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Hey there! Continous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) are key concepts in DevOps that can help you accelerate developing software and getting it to users more quickly. In this comprehensive beginner‘s guide, I‘ll walk you through setting up CI/CD pipelines for the first time using Microsoft‘s Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS).
What Exactly is CI/CD?
Before we dig into the specifics of VSTS…
Continuous integration refers to developers merging code changes frequently to a shared repository, triggering automatic builds and tests. This catches integration issues early to prevent big headaches down the road!
Continuous delivery takes the next step of automating releases any time a build passes tests. This way, you can deploy rapidly and sustainably while ensuring quality.
The main benefits of CI/CD include:
- Faster time-to-market – Deploy code changes immediately
- Improved quality – Catch bugs and breaks early
- Reduced risk – Small, incremental changes are low risk
- Reliability – Deployment pipeline consistency
- Developer productivity – Spend less time on manual processes
Research shows companies using CI/CD deliver code 30x more frequently than those who don‘t!
Introducing Visual Studio Team Services
VSTS provides a full-featured CI/CD platform…
Key Capabilities
- Source control management with Git, TFVC, and SVN
- Automated build pipeline creation UI and templates
- Cross-platform automation agents (Linux, Windows, macOS)
- Release management for deployments to environments
- Load and performance testing built-in
- Integrates with 300+ open source and third party apps
VSTS Usage Stats
Over 75% of Fortune 100 companies now use VSTS for software development:
[Chart showing large growth in VSTS adoption]
Let‘s explore how we can leverage VSTS for CI/CD!
Walkthrough: CI/CD for an Azure Web App
I‘ll guide you through the steps to set up a pipeline to deploy an ASP.NET app to Azure App Service:
1. Configure Git Source Control
First we set up a Git repo in VSTS for our app source code…
[Steps to integrate repository]
2. Create the Build Pipeline
The build pipeline executes tasks to compile source code and produce deployable artifacts:
- Restore NuGet packages
- Build solution and run unit tests
- Publish output files
[Config screenshots and details]
3. Add Release Stages
The release pipeline defines the deployment process across environments like Dev, QA, Prod.
We create one stage for deploying to an Azure web app.
[Release config instructions]
4. Set Up Continuous Deployment
By toggling on continuous deployment (CD), any new successful build from the CI process automatically triggers release!
No need for manual intervention to kick off a deployment!
[Demo CD configuration]
5. Deploy and Validate!
On the first pipeline execution, we can inspect the logs and verify the application was deployed successfully to our Azure environment.
[Include deployment logs]
Now any code changes checked in will flow through the pipeline to prod automatically!
Key Considerations for Effective Pipelines
Now that you‘re up and running, here are some best practices to refine your pipelines:
Automated Testing – Add integration, performance, and security testing to pipeline quality gates. VSTS includes many built-in testing tools.
Infrastructure Monitoring – Instrument your apps and monitor infrastructure health to catch errors faster. Extend VSTS with AppDynamics, New Relic and others.
Secrets Management – Use KeyVault references for handling sensitive credentials and configuration.
Access Controls – Lock down pipeline permissions with fine-grained security policies.
Troubleshooting – Inspect failure logs at each stage. Set alerts, gauges, and traceability.
Optimization – Profile long running tasks and balance parallel stages for efficiency gains.
[More examples and data]
How Does VSTS Compare?
VSTS stacks up well against many CI/CD alternatives:
Jenkins – Open source, highly extensible but complex scripting. Lacking native UX.
TeamCity – Full-featured commercial product. Lightweight and fast. Not built for enterprise scale.
CircleCI – YML-based pipelines popular with devs. Basic platforms and permissions support only.
AWS CodePipeline – Tight AWS integration but proprietary lock-in. Light on built-in dev tools.
[Include comparison chart]
For most teams, VSTS strikes a nice balance of usability, robust enterprise features, custom extensibility, and cloud portability.
Wrap Up
In this guide, we went step-by-step through setting up continuous integration and continuous delivery for an ASP.NET app in VSTS using out-of-the-box automation to deploy on every code change!
VSTS provides all the tools you need for reliable, secure, and automated CI/CD with the flexibility to tailor pipelines to your unique needs.
To dive deeper, check out the VSTS docs or reach out if you have any other questions!
Happy deploying!
[Links to more learning resources]