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Introducing IBM DevOps Deploy 8.1.0 which includes enhancements to user interface, improve security, and improve usability

By Randall Langehennig posted 2 days ago

  

Introducing IBM DevOps Deploy 8.1.0 which includes enhancements to user interface, improve security, and improve usability

19 November 2024

Overview

We are very pleased to announce the release of IBM DevOps Deploy 8.1.0.  

IBM DevOps Deploy (formerly known as UrbanCode Deploy) is an application-release solution that infuses automation into the continuous delivery and continuous deployment (CI/CD) process and provides robust visibility, traceability and auditing capabilities.

We introduced many new enhancements and features in the 8.1.0 release that improve the user interface, improve security, and improve usability of the solution.  To see all the details of What’s New in 8.1.0, please see the What's New page.

For all of those that attended IBM TechXchange 2024 in Las Vegas, thank you for attending our hands-on lab, our customer-led sessions, and our community booth to get hands on with IBM DevOps Deploy.   A special thank you to all our customers that attended and to those that presented and provided testimonies of their implementations to meet their business objectives. 

Enhancements in DevOps Deploy 8.1.0

Version 8.1.0 includes the following enhancements:

Feature Title Description
Moved navigational tabs to the left-hand side of the screen 

The Deploy UI page tabs, such as Components, Applications, and so on are moved from the top of the screen to the left-hand side for usability purposes and to provide standardization across products.

Enhanced the dashboard for comprehensive deployment and agent health insights

Enhanced the dashboard page to provide insights into Deployment Health, Agent Utilization, Agent Health and Deployment Schedule.

Added support for systemd service on Linux You can run a server, agents, and agent relay by using the systemd service with a unit file.

See the following for more detail:

Updated requestApplicationProcess CLI endpoint Updated the requestApplicationProcess CLI endpoint to display deployment warning counts by using the ${p:warningCount} property in the message.
Added support for use of properties in the comment prompt of manual tasks You can add properties in comment prompt of manual tasks.   This would allow you to identify the version or snapshot for which the approval is needed as an example.
When a manual task is approved, the approver time can now be exposed as output properties of the step

These output properties can be referenced using:

    • ${p:ManualTask/ApproverTime}
    • ${p:ManualTask/FormattedApprovalTime}
Updated the calendar to view scheduled deployment jobs in list format

Added list view within the calendar that allows the display of daily deployments in a simplified list format within the calendar view, providing clearer visibility and ease of navigation.

When you click the List button highlighted above, you will see the list as shown below.   Clicking the List button again will toggle back to the standard view.

Added the Description field in the Create Teams and Create Groups windows

You can add description about the teams and groups while creating them for users to understand who are the team and group approvers.

See Creating a team and Creating a security group for more details.

Enhanced Webhook integration for MS Teams with proxy-enabled 

Added new configuration fields to Webhook objects that allows you to specify proxy host and port needed for integration with MS Teams.

See Adding webhooks to process for more details.

Dynamic width adjustment for component names in the web UI

The Select component versions window is fixed to show the component name with word breaks if a name is too long to fit on the screen. This update includes the removal of horizontal scroll bar to view the entire name.

Automatic user account locking and deleting

Added ability to enable/disable user accounts instead of deleting them. In addition, you can select to automatically disable an account if it has not been used in a designated number of days.

See Locking and deleting user accounts automatically for more details.

Enhancing secret store for Vault with LDAP authentication

Connections are allowed from Vault using LDAP authentication methods to further enhance security and provide flexibility in user authentication.

See Secret stores for more details.

Updated the Agents UI to show the time when a agent was last online

A column Last Contact is added to the Agents UI that includes the date and time when the agent went offline.

Allow a non-interactive console access to provide the password silently while uploading the Process as Code files 

Allow user to specify password on command line either directly or through the use of an environment variable when running the command to upload Process as Code files.

Here is an example with a password variable:

See Using the PAC commands for more details.

Two separate options to cleanup log files and deployment history

Allow user to configure how frequently to cleanup job step log files independently of deployment history.

Customizable Application history view

The Application history view is now customizable and allows you to see the start date and end dates of a deployment, and a description that provides user-supplied information about that specific deployment.

Added import and export options for specific component and application processes

You can export and import component and application processes in either JSON or YAML formats as shown below:

Updated the CreateComponentVersionCompositeAction found in the GitHub Marketplace

Updated Create Component Version Composite Action to allow upload of component version files.

Reference link:  https://github.com/marketplace/actions/create-component-version-composite-action

Modified permissions of the secured-installed.properties file to 0600

Reduced file permissions for secured-installed.properties from 0644 to 0600 to add stronger protection for the sensitive information contained in the file.

Updated default settings of Default Teams for New Objects field in the User preferences page

In the User preferences page, the Default Teams for New Objects field is now set to System Default Policy by default.

See Setting the user preferences for more details.

Enforcing certification expiration and automatic agent keypair rotation

Added the ability to have agents generate a new key pair and certificate automatically and install it into the server. By rotating certificate automatically, you can mitigate the security risk of using the same keystore entry for an extended period.

See Enforcing certification expiration and auto-rotation for more details.

Added the ability to test Vault AppRoles and LDAP integration

Added the Test option to Vault AppRole and LDAP user definition that allows you to quickly and conveniently verify that the AppRole or LDAP integration is configured correctly.

Added CLI support 
Ported the FileUtils plug-in steps to Java

Several steps within the FileUtils plug-in are converted from Groovy to Java to increase performance. These steps include:

  • Create File
  • Monitor File Contents
  • Read Property File
  • Create Directories

Mainframe Enhancements

With the DevOps Deploy 8.1.0 release, we also provided the following enhancements to help our zOS customers:

  • ·       Support for Java 17
  • ·       Enhancement to the 'Remove Redundant Versions' zOS Utility plugin step
  • ·       Version Checksum validation enhancement

Important Note about Plugins and the Minimum Supported Java Version

With the release of DevOps Deploy 8.1.0.0, all plugins for DevOps Deploy will require a minimum version of Java 8, or later.  This applies to both automation plugins and source configuration plugins that are used with the product.

Summary

As you can see from all of the great enhancements above, we are fully committed to the IBM DevOps Deploy product and will continue to enhance the solution based on market research and feedback from our many customers.    New exciting features are already planned for our upcoming releases including our mainframe deployment capabilities, container deployments, and much more.

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