This is an ideal type of application to modernize with containers. It is stateless,
has an automated and repeatable build process and is being actively
developed.
How Was the Application Deployed?
Before containers, the application was deployed to each environment by updat-
ing the existing virtual machines. An environment-specific deployment script
ran a set of commands to copy the latest version of the application to a shared
file system, and then updated each VM with the new version. The deployment
was slow and frequently failed due to transient timeout errors during the
update process.
What Problem Were We Trying to Solve Using
Containers?
Setting the Scene
As the team scaled, the deployment process became a bottleneck. The team
was frequently troubleshooting deployment failures, which caused delays and
missed target dates. Incorporating additional tools and automation required
involving specific team members familiar with the custom deployment scripts.
The amount of effort and coordination required to deploy the application to
production led to an increase in the amount of time between releases. To mit-
igate impacts to clients, the deployments were done late at night or early in the
morning.
54 | THE DOPPLER | SPRING 2018