Last Updated Dec 18, 2017 — DevOps Expert
XebiaLabs DevOps Platform 7.5: Scalable DevOps for the Enterprise
DevOps
More than ever, our customers are realizing that pushing software from their engineers’ laptops directly to Production has become a common – and highly efficient – method of delivering software. At the same time, more and more people from across the organization are participating in the release process. In addition to release managers and developers, auditing officers, business stakeholders, ops engineers, and security consultants are increasingly more involved, and all have crucial roles. And of course, frequency of releases is going through the roof too.
[caption id="attachment_17476" align="aligncenter" width="611"]New and improved features in XL 7.5
10x or better! Performance improvement in Both XL Release and XL Deploy
Many of our customers are facing a dramatic increase in number of deployments; some go up to a thousand deployments per week. While this is a positive trend that is the result of continuous improvement and automation of the existing delivery processes, it’s one that can be difficult to manage without high-performing tools. This is why we’ve made continued performance improvements a priority for this version of XL Deploy. To enable quick and valuable insights, we’ve improved the underlying data processing flow, allowing users to do searches and create dashboards in seconds. Now, the ability to easily filter and quickly access different cross-sections of the data is at your fingertips. We’ve also improved the reporting performance in XL Deploy, making it anywhere from 10x to 100x faster, depending on which tasks are being performed. And XL Release 7.5 is 10x times faster on average as compared with 7.0!More convenient and more secure access for the entire XL Platform
As our customers continue to increase the amount of critical software they release using the XL Platform, they need more streamlined and secure access. To make logging into the platform easy, we’ve added a Single Sign-on feature for XL Release and XL Deploy. Just use the corporate setup of your Active Directory or LDAP, and manage access to your XebiaLabs systems via your existing set of roles and authorizations. With the new Single Sign-on capability, you also have the option of applying your organization’s existing multifactor authentication protocol to XL Release and XL Deploy. Particularly in environments where SOX compliance is crucial, these small features will greatly improve auditability.
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Groundbreaking technologies are driving innovative business models across every vertical. Hear Forrester analyst and DevOps expert, Rob Stroud, explain how even the largest enterprise can succeed with innovation at scale while accelerating release velocity and delivering high quality, low-risk software.XL Deploy: Clearer relationship between deployment plan, deployables, and environment
As you automate your DevOps pipeline, nothing is more important than understanding what will happen and when during deployments. To make this information more visible, we’ve added a minor feature with major impact: when XL Deploy is in preview mode, you can now easily relate the steps in your deployment plan to the deployables and the environment. Traceability is easier than ever before. Simply click through your deployment plan to discover the order in which the deployment steps will happen.XL Deploy: Easily support your team with “View As”
Adding users to XL Deploy means that the team that supports the system will get even busier. Fortunately, the new “View As” feature allows your administrators to view the repositories as another user, which helps them more quickly find root causes and solve problems.XL Release: Improved availability and resiliency
If you orchestrate all of your releases via XL Release, and Continuous Delivery is crucial for your business, then you must ensure that your setup is robust and scalable. The new Active-Active mode lets you run multiple instances of XL Release in a cluster to ensure high availability. From a user perspective, nothing changes.XL Release: Helping developers write better scripts with Dual-mode DevOps
On top of all the “DevOps at enterprise scale” features we’ve added, there’s also a great new feature for engineers in XL Release: a new and improved inline code editor. We strongly believe that XL Release connects different worlds - from engineering, risk, compliance, and release management – and all parties are of great importance for success. To support all types of users, we introduced the concept of Dual-mode DevOps in XL Release in January of this year. Dual-mode features let users choose the method that works best for them – they can define releases using the simple user interface, or they can write code instead! [caption id="attachment_17475" align="aligncenter" width="934"]XL Release: Working smarter with Customizable Risk Intelligence
In June of this year, XebiaLabs pioneered the concept of Risk Intelligence to help teams monitor releases at scale and focus their limited attention on areas of greatest need. Version 7.5 now introduces the market’s first-ever Customizable Risk Intelligence, which makes risk management and mitigation even more targeted and efficient. [caption id="attachment_17474" align="aligncenter" width="1162"]Helping our customers transform to modern IT
One thing is certain: the DevOps technology stack is continuously expanding, and enterprises need to be able to easily adopt the latest technologies to stay competitive. XebiaLabs has always provided expansive support for the DevOps ecosystem. We want to continue to help our customers take advantage of the latest and most modern technology, so we’ve made it a priority to provide seamless support for the most popular cloud and container platforms for XL Release and XL Deploy. With 7.5, XebiaLabs delivers a host of new and enhanced plugins to ensure seamless operation, including connectors for OpenShift, Kubernetes, Docker, Azure, AWS, and VSTS/TFS.In fact, in 2017, XebiaLabs added support for 16 new cloud and container technologies: AWS EBS, AWS VPC, AWS ECS, AWS S3, AWS RDB, AWS Lambda, Amazon API, Gateway, Azure Compute, Azure Container Instance, Azure Functions, Azure Blob Storage, Azure App Services, Kubernetes, Google Container Engine (via the Kubernetes plugin), and OpenShift. We will continue to add new and exciting capabilities that are essential for enterprises to successfully automate and scale their DevOps pipelines. Keep an eye on this blog to learn about ongoing innovations!Further reading
- Last month we launched our new product, XL Impact, which provides goal-based DevOps intelligence to stakeholders across the enterprise.
- To see the many other enhancements in our products, please check out the 7.5 release notes: XL Release and XL Deploy.
- Try these new features in XL Release and XL Deploy – free!