Summary
In this module, you have learned about two important concepts in DevOps: continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD). CI focuses on building and testing software artifacts, while CD automates the process of delivering these artifacts to users. Continuous delivery involves automating the generation of software releases, ensuring they're deployable, and making them available to consumers. It aims to minimize the time to deploy and mitigate issues. Continuous delivery is an iterative process that involves transitioning the latest software release through different environments for testing and validation.
The main takeaways from this module are that continuous delivery offers several benefits, including accelerated release cycles, increased resiliency, improved collaboration, and efficient resource utilization. It allows for faster deployment of software releases and enables organizations to gather customer feedback gradually. Progressive exposure techniques, such as deployment rings, blue/green deployments, feature flags, and dark launches, contribute to increased resiliency in continuous delivery practices. Additionally, GitHub Actions are a powerful tool for implementing software delivery workflows on the GitHub platform, allowing you to build and run CI/CD workflows using various components.