I've taken over an older application that has several prerequisites like Java, VC redistributables, and some SQL ODBC drivers. The app has been manually maintained and isn't in the best condition right now. I'm trying to figure out the best way to handle these prerequisites. Should I include the installs in the application release process, or should they be part of the server provisioning stages? These dependencies are really old and probably won't change, even regarding vulnerability management issues (I realize that's not ideal). Unfortunately, I don't have control over the VM image that gets used.
1 Answer
I'd suggest that the prerequisites should really be part of a golden image. This way, every new deployment automatically has those dependencies already set up, making things much smoother.
Unfortunately, I can't bake them into an image myself.