Deployment: March 3, 2008

We had the conference call, regarding the previous deployment, and it was decided that we were confident enough in the original database scripts to proceed with the deployment, at 20:00. We would be using a different DBA.

20:00: We all logged onto the conference bridge, and confirmed that we were ready to go.

20:00–20:20 (20 minutes): We shut down the application servers for both apps.

20:20–20:30 (10 minutes): We backed up the back-end databases for both applications.

20:30–20:50 (20 minutes): We executed the database scripts for Application 1.

20:50–21:20 (30 minutes): We deployed Application 1.

20:50–21:25 (35 minutes): We executed the database scripts for Application 2, in parallel with the deployment of Application 1.

21:20–21:25 (5 minutes): We did sanity testing of Application 1, which turned out fine. (Only 5 minutes because sanity testing for this particular application is pretty quick.

21:25–23:20 (1 hour and 55 minutes): The client did their Landing Test of Application 1, and everything looked good.

21:30–21:45 (15 minutes): We deployed Application 2.

21:45–22:00 (15 minutes): We did sanity testing of Application 2, and everything looked good.

22:00–00:40 (2 hours and 40 minutes): The client did their Landing Test of Application 2. There were some minor issues discovered, but none were show-stoppers. They signed off on the deployment, and we all went to bed.

The last time we’d deployed this, one of the back-end systems we depend on went crazy, and we had to back out. Many of us were thinking negative thoughts, worrying about having to do the same thing this time, as our heads hit our pillows…