Category: Continuous Deployment

RFC Octopus Data Center Manager

I’ve been using Octopus Deploy since early 2014. Around version 2.2 or 2.3 is when I started investigating Octopus and then implementing it in an enterprise scale environment. It’s been over a three year long journey for myself. A ton of changes have been made to Octopus during that time and it’s not without a sense of appreciation and respect that...

Setting up continuous deployments with Octopus Deploy and TFS

One reader asked in my Octo.exe deep dive if I had published how to setup continuous deployments. I had mentioned it in the deep dive and while I’d rather do a comprehensive piece to see how many different ways we could set up a continuous deployment, a simple post on how to setup continuous deployments in TFS is just as effective for the...

The Octo.exe – your utility knife for automation

If you’ve started using Octopus Deploy and want to fully maximize it’s potential via automation but you don’t know where to start, you need to begin investigating the Octo.exe. The Octo.exe is a neat little utility that allows you, through the command-line (and by extension, PowerShell) to interact with your Octopus Server without using the web interface. There’s a number of...

Backing up projects on Octopus Tentacles? Think twice

I’ve noticed many of our Octopus teams use the File System – Backup Directory step template from the library to implement a backup step. Unfortunately, I’ve seen minimal prudence from said teams implementing backups. Many of these teams simply backup their project across most if not all of their environments while having no rollback steps whatsoever. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Octopus Step...

Octopus Deployment Basics

For the past few months, I’ve been analyzing Octopus Deploy in terms of it’s components, architectural design and benefits of said design decisions. In this article, we’re going to bring everything together to see the sum of all the parts. Everything starts with NuGet. Octopus works with your applications as NuGet packages and distributes them to the appropriate server. PowerShell is...

Minor change in plans for Octopus Deploy Series

My current Octopus Deploy Series so far has been more focused at a high/conceptual level. They’ve been a lot of fun to write and to piece together how Octopus’s components and mechanisms complement one another for both the developers’ and users’ benefit. I originally intended to do a deeper dive into Octopus Deploy and I think my initial estimates of time were underestimated. I think...