you have probably heard of 'big data,' well get ready for Huge Data.
February 25, 2015 7:31 PM Subscribe
The DevOps League is your fast track to DevOps certification by the industry's leading Thought Lords. Supported by one man – one stunning man – you will deep dive into such important concepts such as Dark Data, Data Beans and Terry the Data Goblin, to fully learn what DevOps really means. (But beware of the Realm of Dark Jon Hendren or 2014's Worst DevOps Article Headers.)
I have seriously considered adding my DevOps League certification to LinkedIn.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 7:47 PM on February 25, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 7:47 PM on February 25, 2015 [4 favorites]
This DevOps League Certification... it's the tech equivalent of a Ministry with the Universal Life Church, right? Do you get to marry people with this too?
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:19 PM on February 25, 2015
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:19 PM on February 25, 2015
Do you get to marry people with this too?
Automatically.
posted by furtive at 8:33 PM on February 25, 2015 [3 favorites]
Automatically.
posted by furtive at 8:33 PM on February 25, 2015 [3 favorites]
Do you get to marry people with this too?
Automatically.
Continuous marriagration.
posted by ryoshu at 8:39 PM on February 25, 2015 [14 favorites]
Automatically.
Continuous marriagration.
posted by ryoshu at 8:39 PM on February 25, 2015 [14 favorites]
> Continuous marriagration.
High availability always on redundanter interoperative opcenters
waggles eyebrows.
posted by boo_radley at 8:53 PM on February 25, 2015
High availability always on redundanter interoperative opcenters
waggles eyebrows.
posted by boo_radley at 8:53 PM on February 25, 2015
what I mean to say is devops is basically getting tech idiots to do 3 jobs and rewarding them with idiot titles instead of money.
it's like the 90s but not with Mosaic based products.
posted by boo_radley at 8:54 PM on February 25, 2015 [4 favorites]
it's like the 90s but not with Mosaic based products.
posted by boo_radley at 8:54 PM on February 25, 2015 [4 favorites]
In all seriousness, boo_radley, I don't buy that. I have a job that's certainly verging on DevOps in its characteristics, and I personally like being the owner of what I release, end to end. It puts a certain... focus on making sure issues that would cause an oncall tech to get woken up in the middle of the night don't land in production.
posted by ChrisR at 9:26 PM on February 25, 2015 [5 favorites]
posted by ChrisR at 9:26 PM on February 25, 2015 [5 favorites]
There's also a Borat for that. (Twitter Borats seem to have peaked a few years ago; Taylor Swift may be the new hotness)
posted by kurumi at 9:49 PM on February 25, 2015
posted by kurumi at 9:49 PM on February 25, 2015
> I personally like being the owner of what I release, end to end. It puts a certain... focus on making sure issues that would cause an oncall tech to get woken up in the middle of the night don't land in production.
I disagree with the idea that a single devops engineer owns anything end-to-end in that way, but sure. Nobody wants to get woken up in the middle of the night, but you're not minimizing that risk because you own all the pieces. If my app server ESX host shits the bed, the server team gets the call. If a backhoe gets frisky with fiber, our networking team gets the call. And so on. Only the person responsible gets woken up.
I don't think people get to focus in devops. I think focus gets split in a dozen ways, and that's bad for my career and my marketability.
As a SharePoint + CRM dev, I don't have the time to learn all of the OS and middleware stack to the professional level that my server and database teams do. Enterprise software is fiddly fucking business, and digging into the nuances of how operating system configurations interact with IIS configurations interact with The Christing F5 interact is an impossible act. I love the idea of developing and deploying rapidly, but you can't know and do all of the things, unless you're working on trivial applications.
I've talked with a lot of application specific staff aug people who work agile on one product, and they're great right up until you get them off the rails. They often lack broader context, and seem to have a rote knowledge of the products and "best practices" settings, and aren't able to synthesize information about novel environments into good recommendations. They're talented right up until the point that they're not, and it's hard to get them to expand.
I don't mean this as an attack on you, ChrisR, although it certainly is a bit screed-y. I think that ultimately, devops is a way to reduce headcount and specialize people into niche positions that transfer well. It's hard to see, I think, because people love being in control, and devops gets you that sensation. You control the server! the database! the software! But I feel like there's little depth in the devops work that I've done. It's always been "configure the server until the software stops crashing. If we have time in a month, you can come back to tune it." and we rarely get that time.
Cordially,
posted by boo_radley at 10:02 PM on February 25, 2015 [7 favorites]
I disagree with the idea that a single devops engineer owns anything end-to-end in that way, but sure. Nobody wants to get woken up in the middle of the night, but you're not minimizing that risk because you own all the pieces. If my app server ESX host shits the bed, the server team gets the call. If a backhoe gets frisky with fiber, our networking team gets the call. And so on. Only the person responsible gets woken up.
I don't think people get to focus in devops. I think focus gets split in a dozen ways, and that's bad for my career and my marketability.
As a SharePoint + CRM dev, I don't have the time to learn all of the OS and middleware stack to the professional level that my server and database teams do. Enterprise software is fiddly fucking business, and digging into the nuances of how operating system configurations interact with IIS configurations interact with The Christing F5 interact is an impossible act. I love the idea of developing and deploying rapidly, but you can't know and do all of the things, unless you're working on trivial applications.
I've talked with a lot of application specific staff aug people who work agile on one product, and they're great right up until you get them off the rails. They often lack broader context, and seem to have a rote knowledge of the products and "best practices" settings, and aren't able to synthesize information about novel environments into good recommendations. They're talented right up until the point that they're not, and it's hard to get them to expand.
I don't mean this as an attack on you, ChrisR, although it certainly is a bit screed-y. I think that ultimately, devops is a way to reduce headcount and specialize people into niche positions that transfer well. It's hard to see, I think, because people love being in control, and devops gets you that sensation. You control the server! the database! the software! But I feel like there's little depth in the devops work that I've done. It's always been "configure the server until the software stops crashing. If we have time in a month, you can come back to tune it." and we rarely get that time.
Cordially,
posted by boo_radley at 10:02 PM on February 25, 2015 [7 favorites]
huh well. yeah.
https://twitter.com/fart/status/560680577783709696/photo/1
sure thing.
posted by Annika Cicada at 10:05 PM on February 25, 2015 [1 favorite]
https://twitter.com/fart/status/560680577783709696/photo/1
sure thing.
posted by Annika Cicada at 10:05 PM on February 25, 2015 [1 favorite]
which what I am trying to say I guess is that I don't have a sense of humor that aligns with this. I don't want to make anyone annoyed...The humor just is not for me, and I'll move on to another thread :-)
posted by Annika Cicada at 10:08 PM on February 25, 2015
posted by Annika Cicada at 10:08 PM on February 25, 2015
Ffs don't kiss the data elf that's 7 more sprints of bad data.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 10:35 PM on February 25, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 10:35 PM on February 25, 2015 [2 favorites]
I don't think this has been linked, but its a pretty great to have a helping of Data Science to go with your DevOps.
posted by ethansr at 11:49 PM on February 25, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by ethansr at 11:49 PM on February 25, 2015 [1 favorite]
Well, I'm an infrastructure person, just to give you background ... so I'm biased. I really have problems with this whole "DevOps" movement. How is this .Net or C## or whatever developer going to know whether the storage array his "instance" is going to be on RAID-0, or 1 through 10? How are they going to know how it's backed up? How are they going to know what their RPO and RTO is? How are they going to known what their latency will be? What will they do when the storage array fails or they lose power to the production data centre or ESX just decides to shit it's pants?
Yeah, it's easy to spin up some VMs these days, but I really think you need to have people focusing on the infrastructure side of things that enable this whole Devops "Just spin up another VM" mindset.
Don't get me wrong - I would LOVE it if a developer could just click a few buttons to get a new dev/test/qa system up and running. But I'll be fucked if I'm going to provide any performance or recoverability guarantees.
posted by Diag at 4:03 AM on February 26, 2015 [3 favorites]
Yeah, it's easy to spin up some VMs these days, but I really think you need to have people focusing on the infrastructure side of things that enable this whole Devops "Just spin up another VM" mindset.
Don't get me wrong - I would LOVE it if a developer could just click a few buttons to get a new dev/test/qa system up and running. But I'll be fucked if I'm going to provide any performance or recoverability guarantees.
posted by Diag at 4:03 AM on February 26, 2015 [3 favorites]
Somehow I read this post in the voice of Douglas Reynholm of Reynholm Industries
posted by Ian Scuffling at 5:08 AM on February 26, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Ian Scuffling at 5:08 AM on February 26, 2015 [2 favorites]
A *little* bit of Ops in your Dev is awesome, but a lot is possibly the worst thing ever. And I say that as a Software Dev Mgr.
posted by blue_beetle at 5:32 AM on February 26, 2015
posted by blue_beetle at 5:32 AM on February 26, 2015
... ESX host ... SharePoint + CRM dev ... IIS configurations ... Enterprise software ...
... .Net or C## or whatever developer ... RAID-0, or 1 through 10 ... storage array ...If you are talking devops, and make the mistake of mentioning any one of these terrible terrible things that are anathema to dev ops, you must throw in *at least* actual 100 dev ops buzz words before you can return to baseline dev ops credibility. So lets see 100 lines of "Ruby chef deploys ansible clouds under cover of agile swarms of etcd docker configuration management to replace Ubuntu VMs." up on the whiteboard before we hear any more comments about "DevOps," OK?
The cloud already exists. Nobody knows who put it there, but it's there. Worrying about where it came from is a pointless exercise. Don't fret about it going away, just use mulitple availability zones in AWS. And if you're using Azure, don't admit it, but you're at least using Linux still. IIS? Enterprise software? These are blasphemous concepts that have no place anywhere where dev ops are being practiced. EBS, sure, that's a thing. But you dare mention Storage Spaces, non-software raid, or fucking SharePoint (COME ON, SHAREPOINT??!??!??!?!??!?!!?!), and you have crossed the line, my friend.
Geez. Enterprise Windows is already full of bullshit know-nothing certificate holders, let the Linux crew have their fair share of idiots too. You don't get to hoard them all!
posted by Llama-Lime at 6:44 AM on February 26, 2015 [3 favorites]
DevOps is being that shop who makes the websites for local businesses, except instead of managing the HTML, WordPress plugins, and setting up the DreamHost accounts, you're managing the HTML, Angular, Karma, Protractor, Grunt, Bower, [other development resources ad infinitum], web server platform, web server, database platform, database server, ticket queue, vendor specs, and agile sprint plans. And the client accounts are millions of dollars apiece rather than a flat $800/site, but the sales team and several layers of management over you get most of that.
In conclusion, it's a means for leveraging the control-freak nature of the typical dev-bro to do the work of three people for the cost of 1.25 people.
posted by at by at 6:54 AM on February 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
In conclusion, it's a means for leveraging the control-freak nature of the typical dev-bro to do the work of three people for the cost of 1.25 people.
posted by at by at 6:54 AM on February 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
This is hitting a painfully-exposed nerve for me right now. Whenever I hear the phrase "spin up" I can actually feel on my body the sweat of desperate frustration over not being able to lash out with my fists.
See, I really, really want for the developers to have the resources and instances they need, when they need them. And being able to spare them some tickets by giving them some extra powers sounds great.
But the flip side is that someone has to provide some estimates of WHAT and HOW MUCH and WHEN so that I can have the resources & systems ready ahead of time. Otherwise, they are standing there ringing the doorbell impatiently while I run around like Mrs. Doubtfire -- and yes, I end up with a face full of pie.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:57 AM on February 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
See, I really, really want for the developers to have the resources and instances they need, when they need them. And being able to spare them some tickets by giving them some extra powers sounds great.
But the flip side is that someone has to provide some estimates of WHAT and HOW MUCH and WHEN so that I can have the resources & systems ready ahead of time. Otherwise, they are standing there ringing the doorbell impatiently while I run around like Mrs. Doubtfire -- and yes, I end up with a face full of pie.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:57 AM on February 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
Proud to say I've got my certification.
posted by saladin at 7:17 AM on February 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by saladin at 7:17 AM on February 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
I am an Eighth Level Full Stack Devops Certified Thought Lord, which makes me one of five people on earth qualified to discuss Dark Data.
I will not discuss Dark Data.
posted by Itaxpica at 7:42 AM on February 26, 2015 [4 favorites]
I will not discuss Dark Data.
posted by Itaxpica at 7:42 AM on February 26, 2015 [4 favorites]
Also wait, I never put 2 and 2 together on this one, but is this the same @fart who made the guy from Smash Mouth eat all those eggs that one time?
posted by Itaxpica at 7:43 AM on February 26, 2015
posted by Itaxpica at 7:43 AM on February 26, 2015
Remember like 5 years ago, when managers decided Agile was the greatest thing ever? And then they started grading projects, not based on how successful they were, but on how agile they were? DevOps feels a lot like the new Agile.
posted by KGMoney at 7:43 AM on February 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by KGMoney at 7:43 AM on February 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
DevOps, for me, is working with my team of devs and a sysadmin to have a build+deployment pipeline that is testable, repeatable, and fails fast. It means not having to ask someone else for permission to deploy updates and fixes, nor have a dependency on their schedule. We own our stack, inasmuch as possible, and we're allowed to do so because we perform well. But I can't imagine doing that without my sysadmin, nor would I want to. He is the Gayle to my Oprah.
I often wonder if a lot of the hostility towards DevOps, or the drive towards increased automation more generally, is perhaps the result of organizational cultures (or maybe teams) that are already not working together very well. It's the same with Agile: I think that Agile *can* shine a light on this dysfunction, but whether or not you can see it, and what you can do ultimately do with that information, depends a lot on the organization and its management.
I do agree though that certification is pretty dumb. Buy everybody a copy of Continuous Delivery and spend the other 99% of the money on candy.
posted by JohnFredra at 8:06 AM on February 26, 2015 [2 favorites]
I often wonder if a lot of the hostility towards DevOps, or the drive towards increased automation more generally, is perhaps the result of organizational cultures (or maybe teams) that are already not working together very well. It's the same with Agile: I think that Agile *can* shine a light on this dysfunction, but whether or not you can see it, and what you can do ultimately do with that information, depends a lot on the organization and its management.
I do agree though that certification is pretty dumb. Buy everybody a copy of Continuous Delivery and spend the other 99% of the money on candy.
posted by JohnFredra at 8:06 AM on February 26, 2015 [2 favorites]
DevOps feels a lot like the new Agile.
A kernel of good sense encrusted in ever-deepening layers of bullshit?
posted by twirlip at 8:15 AM on February 26, 2015 [6 favorites]
A kernel of good sense encrusted in ever-deepening layers of bullshit?
posted by twirlip at 8:15 AM on February 26, 2015 [6 favorites]
JohnFredra: "DevOps, for me, is working with my team of devs and a sysadmin to have a build+deployment pipeline that is testable, repeatable, and fails fast. It means not having to ask someone else for permission to deploy updates and fixes, nor have a dependency on their schedule. We own our stack, inasmuch as possible, and we're allowed to do so because we perform well. But I can't imagine doing that without my sysadmin, nor would I want to. He is the Gayle to my Oprah."
This is fine and, for the more rigorous definitions of devops, I think there's a lot of value in having people who can work well and, like you say, fail fast. More often than not, our agile projects and staff aug can fail fast, but rarely learn the lessons they ought from those fast failures.
JohnFredra: "But I can't imagine doing that without my sysadmin, nor would I want to. He is the Gayle to my Oprah."
Oh man, do I love this.
posted by boo_radley at 8:30 AM on February 26, 2015 [2 favorites]
This is fine and, for the more rigorous definitions of devops, I think there's a lot of value in having people who can work well and, like you say, fail fast. More often than not, our agile projects and staff aug can fail fast, but rarely learn the lessons they ought from those fast failures.
JohnFredra: "But I can't imagine doing that without my sysadmin, nor would I want to. He is the Gayle to my Oprah."
Oh man, do I love this.
posted by boo_radley at 8:30 AM on February 26, 2015 [2 favorites]
>> More often than not, our agile projects and staff aug can fail fast, but rarely learn the lessons they ought from those fast failures.
That's the nut of it, I think. There are no technical solutions for cultural problems.
posted by JohnFredra at 8:42 AM on February 26, 2015 [3 favorites]
That's the nut of it, I think. There are no technical solutions for cultural problems.
posted by JohnFredra at 8:42 AM on February 26, 2015 [3 favorites]
I really think you need to have people focusing on the infrastructure side of things that enable this whole Devops "Just spin up another VM" mindset.
This is the old way where you had to manage power/network/server yourself. Those people work at amazon now not the next office over. Link is a pretty amazing video about amazon AWS and how much they think about that.
I often wonder if a lot of the hostility towards DevOps, or the drive towards increased automation more generally, is perhaps the result of organizational cultures
Devops done correctly means less in-house resources (server/network). It's a direct threat to jobs and "the way things are".
posted by anti social order at 8:51 AM on February 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
This is the old way where you had to manage power/network/server yourself. Those people work at amazon now not the next office over. Link is a pretty amazing video about amazon AWS and how much they think about that.
I often wonder if a lot of the hostility towards DevOps, or the drive towards increased automation more generally, is perhaps the result of organizational cultures
Devops done correctly means less in-house resources (server/network). It's a direct threat to jobs and "the way things are".
posted by anti social order at 8:51 AM on February 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
I really, really hope Jon Hendren makes his weigh in to this thread to regale us with his thought leadership.
posted by saladin at 9:01 AM on February 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by saladin at 9:01 AM on February 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
anti social order: "Devops done correctly means less in-house resources (server/network). It's a direct threat to jobs and "the way things are"."
Oh man, do I love this caveating. Devops done correctly. Are you having bad devops times? You are devopsing poorly.
Devops done correctly I wouldn't have a backlog that was passed on from the last person who ticket-punched out to the high paying but weirdo cult-like medical device company uptown. This is a backlog that has work items on it that I've culled because the original requester and affected system aren't in the organization any more.
Devops done correctly would mean my workload would approach 1 FTE, rather than exceed it on the regular. Or that my DBAs wouldn't be overloaded, or that my server team wouldn't be overloaded. Oh man. Devops done correctly. Here comes the orthodoxical orthopraxy. Spike the censers with frankincense and charcoal, devops done correctly.
At least the agile methodologies got their situation together. And they can apply to operations just as easily. Maybe looking at devops as "agile for ops" would be a little better, but there always seems to be a crushing desire by management to turn deep technical knowledge into facile specialization.
posted by boo_radley at 9:08 AM on February 26, 2015 [2 favorites]
Oh man, do I love this caveating. Devops done correctly. Are you having bad devops times? You are devopsing poorly.
Devops done correctly I wouldn't have a backlog that was passed on from the last person who ticket-punched out to the high paying but weirdo cult-like medical device company uptown. This is a backlog that has work items on it that I've culled because the original requester and affected system aren't in the organization any more.
Devops done correctly would mean my workload would approach 1 FTE, rather than exceed it on the regular. Or that my DBAs wouldn't be overloaded, or that my server team wouldn't be overloaded. Oh man. Devops done correctly. Here comes the orthodoxical orthopraxy. Spike the censers with frankincense and charcoal, devops done correctly.
At least the agile methodologies got their situation together. And they can apply to operations just as easily. Maybe looking at devops as "agile for ops" would be a little better, but there always seems to be a crushing desire by management to turn deep technical knowledge into facile specialization.
posted by boo_radley at 9:08 AM on February 26, 2015 [2 favorites]
oh man, look at what I wrote, haha.
ps i am not a crank. Jeez.
posted by boo_radley at 9:30 AM on February 26, 2015 [5 favorites]
ps i am not a crank. Jeez.
posted by boo_radley at 9:30 AM on February 26, 2015 [5 favorites]
Oh man, do I love this caveating. Devops done correctly. Are you having bad devops times? You are devopsing poorly.
No true devop...
posted by Itaxpica at 9:40 AM on February 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
No true devop...
posted by Itaxpica at 9:40 AM on February 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
He is the Gayle to my Oprah.
Sometimes it's more like the Tom Cruise to my Oprah.
posted by blue_beetle at 2:25 PM on February 26, 2015
Sometimes it's more like the Tom Cruise to my Oprah.
posted by blue_beetle at 2:25 PM on February 26, 2015
The best part is when your company confuses methodologies for roles and decides it needs to have a 'devops team.'
posted by mullingitover at 1:22 PM on February 27, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by mullingitover at 1:22 PM on February 27, 2015 [1 favorite]
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posted by phooky at 7:47 PM on February 25, 2015 [7 favorites]