You are already familiar with the word pipeline and its purpose. In the context of DevOps, Continuous delivery, and Continuous delivery it serves the same purpose. A deployment pipeline is a set of practices and tools that delivers software from the developer to the end user efficiently and reliably.

Deployment pipeline is an essential component of DevOps and CI/CD. The main purpose of the deployment pipeline is to ensure that the software changes are integrated, tested, and deployed systematically.

Now that you’ve grasped the concept of the Deployment pipeline let’s explore its stages and components.

Stages of a Deployment Pipeline:

 

You can add as many stages to a deployment pipeline as you want. But here are the 5 key stages of a deployment pipeline.

• Code Commit
• Build and Compilation
• Automated Testing 
• Staging Environment Deployment
• Production Deployment

Let’s explore each stage in detail.

Code Commit:

Code commit is the first stage of the deployment pipeline. It starts with the developer writing and committing code to a version control system like Git. The code is committed to the main repository where all the developers collaborate. 

DevOps practices encourage code commitment several times a day to ensure efficiency and quality. We’ve already discussed in detail the importance of committing in small batches. It allows developers to test and integrate effortlessly.

As soon as the code is committed it triggers the build process. Let’s Explore the build phase.

Build and Compilation:

When the developer commits the code into the repository the build and compilation stage triggers, at this stage, the code is transformed into deployable artifacts. It is a critical stage because it prepares the code for further testing and deployment.

You can utilize build tools for this stage. Various build tools are available with different configurations, you can utilize one based on your project needs.

After the build and compilation, the next stage is testing. Let’s explore it in detail.

Automated Testing:

Automated testing is a crucial aspect of the DevOps and CI/CD pipeline. These tests are vital to ensure the proper functioning of code changes. Automated testing is of different types. Each test has its purpose for example integration testing, functionality testing, security testing etc.

Some essential automated test types are:

• Unit Test
• Integration Test
• Functional Test
• Load and Performance Test
• Security Test
• Acceptance Test

After the automated testing stage, comes Staging environment deployment. 

Staging Environment Deployment:

After automated testing, the code is deployed into the staging environment with all its dependencies. Applications are given an environment that resembles the production environment when they are in the testing or staging environment.

The purpose of this stage is to perform additional validation and testing of the application in a controlled environment.

Production Deployment:

After completing all the above stages the last stage is to deploy your application into the production environment. The production environment is where your software reaches the end user. Deployment strategies like blue-green deployment, canary releases, and rolling updates can be utilized to lower the risk of downtime.

Once all the changes are deployed in the live environment you need to monitor these code changes to ensure proper functionality.

Further Reading

• Deployment Pipeline Automation Components