The valuable features are “scriptability” and customizing the deployment processes.
Co-founder at ClarityWorks BV
Enables the creation of reusable component templates. WebSphere deployments do not work out-of-the-box.
What is most valuable?
How has it helped my organization?
It’s not necessarily the product, but more the drive to automate deployment that results in improvements.
UCD gives the freedom to create reusable component templates. You set up a process for deploying something once, such as a standalone Java application, and then that is “templetized” and can be reused.
In these templates, you can:
- Standardize the used repositories, such as Nexus
- Standardize how an install.sh script must be made
- Determine how staging parameters must be stored in a config file.
Many of the improvements are, therefore, based around automating the deployments. They are automated in such a way that no more "screwdrivers under the hood" are allowed in any stage.
This saves time, and makes the process much more reliable, reversible, repeatable, and traceable. In the beginning, this is painful. I can’t stress enough how much effort should go into getting this right.
What needs improvement?
WebSphere deployments, for some reason, don’t work out-of-the-box. We have worked on the Websphere issue with the IBM uDeploy development team a lot more now. What we want to be able to do is apply configurations to the Websphere using the standard plugin. This can be done by creating json snippets that must be parsed with the large json files of the cell, the node and the server that have been created during the mandatory initial configuration discovery of the target machine. We have had lots of difficulties getting the parsing to work, now a new version of the config plugin has been released which is an improvement.
However, what we want to be able to do with our CICD automation is to create configurations paired with the EAR files so that we can start doing partial updates, of only the parts that have changed. Also rollbacks will this way be much easier to accomplish. uDeploy can not work like this to date, the plugins do not allow it.
UCD needs to perform a discovery of the environment. This would not be needed if it would understand more about WebSphere environments and releases.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have used this solution for one year.
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What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
In terms of deployment for WebSphere, the configure plugin didn’t do what we wanted. The plugin requires a discovery of the target WebSphere environment. For some reason, applying changed configurations via the plugin doesn’t work for us.
In itself, UCD is a stable tool. Once something works, it continues to work.
How are customer service and support?
I would give customer support a rating of 6/10. The customer is expected to bring a significant amount of knowledge to be able to configure component templates, resource tree, etc.
Customer support is available, but it is remote and only acts upon raised incidents. At our own cost, we have hired IBM specialists on premise to solve the WebSphere issue.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We didn’t have a previous solution. This was our first real attempt to introduce one central deployment tool to automate and standardize deployment processes for all techniques, such as Linux, IIB, IIS, and WebSphere.
We chose the product because we have a long-lasting relationship with IBM.
How was the initial setup?
Initial setup was done on only one environment. Even then, UCD has a quite complex setup due to a needed high-available setup with load balancers, queue managers, license servers, and databases.
Depending on the size and complexity of the organization, you need at least three environments:
- To develop and test new versions of UCD
- To build reusable deployment solutions
- To execute them
What about the implementation team?
IBM did the implementation. Unfortunately, they did it without considering that deployment automation is not just about a tool, but much more about standardizing and optimizing the deployment landscape and the processes.
It was done as a remote implementation, which of course didn’t fit. It had to be changed in numerous ways.
What was our ROI?
I have no knowledge on the ROI. In the end, I think the costs must be seen in the light of the objective you want to achieve. If you’re considering release management, CICD processes, and want to be a DevOps organization, then the costs for the tool don’t matter much.
What other advice do I have?
Think about what deployment automation really is. It means no tweaking throughout the stages whilst applying changes. Everything must be code. That is the most important step; having everything as code.
Once that is done, then probably all of the good deployment tools in the upper-right corner can do the job.
In the end, deployment should be something that runs in the background; getting a signal to deploy something that has been created.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Enterprise Development and Deployment Support at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
It's user-friendly enough for our development team to access and use on a daily basis.
What is most valuable?
There are several most valuable features for us.
- Automation of deployment processes for all our projects;
- It's user-friendly enough for our development team to access and use on a daily basis; and
- The lead approval process is one of the unique features in it that can't be found in any other automation tool.
How has it helped my organization?
It's improved our organization's functions in a few ways.
- It has automated the manual deployment process for all Java, .NET, and C++ applications;
- It makes is easy to track production releases with date and time; and
- It's gotten rid of the manual errors for deployment that occurred from manual testing.
What needs improvement?
I think that the IBM support team needs to be more proactive in their responses to PMR tickets raised by customers. Also, the plugins for ServiceNow Integration need to be updated.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used it for three years.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
We've haven't encountered any issues with deployment.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We haven't experienced any issues of instability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We've been able to scale sufficiently.
How are customer service and technical support?
Customer Service:
I'd rate customer service at a 5 out of 10.
Technical Support:I'd rate technical support at a 6 out of 10.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We previously used IBM Rational Build Forge and then migrated to UrbanCode Deploy, which has more flexibility and process-oriented features.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was pretty straightforward with the installation of agents and clients. The configuration process and specific jobs are dependent on the complexity of your application or project.
What about the implementation team?
Our client's in-house team helped with the implementation, and they had an expertise of about an 8 out of 10.
What was our ROI?
I can't say exactly what our ROI is, but as we're in the insurance sector, I know that this is a cost-efficient tool.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It's available at a very reasonable price.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated OpenStack and Amazon Web Services.
What other advice do I have?
It's best to do a POC on the applications you're currently running to check the feasibility of using UrbanCode Deploy.
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
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Systems Engineer at a tech company with 51-200 employees
I like the web interface for deployment to various enviorments. Would like to have full blown support for repositories.
What is most valuable?
- Automatic detection of new builds (via an agent on Nexus).
- The ability to easily create a custom deployment workflow in the web interface.
How has it helped my organization?
Deployment to various environments can be done from a web interface without needing to manually copy files around or log into systems to run scripts.
What needs improvement?
Full blown support for repositories such a SonaType Nexus would be better than having to deploy an agent to watch particular filesystem paths.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've been using IBM UrbanCode for 3 months.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
No issues with deployment and the automatic deployment of agents and agent relay has proved very useful.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We have not encountered any issues with stability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Currently a single node is sufficient for our needs, so scalability has not been an issue.
How are customer service and technical support?
Customer Service:
There was no need to contact customer service.
Technical Support:There was no need to contact technical support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
The previous solution was a mix of manually copying files around and logging into systems to run scripts. IBM UrbanCode Deploy enabled us to easily take builds from SonaType Nexus and deploy them into the environments without needing manual steps.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was straightforward. It was very easy to install and configure IBM UrbanCode Deploy and remotely deploy its agents.
What about the implementation team?
In-house.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before chosing this product we also evaluated Midvision RapidDeploy, Thoughtworks Go and Xebia Labs XL Deploy.
Thoughtworks Go: the plugin to integrate with Sonatype Nexus is a thirdparty plugin and has been broken for sometime.
Xebia Labs XL Deploy: The set up of each app for deployment is overly complicated.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Computer Software Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Its reusable templates make your life easier
What is most valuable?
Reusable templates make your life easier.
How has it helped my organization?
Using reusable templates (mainframe and middleware), you can force developers to use the same rules for deployment. Also, you have choice to break that rule.
For how long have I used the solution?
Since 2016.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
In our implementation, we created 16 PMR for this product. 15 of them were solved.
How are customer service and technical support?
Customer Service:
Perfect. IBM has one of the best customer services.
Technical Support:Perfect. IBM has one of the best technical supports.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
No.
What about the implementation team?
We implemented in-house.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Technical Specialist - DEVOPS at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Gates help approvers provide their approvals without having to rely on when deployment happens.
What is most valuable?
Gates is one interesting feature, which will help approvers provide their approvals in advance, without having to rely on when deployment happens.
How has it helped my organization?
It has helped developers manage and deploy their own applications.
What needs improvement?
The Archiving policy is something which should be looked at.
The resource tree is pretty bulky and slow. Making a change to the resource tree manually is pretty difficult when size increases.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using it for more than six years.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
Sometimes logs were not returned back and answers were not found, but still re-executing them worked fine.
Also, when the application history grows and resource tags with component tags are used, actual deployment take-off occurs much later than when you start the deployment.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have not encountered any stability issues, as such, in 6.1
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I have encountered scalability; the artifact's clean-up policy is not efficient, so it takes up a huge amount of storage.
Also, when you have a large number of components in the same application, the deployment take-off is very slow. I assume it fetches the current inventory and compares it against the requested version.
How are customer service and technical support?
Customer Service:
Customer service is good, as opposed to earlier products where recreating the problem on the IBM side used to take days.
Technical Support:Support is great, I would say. They are very reachable, collaboratively connect and help solve the problem
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We had home-grown solutions different for different applications. We have standardized by adopting this solution.
How was the initial setup?
Initial setup was not that complex, but you need to work on integrating this with your company standards, and tools and policies supported.
What about the implementation team?
Implementation started initially with vendor support but post that, it was done on our own. This was when there were only a few members at the company when we started in 2010. So, not much documentation and help was available.
What was our ROI?
ROI is difficult to explain but it's provided huge savings.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It is a bit costly but good ARA tools are not free, and this has competitive pricing.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before we chose this solution, we evaluated other options.
What other advice do I have?
It is a good tool to use if you have a substantially big enterprise.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
It has flexible deployment options, allowing us to model our components as we want and need. More plugins are required.
Valuable Features
It has flexible deployment options, allowing us to model our components as we want and need, which is the most valuable feature we've found from our experience with it.
Improvements to My Organization
It reduced more than 70% of our manual effort when it automated deployment of both UNIX and Windows-based applications using UrbanCode Deploy. We used plugins available in the plugin center and used UNIX shell and powershell scripts to automate completely.
Room for Improvement
More plugins are required. There are also many bugs in UrbanCode Deploy. Finally, database deployment and rollback of databases needs to be worked on.
Use of Solution
I've used it for one year two months.
Deployment Issues
It does not support variable changes and utilizations while executing the application. We were setting the variable values in the application process and using it in the same process, but apparently that's not supported.
Stability Issues
There have been no issues with the stability.
Scalability Issues
We have had no issues scaling it.
Customer Service and Technical Support
Technical support is very good.
Initial Setup
Refer to the IBM Learning Center as that will help with the setup
Implementation Team
We used a vendor team for our implementation.
Other Solutions Considered
Rundeck is also a good option, but UrbanCode Deploy provides more features and is easier to use.
Other Advice
Before buying this, try the trial version and check if it serves your purpose.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: We're partners.
Thanks for the feedback. Would love to know what plugins you are looking for. And for dynamically setting values during a process, look at capturing dynamic values as the output properties of one step and referring to them from another. That's a "chalk board" you can write to in flight. The app properties are not because each deployment uses a traceable version of the props for audit / repeatability purposes. When the process updates those properties it is creating a new, different version of the props. So I'm guessing you can get the dynamism you're looking for with a different approach.
Sr. Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
It has out-of-the-box integration with source-code repositories, various ticketing systems, plus a wide variety of plugins to use during deployment.
What is most valuable?
It has out-of-the-box integration with source-code repositories, various ticketing systems, plus a wide variety of plugins to use during deployment. Custom plugin development was easy and the tools capability of keeping the version tracking of workflows were pretty good.
How has it helped my organization?
It provided a reduction in deployment time and lowered the application downtime.
What needs improvement?
More out of the box plugins are required though good number are avaialble at the moment.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used it for one-and-a-half years. The sole purpose of the tool was to pick the application binaries from various sources and deploy them on target systems.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
There were some issues related to high memory consumption, but those were primarily due to the deployment workflows being developed incorrectly.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
There were no issues with the stability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The tool is capable of handling the load. The single application server was handling 50-70 applications which were quite complex in nature.
How are customer service and technical support?
Customer Service:
7/10
Technical Support:7/10
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We used BMC BladeLogic previously. BladeLogic is more for automating tasks performed on servers like compliance, patching, and provisioning. It is not suited for devops/application deployment and hence the migration from BMC to IBM.
How was the initial setup?
It was fairly simple as the product is easy to install.
What about the implementation team?
We did it in-house with failover.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
For us, it was more about automating the complex application deployments which were manual for years. IBM products are expensive unless you can strike a deal. However, the tool did help us in automating the use cases and integrate with existing platforms via plugins.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We explored Ansible, Puppet and Chef. I worked on Chef for a few days and I am not a very big fan of it, probably due to my lack of interest.
What other advice do I have?
For DevOps, this tool is one of the best with all its integration capabilities for repositories and various systems. Perform the initial setup carefully, and probably with someone who has knowledge on the tool plus enough experience of designing infrastructure solutions. For me, the pain starts due to mostly incorrectly designed/implemented tools.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Thanks for the review! I'm glad you found custom plugin development easy! We'd love to have you join our open plugin development community. developer.ibm.com
Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Automated deployment forces the organization to standardize runtimes. They could add support for some of the vendor's own middleware.
What is most valuable?
Ability to do automated deployments. It does what it promises: It helps you automate deployments. But, it works better for some application component types than for others.
How has it helped my organization?
Automated deployment forces the organization to standardize runtimes, development output and handling of platform provisioning.
What needs improvement?
They could add support for some of IBM’s own middleware. IBM is so big a company that the left hand doesn’t understand the right hand.
For how long have I used the solution?
I’ve been using UrbanCode Deploy for too long.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We have not had stability issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have not had scalability issues.
How are customer service and technical support?
Technical support is bad.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We had various solutions before this one.
How was the initial setup?
Setup was complex because IBM started on the wrong foot.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Don't use the tool in combination with IBM as datacentre manager.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We didn’t evaluate other tools. We were forced to use it by IBM as datacentre manager.
What other advice do I have?
Look for other tools if IBM runs your datacentre.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Integration with Nexus has shipped. Hope it helps!
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