Background: Making certain that the software packages we deploy on our systems remains stable is challenging. And downloading the software from 30+ projects is time consuming. I work in education, but anyone in any industry could have similar results.
Goals: Keeping deployed software packages up to date.
"It gave me a framework to work out and stage my end goal, and made the process repeatable."
Solution & Results: I wrote a pipeline that will download the software installers from vendor websites and copy them out to our network for deployment. The biggest thing was being able to see if my deployment was successful without having to check or do it manually. Otherwise the results I saw were:
Less time maintaining the install packages semester to semester
Everything was repeatable
No manual tasks required