Tag: check list

Introduction

Application Launch checklist is aimed for Devops, Sysops and anyone whois job to make website available and reliable.
The checklist better works for applications which are going to be Live in near feature, but also useful to validate your Devops processes for already running applications.

This checklist is a complied notes from Launch Checklist for Google Cloud Platform. It is mostly targeted on Devops work routines and in a nutshell explain first and necessary Devops steps into launching applications.

Software Architecture Documentation

• Create an Architectural Summary. Include an overall architectural diagram, a summary of the process flows, detail the service interaction points.
• List and describe how each service is used. Include use of any 3rd-party APIs.
• Make it easy accessible and available – the best as wiki pages.

Builds and Releases

• Document your build and release, configuration, and security management processes.
• Automate build process. Include automated testing and packaging.
• Automate release process to provision package between environments. Include rollback functionality.
• Version your configuration and put it into Configuration Management system like Saltstack, Puppet or Ansible.
• Simulate build and release failures. Are you able to roll back effectively? Is the process documented?

Disaster recovery

• Document your routine backup, regular maintenance, and disaster recovery processes.
• Test your restore process with real data. Determine time required for a full restore and reflect this in the disaster recovery processes.
• Automate as much as possible.
• Simulate major outages and test your Disaster Recovery processes
• Simulate individual services failure to test your incidents recovery process

Monitoring

• Document and define your system monitoring and alerting processes.
• Validate that your system monitoring and alerting are sufficient and effective.

Final thoughts