Application environment issue, process redesign consideration

Products

• CA Release Automation - Release Operations Center (Nolio)
• CA Release Automation - DataManagement Server (Nolio)

Issue/Introduction

We use a generic flow (application in RA) to be able to quickly on-board a lot of applications. So we've generic flows to deploy applications to different platforms.

As more and more servers are added to application environments we face some below issues often

1: Blocking execution due to server type got stuck with old failed release, which keep running

2: Generic flow is very complex and many teams are contributing to same, hence very limited control on stability of the process.

Cause

Processes have overgrown in complexity and need some refactoring consideration, along with some of the features of product allowing parallel execution.

Environment

Release : 6.6

Component : CA RELEASE AUTOMATION RELEASE OPERATIONS CENTER

Resolution

Generic Flow is good to start but, in general if complexity of the process and numbers of servers increases it is preferred to decompose the process into various processes. Earlier version of RA were not having shared components but 6.4 and onward it is present, let designer to create shared component having generic operation flows common across applications and process. 

Blocking process/release execution: Please review if the below configuration is unchecked in your server type. The below property allow parallel execution. By default the value is sequential execution you need to un-check it to let parallel execution which means the agent assigned to these server type can run multiple task in parallel, hence they will not block or sequence the release execution on them.

Other alternative worth considering, however we request to due diligence at your end considering process complexity, downtime, process size etc.

• Clone the existing process and replace the server type in those cloned processes. (In process select the server type and right click for below option). This way you will be having identical copy of the process but mapped to different server types.

• The other alternative can be export/import of the applications to create multiple application (cleaning them w.r.t. specific need). Please note that cleaning of not required processes, flows, environment is important else it will result in increase DB size due to application size and can result in performance impact if not regulated well.