VMware Code Stream, hassle free CI/CD-as-a-Service!

The third and final new Automation Cloud Service besides Cloud Assembly and Service Broker is Code Stream. Code Stream allows you to model any kind of release process for any kind of software. Implement blue/green, canary or rolling update delivery methods quickly. Code Stream visualises all active pipelines and their current status. Drill down to see an end-to-end view of each pipeline and enable quick troubleshooting. You can leverage existing tools and processes within the software development lifecycle with out-of-the-box integrations.

Why should you use Code Stream? Many organizations embrace DevOps for the ability to release high-quality software more frequently. DevOps enables this by promoting communication and collaboration. With Code Stream, VMware brings the productivity gains from DevOps to developers and administrators of both infrastructure as well as applications. It is a DevOps tool that tackles the challenges involved in enabling Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) in multi-cloud environments.

Although Code Stream supports Continuous Integration it is primarily a Continuous Delivery service to speed up software delivery and troubleshooting with release pipelines and built-in analytics supporting Containers & Traditional Applications.

Simplify deployments

VMware Code Stream automates the code and application release process with a comprehensive set of capabilities for app deployment, testing and troubleshooting. The service integrates with popular developer tools and supports VMware-based private clouds, VMware Cloud on AWS and native public clouds.

The new cloud service includes many pre-built Continuous Integration plug-ins for development tools (e.g. Git, Jenkins), Cloud (AWS) and orchestration systems (e.g. Kubernetes, VKE, PKS). Whereas Cloud Assembly automates infrastructure or application deployments, Code Stream improves productivity by automating the deployments though various stages leading unto production.

You can do this by quickly model your entire release process from simple to complex without a bunch of scripting using the GUI, CLI or Pipeline as Code.

Increase visibility and prevent downtime

Many of the innovations in Code Stream come from VMware’s use of Code Stream to develop their own products! As a result, it has pre-built Smart Templates for container deployment strategies for Kubernetes, such as, canary deployments or blue-green deployments or rolling upgrades.

It helps to resolve issues quickly without large troubleshooting efforts by easily rolling back code to earlier versions.

The continuous delivery pipeline also has enterprise-class capabilities such as nested pipelines. And also out of box dashboards  to understand and monitor release metrics and key performance indicators to know what is going on where to help spot issues and improve release efficiency.

More information can be found here.