Genesis archetypes

A Genesis archetype is a template of an applications configuration files. Generally any non binary or non content application artefact will be included in an application archetype. Application archetypes implement the designs, standards and specifications defined in an organisations standard build for the application and Genesis maintains archetypes for all the applications that exist in an enterprise stack.

To create a deployable software of configuration package, Genesis draws custom configuration data and combines it with the application archetype in a process called transcription. Since the same application archetype is used to build the packages for different environments there will be a high degree of standardisation across all the deployed instances of the application.

In order to maintain standardisation across the enterprise the best practice is to maintain one archetype for any single version of an application. In reality this may not be achievable, and you may find that you need to maintain two or three archetypes per application, however the more archetypes you use for a given application the less standardised the deployment of that application becomes. Under these circumstances you should review the causes of variation and make sure they are justified.

• Step by Step instructions for creating a simple Genesis Archetype