Thanks for sharing. And yes, we're also doing a fair bit of CI in the database space. We have a dedicated environment for that, but follow a similar process for standing up an Alpha testing environment using near production data.

We use TFS for version control and builds, with a customised build template that will handle the standard stack (SSDB, SSAS, SSRS, SSIS). We run two templates, one for a build of artefacts and one for deployment + testing of those artefacts, using the same Powershell script + Manifest for deployment to higher environments. We use BDD (Specflow + custom data generation and testing schemas for data generation off features) to exercise the product features; all green on the Test Manager Test suite allows deployment artefacts to get generated for release.

Pickles on the end of the stream for living documentation, although getting business users to read that is still a chore. Still, it shows us per build how our tests are and what has failed and it has saved our bacon a few times when building new features and having to remember how something worked.

Next step is to include the deployment documents in the build and start the next phase for CD.