Puppet: Best Practices
This is 4th part of the multi-part series covering Automation, provisioning and Configuration Management. In this article best practices for Puppet shall be covered. Puppet, one of the most well-liked configuration management tools, can also turn out to be complicated at times. In this post I’m going to briefly go through a few practices that have […]
The Business Value of Continuous Testing
***This post is based on themes and ideas from the great e-book, “Continuous Testing,” by our friends at Parasoft. Enterprise software development models have presented many innovative solutions for IT to align development efforts with business goals. Adopting new software development lifecycle methodologies is as much a business decision as an IT decision. From an […]
If you “code” your apps, why do you still “configure” your IT infrastructure?
Industry studies and market indicators show the exploding growth of the DevOps movement, and it’s for one simple reason – in today’s application driven economy, DevOps teams have proven that they can build, test and ship applications faster than the traditional IT approach. Businesses compete on the efficiency of delivering applications to meet the demands […]
Ansible Tower in the Software Development Lifecycle
Ansible Tower is used in a variety of different ways, from traditional configuration management, to custom application deployment, to the orchestration of zero-downtime rolling updates. Companies like Gawker Media use Ansible to deploy their sites more than 10 times an hour. NASA uses Ansible to update security vulnerabilities and to patch manage nasa.gov weekly. Enterprises […]
Redefining the state of quality with mobile apps
While many organizations are looking to agile methods to deliver mobile apps faster, they are also facing challenges in embracing the methodology across the organization. The keystone of agile for mobile apps is the focus on “the state of quality,” or the need to know if your code works, so will your app. The major […]
31 Reference Architectures for DevOps and Continuous Delivery
At QCon London, David Farley (@davefarley77) told the audience that “continuous delivery changes the economics of software delivery”. I could not agree more. If you have been drawn to the evangelists like David Farley, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim, you’ll know that high performance IT organizations are seeing a massive payoff in their continuous delivery […]
Automation, Provisioning and Configuration Management with PUPPET
This is 3rd part of the multi-part series covering Automation, provisioning and Configuration Management. In this follow up article best practices for Puppet shall be covered. Why Puppet? While every system administrator comes up with more progressive systems to be managed, the automation of every mundane task is increasingly significant. Instead of achieving in-house developed scripts, […]
DevOps Makes Security Assurance Affordable
Despite the fact that information security is a top priority, many organizations face challenges integrating security assurance practices into their product and service development practices. All too often security problems are only detected and resolved with software patches following a security breach. Security assurance is often reactive but what is needed is a more consistent […]
To Get Jammin’ Mobile Downloads, Toss Out 40 Years of Tradition
The tally of smartphone usage worldwide is mind-numbing: Even as far back as 2012, more people on earth had access to a mobile phone than had access to a toothbrush. Even more mind-numbing must be the stats on the untold millions of those mobile device users in various states of rage at any moment while […]
Continuous Testing System Stability
The effort to speed up continuous testing will be wasted if the underlying system that continuous testing depends on is not stable. In my prior blog Continuous Test Results Analysis – at the Speed of DevOps, I discussed the importance and practices for speeding up continuous testing results analysis. However, unless the continuous test system […]
Test Results Analysis at the Speed of DevOps
Fast continuous testing is counterproductive if the analysis of test results does not keep up with the speed of testing. In my prior blog Continuous Testing – Accelerated! I discussed the importance and practices for speeding up continuous testing. Unless test analysis is as fast as the tests, all that will happen is an accumulated […]
Business Value of Log Analysis
The modern software delivery pipeline breaks the mold of traditional process and tool acquisition, but doesn’t warrant any less consideration. Measuring the impact of log analysis for your ops and dev teams (and the organization overall) is more of an exercise in measuring process improvement—not hard ROI. The soft ROI components of log analysis are: […]
Financial Sector Leading the Way with CD for the database
The financial industry, especially banks, are still using a programming language that is over 50 years old. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean they are out of date, rather these giant institutions have found in some cases that their ancient systems just work. They are stable and secure software programs. But databases are not like static […]
A Look into Open Networking Standards
Open source standards hold a lot of potential for networking. Already, initiatives such as OpenStack and OpenDaylight have gained a fair amount of momentum due to the contributions of major vendors such as Intel that recently joining OpenDaylight as a platinum member. That momentum is even spurring telecoms like AT&T to start their own open […]
Automation, Provisioning & Configuration Management (CHEF)
Introduction Chef is an influential configuration management and automation platform that transmutes the complex infrastructure and helps you in describing your infrastructure with code, by bringing your servers and services to life. Since your infrastructure is controlled and managed with code, it can be automated, tested and reproduced with efficiency and ease. Chef automates the […]
Beyond Server Monitoring
The logs go in and the visualizations and insights come out. You suddenly have access to data you never had before—data that helps improve your operations and your DevOps environment. But is that where the value of log analysis stops? No! Extending log analysis benefits your entire organization, not just the development and IT Operation […]
Continuous Testing – Accelerated !
Except for cases where test duration is the point of the test, as indicated in my prior blog “Isn’t Continuous Testing a Longevity Test Anti-pattern?”, faster continuous testing cycles are preferred because failing early and often is a DevOps goal. There are multiple reasons for this, but it should be evident that faster tests reduce […]
Building software quality into your Continuous Delivery pipeline
The modern software development landscape places a premium on speed. It’s good to be first to market. If you’re going to fail then you should fail fast. A rapidly evolving product can be shaped according to customer feedback, and fast turnaround allows you to stamp out defects and hone the software for your audience. A […]
Isn’t Continuous Testing a Longevity Test Anti-pattern?
Accordingly to Jim Coplien: “an anti-pattern is something that looks like a good idea, but which backfires badly when applied. “ In DevOps context, continuous testing is an attractive solution for the narrow context of testing specific software components quickly (in cycles measured in minutes or hours) but may be “bad” if the system that […]
Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS)
Amazon has packed a box full of services and covered nearly every aspect in making cloud a smooth experience for developers to put up exceedingly operational and structurally complex applications on AWS. Large numbers of cloud-based systems feel the dire need of or dependency on sending out emails on a subscription basis to end users. But it is […]
Four Steps to Free Your Organization From Scheduled Maintenance
Whether you’re an operations engineer or a customer, scheduled maintenance is often viewed as a given when delivering software as a service. While far better than surprise outages, planned downtime is still tough for everybody involved– customers will always have off-hours access needs, and the low-traffic times you want to perform maintenance are often the […]
Functional Testing for IoT
The Internet of Things (IoT) is becoming a bit more than a fun three letter acronym. And while internet connected devices have been around for a while, turning it into a practice is an important evolution. It allows the establishment of best practices, better integration into standard software development, and thus more robust applications, sometimes […]
From QA to Continuous Testing
My prior blog “DevOps – It’s All About Continuous Testing” posits that QA testers don’t need to fear DevOps because continuous testing QA is a central part of DevOps infrastructures that are implemented according to best practices. That is not to say however that continuous testing is precisely the same as traditional QA testing or […]