devops for ctos

DevOps for CTOs

Software Leaders Breakfast3-4-2014

My observations, experience, research, thoughts

OnDevOps for SaaS CTOs

We want to talk, not listen – so this is going to go fast…

Traditional development focus on Functional Requirements

FeaturesUI

(and bugs)

Non-Functional Requirements often ignored

Security, backup, high availability, failover, upgradeability, configuration management, monitoring, deployment, test, feature flags

No time(these really are features too)

And IT Ops has their own issues

Few resources and no automation=

More of the same

Business Value = FeaturesRight?

Business Value=

Anything which makes people gives us more money

(Coda Hale)

Business Value happens when our code runs, not when we write it

We don’t pay nearly as much attention to code running as we do

to code writing

SaaS = ProductALL of it

functional and non-functional(hardware, software, API, monitors, logs, health checks,

configuration management, test data, security, scaling up/down, failover, etc.)

Write ----> Run(there’s a lot in between)

DevOps

To increase the flow of work between Dev and Ops and build a

culture of continuous improvement between the groups

Traditionally…DevOps

(Write) (Deploy)

What happens when it doesn’t run?

More and more…

DevDev(Functional)(Non-Functional)

Using code and automation

Infrastructure as Code

VersionedAutomatedRepeatable

(idea started before cloud but is best implemented in cloud)

• 2013 DevOps Survey by Puppet Labs• DevOps = Collaboration between Development and Operations

teams to achieve a common business goal• 63% using DevOps practices, a 26% increase over 2011• Ship code 30x more frequently with lead times of a few minutes• 50% fewer failures with the ability to recover 12x faster• 89% use version control – for infrastructure• 82% use automated code deployment• Blockers to adoption – not understood, no management/team

buy in• DevOps job postings are skyrocketing• Skills – Coding/Scripting, tools (*)

Key Indicators…Increase Deploy Frequency

Decrease Change Lead TimeDecrease Change Failure Rate

Decrease Mean Time To RecoverWith Version Control and Automated Deployment

There’s just one box and it is bigger than most think

All environmentsAll code

One Team

(Clogeny.com)

Environments:• Dev• QA• Staging• Production

Plus:• Boundary• New Relic• White Hat• Pingdom• PagerDuty• Etc.

My Recent Experience…Worked on Dev/Agile firstStabilized Infrastructure

Tried to turn ops people in to DevOps people, didn’t workWasted a LOT of time

Searched LinkedIn for DevOps and started contactingThey’re all employed and busy and not looking for jobs

Found one and recruited hardHired one leader and he started recruiting more

My Recent Experience…We had very early automation attempts and some alerts but we

had SO far to goNo automation, metrics, common logs – flying blind

It was humblingStarted with New Relic, Boundary, Pager Duty, Pingdom

Started the move to AWSIncredible pressure to return to bad behaviors

Painful discussions – “Warranty Denied”

My Recent Experience…It’s very hard to start this in a mature software organizationVery intrusive into the Dev culture (testing, instrumentation,

logging, automated builds, etc. – all non-functional)Complete change to the Ops culture (shift focus away from

touching hardware, and fixing things by hand, to writing code)Test/Stage/Prod must match in every way – including HA

Database is just plain hard in this stuff (last frontier)I’d say give a year at the very least and be prepared to lose

people

DiscussionBurke Autrey

Burke@AutreyMail.com972-897-5897

SoftwareTeam6Leadership for Software Companies

StrategyProduct Lifecycle

DevOpsProduct Management

Security and ComplianceDue Diligence

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