Posted on September 13, 2021

Production-First Mindset Podcast with LaunchDarkly

We recently listened to this great episode of Production-First Mindset Podcast with guest John Kodumal, CTO for LaunchDarkly. In the episode “The Nirvana of Deploying a 100x A Day” John talks about ephemeral environments for productivity, whether you should build a tool or buy it, how LaunchDarkly maintains consistency as their organization scales and much more. Check it out!

You can also listen here

Ephemeral environments for productivity

LaunchDarkly uses Okteto to create ephemeral environments to improve productivity. One reason ephemeral environments are useful is the ability to spin up a copy of software for every PR. John shared his view that anything you merge to master should be deployable, but if no one has tried the code out, you’re missing something.

Using ephemeral environments can improve the quality of what you’re producing because you have that extra level of testing, review, and comfort.

Build it or buy it?

Sometimes, the decision is not, should we have ephemeral environments, but should we use a SaaS product or should we build our own. John pointed out several reasons why investing in a SaaS rather than building your own could be a good solution for your company. Some examples he gave were:

Being able to make sure an environment is spun down when a branch is closed
The ability to see a list of available environments, and also the ability to test one quickly
Having the ability to collaborate with someone in local development, especially in a microservices situation

Another thing to consider is that costs will go up when you start spinning up more environments, so having a lifecycle management system becomes really important.

Take a listen to the episode to learn more about this and other ways LaunchDarkly is maintaining quality and consistency in their products as their organization scales. Have questions about how preview environments can help your organization be more productive? Schedule a time to talk with us about ephemeral environments for your company.