Web Content Deployment
The sheer size, depth and dynamic nature of today's websites and corporate portals present many challenges when it comes to deploying new content and maintaining ongoing updates. Not only is the amount of content under management significant, but with most web-enabled organizations hosting sites from multiple datacenters, the challenge of providing reliable and timely updates is compounded even more.
Historically organizations have established pretty well defined lines between how and where content is created and deployed. In most cases the full burden of "deployment-to-production" has been placed on web infrastructure teams. Web server Administrators have normally executed deployments via manual copying tasks or via scripts based on FTP, XCopy or RSYNC.
As the complexity of web environments expands and the frequency of changes multiplies, scripted solutions start delivering inconsistent completion results, poor deployment cycle timelines and present major management challenges. Eventually the number of scripts and processes under management reaches a point that it is unmanageable and no longer cost effective. When content fails to make its way to production, business and revenue can be negatively impacted.
In the same respect that deploying content can be costly and time consuming via manual and scripted processes, in the event inaccurate or unintended content make its way into production, restoring production environments to a correct data state can be even more of a challenge with manual processes. Any administrator who has dealt with restoring content to dozens of servers, in a short period of time, understands the challenges of this scenario.
RepliWeb is addressing the content deployment needs of performance drive web-enabled organizations. Web Server Administrators, Site Architects, and Content Creators alike can now rely on one solution, RepliWeb Deployment Platform (R-1) to handle Content, Code and Server Component deployments.
An out of the box application, R-1 delivers the scheduling, security, automation and reporting capabilities that are essential for managing content updates throughout localized and remote data center computing environments. R-1 integrates into any content workflow and allows IT to focus on more strategic initiatives.
The following is a typical, multi-stage content workflow for updating production servers with new web content, .NET applications and web server components:
- Administrators create deployment jobs for content and code pushes. Job contain predefined properties, workflow processes, security and reporting policies. Admins then assign jobs to Content Authoring or Application Development Teams.
- Authors and Developers access their "assigned" jobs via a Web Interface that allows them only to see, execute and monitor their own unique jobs
- R-1 allows Web Architects to incorporate QA/Testing processes into the Content Lifecycle.
- "Publishing-to-Live" distributes all Content, Code and Server Components to production web servers/farms in an optimized, efficient and secure manner.