OTHER CASE STUDIES:
Opcalim
How Opcalim Reduced Server Provisioning Time from One Month to Three Days — And Deployments from Two Days to One Hour
How Opcalim Reduced Server Provisioning Time from One Month to Three Days — And Deployments from Two Days to One Hour
100% Windows Functionality
1 Click Automated Pipeline Deployments
10 Minutes between Configuration Drift Remediations
2 Hours to Provision a Server
3 Days to Initiate New Platforms
“When we create a new server, we immediately put in the server roles and everything the server needs to be set up. We know that the server is running exactly how we expect it to.”
Philippe Camelio, Systems and Network Specialist, OpCalim
The Challenge:
Opcalim, a French consultancy that works with government agencies in the French agricultural sector, needed a solution to replace their manual deployment process for a third-party application. However, the company only employed two Operations specialists and no dedicated Development team.
The initial plan to create something in-house did not succeed. The small Operations team—whose job is to deploy applications, not code—struggled to manage the complexity of automating all their IS configurations, .NET configurations, Directories, and Web Config files.
Eventually, the team decided it needed outside help to setup their pipelines. It initially looked to solve their problem by integrating with Jenkins or Chef. However, both platforms force you to use Linux; this was not a good solution for Opcalim, which is a Windows shop. Their small team did not want to waste time provisioning a Linux server.
Then BuildMaster and Otter’s Windows-first design caught their attention.
The Solution:
Once they started using BuildMaster and Otter, the team was impressed they could do configurations before connecting to a server and opening a session. That gave them the security of knowing what was going to happen on the production server. It also offered the promise of quick and easy scalability.
Together, BuildMaster and Otter combine to configure servers and synchronize deployments in a way that provides Opcalim with a solution to a number of problems:
- Eliminate Repetitive Deployment Tasks: One-click deployments automate repetitive deployment tasks. Opcalim can build a deployment pipeline once, set up new environments quickly as needed, and then press a button to make the whole thing go over and over again.
- Simplify Deployment Pipeline Changes: Changes in .NET or SQL are simplified, taking up much less of the team’s time. BuildMaster makes it easy to follow and deploy into all other environments, eliminating the time-sink around adjusting deployment pipelines.
- Rapid, Error-free Server Configuration: Instead of manually setting up infrastructure, Otter ensures new servers immediately receive server roles and everything needed to set them up. This automation also gives the team peace of mind that the server is running exactly as expected. And instead of days or weeks of manual setup, the entire automated process takes just two hours.
- Auto-remediation of Configuration Drift: Instead of searching for configuration drift or waiting for problems to manifest, OpCalim’s team uses Otter to auto-remediate servers every 10 minutes.
- Modification of Third-party Applications: Instead of spending time modifying complicated third-party .NET configuration files manually, BuildMaster allows the team to easily modify the files of the .NET applications they work with in environment-specific ways.
- Huge Time Savings: Instead of taking three to four weeks to manually initiate a new platform of three SSRS/SQL/.NET servers and two days to deploy the application, it takes Otter three days to initiate and BuildMaster just a single hour to deploy.
“I spend more time finding the right command to deploy a .NET application than to embed it into BuildMaster.”
Philippe Camelio, Systems and Network Specialist, OpCalim
Overall Results:
- Windows-first solution eliminated the need for unnecessary employee training and server configuration
- Build automation and configuration drift management simple enough for a small team to manage
- 10x faster server provisioning and 48x faster deployments
Inedo DevOps tools maximize developer time, minimize release risk, and empower stakeholders to bring their vision to life faster. All with the people and technology you have right now.
