Continuing an extremely hectic month at CFEngine we are wrapping up the month by sponsoring DevOpsDays Silicon Valley which is being held at the Computer History Museum. With an impressive array of sponsors and many attendees this will hopefully be an event to remember. So what will CFEngine be doing at DevOpsDays? Well, after lots of hard work CFEngine 3.6.0 has finally been released so we’ll be showcasing that and explaining how we can help you in your DevOps journey. Mark Burgess will be presenting at the event. It’s my first time seeing Mark present at DevOpsDays as a CFEngine employee. I saw an awesome session by Mark at DevOpsDays London last year which certainly influenced my decision to join CFEngine. I hope Mark’s session leaves a lasting impression on those of you attending too! The real magic of DevOpsDays is the open space sessions, although for me the ignite sessions are also special because the content is so varied, although this time I have decided not to submit an ignite session, I need a break! I’m sure the open spaces will be enlightening as usual and I’m looking forward to Mark proposing an open space on the future of configuration management. There were many unanswered questions from his presentation of the SVDevOps meetup as well as some lively discussion making it perfect for an open space! Look forward to seeing you next week!
Earlier this week CFEngine sponsored DockerCon. Let me start by congratulating Docker on an awesome show. The energy, and enthusiasm was contagious but more so sincere. The commitment to establishing open standards without locking in users to Docker is commendable. The CFEngine table had heavy traffic and the conversations were frequently in Depth. Attendees were not only wanting to know what value CFEngine adds on top of Docker but also what guidance on how others are using Docker. People we talked to understood the need to have a solution that could manage not only Docker containers but also their other physical and virtual infrastructure. We had very positive feedback on how we integrated Docker configurations into our CFEngine policies. For those of you who may be unaware Docker finally reached 1.0 status, which means the warning about running in production no longer applies, not that being pre 1.0 stopped the Docker community running Docker in production! Some key takeaways for me were
CFEngine are sponsoring DockerCon14. We’re excited to be able to show you how CFEngine and Docker can be used together to help manage your docker containers and make sure that you don’t go back down the path of golden images! If that isn’t enough to get your excited our very own Diego Zamboni is flying in from Mexico from the event. Stop by and have a chat with Diego about CFEngine, security or anything else. Diego will also be signing copies of Learning CFEngine 3. We look forward to seeing you there.
DevOpsDays events in Pittsburgh and Austin have both been awesome. It’s great to see the events maturing over time. While it was the first DevOpsDays event in Pittsburgh the organizers were familiar with DevOpsDays events and made sure that they built on top of other successes. The lack of “Idol worshipping” aka “we love Amazon, Etsy, Facebook, Netflix” was refreshing! We were treated to excellent sessions covering culture, PaaS, docker and other great topics. As long as you are in tech I’m certain there was plenty to interest you. The ignite sessions again were fun as always. There were some fun moments and some awkward moments! I presented my ignite session from DevOpsDays Austin on why DevOpsDays is failing horses and unicorns. Eventually I’ll track down a video of it and link to it, but it was well received. The awkward moment was that I presented after Nathan Harvey of Chef. He preached the familiar unicorn cry of “if you aren’t happy quit your job”. My ignite session has a slide that made fun of unicorns telling horses to quit their jobs and go work with unicorns because it really isn’t helpful at all. There was a great open space session on diversity in tech which could have gone on for hours. It was constructive and we all realize there is a problem. While DevOpsDays PGH wasn’t incredibly diverse it was heartening to see a significant number of women attending and presenting. In particular I’m looking forward to seeing Bridget Kromhout (@bridgetkromhout) and Cornelia Davis (@cdavisafc) present again. Awareness of CFEngine is growing, and we are getting recognition in presentations once again. People really seem pleased that we are still around and doing some awesome things. I can’t wait until DevOpsDays Silicon Valley when we can talk about some really cool stuff we have coming! June will be a very busy month for CFEngine. We’ll be at DockerCon, Velocity Santa Clara and DevOpsDays Silicon Valley.
We’ve already had fear-mongering about DevOps potentially killing off operations positions (thanks NoOps) and now it’s the turn of articles about DevOps killing off the developer. Terms like full stack developer are thrown around and other un-helpful terms that recruiters seem to love. Let me make one thing perfectly clear. I don’t believe DevOps is about training people so that people can do each other’s jobs equally well. That doesn’t make sense. There always needs to be specialists. The cultural changes encouraged by the DevOps movement should result in people in Dev and Ops having an appreciation of what the other groups do and the kind of decisions they have to make and why. All too often I have witnessed developers putting technology X into a product because it is new and hot and they want to use it, no matter what the consequences to QA, operations and so on. Dev and Ops should work together. Sure, that might mean that someone from operations spends some time in code working with developers getting an understanding of what’s going on and why, especially when it affects infrastructure design. The same goes for developers, spending some time doing some basic administration and maintenance of systems that traditionally fall outside of the developer role is a good thing. That said, having spent most of my time on the development side of the house and working very closely with operations I believe that developers should be involved in the consequences of their decisions. In fact the best developers I have worked with have cared about this and were extremely happy to work with operations teams if given the chance. Of course there has to be balance. If as a developer you are spending less time developing and more time playing with databases, infrastructure of whatever else you blame DevOps for I would guess there might be a couple of things going on: 1. The development team put something together than is hard to maintain once it is out of the hands of development and you are now being held accountable, or 2. You have a management problem. Either way I would say it’s not something DevOps should take the blame for. Perhaps this sounds like I am bashing developers! What I have said applies to Ops too. I’ve witnessed Ops being so resistant to change that developers feel like they are working with one or even both arms tied behind their backs due to constraints imposed on them. So no, DevOps isn’t killing off the developer, it’s not killing off operations or anyone else. It should be helping you collaborate and work effectively which will ultimately let you spend more time doing what you do best.
I’m really looking forward to DevOpsDays Pittsburgh this week. The first DevOpsDays event in a city is always special. I’m not sure what to expect, but I think it’s going to be great and at the very least I’ll get to have some great conversations about DevOps, configuration management and play some werewolf! I’m due to present an ignite session too, I have one lined up already but theres a good chance I might come up with something new based on conversations and presentations on the first day of the event. I’ll be at the event with Adi Aloni, so stop by and talk to us about CFEngine and some of the exciting things we are working on.
I had a thought-provoking article by Rachel Shannon-Solomon forwarded to me. Essentially the article states that while DevOps is great for startups the enterprise isn’t ready for it yet. I’ve read/heard people disagreeing with this but I think the article raises some great points. At DevOpsDays Austin I presented a session on why it isn’t realistic to expect enterprises to become just like startups when adopting DevOps. There’s a lot of technological and cultural complexity present in legacy enterprises that just aren’t an issue in startups. DevOps practitioners from startups don’t seem to have an answer either, quit your job and move to a startup might be a solution for an individual but it certainly doesn’t help with DevOps adoption in the enterprise. Setting aside the cultural difficulties of doing DevOps in the enterprise there’s the not so small issue that a lot of the tools available are suitable for startups but unproven and dare I say often unsuitable for the enterprise. Some vendors have been extremely skilled at attaching themselves to DevOps and trying to morph DevOps into something that helps them sell products. Unfortunately this doesn’t change the fact that software isn’t going to solve your DevOps adoption problem, in fact I would say some of the solutions I have seen presented can make matters worse. I’ve heard multiple times that being a Director of DevOps or a having similar title isn’t ideal because it implies that the person is responsible for the success or failure of DevOps in an organization. I agree with that in any type of organization. The problems DevOps is trying to address span multiple organizational units and it takes much more than one person with a fancy job title and a mandate to “do DevOps” to make changes in the enterprise. Those of us who believe that the DevOps movement can make a difference in the enterprise have a responsibility to recognize challenges faced. Let’s stop pointing out how awesome DevOps works in startups and get together to bring DevOps to the enterprise. Perhaps it is the DevOps movement that isn’t quite ready for the enterprise. The good news is that there are people who passionately believe in helping bring DevOps to the enterprise. I believe their work will help transform the DevOps movement into something more enterprise friendly while still keeping the spirit of DevOps.
Once again DevOpsDays Austin was a fantastic event. This was the DevOpsDays event that I have been to that had two tracks. One track for what I would call traditional DevOpsDays sessions that focused on culture and organizational change, the other with more practical advice on how to get things done. I took the opportunity to get something off my chest that has been bothering me a bit about DevOpsDays and other DevOps events in general. I presented an ignite session titled “Why DevOpsDays (and other DevOps events) is failing both horses and unicorns”. Essentially I proposed that focusing on Amazon, Etsy, Facebook and Netflix so much wasn’t really helping the horses (aka the enterprise). Essentially there was a proposal and a reminder in the ignite: 1. Let’s stop using the regular DevOps idols as examples and replace them with stories from other companies. If there aren’t any other success stories then are we really making a difference at DevOpsDays events? 2. For the unicorns presenting always think about how what you are presenting applies to people in more traditional companies. Don’t just say “if you can’t do awesome in your current company quit your job and come work with us”. That’s not particularly helpful I didn’t really expect a positive reaction to the session but was pleased that it resonated with people. If the evolution of DevOpsDays Austin over the past few years is anything to go by I’m really looking forward to seeing how other DevOpsDays events will evolve over the source of the year. Next up is DevOpsDays Pittsburgh. CFEngine is sponsoring and I’ll be there to spread the word about CFEngine! Hope to see you in Pittsburgh!
In a few days I’ll be flying to Austin to attend DevOpsDays Austin. It was an awesome event last year and CFEngine is proud to be sponsoring the event. I’m looking forward to participating in open space sessions and hearing about the latest challenges, tips and tricks people have to share. It will also be my first chance this year to talk to people in person to see if DevOps is making advances in the traditional enterprise (aka horses) instead of just hearing about Netflix, Amazon, Etsy, Facebook (aka unicorns). See you in Austin!
We are pleased to announce that CFEngine Founder Mark Burgess will be speaking at the next Silicon Valley DevOps meeting about the future of configuration management. At the meetup you will not only learn about the future of Configuration Management as Mark sees it but also have the chance to network with some of the best and brightest in Silicon Valley who are passionate about DevOps and Configuration Management.
