What is DevOps?

Speaker

Andriy Rybalchenko, CISA, CISM

• Technical editor of DevOps Hub

• Areas of expertise: IT / IS Consulting and Auditing,

DevOps, Information Security Management, Application

Performance Management

• More than 30 years of practical experience in IT

• Current role: Senior IT Auditor

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Agenda:

• Definitions and the main ideas

• The Evolution of IT

• Tensions and Communication Challenges between Dev and Ops

• There is no silver bullet for DevOps

• DevOps and Information Security

• Possible organizational and cultural obstacles

• Every organization has to find its own way to success

• DevOps and automation

• DevOps and monitoring tools

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Definitions and the main ideas

“DevOps (a portmanteau of development and operations) is a software development method that stresses communication, collaboration and integration between software developers and information technology (IT) operations professionals.”

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“DevOps is, in many ways, an umbrella concept that refers to anything that

smoothes out the interaction between development and operations. However,

the ideas behind DevOps run much deeper than that.”

From dev2ops.org

“Effectively, you can define DevOps at the top level as

system administrators participating in the product

development process alongside developers and using a

many of the same techniques for their systems work.”

Explanation from The Agile Admin

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The evolution of IT

During the last twenty years, developers went a long way from building mono

applications running on just a few servers. Now we have complex systems

assembled during development that use a wide variety of best available tools and run

on large hardware clusters, clouds, built from hundreds or even thousands of physical

servers and virtual machines.

The evolution of IT, from Docker presentation

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Tensions and communication challenges between Dev and Ops

“Wall of Confusion” between development and operations is caused by a

combination of conflicting motivations, processes, and tooling.

The main reasons the DevOps movement started was to address the

communication challenges between Dev and Ops teams, getting teams with

very different perspectives to work more effectively together.

CMCrossroads: “Digging Deeper into DevOps”

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There is no silver bullet for DevOps

DevOps doesn't come in a box.

You cannot download DevOps.

You cannot buy DevOps.

We are working with humans here, and that IS challenging. Too often management

wants an easy way out, and instead of engaging in the continuous cycle of self-

improvement just mimics techniques used by other successful companies.

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Possible organizational and cultural obstacles

Types of obstacles Possible solutions

Inertia and resistance to changes

• Start at cultural level and find shared vision• “No scapegoats” approach• In large enterprises consider test on smaller group

Reluctance to merge roles

• Balance new responsibilities with incentives• Consider RACI with shared responsibility• Implement job rotation

Business is afraid of disruption of services

• Once again - “No scapegoats” approach• Use right mix of modern APM tools• Regular check for patterns of root causes• Automation of routine tasks and standard procedures

Lack of skills • Enable and encourage training and education• Encourage knowledge sharing• Align acquisition plans with DevOps initiatives

Accountability issues • Clarify publicly exactly what each team needs to achieve, who has to deliver what and how everyone must behave in order to succeed• Leaders should set the example, confront difficult issues

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DevOps and information security

• Communication and collaboration means less problems and quick reaction

• Smaller releases are safer

• Automated configuration of environments

• Automated security testing

• Security loves proper change management

• APM is good as an early warning for security issues

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Every organization has to find its own way to success

Road to DevOps adaption:

• Right organizational structure

• Management support

• Education for creation of similar mindset and collaboration between Dev and Ops

• Encouragement of identification of errors and risk management

• No scapegoats

• Elimination of differences in tooling, mix of right tools

“This year’s survey is the first rigorous study to confirm that DevOps practices and

strong IT performance can drive real business value,”

Nigel Kersten, CIO of Puppet Labs regarding Puppet Labs 2014 State of DevOps Report

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DevOps and automation

DevOps requires rigor and discipline that lead to repeatable processes. After processes are

repeatable, they can become automated to save time and reduce human error.

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DevOps and monitoring toolsModern monitoring tools are among the most essential for the DevOps success. They solve

several things at once:

• Provide crucial information that helps to ensure service uptime and optimal performance

(which, in turn, strengthens “learn from mistakes” and “no scapegoats” approaches)

• Help to establish that transparency and shared vision we were talking about, and not only for

Dev and Ops, but for other parties

• Provide data usable both by Ops and Devs, bringing the teams closer and allow to work

together both during problem solving and proactive improvement of applications and services

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Recommended resources

There are some resources I’d like to recommend for farther studying:

• http://devopshub.net/

•The Phoenix Project: A novel about IT, DevOps and helping your business win http://itrevolution.com/books/phoenix-project-devops-book/

• DevOps adoption – Enterprises http://devops.com/blogs/devops-adoption-enterprises-part-2-2/

•How The Amazing Twitter Infosec Team Helps DevOps http://itrevolution.com/heres-how-the-amazing-twitter-infosec-team-helps-devops/

Ваши вопросы ипредложения?

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