Proper DTAP configuration for content delivery

Question

I had this setting, but it was not quite right.

How would you improve content development (CD) in several .NET development teams (client)?

CMS Server -> Presentation Server Environment

• CMS Production → Live and Website Preview
• CMS Combined Test + Acceptance (internally referred to as "Staging") → Live ("Staging")
• CMS Development (DEV) → Live (Dev website), and sometimes local developer computers (laptops).

Expectations and limitations:

• Several teams and several websites
• Single DEV CMS license (typical for customers, I think?)
• Enough CD licenses for each developer.
• It is advisable that the developer can program and run the changes locally - was this a reasonable expectation?

Worked

We developed ASP.NET pages using the content delivery API, with the same broker database for local machines and CD DEV. Local machines had CD DLL files, their own license files, and worked fine / debugged with requests and calls to represent components.

Bad

From time to time, we publish both the Dev presentation server and the developer's machines, which do not look right now, but I think it was for receiving the schema files on our local machines. But yes, we did not trust the Dev broker database.

Problematic:

Local machines sometimes required pages published on Tridion, but we could not reliably publish them on local machines:

• Setting up multiple publication addresses for the same purpose of publishing "Local Computer" will not work - we often take these "servers" at home.
• The VPN blocked access to laptops off-site (at that time it used an “inbound” folder).

Managing publication goals for each developer and creating a CD for each new laptop was good practice (as in an exercise, not necessarily as a good idea), but just a little tedious.

Do these rear landmarks apply?

• Sync physical files from Dev to local computers on your own?
• Do not run local presentations locally (localhost), but rather create, load dll and check Dev?
• Did we just skip the fourth CMS environment? As much as we liked our Sales Guy, we were not interested in acquiring another CM license.

How could you better configure a .NET CD for multiple developers in your organization?

Edit: @DominicCronin pointed out that this is only a subset of the correct DTAP settings. I updated my conditions and created a separate question to clarify DTAP with Tridion .

Answer 1

The answer to this question largely depends on your publication model.

When using a dynamic model with a framework such as DD4T , you will need only one environment. In this environment, there is one CMS and one CD server, and everything is published in the broker's database. The CD-ROM environment can be used as an automatic assembly system, developers simply work locally on the localhost website (which receives data from the database of broker developers), and their changes are checked in VCS (on the basis of which automatic assembly can be created).
This solution can work only with one CMS, because there is practically no code on the CMS side (templates are standardized, and all work is done on the CD side).

This becomes more complicated if you are using a static or brokerage publishing model. Then I think the solution is to split Dev into Unit-Dev and Dev, as pointed out by Nuno and Chris. This solution requires coding both on the CMS side and on the CD, so each developer has a huge benefit from having their own local CMS and CD env.

Answer 2

Talk with your Tridion account manager and agree to a license package that matches the development model you want to have. Of course, they want to maximize their income, but the various things that are being calculated are really designed to ensure that large customers pay accordingly, and smaller customers get what they can afford at a price that reflects the benefits they receive. In fact, creating a well-designed development street with particular emphasis on quality is what will ensure good customer satisfaction and long-term interaction.

OK - that’s why account managers still have internal rules that must be followed, but they also have a fair amount of autonomy to arrive at a reasonable deal with the client. I'm not saying that this will always work, but its way is better than blindly assuming that they will insist on counting each server equally.

On the technical side - be sure to try the local developer settings and the general dev-a Chris 5th master server. These days, your shared development environment should probably be seen as a build / integration server: the first place the team guarantees that all tests are complete.

The requirements for developing CM and CDs are not very different, although you can publish several developer goals from the same CM if not many CMs are developed. (This is somewhat relevant to MVC-ish approaches, but it is not a silver bullet.)