Five Top Tips for Cloud and DevOps Automation
A while back, I overheard someone asking why many of the ‘cloudy people’ have moved on to DevOps. One reason is certainly that cloud is at the heart of DevOps. Many of the grounding principles of DevOps – rapid iteration, agile development, automated testing, continuous delivery and continuous integration – are barely even possible without […]
The 7 skills Ops pros need to succeed with DevOps
There’s a lot of confusion about what DevOps exactly is, and what it takes for enterprises and individuals alike to succeed. Some argue it’s about successfully using collaboration toolsets. It’s not. DevOps is about collaboration between software developers and IT operations teams. DevOps grew from the need for a more agile organization, and to knock […]
Lean versus the bandwagon, lean wins
I’ve just finished reading “The Phoenix Project,” by Kim, Behr and Spafford. To be honest, it was on my reading list but had I not picked up a copy at Camp DevOps I don’t know that I would have ever read the book. My main issue with books of this ilk, such as “Who Moved […]
Your End Users Want Everything: Here’s How to Give it to Them
In today’s application-centric business environment, the end user is king. Whether we’re talking about being first to market with the next big thing or adding new capabilities and features to an existing application, so much of our current development time, resources and energy is spent on trying to meet the needs of end users. It’s […]
Enterprise DevOps is Real and Here to Stay
A recent column in the Wall Street Journal’s CIO Journal argued that while DevOps is gaining inroads in small and mid-sized businesses, it’s facing a much less rosy future in large enterprises. The story cited organizational challenges, many of which we covered, such as large siloes, regulatory compliance, and resistance to change as great impediments […]
Who’s side are you on anyway? DevOps Culture
Shame on you! Yes you, because there is a good chance you are thinking about DevOps all wrong. If you are a developer you might be thinking DevOps means IT goes away and you control all the infrastructure. If you are from IT you are thinking that DevOps is just automating what you already do, more. […]
Simplify and expedite server management
Deploying, managing, and maintaining servers can be tedious. Deploying, managing, and maintaining thousands, or tens of thousands of server instances is overwhelming—bordering on impossible—without the right tools. Thankfully, the right tools exist. The Pain of Doing Things the Hard Way I know I am dating myself, but when I was an IT admin for a […]
Avoiding Parrot Processes
One of the things devops practitioners are tasked with is the provisioning and configuration of all sorts of infrastructure. Application servers, web servers, load balancers, proxies and database servers are among the lengthy (and no doubt growing) list of “boxes” devops needs to get up and running to support just about any given application today. […]
Security automation with DevOps: show me the code!
Last week Andrew Storms put up a good post hinting at the promise of security automation in [SecDevOps: Security Automation By Example – The Firewall Change]. He included an example of automating a series of actions when a firewall rule is changed. It’s a good article, although I’m increasingly convinced there’s no such thing as […]
Meet Infrastructure as Code
Maybe you have already heard the terms “Programmable Infrastructure” and “Infrastructure as code”. But even if you have not, if you are interested in DevOps it’s something you need to know. Most new lingo causes me to roll my eyes. But in this case, it’s not just new lingo, it’s an entirely new concept. Besides making […]
An open letter to Jeff Knupp
Dear Jeff, First off, nice recovery. I commend your gesture to return to positivity and make what to my eyes, looks like a kind and altruistic offer to an underserved class of engineers. I personally sent your offer to all the female engineers on my team and got very good feedback from several of them. […]
Does DevOps spell death for Line-of-Business (LOB) Applications?
Perhaps wrongly, “DevOps” has been associated with “new” and “that thing for the cool kids” and the “hipster developers”. This is used both as an excuse and as a source of animosity against the movement. But more subtly, I sometimes observe IT departments that acknowledge DevOps as a thing, but claim it wont work for […]
DevOps storytime: MTTR vs. Goodheart’s Law
I am not a fan of metrics. Wait. That’s not right. Let me try again. I am not a fan of singular metrics that stand by themselves. Nope. That’s still not right. I loathe singular metrics that stand by themselves as if they themselves are solutions to problems. Ok. That works. Let me explain. Last […]
Security and DevOps showdown
George Hulme’s article on proceeding with caution on DevOps implementation offers some advice from a few well known security experts. Article here vs. Alan Shimel says today’s speed of business isn’t compatible with :go slow”. Security people have to understand that DevOps is our last best hope. But in order to have DevOps […]
DevOps: Security’s last best hope
Help us Obi Wan! The fact is that DevOps is security’s last best hope. The sooner the security industry realizes it the better it will be for everyone. I read George Hulme’s story today about proceeding with caution and going slow with DevOps. Of course it was no surprise to me that those cautioning to […]
DevOps: Caution Ahead
Despite the continued adoption of enterprise DevOps practices, some organizations, especially those in highly-regulated industries remain cautious about moving forward too quickly. “There’s no doubt that DevOps brings benefits for some organizations,” says Martin Fisher, director of information security at Atlanta-based WellStar Health System. “However, many pushing for DevOps underestimate the amount of technological and […]
DevOps developers; don’t be a DevGoof
There was a lot of brush back last week over Jeff Knupp’s post about how DevOps is killing the developer. Frankly I wasn’t shocked by Knupp’s opinion that developers “are the dentists in the dental office”. In my 30+ years of involvement in the IT industry my experience is that developers often think of themselves […]
Merging creation with operations: facilitated collaboration enables continuous delivery
So much has been written lately about the challenge of improving IT agility in the enterprise. The best sources of insight on why this challenge is so difficult are the CIOs, application owners, ecommerce and release engineering executives, and VPs of I&O, grappling to change their organizations right now. At a conference I attended recently, […]
Technology’s effect on religion
Today being Good Friday, with Easter being Sunday and in the midst of Passover; it is a time for reflection. Instead of thinking about DevOps, today I ponder life and religion. What comes to mind is the future of religion in these technological times. The number of Americans with a religious affiliation continues to decline, […]
DevOps adoption can succeed where ITIL failed, if we let it
When I look at the future of DevOps adoption and acceleration I contrast it with what I feel was the failure of ITIL to really move beyond large enterprise IT shops. I am of the firm belief that DevOps has the legs to succeed and soar where ITIL sort of crashed and burned. OK if […]
Programmability in the Network: Stop a Bleeding Heart…
It is not often the case that a security vulnerability can get the entire Internet talking. And not just the security community on the Internet, but everyone. End-users and IT alike are looking for answers and trying to mitigate Heartbleed. It has its own web site and logo. It’s that big of a deal. Many service providers have […]
Automation versus Orchestration
Yes, Virginia, there is a difference. One of the things devops practitioners are tasked with is the provisioning and configuration of all sorts of infrastructure. Application servers, web servers, load balancers, proxies and database servers are among the lengthy (and no doubt growing) list of “boxes” devops needs to get up and running to support […]
DevOps Needs a Tsunami To Jump The Chasm
All start up business endeavors must go through the phase of crossing the chasm. Most of those business endeavors usually fall prey to the chasm. The chasm is this black hole that everyone claims to understand but no one truly does. We have all seen businesses cross the chasm or fail to cross the chasm […]