It is true that DevOps has grown to be the beast in the room. I’ll co-opt the “cloudwashing” term to call it “DevOps-washing” because it seems every tool you’ve ever used to develop and deploy applications now has a DevOps angle to it. For example, the Jenkins update center is kind of overwhelming. While I […]
DevOps and Data Portability
You have a classic car. You’re in the middle of restoring it, and it looks mighty sweet. Paint is polished, wheels are stock, hubcaps (or spokes) are shiny, engine is completely restored to original spec. But it has no gas tank. A bit of a stark comparison, but that’s where we’re at with application release […]
XebiaLabs Shows Off ARA, More at Jenkins World
In this third spotlight on companies attending Jenkns World, another worth checking out came to mind, so I am taking a look at what XebiaLabs intends to do while there. XebiaLabs is one of the leading application release automation (ARA) vendors, and has a long history of working with Jenkins, so it’s a little more […]
Don’t Underestimate the Work
It is relatively common in human endeavor to attempt to figure out how much work will be involved in a project, and be wrong. The more complex the work being done and the organizational system doing it, the further off estimates can be. This was one of the drivers for both Agile and DevOps: to […]
Manual Intervention or Release Automation? That is the Question
When it comes to launching nuclear weapons, there are a variety of steps and a variety of fail-safe mechanisms, all designed to ensure that those pushing the button really want to do what the nuclear launch system is designed to do. I fear it is some sort of mini-Godwin argument to equate nuclear warfare with […]
appOrbit: End-to-End Hypercloud
As cloud and DevOps have heated up, enterprise need for cloud portability and deeper DevOps integration have become pretty clear. The need for portability to avoid cloud lock-in has been a desire of enterprise cloud users from day one. A variety of people are attempting to address this need, but the market is still very […]
Continuous Delivery vs. Continuous Deployment
I am often asked, “if we are using a continuous integration (CI) server and adopting a continuous delivery pipeline, where does continuous deployment fit in?” Good question. In a nutshell, continuous delivery engines such as CloudBees or Blue Ocean are designed to trigger the execution of CI workflows across the dev, test and prod environments. […]
Think of the Future When Building Delivery
We’re in a strange state of the pendulum swing right now, where speed of delivery is king and all else seems to take a back seat. Many orgs even place quality behind speed in the claim that “we’ll get it right later,” but I’m talking about the more universal rush to deploy and the infrastructures […]
6 Big, Bad Mistakes in Configuration Management, Part 2
In Part One of my article on big, bad mistakes in configuration management, I reviewed the dangers of using the wrong tools for the configuration management job. Provisioning management tools, application release automation tools and continuous integration tools each have their place in your DevOps toolchain. But they should not be used as a substitute […]
6 Big, Bad Mistakes in Configuration Management, Part 1
Configuration problems come in many flavors. Some are mere nuisances. Often though, configuration errors can lead to more serious mishaps like application performance problems, policy compliance violations or even security vulnerabilities. They can often go undetected, quietly doing their damage in the background while everyone’s attention is focused elsewhere. Unfortunately, I find that configuration management […]