Introduction
The Liferay Cloud Team is committed to your project launching smoothly and has developed this Go Live Checklist to ensure performance is optimized and potential issues are caught in advance. This checklist was created from the experience of successfully deploying dozens of customer projects globally.
Priority Items to review (the following services are critical to a successful Go-Live):
- Plan Quotas
- Downtime
- Backup
- Domains
- Stress Test
- Auto Scaling.
Reviewing Your Architecture
Environments
Confirm that the production environment matches the subscription. On the Settings Page of your production environments, there should be a type "production" for the production environment (Environment type is a classification that denotes an environment's configuration). Check here for more information: Understanding Liferay Cloud Environments
Service Versions
Make sure all of your services are using the latest image versions. Check here for the latest versions: Services Changelog
Clustering
In case you purchased a High Availability environment, review to see if clustering is working properly. Check here for more information: Setting Up Clustering in Liferay PaaS
Development Lifecycle
Review if the Software Development Life Cycle (SLDC) is being used properly. Builds should be generated via Jenkins and Deployments should be made via Console UI. Check here for more information: Overview of the Liferay PaaS Deployment Workflow | Deploying Changes via the Liferay PaaS Console | Deploying Changes via the CLI Tool
Reviewing Your Metrics & Numbers
Alerts
Check existing alerts to see if there's anything that should be addressed before launch. Also, make sure that the main project contributors have changed their preferences to receive alerts via email. Check here for more information: Real-Time Alerts
Dynatrace
If High Availability or Dynatrace Add-Ons were purchased, check your subscription to see which environments should have a Dynatrace setup to detect problems. The main contributors should have access to the Dynatrace dashboard to facilitate the diagnosis process. To learn more about configuring Dynatrace, check here: Integrating Dynatrace with Production Environments
Plan Quotas
Be sure to deploy to all environments to confirm the quota. If you have changed your quota allocation, revert your changes for the production environment prior to going live. Check here for more information: Quotas
Reviewing Your Continuity Plan
Auto Scaling
We recommend having auto scaling turned on and tested before going to production. Check here for more information: Auto scaling
Disaster Recovery
If a Disaster Recovery environment was purchased, you should run a disaster recovery simulation to see how fast you can recover in case there is a downtime in an entire region. Check here for more information: Disaster Recovery Overview
Backup
Check to see if the backup feature is enabled, check the frequency to make sure it accommodates the project needs, and run a backup and restore to check if everything is working as expected. Check here for more information: Platform Services: Backup Service
Zero Downtime Deployments
Check to see if deployments are working without downtimes. If not, consider adjusting your liveness and readiness probes. Check here for more information: Troubleshooting Self-Healing
Reviewing your Project’s Benchmarks
Performance Comparison
Review to see if the performance of the new application is equivalent to the current installation. Check here for more information: Application Metrics
Stress Test
Run a stress test on the UAT environment and check the results. Please inform Support by opening a ticket on Liferay Help Center.
Reviewing the Final Go Live Details
Custom Domains
Review the DNS entries that are pointing to Liferay Cloud and analyze how the domains are being referenced. Note that Changes or additions to custom domains can take up to 24 hours to propagate. Please plan go-live timelines accordingly. Check here for more information: Custom Domains
VPN
Check if all VPN connections are working as expected. Check here for more information: VPN Integration Overview
Team Members
Review to see if the team members are added with the correct permissions on each environment. Check here for more information: Environment Teams and Roles
Final Thoughts
This Go Live Checklist was prepared with the typical Liferay PaaS configuration in mind. Additional precautions may need to be taken according to any unique customizations or integrations that your project uses. On behalf of the Liferay Cloud Team, we would like to thank you for choosing Liferay PaaS and look forward to partnering with you for years to come!