NetApp : Accelerate Continuous Integration on FlexPod Datacenter with Apprenda – Part I

In a build-versus-buy paradigm for IT infrastructure, many business owners like you prefer to buy instead of build. Specifically, they choose to buy a converged infrastructure that provides a flexible, scalable, and cost-efficient architecture with FlexPod® Datacenter and VMware.

Even with a superior CI in place, however, you might still have a barrier between development and operations. With the integrated solution of Apprenda Cloud Platform (ACP) on FlexPod, however, you break that barrier. You eliminate any friction during the software delivery process and accelerate time to market for application delivery.

Start DevOps Quickly and Easily

When you deploy FlexPod Datacenter with ACP and VMware, you get a superior out-of-box experience for your DevOps administrators and infrastructure engineers. This converged platform for DevOps requires:

• No lead time for provisioning infrastructure and deploying applications
• No special skillsets to manage and provision the infrastructure

For applications that follow an agile method of development, ACP integration with FlexPod helps you accelerate the continuous integration (CI) and continuous deployment (CD) processes.

CI is a process in which your developers can iteratively make small changes to the code, build it, and test it. Your developers can then identify bugs in the early stages of the development cycle. The CD process allows developers to automatically release the application into production after every code change has been tested and has been proven for deployment anytime.

The following diagram illustrates the different layers of integration where development tools and workflows are running in containers on FlexPod Datacenter for Apprenda.

Increase Data Storage Efficiency

During the development and deployment process, data is important to the applications. Apprenda can automate your software and application delivery process, so your developers no longer have to think about where to store the data. And by running the process on Apprenda, your developers can take advantage of various data management capabilities with NetApp ONTAP software and use it for applications-with zero friction. Apprenda interfaces with ONTAP RESTful APIs to provision storage for your applications automatically, and your developers get the transparency to consume infrastructure on demand during the CI or CD process.

NetApp ONTAP runs on AFF, an all-flash appliance that's part of the FlexPod Datacenter platform. In addition to storage efficiencies, ONTAP gives you native functions like NetApp Snapshot™ copy creation and FlexClone® technology that integrate directly with the CI and CD workflow by using ONTAP RESTful APIs. It all works together to enhance the experience for your DevOps administrators, infrastructure engineers, and developers.

Integrate Tools to Accelerate Developer Productivity

Does your organization develop and deploy cloud-native applications? Make it easy for developers by integrating build tools like Jenkins on ACP in a Kubernetes cluster that has been created by using the Kismatic Enterprise Toolkit from Apprenda. This toolkit gives your developers a standard execution run-time platform for developing and deploying cloud-native applications. Apprenda manages the Kubernetes cluster, and after the build process, the binaries are automatically deployed by Jenkins on Apprenda. After the application has been deployed on Apprenda, it's released into production.

NetApp also has integrated development tools, like GitLab and Jenkins in the NetApp Jenkins framework, that you can run in a Kubernetes cluster on ACP. The outlined box in the following diagram gives you an overview of the different components that are part of this framework.

The framework is a Helm package that autoinstalls GitLab Community Edition (CE), Jenkins OSS, web services, Docker Registry, and other services along with Docker images. You get an automated CI pipeline and developer workspace creation with an AWS Cloud9 integrated development environment and web services. The web services function as a broker between the Jenkins jobs that are executed from ACP and the ONTAP RESTful APIs, so you can access the data layer on demand.

The successful builds from the CI process are then autodeployed on ACP in the sandbox mode and are finally published and launched into production.

During the CI and CD process, ACP in the NetApp Jenkins framework gives your developers zero-touch storage. This integration drives velocity, agility, and security goals during your DevOps practice. The framework accelerates engineering productivity, reduces build times, and improves infrastructure efficiency in your organization.

Improve Your DevOps Today

Break the barrier between production and development. To start increasing developer efficiency in your organization, find out how to deploy FlexPod Datacenter with Apprenda Cloud Platform.

The next installment of this blog series highlights how you can rapidly provision a production-like MySQL database for application testing and development during staging, before you release the application to production.