The HOL &quot;Building a Release Pipeline with Team Foundation Server 2012&quot; thing

Microsoft Downloads - Building a Release Pipeline with Team Foundation Server 2012 – Hands-on Labs

These labs teach you how to implement a continuous delivery release pipeline by using Team Foundation Server 2012. You begin by building a simple release pipeline that supports continuous integration. Later labs modify and extend the pipeline until it supports continuous delivery and includes features such as automated deployments and testing.

Version: 1

Date Published: 9/19/2013

ReleasePipelineHOL_V1.zip, 80.8 MB

This series of labs are a companion to the book "Building a Release Pipeline with Team Foundation Server 2012." They teach you how to implement a continuous delivery release pipeline by using Team Foundation Server 2012. You begin by building a simple release pipeline that supports continuous integration, but has no other automation. Subsequent labs modify and extend the pipeline until it supports continuous delivery and includes features such as automated deployments and automated testing.

Here's a snap of the zip contents;

The ToC from the Introduction doc;

Finally a snip from the doc

Objectives

This series of labs teaches you how to implement a continuous delivery release pipeline by using Team Foundation Server 2012. You begin by building a simple release pipeline that supports continuous integration, but has no other automation. Subsequent labs modify and extend the pipeline until it supports continuous delivery and includes features such as automated deployments and automated testing.

A good starting point is to read the guidance that the labs are based on, which is Building a Release Pipeline with Team Foundation Server 2012. [GD: seems this link is active right now] This guidance emphasizes three patterns that are critical to developing a continuous delivery pipeline and whose importance is reinforced by the hands-on labs (HOL). The patterns are:

· Orchestration

· Automation

· Monitoring and Metrics

Even as new technologies become available, the underlying patterns that shape your development efforts will remain the same.

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Contents of the HOLs

One the biggest challenges in learning about distributed architectures such as the one required for these labs is creating the infrastructure. The details of setting up a complex infrastructure can be a serious distraction that makes focusing on the actual purpose of the labs difficult. To remove this difficulty, the labs have two versions. Labs 1 through 5 assume that you are using the Brian Keller VM for your infrastructure.

Lab 6 is considered an advanced lab, and assumes you are not using the Brian Keller VM. This is because it shows you how to install the components of the Trey Research Windows Phone 8 app and how to deploy a Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) service to Windows Azure. Currently, the Brian Keller VM cannot support these features, so you must create the entire infrastructure yourself. Here is a more detailed description of the labs.

· Lab 1: Starting Point. In this lab you install the Trey Research application and create the initial version of the Trey Research release pipeline.

· Lab 2: Orchestration. This is a set of four labs. In the first lab you orchestrate the commit stage of the pipeline. In the second lab you orchestrate the rest of the pipeline stages. In the third lab you configure the pipeline. In the fourth lab you test the orchestration.

· Lab 3: Automation. This is a series of three labs. In the first lab you automate the deployment of the WCF service. In the second lab you automate the deployment of the WPF application. In the third lab you automate the tests. At the conclusion of the Automation HOL, you will have created a continuous delivery pipeline.

· Lab 4: Monitoring and Metrics. This is a set of two labs. In the first lab you learn how to monitor a continuous delivery pipeline. In the second lab you learn how to create custom reports in Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS) to track some of the key metrics that are used with continuous delivery projects.

· Lab 5: Adding New Stages to the Pipeline. In this lab you learn how to add new stages to the pipeline. New stages contain new tests that improve how you test the pipeline

· Lab 6: Advanced. This is a set of two labs. The first lab is similar to the Starting Point lab, but has additional sections that show you how to add the components for the Windows Phone 8 app and the WCF Windows Azure service. The second lab shows you how to automatically deploy the components for the Windows Phone 8 app.

Completing the Labs in Sequence

As was mentioned above, there are two ways to complete all the labs. Here are the two possible sequences.

With the Brian Keller VM

Here is the sequence you should follow if you are using the Brian Keller VM.

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Without the Brian Keller VM

Here is the sequence you should follow if you are not using the Brian Keller VM.

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