Control Deployments using Release Gates
Estimated time: 75 minutes.
Scenario
This lab covers the configuration of the deployment gates and details how to use them to control the execution of Azure Pipelines. To illustrate their implementation, you'll configure a release definition with two environments for an Azure Web App. You'll deploy to the Canary environment only when there are no blocking bugs for the app and mark the Canary environment complete only when there are no active alerts in Application Insights of Azure Monitor.
A release pipeline specifies the end-to-end release process for an application to be deployed across various environments. Deployments to each environment are fully automated by using jobs and tasks. Ideally, you don't want new updates to the applications to be simultaneously exposed to all users. It's a best practice to expose updates in a phased manner, that is, expose them to a subset of users, monitor their usage, and expose them to other users based on the experience of the initial set of users.
Approvals and gates enable you to control the start and completion of the deployments in a release. You can wait for users to approve or reject deployments with approvals manually. Using release gates, you can specify application health criteria to be met before the release is promoted to the following environment. Before or after any environment deployment, all the specified gates are automatically evaluated until they pass or reach your defined timeout period and fail.
Gates can be added to an environment in the release definition from the pre-deployment conditions or the post-deployment conditions panel. Multiple gates can be added to the environment conditions to ensure all the inputs are successful for the release.
As an example:
- Pre-deployment gates ensure no active issues in the work item or problem management system before deploying a build to an environment.
- Post-deployment gates ensure no incidents from the app's monitoring or incident management system after being deployed before promoting the release to the following environment.
There are four types of gates included by default in every account.
- Invoke Azure Function: Trigger the execution of an Azure Function and ensures a successful completion.
- Query Azure Monitor alerts: Observe the configured Azure Monitor alert rules for active alerts.
- Invoke REST API: Make a call to a REST API and continues if it returns a successful response.
- Query work items: Ensure the number of matching work items returned from a query is within a threshold.
Objectives
After completing this lab, you'll be able to:
- Configure release pipelines.
- Configure release gates.
- Test release gates.
Requirements
- This lab requires Microsoft Edge or an Azure DevOps-supported browser.
- Set up an Azure DevOps organization: If you don't already have an Azure DevOps organization that you can use for this lab, create one by following the instructions available at Create an organization or project collection.
- Identify an existing Azure subscription or create a new one.
- Verify that you have a Microsoft or Entra account with the Contributor or the Owner role in the Azure subscription. For details, refer to List Azure role assignments using the Azure portal.
Exercises
During this lab, you'll complete the following exercises:
- Exercise 0: Configure the lab prerequisites.
- Exercise 1: Configure the build pipeline.
- Exercise 2: Configure the release pipeline.
- Exercise 3: Configure release gates.
- Exercise 4: Test release gates.
- Exercise 5: Remove the Azure lab resources.
