Release Manager Objects

Release Manager includes the following objects, which together manage the overall release process. The primary object relationships of Release Manager, including the Release Automation object relationships, are shown in the following figure. Descriptions of each of the objects follow the figure.

• Release Trains

  Release trains manage a set of application releases from concept approval through scheduling and scoping, construction, verification, and deployment.

  Refer to About Release Trains.

  • Approvals

    Approvals may be required to allow a release train to proceed to scoping, QA, and final deployment stages; to validate that a release train may exit a stage based on stage gate exit criteria; and to confirm that pre-defined milestones for release trains or application releases have been reached by a certain date.

    Refer to About Approvals.

• Application Releases

  Application releases manage the release of an application instance, such as a version. Application releases are linked to Release Automation applications. Business requests, or requirements, and development tasks are associated with application releases.

  Refer to About Application Releases.

  • Business Requests or Requirements

    Represent work items for an application release in response to a business need. Refer to About Requirements and Development.

  • Development Tasks

    Represent work items for an application release. Refer to About Requirements and Development.

• Turnovers

  Turnovers manage deployments to and configuration of software through a sequence of environments defined and scheduled in a deployment path. The details of the deployment steps, including the Release Automation component versions or snapshots to be deployed, are included in an ordered set of deployment tasks.

  Refer to About Turnovers.

  • Deployment Paths

    A sequence of environments where turnovers are defined and scheduled. Refer to About Deployment Paths.

  • Deployment Tasks

    The details of the deployment steps, including the Release Automation component versions or snapshots to be deployed, are included in an ordered set of deployment tasks. Refer to About Deployment Tasks.

  • Runbooks

    Runbooks store commonly-used sets of automated and manual deployment tasks and can be applied to turnovers to ease configuration and keep consistency from turnover to turnover. Refer to About Runbooks.

  • Environments

    Environments manage and give visibility into the scheduling of maintenance and other events in environments, flagging any scheduling conflicts. Environments are linked to Release Automation environments. Turnovers are scheduled into environments in the turnovers' deployment paths. Refer to About Environments.

• Release Automation Objects

  Following are the objects in Release Automation that provide the automation layer for Release Manager.

  • Applications

    Bring together components with their deployment targets and orchestrate multi-component deployments.

  • Environments

    A set of resources to which turnovers are deployed. These are user-defined collections of resources that host an application, typically modeled on some stage of the software project life cycle, such as development, QA, or production. An environment can consist of a single machine, be spread over several machines, or be spread over clusters of machines.

  • Component Versions

    Instances of Release Automation components, which are the artifacts to be deployed or otherwise configured.

  • Snapshots

    A snapshot captures an application's current state, and as the application moves through different environments, the snapshot ensures that proper component versions are used.

Related Topics

Glossary