Continuous Delivery For Complex Systems Using Zuul with Monty Taylor

Summary

Continuous integration systems are important for ensuring that you don’t release broken software. Some projects can benefit from simple, standardized platforms, but as you grow or factor in additional projects the complexity of checking your deployments grows. Zuul is a deployment automation and gating system that was built to power the complexities of OpenStack so it will grow and scale with you. In this episode Monty Taylor explains how he helped start Zuul, how it is designed for scale, and how you can start using it for your continuous delivery systems. He also discusses how Zuul has evolved and the directions it will take in the future.

Preface

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• Your host as usual is Tobias Macey and today I’m interviewing Monty Taylor about Zuul, a platform that drives continuous integration, delivery, and deployment systems with a focus on project gating and interrelated projects.

Interview

• Introductions
• How did you get introduced to Python?
• Can you start by explaining what Zuul is and how the project got started?
• How do you view Zuul in the broader landscape of CI/CD systems (e.g. GoCD, Jenkins, Travis, etc.)?
• What is the workflow for someone who is defining a pipeline in Zuul?
  • How are the pipelines tested and promoted?
  • One of the problems that are often encountered in CI/CD systems is the difficulty of testing changes locally. What kind of support is available in Zuul for that?



• Can you describe the project architecture?
  • What aspects of the architecture enable it to scale to large projects and teams?



• How difficult would it be to swap the Ansible integration for another orchestration tool?


• What would be involved in adding support for additional version control systems?


• What are your plans for the future of the project?

Keep In Touch

• emonty on GitHub
• Website
• @e_monty on Twitter

Picks

• Tobias
  • Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy



• Monty
  • Bojack Horseman

Links

• Red Hat
• Zuul
• OpenStack
• Jim Blair
• Perl
• SNPP
• Rackspace
• NASA
• Drizzle
• Sun Microsystems
• MySQL
• Continuous Integration
• Continuous Delivery
• Launchpad
• Bzr
• Jenkins
• Jess Frazelle
• Graphite
• StatsD
• graphite.openstack.org
• grafana.openstack.org
• subunit
• Ansible
• Helm
• Software Factory
• Gerrit
• Git
• Perforce
• Subversion
• Zookeeper
• Gearman

The intro and outro music is from Requiem for a Fish The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA