May 2016 Summaries

Octopus Deploy 3.4 Alpha 2 has been released as part of the Early Access Program, offering significant new features such as multi-tenant deployments and improved support for elastic environments and transient machines. This release allows users to perform tenanted deployments, configure deployment targets, and manage variables by tenant, all accessible via the Octopus API. Additionally, machine policies have been refined based on user feedback, enabling more control over health checks and machine availability. Deployment-related controls have been moved to the project level, allowing for more flexible deployment processes. The introduction of triggers for auto-deployment is underway, aiming to provide better modeling of automatic deployments based on specific events. While the Alpha 2 release supports upgrades to the full version of Octopus 3.4, it does not support downgrades, and users are encouraged to provide feedback and participate in the development process.

Octopus, a deployment automation software, has seen significant growth, with over 6,500 active installations and licenses sold in 62 countries, including a substantial presence among Fortune 100 companies. The software attracts around 1,000 new trial users each month, with a 23-27% conversion rate to paid licenses and a 63% renewal rate, indicating strong customer retention. While telemetry data offers insights into usage patterns, it is limited by users' ability to disable data collection. Typical installations involve a few environments and projects, but there are instances of much larger deployments, with some servers managing over 3,566 Tentacles. The community has been instrumental in Octopus's success, contributing to its widespread adoption and the execution of over 2.6 million deployments globally.

Octopus Deploy is now accessible through the Azure Marketplace, offering a solution template that sets up a Virtual Machine with an Octopus Deploy server and an Azure SQL Database. Users can customize the Virtual Machine's size, DNS name, and administrator credentials, enabling quick deployment with minimal effort. The setup includes a 45-day trial license, after which users can either opt for the free Community Edition for small teams or input an existing or new purchased license. This integration simplifies the deployment process on Azure, providing a streamlined experience for IT professionals.

In a discussion on deployment processes, Paul Stovell highlights the limitations of using snapshots introduced by Octopus in 2012 to ensure consistency between environments during releases, noting that while they allow for changes without affecting previous deployments, they fall short in scenarios like adding new steps before a production deployment or updating variables like API keys. The introduction of channels in late 2015 offers a more flexible solution, enabling branching, feature branches, and specific deployment designs, which can handle tasks snapshots were meant to address more efficiently. Channels allow for granular control by applying different steps and variables to different channels, facilitating experimentation without creating new releases. As channels can cover the functionalities of snapshots while offering more benefits, Stovell suggests considering the removal of snapshots in future releases, acknowledging challenges such as compatibility and user education while emphasizing channels as a superior alternative.