Get Ready to Become a Full-Spectrum Engineer
The more things change, the more they stay the same. In software development, change has been a constant. I’ve been a software engineer for more than 25 years and have had to morph, pivot and learn new things to remain current and in demand. Plus, the industry swings like a pendulum between the need for […]
Advancing DevOps with Diagrams
The Application model can be incredibly useful to map out application features, planned changes and current flaws, and even for roadmapping. The model takes organizational time and effort, and can only be created and maintained when a universal language has been developed by a modeling team. The effort is well worth the cost, however, since […]
Infographic: DevOps Lessons from Lean Auto Manufacturing
Lean principles are as relevant to software delivery today as they were to auto manufacturing in the 20th century. And when you apply lean practices to software delivery, you get the same great results — lower costs, faster cycle times and higher quality. See the below infographic from Puppet to explore what software can learn […]
The Perfect Combination: Imperative Orchestration, Declarative Automation
There are two fundamental approaches of how to design automation processes, declarative (also often known as model) and imperative (also often known as workflow or procedural). The purpose of this article is to explain the principles of each, explore a little of how they work, try to highlight some of the strengths and weaknesses and […]
Elasticsearch Ransomware Attacks Highlight Need for Better Security
Recently, reports surfaced that a large number of Elasticsearch servers fell victim to potential ransomware attacks. Ransomware is the type of malware a company doesn’t want on its systems or network. It takes systems hostage, most commonly by encrypting or stealing data, and exposes the owners to blackmail attempts. According to a report by the […]
Automation: Achieving Faster Rollouts with Better Accuracy
A changing landscape requires new processes At the recent Symposium/ITxpo, Gartner shared a list of technologies and trends that will be important for organizations to embrace and prepare for in 2017. These trends, which are listed in the report, “Top Strategic Predictions for 2017 and Beyond: Surviving the Storm Winds of Digital Disruption,” reinforce the […]
DevOps in 2017: From Building to Executing
In 2016, DevOps grew in popularity and use, new tools were introduced and enterprises across industries realized the influence and benefits derived from agile development. But there are even more developments to look forward to as enterprises engage DevOps teams further. Scaling-out solutions, providing a baseline for a new cultural approach to problems and continuous […]
A DevOps Checklist for Traditional Service Providers
As companies such as Amazon and Google rapidly innovate to deliver new services, traditional service providers recognize that change is necessary to keep up with shifting customer expectations. Given the pace at which technology continues to morph, creating better, faster and more innovative solutions is a necessity, and if this isn’t achieved, even longtime customers […]
The 3 Secrets to Overcoming the Agility-Stability Paradox
Regardless of whether an organization subscribes to a bimodal IT approach, one thing is clear: It’s more important, and more difficult, than ever to fight the agility-stability paradox. Today’s businesses must build on a delicate balance of being compliant, plan-driven and keeping the lights on while also seeking ways to become more fluid and agile […]
Chef Boards the DevOps Express with CloudBees, Others
You often may have more questions than answers as you progress along your DevOps journey. Which tools should I choose? Do these tools work well together? What have other people done in my situation? You’re often left Googling to find the right integrations and piece together an architectural solution. Today, I’m excited to announce that […]
GRC: A Key Ingredient in DevOps’ Secret Sauce
By now, surely everyone has seen cooking competition shows such as “Hell’s Kitchen” and “Top Chef,” in which people compete to create and serve the best dishes as quickly as possible. These hit TV programs are like the DevOps world, which also consists of people creating and releasing the best software as fast as they […]
Why Your Organization Needs DevOps
The recently released fifth annual “State of DevOps Report” by Puppet has once again brought with it fresh insights into what drives high-performance teams. The report, which comes at a time when DevOps has ceased to be a buzzword, provides proof of why more and more businesses across the world are adopting DevOps to improve their organization’s performance, revenues […]
7 Reasons to Move to Parallel Testing
While development operations are more scalable now than ever, there is one area that continues to constrain the ability of organizations to scale: functional testing. Most organizations still rely on sequential tests to deliver quality assurance. No matter how rapidly a business can produce great products, its ability to bring them to consumers quickly is […]
DevOps: Shift Left to Reduce Failure
DevOps is all about increasing the feedback loop from idea to customer and back again. Tremendous gains have been achieved in automation and tools to drastically reduce the amount of manual labor involved in progressing down the release pipeline. But mission-critical applications in a highly competitive market cannot afford to go down. Complex applications, environments […]
Best Practices for Cloud Deployment
When it comes to deploying apps in the cloud, the conventional wisdom is that DevOps is not required if you’re a small or midsized company. The cloud is designed to enable virtually anyone to set up the infrastructure they need, quickly and easily, without a lot of experience in the intricacies of managing data center […]
Test Better, Test Faster, Test Smarter
How do you balance the need to “go fast” with the need to test everything and deliver high-quality software? With applications the driving force in today’s economy, the quality and release cadence of your software are critical to your business and your bottom line. You want to get software updated in the hands of your […]
The Cost of Not Building with Security in Mind
The unfortunate reality for today’s organizations is the fact that a security breach is bound to happen. Major breaches are happening with alarming frequency and fill the news headlines almost daily. And behind many of these major breach stories is a software vulnerability that has been exploited. There is a silver lining, however. Addressing security […]
Puppet Labs Launches Annual State of DevOps Survey
Puppet Labs has announced its 5th annual State of DevOps Survey. In the past five years, we’ve surveyed more than 20,000 technical professionals around the world, spanning all industries and companies of all sizes. We’ve captured a tremendous amount of data about how IT performance, culture, technical practices and organizational performance intersect. What sets our […]
IT DevOps: One Size Does Not Fit All
As absurd as this may seem, some in IT may be longing for the good old days of the mainframe. After all, the hulking machine, with its dumb terminals and thousands of punch cards, gave IT complete control. No citizen developers or business analysts allowed. Things got more complicated with distributed desktop computing and its […]
DevOps Impact on IT Operations Management
Most of the focus of the DevOps movement is on the application development to deploy cycle, and that’s appropriate. When folks talk about the IT Ops side of DevOps, you’ll hear talk about IT process management tools like Puppet, Chef, and Ansible that are used to automate the deployment, update and remediation of software and […]
Continuous Delivery versus Continuous Deploy
Getting a solid grasp on the meaning of DevOps requires a clear understanding of the terms used to describe it. Over the last several years, we have seen a paradigm shift in the way software is developed, moving away from a waterfall approach, with monolithic releases, to an agile approach with incremental releases. This shift […]
Moving from Infrastructure Automation to True DevOps
Deciding on two separate teams, or an integrated end-to-end team While a lot has been said about “the right way” to do DevOps, what we’re seeing in practice are two different approaches being tried to enable development and operations to work together as a team. On the one hand, there’s the approach to create an […]
Surprise! Broad Agreement on the Definition of DevOps
For the past few years, the conventional wisdom has been that DevOps has no agreed upon definition. Instead, everyone has their own interpretation. However, the conventional wisdom is wrong. While everyone supplies slightly different words, the same working understanding of DevOps is nearly universal. Our understanding of DevOps goes back to a handful of common touch-points. There is the “CAMS” […]