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Deploys at Slack

slack.engineering

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Re: Deploys at Slack

#81

Post by matheussampaio »

thinkingkong wrote: post #11
brycethornton wrote: post #2

It's always nice to see how other teams do it. Nothing too groundbreaking here but that's a good thing. I did notice the screenshot of "Checkpoint", their deployment tracking UI. Are there solid open source or SaaS tools doing something similar? I've seen various companies build similar tools but most deployment processes are consistent enough to have a 3rd-party tool that was useful for most teams.

I've built that tool 2-3 times now. The issue is really the deploy function and what controls it. It's always a one-off, or so tightly integrated into the hosting environment, that reaching in with a SaaS product is somewhat difficult. That being said, the new lowest-common-denominator standards like K8s make it way easier. If anyone is interested in using a tool just leave a comment and I'll reach out.

interested.

Re: Deploys at Slack

#82

Post by aprdm »

echelon wrote: post #68
Saaster wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plain EC2, backend in PHP.

> Plain EC2, backend in PHP. That's slightly horrific. Weirdware NIH deploy system, no containers, PHP.

Lol.

You would be surprised at how 99.9% of the companies work. Including a lot of departments inside Google, Amazon and Netflix.

Maybe you were being sarcastic and I felt for it since you stressed it a bit too much.

Re: Deploys at Slack

#83

Post by codenesium »

bob1029 wrote: post #72
brycethornton wrote: post #2

It's always nice to see how other teams do it. Nothing too groundbreaking here but that's a good thing. I did notice the screenshot of "Checkpoint", their deployment tracking UI. Are there solid open source or SaaS tools doing something similar? I've seen various companies build similar tools but most deployment processes are consistent enough to have a 3rd-party tool that was useful for most teams.

I've never seen anything that could even remotely give us what we wanted. We ultimately decided to roll our own devops management platform in-house which was 100% focused on our specific needs. We are now on generation 4 of this system. We just rewrote our principal devops management interface using Blazor w/ Bootstrap4. The capabilities of the management system relative to each environment are fairly absolute - Buil…

I'm curious what a Jenkins + Octopus system is missing that your system provides. Most companies would have a hard time justifying the expense to build a bespoke system just for devops.

Re: Deploys at Slack

#84

Post by lukevp »

aledalgrande wrote: post #53
datasage wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With PHP (What slack was using at one point for some of the services. I think everything uses Hack now which may still maintain a similar model). Switching directories can be mostly atomic. PHP-FPM with opcaching doesn't need to access files once all the opcodes are cached (turn off file modification checks in production). When you move the directory, you will restart the service. Unless a request hits a file that is…

My point is that if there is any downtime for the switch, for example restarting a service, it's not atomic. A small percentage of failed requests can still be high in absolute terms for a company like Slack, so why not using a paradigm [1] where you have atomic switch? And also instant rollback. [1] https://www.martinfowler.com/bliki/BlueGreenDeployment.html

Nginx can hot reload a config file while running that’s pointed at a different directory, or perhaps they’re updating a symlink?

Re: Deploys at Slack

#85

Post by paxys »

Saaster wrote: post #66

I'm surprised at the 12 deployments per day, if that's truly to production. There's bugfixes etc., but feature wise Slack has been... let's say slow. Not Twitter slow, but still slow, in making any user visible changes.

User visible changes are dependent on the product development process rather than the rate of deploys. Whether you deploy 12 times a day or once a month, it's not like code is getting written any faster.

Re: Deploys at Slack

#87

Post by broth »

thinkingkong wrote: post #11
brycethornton wrote: post #2

It's always nice to see how other teams do it. Nothing too groundbreaking here but that's a good thing. I did notice the screenshot of "Checkpoint", their deployment tracking UI. Are there solid open source or SaaS tools doing something similar? I've seen various companies build similar tools but most deployment processes are consistent enough to have a 3rd-party tool that was useful for most teams.

I've built that tool 2-3 times now. The issue is really the deploy function and what controls it. It's always a one-off, or so tightly integrated into the hosting environment, that reaching in with a SaaS product is somewhat difficult. That being said, the new lowest-common-denominator standards like K8s make it way easier. If anyone is interested in using a tool just leave a comment and I'll reach out.

interested

Re: Deploys at Slack

#88

Post by kronin »

thinkingkong wrote: post #11
brycethornton wrote: post #2

It's always nice to see how other teams do it. Nothing too groundbreaking here but that's a good thing. I did notice the screenshot of "Checkpoint", their deployment tracking UI. Are there solid open source or SaaS tools doing something similar? I've seen various companies build similar tools but most deployment processes are consistent enough to have a 3rd-party tool that was useful for most teams.

I've built that tool 2-3 times now. The issue is really the deploy function and what controls it. It's always a one-off, or so tightly integrated into the hosting environment, that reaching in with a SaaS product is somewhat difficult. That being said, the new lowest-common-denominator standards like K8s make it way easier. If anyone is interested in using a tool just leave a comment and I'll reach out.

Interested

Re: Deploys at Slack

#89

Post by sophiebits »

daenz wrote: post #60

I'm kind of surprised they don't have a branch-based staging. Every place I've worked at has evolved in the direction of needing the ability to spin up an isolated staging environment that was based on specific tags or branches.

It’s become more common to eschew long-lived release branches for SaaS applications. For example: https://engineering.fb.com/web/rapid-release-at-massive-scal...

Re: Deploys at Slack

#90

Post by IBCNU »

thinkingkong wrote: post #11
brycethornton wrote: post #2

It's always nice to see how other teams do it. Nothing too groundbreaking here but that's a good thing. I did notice the screenshot of "Checkpoint", their deployment tracking UI. Are there solid open source or SaaS tools doing something similar? I've seen various companies build similar tools but most deployment processes are consistent enough to have a 3rd-party tool that was useful for most teams.

I've built that tool 2-3 times now. The issue is really the deploy function and what controls it. It's always a one-off, or so tightly integrated into the hosting environment, that reaching in with a SaaS product is somewhat difficult. That being said, the new lowest-common-denominator standards like K8s make it way easier. If anyone is interested in using a tool just leave a comment and I'll reach out.

interested
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