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Getting Started with DevOps

Eric MinickConsultant & Technical Evangelist

eric@urbancode.com

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Why DevOps?

• Cool new Applications are delayed because they don’t run in our production environments

• Outages due to Dev / Ops communication problems

• Releases fail due to environmental differences

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DevOps Is NOT

• Giving the developers the root password

• A job title (ok, it is, but that doesn’t make sense)

• Asking Developers to be sys-admins or sys-admins to be developers

• A formalized process like ITIL or Scrum. Nor is it incompatible with those processes

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DevOps is a philosophy

• Agile & Lean applied to the whole software delivery chain, not just developers– BizDevQaSecReleaseOps

• Driven by efficiency and consistency– Building applications– Building environments– Configuring applications and environments

• Optimizing software delivery end-to-end

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DevOps needs People, Process and Tools

• People– Changes in behavior– Potential for new roles

• Process– Tweak SDLC processes for more responsiveness– Regular refinement

• Tools– Chain of complementary tools – Supporting people and process

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Agenda: Process, People, Tools

• Process• People• Tools

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Agenda: Process, People, Tools

• Process• People• Tools

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Start updating Process: The Goal

• Goal: Unify the software delivery process across the SDLC– Reduce duplication of effort– Improve consistency– Embrace change– Remove known sources of error

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Start Updating Process: Form a Team

• Establish a team that improves process

• Members:– Stakeholders across the SDLC• Devs, QA, Release, Ops, Security…

– More hands-on people than managers

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Start Updating Process: Form a Team

• The team should meet:– Regularly (perhaps inline with Dev’s Sprints)– For post-mortem’s of outages and good releases

• Refining the Process– Start from current process– Respond with real change to real failures• “We should be more careful” doesn’t count

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Start Updating Process: Ex. Refinements

• Because errors creep into the official builds…– Unify the CI and official builds and test nightly

• Because a new app wasn’t compatible with the live environment…– Involve sys-admins in early design phases– Setup test envs that more closely match Live

• Deployments failed due to manual error– Increase automation in deployment

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Agenda: Process, People, Tools

• Process• People• Tools

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People: Living DevOps

• Break down the Dev / Ops wall– Different roles are ok

• Involve members of “the other side” in your decisions.

• When in doubt, get a mediator

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People: As Developers…

• Inform Ops early of new applications and other changes coming down the pipeline

• Include health and status monitoring in the app

• Consider involving Ops in early architecture meetings. They’ll ask:– So… how are you going to back that up?– What security protocols are we using?– Will it run in the cluster?

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People: As Operations…

• Share network diagrams with interested developers.

• Support Dev and QA with “cheap” and disposable test environments

• Collaborate with QA to implement smoke testing for all environments

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People: Facilitators

• Consider Dev / Ops facilitators

• Especially helpful if:– Cultural momentum seems insurmountable– Dev and Ops groups are geographically distant– Each party is attempting to use “DevOps” to

bludgeon the other into submission

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People: Facilitators – Release Management

• Release Management– May already own the end-to-end process

• “System” knowledge is distributed and Release Managers are often already the hub– Distributed development– Offshore development– Outsource development– Outsourced IT operations

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People: Facilitators – Env. Management

• Environment Management– Emerging group. Owns what goes into

environments and their configuration changes.

• Well positioned to maintain environment consistency and integrity.

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People: Facilitators – Delivery Architect

• Chairs SDLC process group

• Strong technical skills– Understands writing, running, tuning and

monitoring complex apps

• Strong people skills– Has to bring many people together– Needs to be great at asking questions

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Agenda: Process, People, Tools

• Process• People• Tools

“Man is a tool-using animal. Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all” – Thomas Carlyle

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Start updating Tools:

• Tools should support people and process across the SDLC– There is no single “DevOps” tool– Build a coherent tools chain– Tools should be reusable across silos

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Start updating Tools: Types of Tools

• “How do we get our software from source code to a deployable package?”– Motivated by the need for an authoritative,

traceable deployable

• Build Systems: – Perform CI for developer feedback and official

builds for release. – CI build is the Official build– Store build output in an artifact repository

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Start updating Tools: Types of Tools ctd.

• “How do we get a deployable package on to an environment?”– Motivated by high deployment effort and/or high

deployment risk

• Application Release Automation / Deployment– Replace manual steps and cobbled scripts– Consistent deployment process across

environments– Consider release management aspects like

approvals to match raw automation

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Start updating Tools: Types of Tools ctd.

• “How do we create environments?” – Motivated by dev / prod environment variances– Need for frequent new test environments

• Virtualization and Environment Provisioning– Public / Private “clouds”– Installing and configuring middleware

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Start updating Tools: Types of Tools ctd

• “How do we know it works?”

• Automated tests suites speed testing as changes are brought to production quickly

• Smoke tests can be incorporated in automated deployments to detect failures

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Start updating Tools: Forming a Tool Chain

• Integrations– Direct integrations are the easiest links

• APIs– An API of some sort allows you to create an integration with current (and future) tools

• Conventions– Short of an integration, common conventions provide

an interface for adjacent tools

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Summary

• The Dev / Ops gap is a sign of a broken system– The business wants change and stability– As a team, we can deliver it

• Examine processes and look for improvements often

• Expect to implement new tools, but do them to support new processes not for their own sake

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Instigate change

You should reach out to people in other silos

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References

http://urbancode.com/resources• Enterprise CD Maturity Model• Death to Manual Deployments!• Build & Deployment Automation for the Lean

Economy• ITIL Release Management and Automation

Urbancode.com/blogs/Twitter.com/UrbanCodeSoftFacebook.com/UrbanCodeSoftSlideshare.net/Urbancode

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Yes, we sell products for this

• uBuild – Build automation and CI for the hard problems

• uDeploy– Deployment and release management

• uCloud (coming soon)– Environment provisioning for in-house PaaS

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Questions?

eric@urbancode.com@EricMinick