DevOps & CI/CD · Module 04

CI/CD with Azure DevOps

Use Azure DevOps (Repos, Pipelines, Artifacts) to build, test and deploy to Azure with multi-stage YAML pipelines, pick a fitting deployment strategy and manage it with the Azure DevOps CLI.

Practice interactively →

What you will learn

• Explain the role of Boards, Repos, Pipelines, Test Plans and Artifacts in CI/CD
• Write a basic azure-pipelines.yml: trigger, pool, variables, stages/jobs/steps
• Create pull requests, pipelines and secret variables with the Azure DevOps CLI
• Compare Recreate, Rolling, Blue/Green, Canary and A/B Testing
• Design a multi-stage pipeline deploying to Azure with environments, approvals and service connections

Lessons

1. Azure DevOps and Its Services

   Azure DevOps is a SaaS suite organized as organization → project, with Boards, Repos, Pipelines, Test Plans and Artifacts; jobs run on Microsoft-hosted or self-hosted agents.

2. Azure Repos and YAML Pipelines

   Branch policies protect main with pull requests and build validation; azure-pipelines.yml lives in the repo with trigger, pool, variables and stages → jobs → steps; secrets must be mapped through env.

3. Deployment Strategies

   Recreate has downtime; Rolling replaces instances gradually; Blue/Green switches traffic once between two environments; Canary shifts traffic by percentage; A/B Testing splits by user group to measure impact.

4. Deploying to Azure — Stages, Environments, Approvals, Service Connections

   Multi-stage pipelines use dependsOn and condition; deployment jobs record history on an Environment, where approvals and checks live; service connections use workload identity federation; internal packages go to Azure Artifacts, images to ACR.