One of the things the economic down-turn has done, is refocus teams on efficiently using resources. Virtualization was already accelerating but remains an area where teams are trying to use the same hardware for a number of different purposes.

AnthillPro plays nicely in a virtualized environment. Build machines tend to always be needed, so having at least most of the build machines be always present makes sense. Machines for automated functional tests are more likely to be used off and on. We see numerous teams looking to start their VMs, run the tests, and then shut the VMs back down. The AnthillPro VMWare LabManager integration can help streamline this process.

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In this article, we look at an advanced concept in AnthillPro: the context a build or deployment requests exists within. The idea of a request context is foreign to most AnthillPro users and administrators but is key to understanding how AnthillPro manages build order and consistency along a dependency hierarchy. Administrators using dependencies aggressively would be well served by understanding the request context.

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Many teams have common conventions that are occasionally broken and would benefit from adding a new default property that they could override. This article looks at how teams can set-up smart defaults in AnthillPro.

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