This is a guest post by Damon Edwards (@damonedwards) DevOps is a hit! Everyone is talking about it! Everyone is doing it! Everyone is going to meetups and conferences! Everyone.... oh wait, EVERYONE isn't. It just feels likes it is everyone. Why? Because we live in the DevOps echo chamber. Now, I'll admit that I'm … Continue reading 2011: Time to Escape the DevOps Echo Chamber
Author: Dan Ackerson
Visualizing Small Batch Sizes with Git
I've recently finished reading Web Operations: Keeping the Data on Time. Written by John Allspaw and Jesse Robins, by far my favorite chapter was Eric Ries' submission for Chapter 4: Continuous Deployment. One of the graphs in this chapter compellingly portrays Flickr's "release early, release often" mantra. This inspired me to start monitoring my own … Continue reading Visualizing Small Batch Sizes with Git
Selenium Testing in the Cloud with Sauce Labs
One small comment for Matthias, one giant leap for our testing infrastructure. In my last post about anti-fixes, I expressed my reservations about selenium test automation. Matthias mentioned the companies Sauce Labs and Cloud Testing maintained virtual test server farms so that I wouldn't have to. Here's why Sauce Labs made my choice super easy: … Continue reading Selenium Testing in the Cloud with Sauce Labs
Bugfixes without Tests are Anti-fixes
We all make mistakes. But how we go about redressing those mistakes tells a lot about our personality, both our strengths as well as our shortcomings. Bugs are a natural part of software development. Testing not so much. I attribute this to, among other things, general developer laziness and the constant pressure of 'Getting Things … Continue reading Bugfixes without Tests are Anti-fixes
Update: LogicMonitor Internals
After using LogicMonitor for almost two months now I've become quite comfortable with it's interface and very secure with it's monitoring. I've been asked by a few folks for some of the more technical details on it's operation which I'll share with you here. Installation and Operation A tarball called agent-linux.tar.gz is available for download … Continue reading Update: LogicMonitor Internals
LogicMonitor: My Virtual SysAdmin
I'd recently ordered a new round of servers and was positively dreading having to setup Nagios & Munin on them. This is where the fact that I'm a "born & raised" developer really shines through. The configuration of Nagios is simply beyond me. No matter how much documentation I read, I just can't get all … Continue reading LogicMonitor: My Virtual SysAdmin
Simple Database Updates with Ruby
As our PHP development team grows we've begun running into the familiar problem of database migrations. And not only between local dev environments, but deployments too. It's nice that Susie told Joe Developer about her latest db changes so he can continue work on his feature, but if I need to do a release early … Continue reading Simple Database Updates with Ruby
What have we done for you today?
I'm a firm believer of release early and often. If there's more than 10 new commits in our code repository awaiting release, I start to get uncomfortable. Whether it's extra "inventory sitting on our shelves" instead of in your browser, or the uncertainty of "going live" with a bunch of new stuff and then running … Continue reading What have we done for you today?
A/B Testing with Webrat
It all began a year ago. We wanted to introduce a new navigation bar, but gradually, gaining feedback (and confidence) that it was the right upgrade for our users. My idea at that time was a random cookie which would show 20% of our users the new navigation while giving them a separate google analytics … Continue reading A/B Testing with Webrat
Why your boss will love Capistrano
Scaleability is a term near and dear to a CTO's heart. It's also the most important factor in growing a website. If you want to avoid the "fail whale" at right, you have to be able to scale your application to run on hundreds (and, if you're really lucky, thousands) of servers. Let's take a … Continue reading Why your boss will love Capistrano
