Exploring DevOps Config
Summarize
Summary of Exploring DevOps Config IT Service Management
DevOps Config serves as a centralized platform for storing and managing configuration data, ensuring it acts as a single source of truth. It allows for validation of configuration data before deployment and conflict resolution in deployed configurations. Please note that with the Washington DC release, DevOps Config is being prepared for future deprecation but will remain supported.
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Key Features
- Single Source of Truth: Consolidates configuration data from multiple sources with role-based access control.
- Validation: Automatically validates configuration data before deployment to prevent non-compliant changes.
- Policy Framework: Supports generic policies for standard checks that can be customized based on specific use cases.
- Integration: Works seamlessly with existing tools, avoiding the need for additional training or workflow changes.
- App Integration: Applications created in DevOps Config link to other ServiceNow products, enhancing functionality.
Key Outcomes
By utilizing DevOps Config, organizations can enhance the speed of their deployment processes while ensuring that any changes made are compliant with established policies. It allows for quick identification and resolution of configuration-related issues, thereby minimizing risks and improving overall operational efficiency. Additionally, ongoing management of configuration data is simplified, making it easier to adapt to new policies and requirements over time.
Use DevOps Config to store and manage all of your config data as a single source of truth. You can also use DevOps Config to validate your config data before deployment, and resolve conflicts in deployed config data.
Watch this short video to see how config data snapshots in DevOps Config can help you identify issues caused by unintended config data changes.
Use root cause analysis of configuration-related outages or alerts to quickly identify and resolve unintended config data changes, also known as configuration "drift." Compare current and past versions of intended config data changes attached to change requests, and roll back to the desired state when needed.
For more information, see Investigate an alert that involves a change to config data.
Manage your configuration data
DevOps Config becomes the single source of truth for your configuration data, rather than the source tool. A consolidated model manages and secures config data across multiple sources with role-based access control.
Although DevOps Config prevents non-compliant changes by validating your configuration data before deployment, security of the configuration data can't be enforced if the data is kept at the source and not stored in DevOps Config.
- Workflow
DevOps Config manages all your data in one location, validates it as it's written, and exports, when needed.
- DevOps Engineer persona
Use DevOps Config and DevOps Config API to manage and validate configuration data. Thus, enabling DevOps teams to release at a faster speed, ensuring that no risky or non-compliant changes are introduced in production.
Use automated gates in a CI/CD pipeline or deployment script so that a deployment is stopped if any change to the application or infrastructure configuration is deemed risky or non-compliant.
Manage DevOps Config as more policies are added and more exporters are defined.
Validate your configuration data
DevOps Config acts as a test tool by automatically validating your configuration data before deployment to prevent non-compliant changes, while ensuring adherence to policy frameworks.
Validation before deployment occurs by executing policies on the configuration data. The DevOps Config Policy content pack includes generic policies that check for standard issues, but can be customized based on use case.
- Workflow
When configuration data is changed or added, DevOps Config runs policies on the configuration data that's stored across multiple sources, validates it, and returns the outcome.
In the pipeline, the decision on whether to deploy is made, and the configuration data is retrieved from the source (Git, for example) to deploy.
- App Engineer (or IT infrastructure owner) persona
Use DevOps Config to validate configuration data. Thus, making sure no risks are introduced and that all changes are compliant with company policies before any changes are applied in a production environment.
Since the tool integrates with the existing toolset, there's no change to the way work is done and there are no new tools to learn. Changes made to configuration data are validated in the background, and when the outcome is reported, action can be taken.