Take the Pain out of Release automation with Octopus Deploy
June 07, 2018
Take the Pain out of Release automation with Octopus Deploy
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Octopus Deploy
Octopus Deploy is used as the primary tool for automated deployment for a host of applications built using as diverse applications as Microsoft BizTalk, Node.js, and SOA based applications. The automated deployments using Octopus has resulted in the quicker delivery of applications to Prod environments and eliminates the tasks that used to be done manually and were error-prone. This has helped the team focus on building better software and not worry about pushing the changes to Test or Production.
- Deployments are not more error-prone because there is no manual intervention. There had been cases in the past where a thing or two miss would cause a lot of heartburn during Prod release and we had to keep the whole herd together until everything was sorted out. With Octopus Deploy we can test the release with the repeat-ability and chances of running into issues has been minimized a lot.
- Octopus Deploy works really well with the whole stack of Microsoft Products. It was one of the 1st 3rd party tools for Continuous Deployment focused on MS products when it was initially released. Over time, however, it has matured and supports nearly every technology under the sun for implementing automated deployments.
- More frequent and parallel deployments. This is where Octopus really shines. This ensures that the QA team is constantly engaged and not waiting for the Dev team as releases are promoted to Test environments faster and ultimately helps to move new features/bug fixes to Prod faster thereby delivering tremendous business value and puts us in a good light in front of our consumers.
- The tool has a very nice GUI and supports scripting in Powershell, C#, Bash, F#. The Octopus user community has developed close to 80 templates that can be used readily. Octopus works as seamlessly on the Cloud as it works on premises. It has first-class support for both AWS and Azure.
- Support for non-Microsoft applications needs to be improved to bring it on par with other comparable automation tools.
- It doesn't yet provide integration options with other IT management tools like JIRA and HP Support to implement continuous delivery and true DevOps processes.
- Support for AWS/Azure has been included very recently and it's not still very mature and feature rich and is expected to improve further in upcoming releases.
- Using Octopus Deploy as the tool for implementing Release automation has really paid off and delivered great business value. It has helped us release 4 times faster than earlier with better quality and made us agiler.
- Integration with IT management applications is lacking currently which would have driven the benefits of Release automation a notch up.
- Developers love deployment tools like Octopus which take away the anxiety of Prod release and helps them to focus on their core strengths to deliver better software faster.
We looked at IBM UrbanCode Deploy and Release and Microsoft VSTS while looking for Application Release Automation tools. While VSTS doesn't work with cross-platform technologies IBM UrbanCode Deploy commands a premium price for the features it offers. Also, it needs UrbanCode Deploy and Releases to work well and results in implementation complexity. Octopus Deploy is best suited for MS products and the cost also worked in the selection factor.
Using Octopus Deploy
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar | None |
- Customize your Deployment using scripts
- Database deployment using Octopus
- Troubleshooting remote deployments are very easy
- Documentation could be improved further. There are a ton of things which should be included in the documentation which I could learn about in support forums from user queries.
- Cross-platform Support for open source technologies.