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
Tag: cfengine
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: 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
Configuration Management: Introduction to Puppet
After years spent working with Cfengine, Luke Kanies decided to form the company Reductive Labs in 2005 and Puppet, a long time idea and quickly stabilizing prototype, was born. He describes it as an open-source, next-generation server automation tool. Configuration files (called manifests) are written declaratively, and there is a client/server model for distribution handling. … Continue reading Configuration Management: Introduction to Puppet
Configuration Management: Introduction to Cfengine
As promised in my last post about configuration management, I want to introduce you to one of the key Open Source configuration management players on the scene today - Cfengine. Embarked upon in 1993 by Mark Burgess, Cfengine has helped system administrators configuring and maintaining their servers in the data center for over a decade … Continue reading Configuration Management: Introduction to Cfengine
Configuration Management: Scaling The Data Center and Growing Your Business
The Velocity 2008 Conference hosted many excellent presentations and discussions concerning web performance and operations. Adam Jacob, of HJK Solutions, presented how his company goes about "Building An Automated Infrastructure". To briefly explain what an automated infrastructure is, let's think of servers and data as office buildings and automobiles. Would it make sense to begin … Continue reading Configuration Management: Scaling The Data Center and Growing Your Business
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
Agile Web Operations 