An environment is a partition grid of agents that is specific for different stages of a project Life-Cycle (QA, PROD, etc.). Each environment may also be configured to a specific technology (Java, .NET, etc.).
Workflows within AnthillPro execute on a specified environment. This allows the definition of a single deployment workflow that can then be used to deploy the application to separate QA and production environments, etc. The same deployment workflow executed on the QA environment deploys the application to the QA environment. When executed on the production environment, it deploys the application to the production environment.
Agents can participate in multiple environments. This allows the use of an agent that communicates with a network deployment manager capable of deploying applications to multiple environments.
Environments are organized as part of an Environment Group: Each individual environment participates in at least one group, or container. An environment group determines the set of environments that project workflows may be executed on. Each environment group must contain at least one environment (typically models a development, QA, production, or other environment).
| Using Environment Groups: Consider an organization that develops software using two different technologies. The first is J2EE. Our hypothetical organization has a development, a QA, and a production J2EE environment, with each containing application servers configured to the corporate standard. The second technology used is C++, with development, QA, and production environments for all C++ projects. The C++ environments use different physical servers than the corresponding J2EE environments. In this scenario, J2EE projects and C++ projects are configured into two environment groups: one called 'J2EE Env Group', and the other called 'C++ Env Group'. The 'J2EE Env Group' contains the J2EE development, QA, and production environment groups, and the 'C++ Env Group' contains the C++ environment groups. With these environment groups, the organization derailed any confusion about what set of servers a J2EE or C++ project should be deployed to. |
AnthillPro ships with one implied environment: the Build-Farm which can't be deleted. It is the default environment containing all agents used for pure-build processes. Because there are no restrictions on how the Build-Farm is used, it may be used for deployments as well. Additionally, AnthillPro has no restriction to prevent you from using other environment groups for pure build processes.