Some videos of my From Dev to DevOps talks. The slides are available at slideshare.
Español: Codemotion Spain 2012
Español: Conferencia Agile Spain CAS 2011
Français (-glish) (watch me butcher the French language): Paris JUG January 2012 at Parleys
Warning, some self-promotion ahead! 🙂
Gartner has published their annual list of Cool Vendors, including a section for DevOps, where we are one of the 5 selected companies.
Not a big fan of this analyst things, but quite proud of being included in such a short list, right next to the people from CFEngine, Opscode and Puppet Labs, that are very active on the DevOps space and, in the case of PuppetLabs, whose products we use heavily for automation.
MaestroDev, an innovation leader in DevOps Orchestration, has been included in the list of “Cool Vendors in DevOps, 2012” report by Gartner, Inc.
And thanks to our great customers too!
Keith Campbell, CTO, Informatics, said “The Maestro product has automated our build process all the way through packaging. We are using our same toolset, but the Maestro Composition engine gives us consistency and speed that we did not have before. With Maestro, we are planning our development-cloud environment as well — reducing our build cost even further because we can dynamically integrate hybrid resources and external services into our workflows.”
You can check out the rest of the press release at the MaestroDev blog, and the Gartner Cool Vendors report.
So, are you already using Vagrant to manage your VirtualBox VMs?
Then you probably have realized already how annoying is to keep the VBox guest additions up to date in your VMs.
Don’t worry, you can update them with just one command or automatically on each start using the Vagrant-vbguest plugin.
Requires vagrant 0.9.4 or later (including 1.0)
Since vagrant v1.0.0 the prefered installation method for vagrant is using the provided packages or installers.
Therefore if you installed Vagrant as a package (rpm, deb, dmg,…)
vagrant gem install vagrant-vbguest
Or if you installed vagrant using RubyGems (gem install vagrant):
gem install vagrant-vbguest
By default the plugin will check what version of the guest additions is installed in the VM every time it is started with vagrant start. Note that it won’t be checked when resuming a box.
In any case, it can be disabled in the Vagrantfile
Vagrant::Config.run do |config| # set auto_update to false, if do NOT want to check the correct additions # version when booting this machine config.vbguest.auto_update = false end
If it detects an outdated version, it will automatically install the matching version from the VirtualBox installation, located at
/usr/share/virtualbox/VBoxGuestAdditions.isoApplications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxGuestAdditions.iso%PROGRAMFILES%/Oracle/VirtualBox/VBoxGuestAdditions.isoThe location can be overridden with the iso_path parameter in your Vagrantfile, and can point to a http server
Vagrant::Config.run do |config|
config.vbguest.iso_path = "#{ENV['HOME']}/Downloads/VBoxGuestAdditions.iso"
# or
config.vbguest.iso_path = "http://company.server/VirtualBox/$VBOX_VERSION/VBoxGuestAdditions.iso"
end
If you have disabled the automatic update, it still easy to manually update the VirtualBox Guest Additions version, just running from the command line
vagrant vbguest
If you are starting to use Puppet or Chef, you must have Vagrant.
Learning Puppet can be a tedious task, getting up the master, agents, writing your first manifests,… A good way to start is using Vagrant, an Oracle VirtualBox command line automation tool, that allows easy Puppet and Chef provisioning on VirtualBox VMs.
Vagrant projects are composed by base boxes, specifically configured for Vagrant with Puppet/Chef, vagrant username and password, and anything else you may want to add, plus the configuration to apply to those base boxes, defined with Puppet or Chef. That way we can have several projects using the same base boxes shared where the only difference are the Puppet/Chef definitions. For instance a database VM and a web server VM can both use the same base box and just have different Puppet manifests, and when Vagrant starts them, it will apply the specific configuration. That also allows to share boxes and configuration files across teams, for instance having one base box with the Linux flavor used in a team, we can just have in source control the Puppet manifests to apply for the different configurations that anybody from Operations to Developers can use.
There is a list of available VMs or base boxes ready to use with Vagrant at www.vagrantbox.es. But you can build your own and share it anywhere, as they are just (big) VirtualBox VM files, easily using VeeWee, or changing a base box and rebundling it with vagrant package.
Once you have installed Vagrant and VirtualBox.
Vagrant init will create a sample Vagrantfile, the project definition file that can be customized.
$ vagrant init myproject
Then in the Vagrantfile you can change the default box settings, and add basic Puppet provisioning
config.vm.box = "centos-6" config.vm.box_url = "https://vagrant-centos-6.s3.amazonaws.com/centos-6.box" config.vm.provision :puppet do |puppet| puppet.manifests_path = "manifests" puppet.manifest_file = "site.pp" end
In manifests/site.pp you can try any puppet manifest.
file { '/etc/motd':
content => 'Welcome to your Vagrant-built virtual machine! Managed by Puppet.\n'
}
Vagrant up will download the box the first time, start the VM and apply any configuration defined in Puppet
$ vagrant up
vagrant ssh will open a shell into the box. Under the hood vagrant is redirecting the host port 2222 to the vagrant box 22
$ vagrant ssh
The vm can be suspended and resumed at any time
$ vagrant suspend $ vagrant resume
and later on destroyed, which will delete all the VM files.
$ vagrant destroy
And then we can start again from scratch with vagrant up getting a completely new vm where we can make any mistakes 🙂
That’s true, in the same way that agile is not about the tools either, it’s a set of ideas, concepts, best practices,…
Nice, but… how can I successfully implement it?
Tools can enable change in behavior and eventually change culture [Patrick Debois]
The same way the Guttemberg printer was a tool that enabled a cultural change, or that Agile development wouldn’t be possible without Continuous Integration servers, DevOps relies on some tools to implement its principles.
Unfortunately, the same way everyone thinks of themselves as being intelligent enough, and every tool out there is magically cloud enabled, now every tool claims to be DevOps.
However, there is agreement that tools that allow us to deal with infrastructure as code are key on implementing DevOps concepts.
It’s all been invented already, now it’s standardized with tools like Chef or Puppet. Before, you could write your own scripts to automate server installation, configuration,… but everyone would do it their very own way.
Now there’s some common language used by Puppet or by Chef, that allows to share and reuse configuration as modules or recipes.
The concept that infrastructure should be treated as code is really powerful. Server configuration, packages installed, relationships with other servers,… should be modeled with code to be automated and have a predictable outcome, removing manual steps prone to errors. Doesn’t sound bad, does it?
But new solutions bring new challenges, and when infrastructure is code we face the same problems faced by developers.
That’s why when dealing with infrastructure as code we should follow development best practices.
For instance we can (and should!)
Hearing everywhere about DevOps and how it is all about automation, and how manual steps should be removed from Operations. Starting to worry about your OPs job?
On one hand, yes, you should worry.
My job is to make other people’s jobs unnecessary.
While I was working on Maven the goal was to automate and standardize all the build steps so there’s no more need to have a magician build master that is the only one that knows how to build the software. All Maven projects are built in the same way and there’s no need to do any manual step. That ended the build master job in many companies as they knew it. Those that were interested enough moved on to do more useful tasks, like setting up continuous integration servers, integrating new quality assurance tools, adding metrics,…
So, on the other hand, no, you shouldn’t worry as long as you want to explore new areas, because there’s still plenty to improve. Stop doing tedious manual tasks and focus on what’s really important.
You should just worry about the NOOPS guys 😉
From the developer point of view, there are some tools involved in the source-to-deploy process
When everything is set together, we can have a CI schedule that is building automatically the changes from the SCM as they are committed, deploying to an artifact repository the result of the build or sending a notification if there is any error. Everything fully automated. A change is made to SCM, the CI server kicks in, builds and runs all sort of tests (unit, functional, integration,…) while you go off for a sword fight with your coworkers.
Now what? somebody sends by email the tarball, zipfile,… to the operations team? oh, no that would be too bad. Just send them the url to download it… And even better send some instructions, a changelog, upgrade task list,…
Using tools like Maven in the Java world or Bundle in Rubyland you can explicitly list all the dependencies and versions you need. But there are some critical dependencies that are never set.
It is just too simple.
Packages installed, C libraries, databases, all sort of OS and service level configuration,… That’s the next level of dependencies that should be explicitly listed and automated.
For example, think about versions of libc, postgresql, number of connections allowed, ports opened, opened file descriptors limit,…
From the point of view of the operations team the number of requirements is complex: operating system, kernel version, config files, packages installed,…
And then multiply that for several stage configurations that most likely won’t have the exact same configurations.
Deployment of the artifacts produced by the development team is always a challenge
That is obviously prone to errors
It’s nothing new but it has increased with the proliferation of Cloud based environments, making it easier and easier to run dozens or hundreds of servers at any point in time. Even knowing how to deploy to one server, how is it deployed to all those servers? what connections need to be established between servers? how is it going to affect the network?
The slides from my From Dev to DevOps talk at FOSDEM 2012 Brussels are up in Slideshare. The material is also in the Lanyrd page.
The conference was huge, I’ve heard that over 4000 people showed up this year, for this free (as in both software and beer) event, organized on several tracks. Not bad considering that the temperature was between -15 and -6C (5 and 23 Fahrenheit) and got a lot of snow.
I spoke on the main auditorium with capacity for 1400 people, there was plenty of space. Unfortunately (for me, but great for the other speakers and the organization) some other devrooms got filled quickly, and couldn’t get into the Configuration and Systems Management Devroom, which should have been really good as nobody left as I was waiting outside between talks 😦
A lot of care by the organization, including a note with a 24/7 phone number in case I got “lost/confused/arrested” (which makes me think it must have happened before), and a full commitment to promote belgian beer 😉
And thanks to the people that attended my talk and engaged through twitter, got great feedback and hints for improvements on the future of development and infrastructure automation!
The year starts with two speaking engagements, about development and DevOps
Next week, Tuesday January 10th at the I.S.E.P. Paris
An afternoon about DevOps, with Henri Gomez also speaking, where I’ll be finally able to put faces to some long time online friends and collaborators on different open source projects.
Sunday February 5th at the ULB Campus Solbosch in Brussels.
the biggest free and non-commercial event organized by and for the community
Interesting conference concept with no registration necessary, around 4000 attendees in 4-6 tracks, completely free, including a Friday Belgium beer event, as they say don’t miss this great opportunity to taste some of the finest beer in Belgium (and, hence, in the world). And they even include spouse/partner tours!
Are you going to any of them? say hi!
This is the start of a (hopefully) series of posts about DevOps, based on my presentation From Dev to DevOps.
The Agile movement stablished a series of development practices quite common nowadays, or at least highly desired:
But what happens after the development cycle? The process of building software or products does not stop there. Even if you are an agile shop, you may hit a wall when trying to move between Development, QA and Operations.
DevOps is a door in that wall.
Rajiv.Pant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Devops.png
DevOps is the intersection between Development, QA and Operations. You can also think of it as DevQAOps.
Christopher Little http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Agile-vs-iterative-flow.jpg
As some issues were solved by Agile methodologies, new issues arose. Agile development generates a higher number of releases (release early/release often) than waterfall methodologies, and that pushes the problem from development teams to operations, that have to deal with more frequent deliveries to production.
Once a product is working, changes are seen as a risk by business, developers, QA, operations,… Reducing the time to make (and revert!) changes increases the assurance to do more frequent changes.
Automation, automation, automation! Not only the development needs to be automated. No more docs with instructions, manual steps, individual knowledge, “deployment master” or hacks. All the steps up to production need to be automated too, including deployments, to reduce risk of manual mistakes.
With the proliferation of virtualization, cloud, PaaS, stacks,… is absolutely necessary to be able to replicate environments for development, QA, pre-production,… Ensuring that proper level of testing is conducted as the product (software + environment) progresses through the lifecycle.
Teams split in Dev, QA, Ops,… cause walls to stand between them, and unnecessary friction, with each team pushing for its own benefit and requiring escalation of issues to account for the overall business good. Getting all the teams on the same table more often the friction is reduced.
Developers are usually measured by the number of features implemented, while operation teams are measured by the performance and stability on production. Two different goals that make both teams clash in many occasions. Bring issues early on and involve all the teams in the decisions.
Read more at What Is This Devops Thing, Anyway?
Does this sound familiar?
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
Exactly, that’s the Agile manifesto, which is still perfectly valid, with some clarifications, if we get into detail:
What does that exactly mean
The key part is the involvement of not just the development team but the QA and Operations teams.
Game theory is defined as the method for analyzing calculated circumstances, such as in games, where a person’s success is based upon the choices of others. If you have watched A beautiful mind, you’ll remember the scene where he tries to pick up a girl at a bar.
What does it have to do with DevOps? The success of the Dev team greatly depends on actions done by the Ops team, good software deployed incorrectly will transmit the wrong impression. Likewise, the success of the Ops team definitely depends on the work of the Dev team, as poorly developed software will cause all sort of performance issues.
If all teams try to achieve their own benefit, it’s not necessarily a good thing for the overall business. Imagine the Ops team not pushing new features because they don’t want to risk the production stability. Or the Dev team pushing new features to production without proper testing because it’s a QA problem, not theirs, and are only measured on the amount of features pushed.
Carlos Sanchez's Weblog 
