What devops means for the sysadmin ?

Sharing customer experiences in Europe

Damien CaroTechnical Evangelist ManagerMicrosoftdcaro@microsoft.com @dcaro

Agenda

Customer identities

People Processes Tools & Technologies

Customer's identities

Customer ALarge European car manufacturer

Software development outsourcedCode production outsourced

Backend for connected cars (Internet of Things)

Linux Suse 9.11

Microsoft Azure & Vmware

Customer BInternet media

Software development in-houseCode production in-house

Client and back-end for media streaming

Windows Server 2008 / 2008 R2

Microsoft Azure & Rackspace

People - Observations

People - Recommendations

• Operations people should have developing experience (scripting or equivalent) or at least willing to learn

• Sell the approach and the why

• Get to a culture of "Learning on the job"• Internal workshop on technologies can help

• Sharing knowledge and experience

Processes – Observations

No Ops

Processes - Recommendations

• Business alignment between teams is the key

• Careful to not dilute the knowledge across siloed teams• Integration Ops in Dev teams is not always a good idea

• Think on the impact on the outsourcing model

• Support and enable fluid communications

Learning curve

• Teams will walk the curve

• In some companies 20% of sysadmins are expected to fall off

• Start with a delimited system to gain easy results.

• Take common subject to get the better help

• Do not underestimate the resistance to change

Company A Company B

Tools & Technologies

OS Configuration• Switch to a descriptive approach,

rethink existing scripts• Learn the languages: JSON, Ruby,

Powershell & DSC• Collect existing procedures and convert

them in definitions

Cloud Configuration• Click & configure is a dangerous start• Get in the project from the very

beginning• Learn the capacity of the cloud

platform

Application Configuration• Leverage community work• DSC modules / Chef supermarket• Create modules or recipes for your

application

Knowledge• Gain a good understanding of the

platforms• Implement a "Hackaton" style

workshop with dev and ops

Final thoughts

• People have to buy in the approach, identify the points of resistance

• In large organization, DevOps is valued at the higher levels but takes time to cascade

• Share a common business objective between Devs & Ops

• Learn the tools in a workshop with the full team

Thank you !

Damien CaroTechnical Evangelist ManagerMicrosoftdcaro@microsoft.com@dcaro

Working title: What DevOps means for the sysadmin?

Abstract: DevOps is indeed a really good way of operating today’s applications but what does it really means for the sysadmin? What needs to be learned, what needs to change in the way we manage systems and communicate, where is the starting point? Based on the learnings from a project with a large European customer we will discuss the best practices learned and the issues encountered. We will also talk about the tools and languages used and the learning curves depending on which platforms is used.We will illustrate our sessions with examples using the industry standard like Chef, Puppet or PowerShell targeting the different platforms like Windows and Linux.