← Back to Home

Module 3: Deploying 1

Module Overview

Learn the fundamentals of deploying applications and managing deployment environments. Understand the process of moving applications from development to production.

Learning Objectives

Deployment Pipeline Overview

Deploying software is the process by which code developed on your computer gets shared with the world. The deployment pipeline typically consists of several stages that ensure quality and reliability.

Stages of Deployment

  1. Source Stage: Local development, testing, code reviews, and pushing to a code repository
  2. Build Stage: Automated build processes, unit tests, and static code analysis
  3. Test Stage: Integration testing in isolated environments (often called Beta/QA)
  4. Production Stage: Deployment to live servers for end-user access

Each stage serves as a quality gate, ensuring that only properly functioning code moves to the next level. This staged approach minimizes the risk of introducing bugs into production systems.

Deployment Environments

Modern deployment practices utilize multiple environments to safely test and validate changes before they reach customers.

Common Deployment Environments

The Beta stage is where tests run to ensure all components work together correctly. The Gamma stage uses production-like data and configuration for final validation before deployment.

Benefits of Multiple Environments

Continuous Deployment

Continuous Deployment (CD) is a software development practice where code changes are automatically built, tested, and deployed to production. This approach reduces manual intervention and accelerates the delivery process.

Key Principles of Continuous Deployment

CD supports key development principles: quality through rigorous automated testing, coordination through standardized pipelines, and velocity through eliminating manual bottlenecks.

Testing in Continuous Deployment

AWS Elastic Beanstalk for Deployment

AWS Elastic Beanstalk is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) that simplifies deploying and scaling web applications. It automatically handles infrastructure details like capacity provisioning, load balancing, and application health monitoring.

Key Features

Deployment Process

  1. Create an application in the Elastic Beanstalk console
  2. Configure the environment (Web Server or Worker)
  3. Choose a platform (Java, .NET, Node.js, etc.)
  4. Upload your application code
  5. Configure environment variables and settings
  6. Launch the environment

Elastic Beanstalk simplifies many aspects of deployment while still providing the flexibility to customize the environment when needed.

Resources