Keeping testing and production server environments clean, in sync, and consistent

Question

It seems that the company that I work for is always struggling with our customers’ server environments.

Specifically, we almost always encounter pro

Answer 1

Your problems are quite normal. There are at least two strategies I know work fairly well:

If you're distributing on linux, you can build rpms/debs from your development process and use the package management function. I know lots of projects do this with great success for inhouse projects.

Another alternative is to package the whole environment as some kind of shell script. This shell script can/should configure the complete environment with all settings. Normally this script is maintained by develeopment, and this script overwrites any modifications that have been made manually. A script like this is usually maintained by development, kept under version control and sent to deployment as a full distribution. We use cygwin for this. Normally the script reads some kind of configuration that may be administered by operations. I've had scripts that'd actually set up the entire system from scratch as if installing on a totally blank, freshly installed machine.

Both of these strategies should preferably include automated production of these artifacts all the way from your build script/build system. The smoother this process runs, the better for all involved parties.