To enable end to end quality analysis, from the VA.gov CMS through to the public facing website, new feature review, and stakeholder demonstrations, multiple joined CMS/WEB environments may be created by any user with access to Tugboat.
The following table lists all environments and CMS/WEB sites used in the development process for VA.gov:
| Environment | Drupal (CMS) | Frontend (FE / WEB / Static) | Management |
|---|---|---|---|
| PROD Live Site |
prod.cms.va.gov | www.va.gov | BRD: Jenkins |
| STAGING Pre-release testing. |
staging.cms.va.gov | staging.va.gov | BRD: Jenkins |
| DEV Latest approved code. |
dev.cms.va.gov | dev.va.gov | BRD: Jenkins |
| LOCAL Local development |
va-gov-cms.lndo.site | va-gov-cms.lndo.site va-gov-cms.lndo.site/static va-gov-cms.lndo.site/$URL?_format=static_html |
|
| CI / PR Pull Requests & Automated Testing |
pr###-{hash}.ci.cms.va.gov | web-{hash}.ci.cms.va.gov pr###-{hash}.ci.cms.va.gov/static pr###-{hash}.ci.cms.va.gov/$URL?_format=static_html |
CMS-CI: Tugboat |
| Demos Demos & Training |
cms-{hash}.demo.cms.va.gov | web-{hash}.demo.ci.cms.va.gov cms-{hash}.demo.cms.va.gov/static cms-{hash}.demo.cms.va.gov/$URL?_format=static_html |
CMS-CI: Tugboat |
For more information on how access these environments see Access
Environments are copies of the production site that are running newer code or have different content that needs to be tested before going live.
Environments can also be used for demonstrations or training, without worrying about disrupting production content.
Each Environment has both a CMS and a WEB site. The CMS is a content management system built with Drupal, and the WEB site is a static HTML site, built with Metalsmith.
The WEB build process consumes the content from the CMS in the same environment.
- Each WEB site is made up of generated "static" files. This means that the WEB site reflects the content from the CMS at the time the WEB Build process was run.
- CMS Editors will not see changes in the WEB site until a "WEB Build" is triggered and the process completes successfully.
- The WEB site will not be accessible until at least one "WEB Build" has run successfully. This happens automatically for CI environments, but not yet for Demo environments. If you get an error such as "Forbidden" when visiting the WEB site, try running the Rebuild WEB process again.
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Visit https://tugboat.vfs.va.gov/ and click on the "GitHub" link to log in with GitHub.
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Click the CMS link and the click the "CMS Demo Environments" to visit the Demos page.
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Scroll down to the "Base Previews" heading and select "Clone" from the "Actions" menu.
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Your demo environment has been created. It will be titled "master". Scroll to the top of the page, click on the "Settings" link for your new environment, and give it a title starting with your initials and a hyphen. Then, click the "Save Configuration" button.
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If you wish to copy prod.cms.va.gov using the latest content, do not change any additional options.
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Click the "Preview" button for your environment to visit it.
NOTE: The WEB site for this environment will not work until you trigger a WEB Build process on the "Release Content" page.
Within each environment, the static HTML for the WEB site is occasionally "rebuilt" so that the latest content from that environment's CMS is used.
The WEB build process is tested in the CI system to ensure compatiblity with the CMS content schema.
The WEB build process is triggered automatically by certain actions in the CMS or manually via the command line.
The WEB instance of an environment is rebuilt when any of the following actions take place in the CMS:
- Facility Alert or Individual Facility Operating Status is created or updated.
- The "Rebuild WEB" button is pressed.
- @TODO: Document all current build triggers.
Note to Developers: Keep this list up to date to help content editors understand the process.
There is a special button and form for rebuilding VA.gov environments. Use this to manually trigger either a WEB or CMS rebuild (or both), and optionally check out different code.
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Find the environment you would like to build in the CMS-CI site, and go to the preview.
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Hover over the "Content" admin menu, and then click "Release Content".
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If you wish to just trigger a WEB rebuild with the existing content, do not change any other options.
For advanced users and developers:
- If you wish to change the branch of the WEB project, click "Select a different frontend branch/pull request". Start typing to search by the name of the branch or pull request you wish to use.
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Press the "Release content" button. You will see the status of your build under the "Wait for the release to complete" heading. You may view the build logs by clicking the "View logs" link.
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Once the REBUILD process is complete, you can click the "Go to front end" button under the "Access the frontend environment" heading.
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That's it! If the process completed, you should see a site that looks like VA.gov.
Environments are copies of the production site that are running newer code or have different content that needs to be tested before going live.
Environments can also be used for demonstrations or training, without worrying about disrupting production content.
Each Environment has both a CMS and a WEB site. The CMS is a content management system built with Drupal, and the WEB site is a static HTML site, built with Metalsmith.
The WEB build process consumes the content from the CMS in the same environment.
- Each WEB site is made up of generated "static" files. This means that the WEB site reflects the content from the CMS at the time the WEB Build process was run.
- CMS Editors will not see changes in the WEB site until a "WEB Build" is triggered and the process completes successfully.
- The WEB site will not be accessible until at least one "WEB Build" has run successfully. This happens automatically for CI environments, but not yet for Demo environments. If you get an error such as "Forbidden" when visiting the WEB site, try running the Rebuild WEB process again.
Within the CMS-CI platform, in "CMS Demo Environments", users can create new environments by cloning the "master" Base Preview.
All environments are hosted on VA GovCloud in AWS GovCloud.
The primary environments, DEV, STAGING, and PROD, are hosted in the BRD system.
Pull Request Environments and Ad Hoc environments are hosted in the CMS-CI system.
SOCKS proxy or PIV+GFE hardware is required for accessing VA internal network.
Build, Release, Deploy
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Source Code: https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs/devops/tree/master/ansible/build/roles/cms
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Runs Continuous Integration for about a dozen different applications with different requirements, including
vets-website,vets-api,cms, and sooncms-ci. -
BRD Process is standardized across apps using Ansible playbooks and roles. See the DevOps Repo Documentation for more information.
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The "Build" process creates the entire server image and permantently tags and archives it as an AMI.
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The "Deploy" process delivers those images to the 3 "environments", DEV, STAGING, and PROD and runs whatever hooks are needed.
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The "Release" process continuously delivers code to each BRD Environment
- Primary branch commits are automatically deployed to DEV and STAGING Environments.
- Git Tags and GitHub Releases are created automatically if those commits pass testing.
- "Environments" in the context of BRD are really different networks.
- The "servers" that actually run the apps are activated AMI images, placed into the desired "environment".
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CI Platform
- CMS-CI refers to the VA's implementation of Tugboat.
- Provides an environment per Pull Request, and allows creation of ad-hoc environments with any name, on any desired branch or Pull Request.
- Provides a Web UI for getting information and managing these environments
- Installed with open source Ansible roles, plus a custom playbook.
- Deployment of new releases of CMS-CI and Tugboat is handled by BRD in way very similar to CMS.
- Provides a complete SDLC pipeline for Drupal code:
- Creates new environments when a PR is open.
- Automatically tests the environment and passes status to GitHub to allow or block merging.
- Destroys and rebuilds PR Environments and runs the full test suite again on every git push.
- If the PR is merged or closed, environment is destroyed.
- Notifies GitHub of deployment success or failure, with lnks to the environments.
- Includes the FE/WEB Build process in the Drupal CI pipeline.
- Front-end WEB project can be built inside PR environments by using the "Release Content" page.
- End-to-end testing of CMS+WEB with Behat and Cypress:
- Make CMS updates: Change content, publish state, etc.
- Run WEB build command to rebuild static assets.
- Confirm CMS change is visible in WEB static assets.
- Runs on a single EC2 instance.
To access a CI environment via ssh, go to that environment's page on Tugboat and click the "Terminal" link on the line for the "php" service.