Immutable CI Pipeline for Cluster Configuration Deployment

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Solution Overview

Problem

Existing distributed systems face challenges in maintaining stability and agility, particularly in ensuring deterministic states of clusters and supporting rolling upgrades and rollbacks, while also ensuring security and correctness of cluster configurations.

Innovation Solution

A method and apparatus for automatically deploying artifacts using a forward immutable continuous integration (CI) pipeline, which generates a trusted configuration artifact and deploys it to a cluster through an orchestration system, ensuring deterministic states and supporting rolling upgrades and rollbacks, with a secure pipeline that verifies trustworthiness and requires peer reviews for changes.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Reliability

If manual deployment processes are used to maintain cluster stability, then security and correctness can be ensured through peer reviews, but deployment speed and productivity decrease

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvecluster stabilityVSAvoiddeployment speed

Core Design Contradiction:

ReliabilityVSProductivity

Solution Approach 1:

The system performs preliminary actions by implementing peer review and approval processes before deployment, and by creating immutable artifacts with embedded approval metadata in advance. This ensures that security checks are completed beforehand, allowing automated deployment to proceed quickly without compromising reliability.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

Solution Approach 2:

The patent introduces an intermediary approval process where designated reviewers verify configuration changes before deployment. This intermediary layer ensures correctness while enabling automated deployment execution, resolving the contradiction between manual review security and automated deployment speed.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

2Productivity

If automated deployment is implemented to increase productivity, then deployment speed improves, but security and correctness may be compromised

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvedeployment speedVSAvoidconfiguration correctness

Core Design Contradiction:

ProductivityVSReliability

Solution Approach 1:

The system performs preliminary security validations and peer reviews before automated deployment executes. Approval metadata is embedded in artifacts during the build process, ensuring that only pre-validated configurations are deployed automatically, maintaining correctness while enabling fast automated execution.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

Solution Approach 2:

The patent implements feedback mechanisms where deployment status, approval status, and validation results are tracked and verified. This feedback loop ensures that automated deployments maintain correctness by confirming that all security checks and approvals were properly executed before and during deployment.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #23Feedback

3Adaptability or versatility

If rolling upgrades are supported to maintain system availability, then service continuity is improved, but system complexity increases

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveservice continuityVSAvoidorchestration complexity

Core Design Contradiction:

Adaptability or versatilityVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The patent segments the deployment process into discrete, manageable stages with clear transition points. Configuration changes are applied incrementally through structured orchestration steps, allowing rolling upgrades to proceed through controlled segments rather than monolithic changes, reducing overall system complexity while maintaining service continuity.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #1Segmentation

Solution Approach 2:

The system implements dynamic orchestration that can adapt deployment pace and methodology based on system state. Rolling upgrades are managed through flexible orchestration that responds to real-time conditions, allowing the system to maintain service continuity while managing complexity through adaptive rather than rigid processes.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #15Dynamics

4Reliability

If peer review processes are implemented to ensure security, then configuration correctness improves, but deployment time increases

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveconfiguration securityVSAvoiddeployment time

Core Design Contradiction:

ReliabilityVSLoss of time

Solution Approach 1:

Peer review and approval processes are performed as preliminary actions during the artifact creation phase, with approval metadata embedded in the deployment package. This shifts the time investment to before deployment, allowing the actual deployment execution to proceed quickly without repeated review cycles, thus improving security while minimizing deployment time loss.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

Data Source

PatentUS11550568B1Automatically deploying artifacts

Publication Date: 2023.01.10 STRIPE INC

AI summary

A method and apparatus for automatically deploying artifacts are disclosed. In one embodiment, the method comprises generating a trusted configuration artifact with a forward immutable continuous integration (CI) implemented as a build pipeline; accessing, by an orchestration system, the trusted configuration artifact from the IAC repository; and automatically deploying the configuration to change a state of the cluster, according to an orchestration type associated with the trusted configuration artifact, including determining the orchestration type.