DevOps.com

  • Latest
    • Articles
    • Features
    • Most Read
    • News
    • News Releases
  • Topics
    • AI
    • Continuous Delivery
    • Continuous Testing
    • Cloud
    • Culture
    • DataOps
    • DevSecOps
    • Enterprise DevOps
    • Leadership Suite
    • DevOps Practice
    • ROELBOB
    • DevOps Toolbox
    • IT as Code
  • Videos/Podcasts
    • Techstrong.tv Podcast
    • Techstrong.tv - Twitch
    • DevOps Unbound
  • Webinars
    • Upcoming
    • Calendar View
    • On-Demand Webinars
  • Library
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Calendar View
    • On-Demand Events
  • Sponsored Content
  • Related Sites
    • Techstrong Group
    • Cloud Native Now
    • Security Boulevard
    • Techstrong Research
    • DevOps Chat
    • DevOps Dozen
    • DevOps TV
    • Techstrong TV
    • Techstrong.tv Podcast
    • Techstrong.tv - Twitch
  • Media Kit
  • About
  • Sponsor
  • AI
  • Cloud
  • CI/CD
  • Continuous Testing
  • DataOps
  • DevSecOps
  • DevOps Onramp
  • Platform Engineering
  • Sustainability
  • Low-Code/No-Code
  • IT as Code
  • More
    • Application Performance Management/Monitoring
    • Culture
    • Enterprise DevOps
    • ROELBOB
Hot Topics
  • Dev Jobs are Dead: ‘Everyone’s a Programmer’ With AI ¦ Intel VPUs
  • Logz.io Taps AI to Surface Incident Response Recommendations
  • Why You Need a Multi-Cloud and Multi-Region Deployment Strategy
  • Cloud Drift Detection With Policy-as-Code
  • Checkmarx Brings Generative AI to SAST and IaC Security Tools

Home » Blogs » Enterprise DevOps » COVID-19: Don’t Sacrifice DevOps

COVID-19: Don’t Sacrifice DevOps

Avatar photoBy: Don Macvittie on March 19, 2020 Leave a Comment

Like everyone else, I’ve been following COVID-19/Coronavirus issues. My focus is more on the IT impact of the disease and its status as a pandemic.

Recent Posts By Don Macvittie
  • Forget Change, Embrace Stability
  • Is AI the Answer to Devs’ Documentation Problem?
  • Standardize: It’s Not the Where. Sometimes it’s Not the What
Avatar photo More from Don Macvittie
Related Posts
  • COVID-19: Don’t Sacrifice DevOps
  • Variable Speed DevOps
  • Why I’m Happy To Have DevOps Engineer In My Job Title
    Related Categories
  • Blogs
  • DevOps Culture
  • DevOps Practice
  • Enterprise DevOps
  • Features
    Related Topics
  • business continuity
  • coronavirus
  • COVID19
  • devops
  • managed service providers
  • MSP
Show more
Show less

Let’s start by saying it isn’t the end of the world. Yes, it’s serious. Yes, it will be disruptive. Yes, those impacted by the worst aspects of the disease will leave a hole. But when it is over, and the tide has swept by, the vast majority of people will still be here, still trying to do what they need to do.

TechStrong Con 2023Sponsorships Available

That includes ITOps/DevOps maintaining whatever you put in during the rush to work remotely. Some organizations will be happy to throw something up and then rip it back down, but most will not. Once they’ve worked out how to work remotely, they’ll want to keep that as an option. Some to offer more work/life balance to employees, others to have a backup plan in case of emergency. Ask any company in Katrina’s path, remote work plans born in emergencies tend to hang around.

It is the nature of DevOps to be nimble and reactive, planning on improving things as time goes on. That’s a good feature of both DevOps and modern IT teams. But some things are less nimble than others, and the rush to remote work is going to show that in a hard way.

The VPN chosen or expanded to enable remote workers is not likely to be swapped out easily or quickly. While there is a sense of urgency—if you follow /r/sysadmin or to a lesser extent, /r/DevOps on Reddit, you know that urgency may even be too gentle a word. Some management teams seem to be in panic mode—you are going to have to live with some of these choices for a while, don’t make them knee-jerk.

Normally, an MSP is your friend when moving like this, offering expertise and knowledge your organization doesn’t have internally, and shortening both deployment and the learning curve. But consensus is that MSPs, laptop manufacturers and VPN vendors are going to be booked solid for the near term.

So, choose software when you can. Not because software is better (truly for some functions it is worse), but because it is generally easier to replace. A software VPN can be expensive, but you’re not buying hardware that is a sunk cost. Consider short-term solutions such as Amazon Workspaces or possibly  Chrome Remote Desktop, old standbys like VNC or RDP (likely with VPN in both cases), file sharing with things such as Sharepoint or OneDrive. Later on, you can look at a Cloud NAS such as Nasuni, or a more solid remote access plan.

Yes, all the suggestions above have things you need to worry about. No, not everything will be within your control. However, these things are easier to rectify on iteration than “We bought big solution X, and it doesn’t do Y, so we need to replace it.” Start with short-term solutions and improve them as you go–this is truly the DevOps way, but it is easy to lose as you’re looking for high-volume, perfect and urgent.

IT workloads (particularly operations workloads) are going to increase for any organization that wasn’t already set up for broad remote work. There is no way around this fact. As someone suggested online, “Kiss your family, tell them you’ll see them in a couple months and get to it.”

You’ve got this. The internet is loaded with information to help, places such as Spiceworks and Reddit have people willing to offer advice all day. Smaller MSPs are likely happy to talk with you as they attempt to grow their business. Determine what you need, how fast you need it and implement the best solution you can in the time available, aiming to improve it on the next iteration. And keep the wheels of business running.

It’s a flu variant, not the black plague. Businesses that deal with this well will come out well. Right now, “Deal with it well” includes a lot of IT work: from continuity planning, to fast DevOps iterations, to getting people at home productive and supporting them through this.

— Don Macvittie

Filed Under: Blogs, DevOps Culture, DevOps Practice, Enterprise DevOps, Features Tagged With: business continuity, coronavirus, COVID19, devops, managed service providers, MSP

« Coronavirus Response: Atlassian Expands Free Software
Day 2 for the Operator Ecosystem »

Techstrong TV – Live

Click full-screen to enable volume control
Watch latest episodes and shows

Upcoming Webinars

Securing Your Software Supply Chain with JFrog and AWS
Tuesday, June 6, 2023 - 1:00 pm EDT
Maximize IT Operations Observability with IBM i Within Splunk
Wednesday, June 7, 2023 - 1:00 pm EDT
Secure Your Container Workloads in Build-Time with Snyk and AWS
Wednesday, June 7, 2023 - 3:00 pm EDT

GET THE TOP STORIES OF THE WEEK

Sponsored Content

PlatformCon 2023: This Year’s Hottest Platform Engineering Event

May 30, 2023 | Karolina Junčytė

The Google Cloud DevOps Awards: Apply Now!

January 10, 2023 | Brenna Washington

Codenotary Extends Dynamic SBOM Reach to Serverless Computing Platforms

December 9, 2022 | Mike Vizard

Why a Low-Code Platform Should Have Pro-Code Capabilities

March 24, 2021 | Andrew Manby

AWS Well-Architected Framework Elevates Agility

December 17, 2020 | JT Giri

Latest from DevOps.com

Dev Jobs are Dead: ‘Everyone’s a Programmer’ With AI ¦ Intel VPUs
June 1, 2023 | Richi Jennings
Logz.io Taps AI to Surface Incident Response Recommendations
June 1, 2023 | Mike Vizard
Why You Need a Multi-Cloud and Multi-Region Deployment Strategy
June 1, 2023 | Jesse Martin
Cloud Drift Detection With Policy-as-Code
June 1, 2023 | Joydip Kanjilal
Checkmarx Brings Generative AI to SAST and IaC Security Tools
May 31, 2023 | Mike Vizard

TSTV Podcast

On-Demand Webinars

DevOps.com Webinar ReplaysDevOps.com Webinar Replays

Most Read on DevOps.com

CDF Marries Emporous Repository to Ortelius Management Platform
May 26, 2023 | Mike Vizard
Is Your Monitoring Strategy Scalable?
May 26, 2023 | Yoni Farin
GitLab Adds More AI and Cybersecurity Capabilities to CI/CD Platform
May 26, 2023 | Mike Vizard
What Is a Cloud Operations Engineer?
May 30, 2023 | Gilad David Maayan
Five Great DevOps Job Opportunities
May 30, 2023 | Mike Vizard
  • Home
  • About DevOps.com
  • Meet our Authors
  • Write for DevOps.com
  • Media Kit
  • Sponsor Info
  • Copyright
  • TOS
  • Privacy Policy

Powered by Techstrong Group, Inc.

© 2023 ·Techstrong Group, Inc.All rights reserved.