are deterministic.