Process
Overview of ABC Provisioning
Archetype, Build and Configuration (ABC) provisioning is a paradigm which focuses on the initial stages of the provisioning process concerning the creation of the specifications that govern application configurations and the implementation of those specifications to create pre-configured, pre-integrated enterprise stacks. ABC provisioning takes a pragmatic approach to design, engineering and management of I.T. infrastructure provisioning which makes it particularly suitable for I.T. departments operating to short deadlines and tight budgets.
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Product Evaluation
Project stake holders evaluate the configuration implications of an application and assess how to deploy it for a particular service in a given environment. An example might be the configuration of database application for an on-line banking service deployed in a production environment. They draw up service, environment and application specification documents which detail the rules that have to be adhered to when provisioning an application. These specification documents represent the foundation of the provisioning process.
Standards Creation
Using these specification documents a Standard Build for the application is created. It can be thought of as a detailed description of the implementation of the application. It details how an application ought to be provisioned for a given service in a particular environment. This document is reviewed by architects and project team with vendor consultations before an application archetype is derived from it.
Archetype Authorship
Using Genesis, a build engineer creates an Application Archetype based on the Standard Build document. Application Archetypes consist of control scripts, binaries and other content (external data provided to the application to use, mange or serve). The build engineer uses XML to describe the provisioning details of an application to Genesis. Archetype authorship reviews the design decisions taken whilst creating the Standard Build, highlighting gaps and making assumptions explicit. It is the most time consuming activity in provisioning process, however, once the application archetype is complete it can be reused, with no modification, for all services across all environments.
Package Deployment
The application deployer populates any remaining changes of configuration data for the different environments and builds the application packages using Genesis. The application packages are deployed to the target environment using third party orchestration tools.