Introduction

1 minute

In Create a release pipeline with Azure Pipelines, you built a basic release pipeline. That pipeline has a Build stage that builds the artifact, and a Deploy stage that installs the web app on Azure App Service. Mara and Andy built this pipeline as a proof of concept that they showed to the rest of the team.

An actual release pipeline has more stages. Each stage has its own set of tasks that can potentially take an artifact all the way to production.

In this module, you join the Tailspin Toys web team as they design a realistic release pipeline that contains multiple stages. You also learn different ways to control how an artifact is promoted from one stage to the next.

A good release-management workflow enables you to release more frequently and more consistently. In practice, you want to define a process that maps to your team's needs. Here you create a basic workflow. That means first designing the environments. The environments define the runtimes of each stage in the pipeline. Then, you deploy the Space Game web app to these stages: Dev, Test, and Staging. Each stage deploys the app to its own App Service instance.

Learning objectives

After completing this module, you're able to:

Identify the stages, or major divisions of the pipeline, that you need to implement in a multistage pipeline.
Explain when to use conditions, triggers, and approvals to promote changes from one stage to the next.
Promote a build through these stages: Dev, Test, and Staging.

Prerequisites

The modules in this learning path form a progression. To follow the progression from the beginning, be sure to first complete these learning paths:

We also recommend you start at the beginning of this learning path: Deploy applications with Azure DevOps.

If you want to go through just this module, you need to set up a development environment on your Windows, macOS, or Linux system. You need:

An Azure DevOps organization with access to parallel jobs. If your organization does not have access to parallel jobs, you can request parallel jobs for free for public or private projects using this form. Your request will take 2-3 business days.
An Azure subscription
A GitHub account
Visual Studio Code with the Azure Pipelines for VS Code extension.
.NET 6.0 SDK
Git

You can get started with Azure and Azure DevOps for free. You don't need an Azure subscription to work with Azure DevOps. But in this module, you use Azure DevOps to deploy to Azure resources that exist in your Azure subscription.

Use this environment to complete the exercises in this and future modules. You can also use it to apply your new skills to your own projects.

Note

Azure Pipelines support a vast array of languages and application types. In this module, you'll be working with a .NET application but you can apply the patterns you learn here to your own projects that use your favorite programming languages and frameworks.