Overview

This chapter covers the core features and capabilities of Databricks CI/CD Accelerator.

Overview

The Databricks CI/CD Accelerator provides production-ready pipeline configurations for deploying Databricks infrastructure and assets across multiple environments. It covers the three major CI/CD platforms — Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, and GitLab CI — with first-class support for both Terraform-based infrastructure provisioning and Databricks Asset Bundles (DABs) deployment.

Stop spending weeks building fragile deployment pipelines from scratch. This accelerator gives you battle-tested configurations with approval gates, secret management, automated testing, rollback procedures, and multi-environment promotion strategies built in.

What's Included

Pipeline Configurations

Environment Configuration

• environments/dev.tfvars — Development environment variables
• environments/staging.tfvars — Staging environment variables
• environments/prod.tfvars — Production environment variables
• environments/promotion-strategy.md — Multi-environment promotion guide

Security

• secrets/secrets-management.md — Comprehensive secrets management guide covering Azure Key Vault, GitHub Secrets, and GitLab CI/CD variables

Testing & Validation

• testing/integration-test-stage.yml — Reusable integration test stage for any pipeline
• testing/validate-deployment.sh — Shell script to validate Databricks deployments post-deploy

Operational Readiness

• rollback/rollback-playbook.md — Step-by-step rollback procedures for every deployment method
• monitoring/pipeline-alerts.md — Pipeline monitoring and alerting configuration guide

Architecture

Follow this guide to get Databricks CI/CD Accelerator up and running in your environment.

Architecture

                    ┌─────────────┐
                    │  Git Push   │
                    └──────┬──────┘
                           │
                    ┌──────▼──────┐
                    │  CI Trigger  │
                    └──────┬──────┘
                           │
              ┌────────────┼────────────┐
              │            │            │
       ┌──────▼──────┐ ┌──▼───┐ ┌──────▼──────┐
       │ Azure DevOps│ │GitHub│ │  GitLab CI  │
       └──────┬──────┘ └──┬───┘ └──────┬──────┘
              │            │            │
              └────────────┼────────────┘
                           │
                ┌──────────▼──────────┐
                │   Validate & Lint   │
                └──────────┬──────────┘
                           │
                ┌──────────▼──────────┐
                │   Deploy to Dev     │
                └──────────┬──────────┘
                           │
                ┌──────────▼──────────┐
                │  Integration Tests  │
                └──────────┬──────────┘
                           │
                ┌──────────▼──────────┐
                │  Approval Gate      │
                └──────────┬──────────┘
                           │
                ┌──────────▼──────────┐
                │  Deploy to Staging  │
                └──────────┬──────────┘
                           │
                ┌──────────▼──────────┐
                │  Approval Gate      │
                └──────────┬──────────┘
                           │
                ┌──────────▼──────────┐
                │  Deploy to Prod     │
                └──────────┬──────────┘
                           │
                ┌──────────▼──────────┐
                │  Post-Deploy Verify │
                └─────────────────────┘

Quick Start

1. Choose Your CI/CD Platform

Copy the relevant pipeline files into your repository:

Azure DevOps:

cp azure-devops/terraform-pipeline.yml .azure-pipelines/
cp azure-devops/dabs-pipeline.yml .azure-pipelines/

GitHub Actions:

mkdir -p .github/workflows
cp github-actions/terraform-deploy.yml .github/workflows/
cp github-actions/dabs-deploy.yml .github/workflows/

GitLab CI:

cp gitlab-ci/gitlab-ci.yml .gitlab-ci.yml

2. Configure Environment Variables

Copy the .tfvars files and update them for your environment:

cp environments/*.tfvars terraform/environments/

Edit each file to match your Azure subscription, resource group, and Databricks workspace details.

3. Set Up Secrets

Follow secrets/secrets-management.md for your platform to configure:

• Azure service principal credentials
• Databricks workspace tokens or service principal authentication
• Terraform state backend credentials

4. Configure Approval Gates

Each pipeline includes approval gates before staging and production deployments. Configure the required approvers in your CI/CD platform settings as documented in the pipeline comments.

5. Run Your First Deployment

Push to your main or develop branch to trigger the pipeline. The dev environment deploys automatically; staging and production require manual approval.