Lessons learned trying to implement DevOps in a rapidly growing environment

Demonware as a company has grown and scaled rapidly across many axis; teams, staff, services, infrastructure. We made relatively early attempts to embrace DevOps - attended velocity first in 2009, established a DevOps team in early 2011 (disbanding it a year later), have 100+ internal puppet modules with Continuous Deployment to production yet we still struggle to articulate DevOps within the company and bridge the Dev vs Ops divide, especially when everyone is busy and has some game to ship. This talk covers a history of “DevOps” at Demonware covering what worked and more importantly what didn’t, and with the benefit of hindsight suggests some possible real world approaches for rolling out DevOps in your organisation.

Presentation given at DevOpsDays Vancouver, 2013 - see http://devopsdays.org/events/2013-vancouver/

Transcript

1. Lessons learned trying to implement DevOps in a rapidly growing environment
3. Local Community Sustainable!
4. Thank you!
5. Lessons learned trying to implement DevOps in a rapidly growing environment
6. Lessons learned trying to implement DevOps in a rapidly growing environment • Lament of a Failed DevOps Manager • Origin of this talk • Excuses
7. Introductions Michael Collins Principal Systems Architect ! http://www.demonware.net/ ! @ook !
8. Demonware • Online services for Console Games • Middleware • SaaS APIs • Cross platform SDKs • Consultancy & Design • Part of Activision Blizzard
9. Demonware • 435+ million gamers • 3.2 million+ concurrent online gamers • 95+ games • 300,000+ requests per second at peak • Avg. query response time of < .01 second • Collect 500,000+ metrics a minute • 100 billion+ API calls per month
10. Lessons learned trying to implement DevOps in a rapidly growing environment • What is rapidly growing? • 50-100% annual growth • People, Scale & Complexity • How Applicable are our lessons? • This talk == Not technical • For DW Tech talks see: • Erlang and First-Person Shooters in online games - Malcolm Dowse - Erlang Factory London 2011 • PyCon.ie 2011 Keynote - Damien Marshall • Puppet at Demonware - Ruaidhrí Power - PuppetConf ’12 0
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Serv Re4red
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11. A brief history of "DevOps" at Demonware • Early years (2003 - 2007) • Focused on P2P, handful of Services, minimal data persistence, 10s of servers, random hardware, Golden Images, Shell Scripts • root for (almost) everybody! • “NoOps” • Early 2007 - Removed root access for developers • April 2008 - Started to dabble with Puppet • September 2008 - Automated installs (preseed), Standard Hardware, Puppet based installs for production base • Spring 2009 - Started to build OS packages for our stack • June 2009 - DW Engineers attend Velocity for first time
12. A brief history of "DevOps" at Demonware • Summer 2010 - Rushed switch to Cobbler/CentOS, more Puppet driven by custom ENC - disabled noop • January 2011 - First Ops Intern • Early 2011 - Ops Re-Org, enter DevOps team • August 2011 - First Engineer moved from Dev to Ops • September 2011 - Move to Continuous Deployment for Puppet to Prod • February 2012 - Work with DTO solutions on "Dev Environment provisioning blue print” • March 2012 - Disband DevOps team, new Org Structure - first official Ops Software Engineer job title • September 2012 - Rundeck in Production • October 2012 - Internal hack-a-thon week to kickstart "Ops API” • November 2012 - Ops API first release, read only cached access to Inventory system • December 2012 - Our current Build engineer started • December 2012 - Prototype v1 of internal IAAS API for bare metal provisioning • February 2013 - First engineer transferred from Ops team to another team (Datawarehouse) • March 2013 - First release of Build Engineering automated developer environment setup tool
13. Initial Thoughts on our DevOps History • Suspect Typical Evolution for Traditional Busy Ops & Dev? • “DevOps” almost exclusively focused on Ops :-( ! • Big Wins • Building internal APIs • Continuous deployment of Puppet to Production • Big Losses • Restricting Prod Access • Starting with Prod & trying to retrofit • Being stereotypical BOFHs
15. 10 Lessons Learned
16. 1 - Be able to clearly articulate what DevOps is What is DevOps?
17. What does DevOps mean for … • You • Day to Day • Big Picture • Your Organization • Colleagues • Boss • Teams you work with • Leadership • Can you explain Clearly, Articulately & Concisely to everyone you deal with?
19. DevOps for me @ Demonware • For me • Day to day - “Automate all the things!” • Big Picture - “Service Delivery Pipeline, Organizational Sympathy” • For Demonware • Colleagues - “Buzzword Bullsh*t - almost Cloud” • My Boss - “DevOps within Ops, Visible Ops” • Old Boss - “Developer Self Service; You build it, you run it” • Teams I work with - “We have to write puppet? What happened to the puppet guys? Wow puppet sucks” • Leadership - “Bridge Dev vs Ops divide, maintain agility as we grow” • Everyone - “Something Michael rambles about” • PS. Above Quotes Fabricated
20. 2 - Trust your developers • My Single Biggest Mistake • Revoking developer access to Production • Ops be a good Customer for your Developers, provide: • Requirements • Bug Reports • Examples • Metrics & Data
21. 3 - Start with Dev • Working on Automation for over 5 years • Almost exclusively focused on Production • Never quite useable in Development • Don’t do this • In 2013 easy to start with Dev • Packer, Vagrant, Docker, Boxen etc • First day: sign in, push “make go now”, get coffee, work
22. 4 - Toolchains not Tools • Demonware - "We build & run services which use Erlang, Python, RabbitMQ, MySQL & Cassandra with Hadoop for Data Analytics” • DevOps@Demonware were “The Puppet guys” • Demonware Ops have: • Nagios guy • Elasticsearch/Logstash/Kibana girl • Graphite guy
23. 4 - Toolchains not Tools • CfEngine vs Puppet vs Chef vs Ansible • Apache vs Lighttpd vs Nginx vs Jetty • Who cares? • What matters is: • Using Configuration Management • Using a HTTP server
24. Distinguish between Tools & Toolchain Components • Knowledge not Trade • Components not Things • Bezos Amazon Service mandate • Containers / VMs / APIs / PaaS • Describe not Proscribe
25. 5 - Service Delivery Pipelines Development Operations Build Run ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
27. 5 - Service Delivery Pipelines Development Operations Build Run
28. DevOps Toolchain & Service Delivery • Not my idea • DTO Solutions • ITIL Service Delivery • Many Others • http://dev2ops.org/category/devops-toolchain- project/
29. 6 - Organizational Sympathy • Mechanical Sympathy • "Hardware and software working together in harmony” • Martin Thompson, High Performance Low Latency Specialist • Blog & Mailing List
30. 6 - Organizational Sympathy • Understand your organization • Goals, Processes etc • Then decide which Toolchain elements make sense to re-use • And what you have to build • Your organization is not Etsy, Facebook or Twitter • You can’t map their Toolchain & Processes without appropriate Transformations
31. PHB Alert
32. 7 - Organizational Flexibility • Org Structure not sacred • Annual re-orgs normal? • Examples • Valve • Internally • Good - Engineers continuing to work together post “re- org” • Bad - Ops Area, Dev Area :-(
33. 7 - Organizational Flexibility • Spend time in different roles • Google "Mission Control” • Sit with other teams • Gatecrash scrums • Understand your colleagues POV
34. 8 - Communication is Hard • Timezones Suck • Cultural differences are Hard • Managing Growth without missteps is impossible? • Most Nerds^wEngineers pick crappy mediums • Face, VC, Voice, IM, Mail … • No Silver Bullets • Best Writing Advice for Engineers I've Ever Seen. Period.
35. 9 - Hiring Matters • The biggest contribution I have made to Demonware is managing to hire people who are smarter than me • Especially crucial for “DevOps”
36. 10 - Metrics & Data • Business Metrics not CPU utilization • Data justifies • Change • Resources • Experiments
37. TL;DR
38. “How does <X> make it easier to deploy and run our services?”
39. Aside - Puppet Continuous Deployment • Problem • Automation just for system build & service prop • “Just stopping puppet, will fix later” - Divergence not Convergence • Solution • Sledgehammer • Toolchain • Code Review & Aggressive pushing (Git & Gerrit & Fan-out) • Monitoring & Alerting based on Puppet (Internal Daemon & Nagios) • “Positive” Policy enforcement - Disease build “bears” • Testing - dcinabox • Result • Most production hosts 100% puppet managed (working on staging) • In large clusters Drain & Rebuild easier then troubleshooting
40. Looking Forward • Distributed Configuration • Promise Theory, Cluster State Transitions, Multiple Sources of Truth, Constraint Solving • Distributed System Platform Blocks • Netflix / Twitter OSS Stacks • Separating Infrastructure, Platform & Applications • Containers • DC wide cluster scheduling • Scaling Organisations • Remote Workers? • Embedded Ops? • Flat organizations?
41. DevOps Lessons Learned 1. Be able to clearly articulate what DevOps is at multiple Levels of Detail 2. Trust your developers 3. Start with Dev 4. Toolchains not Tools 5. Service Delivery Pipelines 6. Organizational Sympathy 7. Organizational Flexibility 8. Communication is hard 9. Hiring Matters 10. Metrics & Data
42. Surprise - We are Hiring! • jobs@demonware.net • http://www.demonware.net/ • @demonware ! • Also food & some drinks later are on us …
43. Questions?
44. Random • Contenders for inclusion: • Operational Acceptance • Versioning • Release Management • Repository Management • Agile!11!