Continuous Deployment
Continuous deployment is a strategy in software development where code changes to an application are released automatically into the production environment. This automation is driven by a series of predefined tests. Once new updates pass those tests, the system pushes the updates directly to the software’s users.
In short, Automatically test and release code into the production environment through continuous deployment.
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While “continuous deployment” and “continuous delivery” may sound like the same thing, they are actually two different approaches to frequent release.
Continuous integration vs. Continuous delivery vs. Continuous deployment
- Continuous integration automates the build, test, and integration stages so that code changes don’t affect codebase stability.
- Continuous delivery automatically sends a release to a staging or testing environment before production.
- Continuous deployment tests and code straight to production and end users.
- The difference between continuous integration, continuous delivery, and continuous deployment is in how far each process goes to integrate, test, and deploy code through the DevOps cycle.
Benefits of Continuous Delivery vs. Deployment
Smoother Releases
Automating testing and deployment with continuous delivery and deployment means releases can happen with the push of a button, rather than taking days to plan for and execute. And with continuous delivery, since every change is delivered to a staging environment using complete IT automation, you can have confidence the application can be deployed to production with a push of a button when it’s ready.
More Frequent Releases
Continuous delivery and deployment compress the time between releases, letting you speed up a feedback loop with customers to improve quality faster with every iteration. And when iterations can happen daily, rather than monthly or even less frequently, customers can stay up-to-date with the latest and highest-quality version of the software.
Safer Releases
Continuous delivery sticks a manual approval stage before deployment to production. But even continuous deployment, which automates the whole release all the way through testing, can ensure more reliable releases, provided you’ve got strong testing tools, strategy, and culture. Since automated processes like continuous delivery and deployment work in smaller change batches, issues in each release are easier to remediate than the code changes pushed out with infrequent, mammoth-sized manual releases.
Less Manual Work
With continuous delivery and deployment, development sees changes live in minutes. Less time spent deploying and testing = more time spent increasing release quality.
