Ravello Systems Powers DevOps with Extreme Continuous Integration on Clones of Production Applications in the Cloud

Ravello adds new Apache Maven plug-in and announces availability of Ruby and Python bindings for integration with build automation tools.

PALO ALTO, Calif. – February 12, 2014 – Ravello Systems, the industry’s first Cloud Application Hypervisor provider, today announced it has added new plug-ins and RESTful APIs to provision entire multi-virtual machine environments, along with networking and storage, in the cloud. Ravello has added a new Apache Maven plug-in, and programming language bindings for Ruby and Python, with support for Continuous Integration (CI) systems including Jenkins, Bamboo, and Teamcity. With one API call, developers can instantly provision a complete clone of their existing on-premise production application and deploy it in the public cloud.

Ravello enables CI on production replicas in the cloud

To achieve successful agile development and test processes, enterprises are quickly adopting DevOps principles, and using CI is a key practice. The goal with CI is to get as reliable feedback as quickly as possible, resulting in higher quality software delivered faster. However, most DevOps practitioners encounter constraints when implementing CI due to (1) difficulties in automating the infrastructure, making it problematic to provision clones of multi-tier production applications, and (2) capacity restraints in the datacenter, making it impossible to deploy these clones for every code commit. Automating CI processes can be very painful, time-consuming and fraught with configuration nightmares.

With Apache Maven, the vastly popular build automation tool, developers are able to manage a project’s build, deployment, testing, reporting and documentation from a central repository. Recognizing the value of Maven as a build automation tool, the Ravello Maven plug-in is designed to help integrate Maven-based projects with Ravello Systems’ rich APIs. This integration makes it easier to automatically configure the build, testing and deployment processes, resulting in smoother operations.

Ravello’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering allows enterprises to spin up clones of their existing multi-tier enterprise applications in the public cloud – without any changes to the virtual machines (VMs), networking or storage. With the addition of a new Maven plug-in and the availability of Ruby and Python bindings for integration with other build automation tools, Ravello now enables extreme CI on production clones in the cloud. Now developers and test engineers can use Ravello’s APIs to:

Provision the entire environment;
Start and stop applications as needed;
Automatically execute the tests and either shut down to release resources once the test has passed, or save the state if an issue needs to be debugged;
Easily integrate with CI servers such as Jenkins, Bamboo or Teamcity.

All this can be done right from the integrated development environment (IDE). Now each code commit can be tested on a clone of production in the cloud for instant and accurate feedback.

“The public cloud with its infinite capacity is very promising for continuous integration, but it’s an inherently different environment than what you have on premise,” said Gil Hoffer, VP of R&D, Ravello Systems. “Your application might have multiple subnets, multiple network cards per server and specific storage requirements. With Ravello we abstract away the differences between the private and public clouds, and have built-in automation for provisioning and deploying those multi-tier applications in the cloud.”

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About Ravello Systems
Founded in 2011, Ravello Systems delivers a software-as-a-service that enables developers, devops and IT to use the unlimited resources of the public cloud to develop and test their on-premise applications. Powered by the industry’s first Cloud Application Hypervisor, Ravello enables enterprises to encapsulate their multi-tier applications and run them anywhere – on-premise or in any cloud – without making any changes whatsoever, and thereby implement a true hybrid cloud. Ravello Systems is backed by top tier VCs including Sequoia Capital, Norwest Venture Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners. For more information, visit www.ravellosystems.com.