Download - How build and deploy affects architecture at thetrainline.com - akqa anoraks

#akqaanoraks @matthewpskelton

How build and deployment shapes software architecture

at thetrainline.com

Matthew Skelton | thetrainline.com

AKQA Anoraks, London | #akqaanoraks

29 November 2012


architecture

= f (build & deploy)

(for some systems)


Systems engineering (robotics, control theory, sensors, neuroscience)

Software development

(finance, insurance, travel, pharma, media, medical imaging)

now

Build & Deployment at thetrainline.com


9m visits per month to thetrainline.com

2nd most visited UK travel booking website

(behind Easyjet)*

Over 100,000 daily visits via our mobile apps

*source: IMRG hotshops list Nov 2011


Booking engines for many UK train operators

Ticketing systems for Corporates and TMCs

Several hundred individual websites

> £1bn ($1.5bn USD) per year in train ticket sales


• Early “distributed agile” success story

• http://www.thoughtworks.com/trainline

http://www.thoughtworks.com/trainline


10+ dev teams in 2 locations


Server Farm (Build, Deployment, Replication)

100+ build agents 20 dev environments x 20 VMs per

environment = 400 dev VMs Git replication (Gitolite), …

MORE SERVERS THAN PRODUCTION



architecture


(for some systems)


“HERESY!”

#webperfdays @matthewpskelton



Web-based

Frequently- changing

Public-facing

High-volume


RELIABLE

REPEATABLE

RAPID

RECURRING #webperfdays

@matthewpskelton #akqaanoraks

@matthewpskelton


‘R-R-R-R’ BUILD AND DEPLOYMENT

Helps to avoid the Ball of Mud

Enables high-performance architectures




LOAD BALANCING HIGH AVAILABILITY

SCALING ELASTIC

RAPID RECOVERY




BUILDABLE

Small pipelined builds on generic build machines

Seconds, not minutes or hours

Short feedback cycles (Dan Worthington-Bodart, @danielbodart - http://bit.ly/M85wsX)



http://bit.ly/M85wsX


Build dependencies may mirror runtime deps

msbuild /m for multi-threaded builds (forces component isolation)

Gallio (MbUnit) – replacement engine for NUnit

NuGet + Squid for super-fast build artefacts

RAM disk for some working copy operations


TESTABLE

Test (separation, harnesses, points)

IDENTIFIABLE

Meaningful versions, packages, defined dependencies, artefact

management

(think component boundaries)




Enforced “onion” testing layers (test separation, build machine firewalls, build agent types, …)

Semantic Versioning (A.B.C.D + contract to ‘clients’)

30+ external services (test harnesses)


DEPLOYABLE Rapid, scriptable, simple failure modes

MONITORABLE Logging, metrics, transaction tracing

CONFIGURABLE

Inject settings – no ‘black boxes’

LIGHTWEIGHT Keep things small and easily comprehendible




GO, MSDeploy, hand-rolled, Octopus, PS remoting (“as simple as xcopy”)

Graphite + SqlToGraphite (https://github.com/perryofpeek/SqlToGraphite)

LogStash + log4net (tune logging levels with config, transaction tracing)

SCOM – operations manager (early monitoring in Dev)

https://github.com/perryofpeek/SqlToGraphite


INSTANTIABLE

No snowflakes or singletons

RECOVERABLE

No nasty zombies after failures

MTTR more important than MTBF* * for most kinds of F




Rebuild Build Agents with Chef

Chef for environment rebuilds

Call Start() and Stop() on each component


Well-known monolithic business rules engine

Costly to build, deploy, configure, test

Being replaced


RELIABLE

REPEATABLE

RAPID

RECURRING #webperfdays

@matthewpskelton #akqaanoraks

@matthewpskelton


LOAD BALANCING HIGH AVAILABILITY

SCALING ELASTIC

RAPID RECOVERY


LIGHTWEIGHT TESTABLE MONITORABLE CONFIGURABLE RECOVERABLE IDENTIFIABLE



London Continuous Delivery

Next meetup: 17 January 2013, with

Opscode (Chef)

#londoncd


architecture


(for some systems)

thank you

@AKQAAnoraks

Blog: http://engineering.thetrainline.com/

matthewskelton.net | @matthewpskelton

Thanks to: Attila S, Jack R and Owain P for feedback.

Picture credits:

Label: seanlabel.com; Sheep: gallery.hd.org; Train: worldontrains.blogspot.co.uk; Gurner: mog.com; Petra: Wikimedia/Berthold Werner; army engineers: US DoD; ball of mud: pwern.blogspot.co.uk; sports car: xarj.net; zombie: bjj.org; feather: Wikipedia; punch:

thelegalblitz.com; passport: coverpalace.com; dogs: reluctantmemsahib.wordpress.com; Meccano: dalefield.com

Download - How build and deploy affects architecture at thetrainline.com - akqa anoraks

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