Let's Talk DevOps

Real-World DevOps, Real Solutions

Author: John

  • DevOps and the Möbius Loop

    Harnessing the Möbius Loop for a Revolutionary DevOps Process

    In the world of DevOps, continual improvement and iteration are the name of the game. The Möbius loop, with its one-sided, one-boundary surface, can serve as a vivid metaphor and blueprint for establishing a DevOps process that is both unified and infinitely adaptable. Let’s delve into the Möbius loop concept and see how it beautifully intertwines with the principles of DevOps.

    Understanding the Möbius Loop

    The Möbius loop or Möbius strip is a remarkable mathematical concept — a surface with only one side and one boundary created through a half-twist of a strip of paper that then has its ends joined. This one-sided surface represents a continuous, never-ending cycle, illustrating an ever-continuous pathway that can epitomize the unceasing cycle of development in DevOps.

    Reference: Möbius Strip – Wikipedia

    The Möbius Loop and DevOps: A Perfect Harmony

    In the ecosystem of DevOps, the Möbius loop signifies a continuous cycle where one phase naturally transitions into the next, establishing a seamless feedback loop that fosters continuous growth and development. This philosophy lies at the heart of DevOps, promoting an environment of collaboration and iterative progress.

    Reference: DevOps and Möbius Loop — A Journey to Continuous Improvement

    Crafting a Möbius Loop-Foundation DevOps Process

    Building a DevOps process based on the Möbius loop principle means initiating a workflow where each development phase fuels the next, constituting a feedback loop that constantly evolves. Here is a step-by-step guide to create this iterative and robust system:

    1. Define Objectives

    • Business Objectives: Set clear business goals and metrics.
    • User Objectives: Align the goals with user expectations.

    2. Identify Outcomes

    • Expected Outcomes: Envision the desired outcomes for business and users.
    • Metrics: Design metrics to measure the effectiveness of strategies.

    3. Discovery and Framing

    • Research: Invest time in understanding user preferences and pain points.
    • Hypothesis: Develop hypotheses to meet business and user objectives.

    4. Develop and Deliver

    • Build: Employ agile methodologies to build solutions incrementally.
    • Deploy: Use CI/CD pipelines for continuous deployment.

    Reference: Utilizing Agile Methodologies in DevOps

    5. Operate and Observe

    • Monitor: Utilize monitoring tools to collect data on system performance.
    • Feedback Loop: Establish channels to receive user feedback.

    6. Learning and Iteration

    • Analyze: Scrutinize data and feedback from the operate and observe phase.
    • Learn: Adapt based on the insights acquired and enhance the solution.

    7. Feedback and Adjust

    • Feedback: Facilitate feedback from all stakeholders.
    • Adjust: Revise goals, metrics, or the solution based on the feedback received.

    8. Loop Back

    • Iterative Process: Reiterate the process, informed by the learning from previous cycles.
    • Continuous Improvement: Encourage a mindset of perpetual growth and improvement.

    Tools to Embark on Your Möbius Loop Journey

    Leveraging advanced tools and technologies is vital to facilitate this Möbius loop-founded DevOps process. Incorporate the following tools to set a strong foundation:

    • Version Control: Git for source code management.
    • CI/CD: Jenkins, Gitlab, or ArgoCD for automating deployment.
    • Containerization and Orchestration: Podman and Kubernetes to handle the orchestration of containers.
    • Monitoring and Logging: Tools like Prometheus for real-time monitoring.
    • Collaboration Tools: Slack or Rocket.Chat to foster communication and collaboration.

    Reference: Top Tools for DevOps

    Conclusion

    Embracing the Möbius loop in DevOps unveils a path to continuous improvement, aligning with the inherent nature of the development-operations ecosystem. It not only represents a physical manifestation of the infinite loop of innovation but also fosters a system that is robust, adaptable, and user-centric. As you craft your DevOps process rooted in the Möbius loop principle, remember that you are promoting a culture characterized by unending evolution and growth, bringing closer to your objectives with each cycle.

    Feel inspired to set your Möbius loop DevOps process in motion? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below!

  • A success for DevOps: Developing and Deploying Mission Critical Applications

    In today’s digital age, businesses rely heavily on technology to remain competitive. This means that the development and deployment of business-critical applications must be efficient and seamless.

    Enter DevOps, a methodology that integrates development and operations teams to improve communication, collaboration, and automation to streamline the development and delivery of software. In this success story, we’ll explore how adopting new methodologies helped a company develop and deploy a business-critical application with great success.

    The Challenge

    A company that provides financial services to small businesses needed to develop and deploy a web-based application that would provide their clients with access to their financial data in real-time. The application needed to be secure, scalable, and available 24/7 to ensure uninterrupted access to critical financial information. The company’s IT team had experience in developing applications but struggled with the deployment process, which was manual and error-prone.

    The company was facing challenges in the deployment process, and that was affecting the time to market for their application. They were unable to release new features quickly and were also struggling to ensure the application was always available to clients.

    The Solution

    To overcome these challenges, the company adopted new methodologies to streamline the development and deployment process. The development team worked closely with the operations team to identify bottlenecks and streamline the process. They implemented continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) pipelines to automate the build, test, and deployment process. They also used infrastructure as code (IaC) to manage infrastructure and reduce the risk of configuration errors.

    The newly adopted methodology allowed the development team and operations team to work together seamlessly, identify the issues in the deployment process, and implement the necessary changes. They automated the process of building, testing, and deploying the application to ensure that it was reliable and scalable. They also used IaC to manage the infrastructure as code, which allowed them to make changes to the infrastructure quickly and efficiently.

    The Results

    The adoption of a different set of methodologies led to a significant improvement in the development and deployment process. The company was able to roll out new features and updates to the application much faster and with fewer errors. The continuous deployment process also allowed the company to respond quickly to any issues that arose, ensuring that the application was always available to clients. The company’s IT team was able to focus on developing new features and improving the user experience, rather than dealing with deployment issues.

    The company was able to reduce its time to market, which allowed them to release new features faster and stay ahead of the competition. They were also able to ensure that the application was always available to clients, which helped to build trust and loyalty with their customers.

    Interpretation of Success

    The success of this project can be attributed to the effective implementation of DevOps or Platform Engineering methodologies. The integration of development and operations teams allowed for better communication and collaboration, resulting in a streamlined process that reduced errors and improved efficiency. Automation through CI/CD pipelines and IaC reduced the risk of human error and ensured that deployments were consistent and reliable.

    The company was able to provide their clients with a secure, scalable, and highly available application that met their business needs. The success of this project demonstrates the effectiveness of DevOps in developing and deploying business-critical applications.

    In conclusion, adopting DevOps methodologies can help companies streamline their development and deployment process, reduce errors, and improve efficiency. This can allow companies to release new features faster, reduce their time to market, and ensure that applications are always available to clients.

  • 10x the DevEX!

    Recently there has been a shift in language surrounding System Reliability Engineering (SRE) and DevOps to Platform Engineering. Granted these terms have been used in various ways for a while, but how language terms are used gives way to how markets evolve. This post provides a few key areas of thought around ways to ultimately get products to production faster. Remember…code means nothing until it’s in production.

    No matter the title, anyone in the pipeline touching production code is part of the team of ensuring success of critical applications in an enterprise. This is an important concept because everyone is part of the larger team and how teams work together ultimately determines the success of any project.

    The focus here will be on the actual development team who is primarily writing the code. The code in question would be delivered as microservices running on a K8S cluster. Keep in mind the use of microservices will lend itself to multiple teams individually creating a service for other teams to consume. Already there is significant dependencies and a single line of code has yet to be written.

    Each team ultimately needs to consume one or more code repositories, one or more “testing” systems, at least one pipeline for continuous integration, continuous delivery/deployment (CI/CD), and many other systems to get code to production.

    The Platform Engineering team is ultimately responsible for ensuring the “platforms” are working in a way to support the developers. Ensuring a great experience is paramount.

    The question is how do Platform Engineers continually improve the great developer experience? The answer many teams turn to is to create powerful systems with guardrails or opinions on how they are to be utilized based on the collective understanding of the teams modus operandi or how they work most effectively.

    The key to how is reducing the repetitive work, the mundane menial tasks which take a toll on the cognitive workload of developers allowing them to be able to focus on writing good, clean code.

    Giving the power to the developers to consume what is needed in a self-service fashion is one major step as is giving a limited set of choices in what toolsets to use. Make it easy for developers to build and deliver software without removing the useful capabilities of the core services.

    In the ideal world, limit restrictions on the how allowing choices in using GitOps or ClickOps or using a API vs CLI vs UI. Use a “as a service” approach to create a system built iteratively by the entirety of the team based on direct feedback.

    What it all comes down to is the fact that everyone has different ways they want to work. Its the platform engineering team who can help ensure all of the tools are available and functional to create a great developer experience which in turn will increase productivity and get new, shiny things to market faster.

  • 90 days to success in DevOps

    Starting a new role? Maybe this is the first foray into DevOps or Platform Engineering? What is needed to “hit the ground running” in a new role? Leaders in high positions of a company typically have a “100 day rule” to prove themselves. Let’s round it out with 3 months of progress for success.

    In most enterprises on boarding new talent is typically left to the new employee. This is very unfortunate because the first 90 days of a new role will impact not only the new employee, but their immersion into the culture and their view of the company. Bottom line, in most cases it is up to the new employee to “learn the ropes” in navigating their new position.

    The first 30 days

    This month is usually the most important for everyone. The first thing a new employee needs to do is find a good mentor especially if they are not assigned one. Seek out those with institutional knowledge who knows how to navigate the company politics. Find someone who knows how the systems work, how to gain the access needed to be successful in the role. The mentor would have knowledge of “how things work” and what is seen as best practice for accomplishing the tasks at hand.

    Some things to know:

    • Who’s who in the organization? – an org chart
    • How mature are they as a development organization?
    • What are the processes to put code into production?
    • Are the processes manual or automated?
    • What is the expectation of you on a day to day basis?

    There is plenty more to uncover, but this will help to get started. Once the processes are understood and access is granted to perform the role, find some quick wins. Listen closely to where the frustrations may lie within your organization. Maybe the previous employee in this role didn’t automate certain tasks…submit a small PR to help.

    It’s important to find some quick wins for many reasons. First it helps “break the ice”. It also shows strengths. Maybe there’s a way to improve some docs. There may be some ideas brought in from previous experience to help with a particular pain point.

    The first 30 days is important to uncover the expectations of the team. Talking to stakeholders and “the customer” is important to get a big picture of what works and what doesn’t in order to find quick wins to make an impact early.

    Days 30-60

    The first 4 weeks are usually greeted with firehose sessions daily. Take a bit to digest everything. Review notes, brainstorm ideas, understand how the team and the company works. Armed with the broader knowledge about the organization, the team, and how things work at a high level it’s time to dig deeper into where the biggest impacts can be achieved.

    In this 30 day block uncover:

    • The maturity of the team?
    • What is the approval process for delivering code to production?
    • What steps are needed to approve PRs?
    • How does code flow through the various systems?
    • What amount of QA is performed?

    Find ways to help the team be more efficient. Listen to the complaints and see where possible improvements could be made. Again, quick wins are key at this stage. As a fresh face, a lot of times gaining access to otherwise inaccessible groups within the organization is usually fairly easy. Keep an ear to the ground to find ways to create impactful suggestions

    It is important to remember as people get to know a new employee the interactions have lasting impacts. Ensure there is adequate listening and relevant questions to get underneath a complaint. Avoid making off hand suggestions, but rather find some common issues. Start to tackle the common issues and socialize improvements. The key here to to avoid “calling the baby ugly”.

    Days 60-90

    This is where a new employee’s impact can accelerate. At this stage having the access needed to be successful would be complete. Hopefully there’s been a few quick wins, new co-workers are impressed, and there’s been positive impact on the team.

    Regular interaction with your leader would have been established. A solid understanding of what is expected is created and the mentor has made an impact. Knowing where to go to get answers if there is a roadblock and knowing how to avoid the “potholes in the road” is key.

    This stage is where the “rubber hits the road”. Gaining traction in the day to day and making regular impact to the business is routine at this point. This is where all of the knowledge gained in the first 60 days can be parlayed into a winning hand.

    What success looks like

    The first 3 months of any new position sets the stage for every new employee. Creating a positive impression on the team helps build credibility within the broader organization and is key to instilling the confidence needed to being successful overall.

    It may take far more than 90 days to feel comfortable with the role and that is okay. As long as there is a consistent method for learning and mistakes are not repeated the impact new employees make is usually sustainable for a long time. Make the best of it and keep track of the wins and losses for the inevitable review with “the boss”.

    You got this. Go.

  • What’s missing in Kubernetes

    Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration system that automates the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. It is widely used for its ability to manage containers at scale and is the de facto standard for container orchestration. However, despite its broad adoption, there are still a few missing pieces that need to be addressed to make it fully functional.

    Network Setup

    One of the main missing pieces in Kubernetes is a proper network setup. Kubernetes allows for the creation of multiple clusters, each with its own set of nodes, but it requires a well-defined network setup to manage communication between these clusters.

    Without proper network setup, nodes in the same cluster may not be able to communicate with each other, or there may be issues with cross-cluster communication. This can result in application downtime, loss of data, and other issues that can impact business operations.

    One solution to this problem is to use a software-defined networking (SDN) approach that allows for the creation of a virtual network infrastructure. An SDN controller can be used to manage the virtual network infrastructure and provide network services such as load balancing, routing, and security. With SDN, Kubernetes clusters can be properly connected, and communication between clusters can be streamlined.

    Security

    Another missing piece in Kubernetes is security. Kubernetes provides some basic security features such as role-based access control (RBAC) and network policies, but these are not always enough to secure the entire system.

    Security is a critical aspect of any container orchestration system, and Kubernetes is no exception. Kubernetes clusters are complex systems with many components, and securing them requires a multi-layered approach.

    To enhance security, Kubernetes clusters should be set up with secure communication channels and encrypted data storage. Additionally, it is important to create and enforce security policies that prevent unauthorized access to the system. This includes implementing identity and access management (IAM) policies, network segmentation, and regular vulnerability scanning.

    Monitoring and Logging

    Kubernetes also lacks inbuilt monitoring and logging capabilities. While Kubernetes includes some basic monitoring features, such as health checks and resource usage metrics, it does not provide comprehensive monitoring and logging capabilities.

    In a production environment, it is essential to have comprehensive monitoring and logging capabilities to ensure the health and availability of the system. Kubernetes clusters should be set up with a logging and monitoring stack that can collect and analyze logs and metrics from all nodes in the cluster. This can provide insights into the health and performance of the system, as well as help identify and troubleshoot issues.

    Conclusion

    Kubernetes is a powerful container orchestration system, but there are still a few missing pieces that need to be addressed to make it fully functional. A well-defined network setup, enhanced security, and proper monitoring and logging are all essential components of a fully functional Kubernetes environment.

    With the increasing adoption of containers and cloud-native applications, Kubernetes is becoming more important than ever. As organizations continue to adopt Kubernetes, it is important to ensure that the missing pieces are addressed to provide a reliable and scalable platform for containerized applications. By addressing these missing pieces, Kubernetes can continue to evolve and improve, providing a robust and secure platform for developers and IT teams.