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About Integrating with CI/CD

This topic provides an introduction to integrating Replicated CLI commands in your continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines, including Replicated's best practices and recommendations.

Overview​

Using CI/CD workflows to automatically compile code and run tests improves the speed at which teams can test, iterate on, and deliver releases to customers. When you integrate Replicated CLI commands into your CI/CD workflows, you can automate the process of deploying your application to clusters for testing, rather than needing to manually create and then archive channels, customers, and environments for testing.

You can also include continuous delivery workflows to automatically promote a release to a shared channel in your Replicated team. This allows you to more easily share releases with team members for internal testing and iteration, and then to promote releases when they are ready to be shared with customers.

Best Practices and Recommendations​

The following are Replicated's best practices and recommendations for CI/CD:

  • Include unique workflows for development and for releasing your application. This allows you to run tests on every commit, and then to promote releases to internal and customer-facing channels only when ready. For more information about the workflows that Replicated recommends, see Recommended CI/CD Workflows.

  • Integrate Replicated Compatibility Matrix into your CI/CD workflows to quickly create multiple different types of clusters where you can deploy and test your application. Supported distributions include OpenShift, GKE, EKS, and more. For more information, see About Compatibility Matrix.

  • If you use the GitHub Actions CI/CD platform, integrate the custom GitHub actions that Replicated maintains to replace repetitive tasks related to distributing application with Replicated or using Compatibility Matrix. For more information, see Integrating Replicated GitHub Actions.

  • To help show you are conforming to a secure supply chain, sign all commits and container images. Additionally, provide a verification mechanism for container images.

  • Use custom RBAC policies to control the actions that can be performed in your CI/CD workflows. For example, you can create a policy that blocks the ability to promote releases to your production channel. For more information about creating custom RBAC policies in the Vendor Portal, see Configuring RBAC Policies. For a full list of available RBAC resources, see RBAC Resource Names.

  • Incorporating code tests into your CI/CD workflows is important for ensuring that developers receive quick feedback and can make updates in small iterations. Replicated recommends that you create and run all of the following test types as part of your CI/CD workflows:

    • Application Testing: Traditional application testing includes unit, integration, and end-to-end tests. These tests are critical for application reliability, and Compatibility Matrix is designed to to incorporate and use your application testing.

    • Performance Testing: Performance testing is used to benchmark your application to ensure it can handle the expected load and scale gracefully. Test your application under a range of workloads and scenarios to identify any bottlenecks or performance issues. Make sure to optimize your application for different Kubernetes distributions and configurations by creating all of the environments you need to test in.

    • Smoke Testing: Using a single, conformant Kubernetes distribution to test basic functionality of your application with default (or standard) configuration values is a quick way to get feedback if something is likely to be broken for all or most customers. Replicated also recommends that you include each Kubernetes version that you intend to support in your smoke tests.

    • Compatibility Testing: Because applications run on various Kubernetes distributions and configurations, it is important to test compatibility across different environments. Compatibility Matrix provides this infrastructure.

    • Canary Testing: Before releasing to all customers, consider deploying your application to a small subset of your customer base as a canary release. This lets you monitor the application's performance and stability in real-world environments, while minimizing the impact of potential issues. Compatibility Matrix enables canary testing by simulating exact (or near) customer environments and configurations to test your application with.