DevOps Continuous Delivery and Continuous Deployment Syllabus

Continuous Delivery and Continuous Deployment syllabus — full chapter and topic list

Expand any chapter to see its topics and sub-topics. This is the whole examinable outline for Continuous Delivery and Continuous Deployment in DevOps, not a summary of it.

1. 1

   Introduction to CD

   2 topics

   • CD Concepts and Practices
   • Benefits of CD
2. 2

   CD Tools

   3 topics

   • Spinnaker
   • Argo CD
   • Octopus Deploy
3. 3

   Setting Up a CD Pipeline

   3 topics

   • Deployment Strategies
   • Blue-Green Deployment
   • Canary Releases

Continuous Delivery and Continuous Deployment flashcards for DevOps

21 of 50 cards from the Continuous Delivery and Continuous Deployment deck — real questions with worked answers.

1. What is Continuous Delivery (CD)?

   A software engineering practice in which code changes are automatically built, tested, and prepared for release to production. Every change is kept in a deployable state, but the final push to production is triggered manually by a human decision.

2. What is Continuous Deployment?

   An extension of Continuous Delivery in which every change that passes the automated pipeline (build and tests) is automatically released to production with no manual approval gate. The release to production is fully automated.

3. What is the key distinction between Continuous Delivery and Continuous Deployment?

   Both automate the pipeline up to production-readiness. Continuous Delivery requires a manual approval/trigger for the production release; Continuous Deployment automatically releases every passing change to production without human intervention.

4. How does Continuous Integration (CI) relate to Continuous Delivery/Deployment?

   CI is the upstream practice of frequently merging code into a shared mainline with automated builds and tests. CD builds on CI by extending the automation to packaging, release preparation, and deployment. CI ensures code is mergeable; CD ensures it is releasable/deployable.

5. In CI/CD, what does the acronym 'CD' ambiguously stand for, and how do you tell which one is meant?

   'CD' can mean Continuous Delivery or Continuous Deployment. The difference is the production gate: Delivery = manual release decision; Deployment = fully automated release. Context (presence or absence of a manual approval step) disambiguates.

6. What is a deployment pipeline (delivery pipeline)?

   An automated implementation of the path from version control to the user. It typically chains stages such as build, unit tests, integration tests, acceptance tests, and deployment, providing fast feedback and a single record of every change's progress toward release.

7. What is an artifact in the context of CD, and what is the 'build once' principle?

   An artifact is the immutable, deployable package produced by the build (e.g., a JAR, container image, or binary). The 'build once' principle states the same artifact built once should be promoted unchanged through every environment, so what is tested is exactly what is released.

8. What does 'keeping the build green' (or 'always releasable') mean in CD?

   The mainline branch must always be in a deployable state. A failing build or test takes top priority to fix, because broken trunk blocks everyone's ability to release at any time.

9. What is trunk-based development and why is it associated with CD?

   A source-control practice where developers integrate small, frequent changes into a single shared trunk (main) rather than long-lived feature branches. It minimizes merge conflicts and keeps the mainline continuously integratable and releasable, which CD depends on.

10. What are feature flags (feature toggles) and what role do they play in CD?

    Configuration switches that turn functionality on or off at runtime without redeploying. They let teams merge and deploy incomplete or risky features in a hidden state, decoupling deployment (shipping code) from release (exposing it to users).

11. In CD terminology, what is the difference between 'deployment' and 'release'?

    Deployment is the act of installing/running a new version of code in an environment (including production). Release is the act of making features available to users. Feature flags and progressive rollouts allow deploying without releasing.

12. List the core benefits commonly attributed to Continuous Delivery.

    Faster time to market, lower-risk releases (small batches), faster feedback, higher software quality, reduced manual effort, improved developer productivity, easier rollback, and the ability to release on demand.

13. Why do small batch sizes reduce deployment risk in CD?

    Smaller changes are easier to test, review, and reason about; when something fails, the smaller change set makes root-cause diagnosis and rollback faster, and the blast radius of any defect is limited.

14. Which four DORA metrics are used to measure software delivery performance?

    Deployment Frequency, Lead Time for Changes, Change Failure Rate, and Mean Time to Restore (MTTR). The first two measure throughput; the last two measure stability.

15. Define the DORA metric 'Lead Time for Changes.'

    The time it takes for a code commit to go from being committed to running successfully in production. Shorter lead time indicates a more efficient delivery process.

16. Define the DORA metric 'Change Failure Rate' and give its formula.

    The percentage of deployments to production that cause a failure (rollback, hotfix, or outage). $$\text{CFR} = \frac{\text{Failed deployments}}{\text{Total deployments}} \times 100\%$$

17. Define MTTR (Mean Time to Restore) and give its formula.

    The average time to recover from a production failure. $$\text{MTTR} = \frac{\text{Total downtime}}{\text{Number of incidents}}$$

18. What is Spinnaker?

    An open-source, multi-cloud continuous delivery platform originally created by Netflix (and co-developed with Google). It focuses on application deployment and release management across cloud providers, with built-in support for advanced deployment strategies.

19. Which cloud providers does Spinnaker natively support?

    Major providers including AWS, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Microsoft Azure, Kubernetes, Cloud Foundry, and Oracle Cloud, making it a multi-cloud deployment tool.

20. In Spinnaker, what is a 'pipeline'?

    A sequence of configurable stages that automate the deployment workflow. Stages can include bake, deploy, manual judgment, wait, and resize, and can be triggered by events such as a new image, a Git push, or a cron schedule.

21. In Spinnaker, what is the 'bake' stage?

    A stage that produces an immutable machine image (e.g., an AWS AMI) from a source artifact, typically using HashiCorp Packer. The baked image is then deployed, supporting immutable infrastructure.

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