Kent Langley is a Senior Director at Joyent, a cloud computing provider running and offering OpenSolaris Nevada based virtual servers, called Accelerators. Not only was he kind enough to answer my questions about his role at Joyent, details about the brand new Accelerator release, and Solaris, but he even brought in Ben Rockwood to give … Continue reading Kent Langley Talks About Joyent, Their New Accelerators And Their Use of Opensolaris
Category: DevOps
Visible Ops: Continuous Improvement
In my last posts, I've introduced you to the IT Process Institute's "Visible Ops Handbook" which presents IT managers and system administrators with a clear road map of how to adopt best practices within their organizations and how to work smarter instead of harder. The first three phases outlined include change management, configuration management, and … Continue reading Visible Ops: Continuous Improvement
Visible Ops: If At First You Don’t Succeed, Build, Build Again
By now you should have a better understanding of how your data center is setup and exactly what's all in there. You've been carefully monitoring changes to this environment and are ready to take it to the next level. The "Visible Ops Handbook" introduces the concept of "production fuses" : when things go wrong with … Continue reading Visible Ops: If At First You Don’t Succeed, Build, Build Again
Visible Ops: Setting Up Your Configuration Management Database
The next step to get a better grip on your environment is figuring out exactly what kind of production configurations you have running out there. If you've ever caught yourself walking through the data center and wondering just what in the hell those servers in the back corner are for, this phase will be quite … Continue reading Visible Ops: Setting Up Your Configuration Management Database
Visible Ops : 4 Agile Steps to ITIL Compliance
Anybody in operations that wants to gain more control and understanding of their environment has heard of the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL). This set of concepts and techniques introduced by the UK's Office of Government Commerce in 1980s heavily borrows from the ideas outlined in IBM's "Yellow Books" by Edward A. Van Schaik (and later … Continue reading Visible Ops : 4 Agile Steps to ITIL Compliance
How Your IT Department Learned About Outsourcing
They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks and this adage applies doubly to system administrators. After all, you pay these same people to protect your data and systems with tooth and claw, right? The problem is that sometimes they protect it too well. Ever needed quick access to data in order to … Continue reading How Your IT Department Learned About Outsourcing
Visible Ops: Rolling Out Change Management
Last week, I introduced you to "The Visible Ops Handbook" and their 4 Agile Steps to ITIL Compliance. While there is no silver bullet for your particular problems, these steps should serve as a good starting point. Today, I'd like to go into a bit more detail regarding what the Visible Ops folks call "Phase … Continue reading Visible Ops: Rolling Out Change Management
Avoiding Code Inventory with Staged Releases
Have you ever found yourself in Sprint 4 or 5 without a single release under your belt? Is it because the new functionality involves a big database upgrade or depends upon coordinating three or four different departments? Not only does this kill motivation, but it's extremely risky to push out this mountain of code and … Continue reading Avoiding Code Inventory with Staged Releases
What Developers Want
Developers are people too. Believe it or not, they have needs and wants just like everyone else. Here are some, which the Operations department should be able to satisfy for a more harmonious and productive workplace. Robust development environment Just as sysadmins have those black sheep servers in the back of the server room used … Continue reading What Developers Want
How Leasing Can Improve Cash Flow and Uptime
If your company is strapped for cash, buying a new file server for $10K is a lot of money. But you might not have to shell it out all at once if you consider leasing or cloud computing. Although you ultimately end up paying more, going in front of the board and explaining an extra … Continue reading How Leasing Can Improve Cash Flow and Uptime
