The Addictive Nature of Automation

Automation is generally accepted as “good.” I’d like to suggest that automation has rather addictive powers, too. Using my own experiences, but not any “real science”, I’ll explore how automation can make operations people happier, developers more productive, systems more resilient, and customers happier. I’ll share some of my experiences at CustomInk where we leveled-up our automation using tools such as Chef, Jenkins, and communication.

Originally presented at LOPSA-East 2013

Transcript

2. Addictive Automation Nathen Harvey nharvey@opscode.com @nathenharvey
3. whoami • Nathen Harvey • @nathenharvey • Technical Community Manager, Opscode • Co-host Food Fight Show Podcast • Co-organizer DevOpsDC Meetup
4. Automation • The use of information technologies to optimize productivity in the production of goods and delivery of services http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automation
5. Results of Automation • Operations people are happier • Developers are more productive • Systems are more resilient
6. Results of Automation • Customer Satisfaction
7. $DAY_JOB -1 • Make bachelorette parties memorable
9. When I joined... • One team working on a few applications simultaneously • Two-week sprints • Operations team deploys the code at the end of each sprint
10. Business Requirements
11. Process • Ticket included in the sprint planning session • Easy change, made at the beginning of the sprint • Change committed, developer done • Change sits in repo for 12 more days waiting on Ops to press the “deploy” button
12. Deploy Time!
13. Ceremony • Email everyone in the company • Announce time and date of the deploy • Full set of changes included • Schedules updated
14. All Hands on Deck!
15. Meanwhile... • Office pool for when the rollback will happen •
16. 17 Days later...
17. Ship it! • Deploy small, independent changes • Deploy when change is ready
18. Change the process • git checkout -b • Redefine "done” • Move from sprints to Kanban
19. Verifying Changes • Staging and verifying many small changes in one or two staging environments doesn't work • Each topic branch must have its own staging environment
20. Disposable Infrastructure • Short-lived branches need short-lived staging environments • Only feasible way is via automation
21. Configuration Management • Your custom scripts and golden images are not sufficient • You need a configuration management framework
22. Infrastructure as Code • Enable the reconstruction of the business from nothing but • a source code repository • an application data backup • and compute (bare metal or cloud) resources
23. Development Environments
24. cap jenkins:create cap jenkins:build cap jenkins:status cap jenkins:console cap jenkins:delete Automated CI • Jenkins tests every branch • Enable developers
25. Stoplight
26. Deploy • Developers deploy the applications • Ceremony is automated
27. Results • Minimized work in progress • Shorter cycle times • Fewer integration bugs • People agitated when deploys slow down • Everyone deploys • Rollbacks are the exception
28. Results • Developers have responsibility for getting features to production • Operations works on more interesting challenges • Customer satisfaction and sales increase
29. How do YOU get started? • Look at the process • minimize handoffs • identify bottlenecks • Automate, automate, automate • Use the right tools • Enable and empower everyone
30. Automation • Start with one function or application • Automate end-to-end • Take lessons learned to other areas
31. The right tools • Distributed version control • Continuous Integration Server • Configuration Management Framework • Sensible and comprehensive Monitoring
32. The right tools • Group chat • Video conferencing • Face-to-face conversations • Blameless Postmortems • Retrospectives • Continuous Improvement
33. How do YOU get started? • Look at the process • minimize handoffs • identify bottlenecks • Automate, automate, automate • Use the right tools • Enable and empower everyone
34. What Questions Do You Have? • Nathen Harvey • @nathenharvey • Technical Community Manager, Opscode • Co-host Food Fight Show Podcast • Co-organizer DevOpsDC Meetup