This week in DevOps #2

#1: The Rise of a New Kind of Administrator

Luke can see the growing trend of admin empowerment within customers and partners from his view at PuppetLabs. His outlook on tools that support admins in complex environments has always been clear, creating tools which allow “you to focus more on the business value of your work and spend a less of your brainpower on implementation details.”

This article looks at the changing role of administrators within organisations as “tools better enable people to build teams to focus on their customer instead of their technology.”

Read more: http://insights.wired.com/profiles/blogs/the-rise-of-a-new-kind-of-administrator

#2: 8 Lessons in Deployment Tooling Lessons Learned

Another great article on learning’s from the UrbanCode guys. This one gives us a history lesson on AnthillPro and what the team learned from creating and using the product. In summary the 8 lessons are;

1. Builds are about quality and checking quality.
2. Deployment is a serious challenge.
3. Developers know jack about audit and security.
4. Deployment starts with production.
5. Deployment requires co-ordination.
6. Deployment starts with high-availability and scalability.
7. “Release” is more than just deployment.
8. Multiple integrated tools are not optional.

Read more:  http://architects.dzone.com/articles/8-lessons-deployment-tooling

#3: Playing Pitfall with DevOps and CMDB’s

One paragraph in and Sam delivers a stark warning that  “there are some underlying shortcomings; some so major they might render DevOps redundant in the near future.”

In summary, he outlines the following challenges;

1. DevOps goes against organizational culture; which advocates for the separation of responsibilities.
2. Departure from IT Service Management Process
3. Configuration Management Database redundancy
4. Inadequate Automation

And so it is, that Sam leaves us with one final point to ponder “Be prepared to say goodbye to DevOps and CMDB, as they are sure to be abandoned in favor of new and improved counterparts in the face of a future IT revolution.”

In response, we ask you to consider Gene Kim’s 3 ways as the underpinning to the DevOps philosophy;

1. The First Way emphasizes the performance of the entire system – the value stream.
2. The Second Way is about shorting and amplifying feedback loops.
3. The Third Way is about creating a culture that fosters continual learning and understanding.

If these truly are the essence of DevOps, are they principles that can ever be abandoned?

Read more: https://www.scriptrock.com/articles/playing-pitfall-devops-cmdbs/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

#4: DevOps Complete Certification Kit

Only 18 Hours and you could be certified! Sounds too good to be true, well it is. As Patrick Debois commented, “they are not getting it!” The geniuses who put this material have really missed the point. We’d love to be certified “DevOps” guys, but instead we’ve focused on recognizing what the practice requires to be implemented. Don’t get us wrong, education on the background to Agile process and the challenges facing Development and Operations teams is vital, but don’t think that 18 hours of study are going to equip you with all you need to become a “DevOps” engineer (a term in itself which is entirely flawed). Remember this…DevOps is a philosophy, not a qualification.

Read more: http://archive.aweber.com/theartofservice/JxFjA/h/DevOps_Complete.htm

#5: Agile Alliance has a DevOps Track

DevOps seeks to address the challenges organizations face when applying change to high velocity environments. Speedy software development handing work over to risk-averse operations need not result in bottlenecks of pessimism. The rise of PaaS, SaaS, IaaS combined with improved understanding of systemic dependencies and business risk is changing how collaboration, automation and operations work in today’s modern enterprises. Mental models are shifting from protection mode to enabling-change mode. The track is going to cover the processes, tools and culture shifts shaping the DevOps movement. We look forward to seeing the output from this. Get submitting!

Read more: http://agile2013.agilealliance.org/program/tracks/devops/

#6: Tweet of the Week

Jesse Keating ‏@iamjkeating

#DevOps lesson: things go well when you’re environment is in an expected state. Not so well when suffering from technical debt. #Fixit