June 2021 Summaries

Bob Walker's article discusses the use of Flyway and Octopus Deploy for database changes, highlighting the benefits of using execution containers, introduced in Octopus Deploy's 2020.2 release, to manage dependencies via Docker images. This method simplifies the deployment process by eliminating the need to bundle or pre-install tools like Flyway and the Java Runtime Engine, thereby reducing package bloat and version control issues. By utilizing execution containers, developers can specify Docker images with the necessary tools installed, allowing for more consistent and reliable deployments across teams. Walker provides a detailed walkthrough on setting up a deployment process with Octopus Deploy, including configuring variables, using the Flyway Database Migrations step template, and leveraging Docker Container Registries. He emphasizes the ease of transitioning to execution containers, particularly when using Octopus Cloud, and the advantages of maintaining a precise version of Flyway without the associated maintenance burden, ultimately aiming to enhance the robustness of the deployment pipeline.

The blog post by Mark Harrison discusses a new step template for integrating Azure Key Vault with Octopus Deploy to retrieve secrets for deployments or runbooks. The step template utilizes the Az.KeyVault PowerShell module, which must be installed on the deployment target or worker. Authentication with Azure Key Vault is achieved through Azure Active Directory and a service principal. The template allows users to retrieve one or multiple secrets, create sensitive output variables, and optionally specify secret versions and output variable names. It provides features such as customizing the Az PowerShell module version and installation path, and options to print output variable names in the task log. The post emphasizes the ease of integrating Azure Key Vault with Octopus deployments to enhance security measures.

Running .NET applications on unsupported versions of Windows can lead to errors such as authentication failures when attempting to establish HTTPS connections, due to the lack of compatible cipher suites. This issue is exemplified by a sample application that fails to connect to a website on older Windows versions but works on Windows 10. The failure occurs because unsupported Windows systems do not have the necessary ciphers to match those required by the website, a situation exacerbated by .NET's reliance on the OS for ciphers. Unlike web browsers and platforms like Go and Java, which ship their own ciphers, .NET applications must depend on Microsoft's updates to the OS for new ciphers. Unsupported Windows versions do not receive these updates, leading to increasing incompatibility with modern websites, illustrating a tangible consequence of using outdated Windows systems beyond general security concerns.

Octopus Deploy has developed a comprehensive suite of end-to-end CI/CD guides to aid teams in configuring delivery pipelines, enhancing the efficiency of software documentation through DevOps principles. These guides offer detailed, step-by-step instructions accompanied by automated screenshots and screencasts, demonstrating processes from code compilation to deployment across various technology stacks. The documentation, created by a two-person team, includes over 60 individual guides, featuring thousands of images and hours of video tailored to specific software configurations. By leveraging DevOps practices such as infrastructure as code, automated testing, and continuous integration workflows, the team ensures the guides are verifiable and up-to-date, mitigating the risk of stale content. The automation framework uses tools like Selenium WebDriver and GitHub Actions to generate and maintain the media assets, enabling the documentation to reflect real-time updates and changes in software infrastructure.

Shawn Sesna's blog post discusses how to create a new DACPAC step template to support Azure Active Directory Managed Identity authentication using PowerShell and a custom class, without modifying existing templates to avoid breaking changes. The process involves provisioning an Azure SQL Server and a Virtual Machine (VM), configuring the VM to use Managed Identity, and granting authentication to the SQL Server either by setting the VM as the Active Directory admin or by adding it as an external login to a database. Sesna explains the use of .NET objects for SQL Server interaction, highlighting the need for an access token for managed identity authentication that cannot be included in the connection string. He further illustrates creating custom classes in PowerShell, overcoming limitations by defining classes in C# syntax and adding type references, thus enabling successful deployment of the DACPAC step template using managed identity. The post aims to guide users in implementing similar solutions and improving their PowerShell use in DevOps environments.

Octopus is expanding its capabilities to include first-class integration with Amazon's Elastic Container Service (ECS), aiming to simplify complex deployments across cloud environments. The initiative focuses on creating a new ECS target and a deployment step that combines Fargate task definitions and services, streamlining processes that previously required cumbersome manual steps. This approach promises repeatable, recoverable, and auditable deployments by abstracting task definition management and leveraging AWS CloudFormation for resource tracking. Initially, the integration will be limited to Fargate deployments and exclude features like auto-scaling and load balancer creation, with plans to extend functionality in future updates. Octopus is actively seeking feedback from users to refine this feature, emphasizing the importance of aligning the tool with diverse ECS architectures and deployment challenges.

As organizations transition their applications and infrastructure to the cloud, a common path is migrating an ASP.NET web app running on Microsoft's IIS to Azure App Services, ensuring the CI/CD process remains reliable. The blog post by Rob Pearson outlines the steps to update the deployment process of an existing web application, using Octopus Deploy, from on-premises to the cloud. The migration involves maintaining a script step to update the database and transitioning the deployment step to a cloud-based Azure App Service, replacing IIS. It also details the optional migration from an on-premises CI/CD platform to Octopus Cloud, emphasizing the self-service project export and import support, and configuring Azure accounts and deployment targets. The updated process includes configuring cloud-based infrastructure, modifying deployment steps to accommodate Azure App Services, and updating configuration variables for cloud compatibility. Additionally, the post highlights the potential use of runbooks for automating tasks such as infrastructure provisioning and database maintenance in a cloud environment, reflecting a broader trend of moving away from traditional virtual machines to modern cloud solutions.

Octopus Deploy's Q2 release introduces a new "Deploy an Azure App Service" step, enhancing the deployment of Azure web applications by allowing deployments to Linux app service plans without complex configurations, supporting container images, and enabling execution on Linux Octopus workers. This step is designed to replace the previous "Deploy an Azure Web App" step, which was limited to Windows workers and did not support container images. The new step utilizes the zip deploy API for file-based packages and allows configuration of application settings and connection strings using JSON, which aligns with Azure's bulk-edit feature and supports Octopus variable expressions for advanced scenarios. Additionally, Octopus provides multiple options for transforming configuration files within packages, such as variable substitution and structured configuration variable transformations. This new feature is available on both Octopus Cloud instances and the self-hosted version, facilitating easier deployment of Azure web applications.

In June 2021, Octopus Deploy introduced its first official GitHub Actions, designed to streamline integration between GitHub builds and Octopus Deploy processes such as package pushing, release creation, and runbook execution. GitHub Actions allows users to automate software development workflows using YAML configuration files stored in Git repositories, offering a consistent and reliable process executed in containers. The blog post demonstrates how to incorporate Octopus Deploy actions into a GitHub Actions workflow, using a .NET web application as an example, to automate tasks like installing the Octopus CLI, packaging build artifacts, pushing them to Octopus, and deploying releases to a development environment. The integration leverages secrets for secure interaction with Octopus instances, which can be either cloud-based or self-hosted. This development marks a significant enhancement in automating builds and deployments, with plans to expand available actions in the future.

The 2021 Q2 release of Octopus Deploy introduces a significant feature that enables the export and import of projects, facilitating seamless transfers between spaces or from on-premises instances to Octopus Cloud. This feature, initially referred to as Project Bento, addresses the long-standing demand for enhanced project mobility within the Octopus ecosystem, which was previously hindered by the absence of a built-in mechanism to move projects between spaces. With the new functionality, users can export projects, including necessary components like environments and variable sets, into a password-protected zip file, and import them into different spaces or servers, though deployment targets and packages require separate handling. The export/import capability is primarily intended for one-time migrations, such as moving projects to Octopus Cloud or reorganizing spaces, with the potential for future iterations to support more frequent project movements. While still in early access, this release aims to simplify project migrations and invites user feedback to refine its capabilities.