Monthly Archives: April 2023

by | April 28, 2023 · 2:34 pm

How To Learn DevOps?

Hey all! James and I are preparing to revise our LinkedIn Learning course, DevOps Foundations, a three hour set of videos designed to orient beginners in the whole scope of DevOps. 

We created the course in 2016 primarily because at the time there were no good introductions to DevOps. You needed to know what blogs to follow and what events to go to and that was it. Even the DevOps Handbook hadn’t come out yet. And this provided a very high barrier to entry to the field. And we believe in learning and collaboration so we knew what we had to do!

Since then, it’s been one of the top tech courses on LinkedIn Learning with over 400,000 learners so far and has generated a dozen other courses drilling down into detail in specific areas. The things that make it worth it to me is the people we run across who say “this helped me improve my career.” My favorite was one gentleman who pulled me aside at the Aqua Security booth at RSA back before the pandemic and said “Hey, I had just gotten out of the Army and was trying to get a good job, and so was looking at tech. Your course oriented me enough that I got a sales job here!” Being able to help people like that is a rare privilege and we really value it.

Please fill out our survey to let us know what you think are the key things someone needs to learn about DevOps – whether they have some existing dev or ops knowledge or are just getting into it!

Here’s the old table of contents for reference… A lot of this hasn’t changed, the basics are still the basics, but it has been 7 years and a lot has changed, some things to add, some things to change, some things to cut. Let us know your opinion!

  • DevOps Basics
    • What Is DevOps? – Understand the meaning of DevOps and why you might care about it.
    • DevOps Core Values: CAMS – Culture, Automation, Measurement, and Sharing are the core values of DevOps.
    • DevOps Principles: The Three Ways – The Three Ways can guide your strategic approach to DevOps.
    • Your DevOps Playbook – There’s a developing list of patterns and methodologies that can help you transition to DevOps.
    • Ten Practices for DevOps Success: 10 through 6 – Tactical, pragmatic tips for DevOps success in your organization
    • Ten Practices for DevOps Success: 5 through 1 – Tactical, pragmatic tips for DevOps success in your organization
    • DevOps Tools – the Cart Or The Horse? – The role of tools in DevOps and tips for selecting and using tooling to achieve your end goal.
  • DevOps: A Culture Problem
    • The IT Crowd and the Coming Storm – Existing IT culture has both internal and external problems. Meanwhile, new challenges of scale and business cadence are pressing technology departments to change.
    • Use Your Words – Communication is the key to collaboration and solving problems when the stakes are high.
    • Do Unto Others – Build trust and respect and eliminate blame and hostility in your teams.
    • Throwing Things Over Walls – Break down the silos and establish a culture of responsibility and ownership, and align your teams to support the flow of concept to cash.
    • Kaizen: Continuous Improvement – Everything can be iterated upon to make it better – even yourself!
  • The Building Blocks of DevOps
    • DevOps Building Block: Agile – DevOps extends Agile principles to include deployment and operations.
    • DevOps Building Block: Lean – Understanding Lean can be the difference between a DevOps implementation that helps you achieve your company’s goals and one that’s just “the same but different.”
    • ITIL, ITSM, and the SDLC – Where does the “old school” fit in to a DevOps world?
  • Infrastructure Automation
    • Infrastructure As Code – Take a fundamentally different approach to building distributed systems whether in the datacenter or in the cloud.
    • Golden Image to Foil Ball – Learn about configuration mangement, automated provisioning, deployment and orchestration.
    • Immutable Deployment – With the rise of containers, different CM patterns are gaining currency.
    • Your Infrastructure Toolchain – Common tools in this space include Chef, Puppet, and Ansible but new container-based approaches like docker are on the rise. [Yes, this was before terraform and kubernetes, definitely places to update]
  • Continuous Delivery
    • Small + Fast = Better – Delivering small batches of change quickly reduces risk, improves quality, and restricts technical debt.
    • Continuous Integration Practices – Learn about Continuous Integration, Delivery, and Deployment, which you need and how to get there.
    • The Continuous Delivery Pipeline
    • The Role Of QA – Move from manual testing to automated with Test Driven Development (TDD) and Behavior Driven Development (BDD).
    • Your CI Toolchain – From Github to Jenkins, your code pipeline consists of many different parts with specific functions.
  • Reliability Engineering
    • Engineering Doesn’t End With Deployment – If you build it, you run it and other patterns for reliability engineering.
    • Design For Operation – Theory – Building a system to be resilient is the highest leverage step in ensuring high uptime and low MTTR.
    • Design For Operation – Practice – Ops has learned hard lessons about resiliency over the years – take it into account when building your applications.
    • Operate For Design: Metrics and Monitoring – Operational support isn’t just keeping the systems up, it provides crucial feedback back into the development cycle. {Yes, the kids call this observability now]
    • Operate for Design: Logging
    • Your SRE Toolchain – Monitoring, troubleshooting, and metrics are a vital space in your tooling strategy.
  • Additional DevOps Resources
    • Unicorns, Horses, and Donkeys, Oh My – In an emerging discipline, going to events to learn from other expert practitioners is your fastest route to success.
    • Ten Best DevOps Books You Need to Read – There’s a growing number of books on DevOps, here’s our top 10 reading list.
    • Navigating The Series of Tubes – DevOps information on the Web is fragmented and hard to find sometimes; here’s some of the best places to watch.
  • The Future of DevOps
    • Cloud to Containers to Serverless – Profound changes to our computing model have arrived to challenge many of our established practices.
    • The Rugged Frontier of DevOps: Security – Security is changing and is rapidly uptaking the DevOps movement, we cover the major implications here. {Yes. the kids call this DevSecOps now]
  • Conclusion
    • Next Steps: Am I a DevOp now? – Learn what next steps you should pursue for growing in DevOps understanding and practice.

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by | April 26, 2023 · 9:34 am

DevOpsDays Austin 2023 Tips!

Well, the Agile Admins have handed the reins of DevOpsDays Austin off to a new generation! And DoDA 2023 is coming up next week! I’ll be there, participating rather than wrangling for once…

Shaun Mouton, one of the new core organizers, asked me to share an annotated overview of items which may be of interest to attendees! So read on, and hope to see you out at the conference.

Austin musical notes

for Visitors and Interested Parties

DevOpsDays Austin 2023 is coming up quite soon, and I thought I’d mention for the out-of-towners and folks who might want to know that there are some decent shows happening around the same time:

May 3rd: The Black Dahlia Murder w/Terror, etc at the Mohawk

  • Metalheads, trudge through some sludge. TBDM is here.

Daisy The Great at Antone’s

  • If twee indie pop heavy on harmony is your thing get your fill of Brooklyn’s darling sextet at Antone’s. Portland’s Olive Klug is playing too and this will probably be a really fun show.

The Drakes at Saxon Pub

  • The Drakes put on a tremendous rock n roll show at one of Austin’s classic venues.

Arc Angels at Gruene Hall

  • I can’t make this show and I’m bummed about it. You should go catch this Hill Country supergroup at one of Texas’ finest music venues.

Warren Hood at ABGB

  • I’ve heard good things about his shows but haven’t made it yet. Still, I feel pretty comfortable recommending this one.

Wednesdays with W.C. Clark at Pinballz Kingdom in Buda

  • The Godfather of Austin Blues lays it down. W.C.’s still got it and you can get it too.

Libby and the Loveless

  • Sam’s Town Point is a great place to hang out and see a show, and L&tL (nobody calls them that) will play a fine mix of country standards.

Michael Hale Organ Trio & Sketch at C-Boy’s Heart & Soul Bar

  • If you’re coming to Austin for the first time or haven’t been to C-Boy’s you might want to make this show. Great venue, great music.

Matt the Electrician & friends at The 04 Center

  • Matt’s fantastic, this is likely to be a great show, and the 04 is a good venue for them.

May 4th: Lil Wayne at Stubb’s

  • I might skip out on evening events if I can make this one. Sorry y’all, it’s Tha Carter.

Tennis at ACL Live at the Moody Theater

  • Tennis is a bit precious, but if you’re into it they’re a lot of fun. Dance it out at the Moody.

Barbara Nesbitt & Friends at The Continental Club Gallery

  • I’m getting a little annoyed writing these now, there’s so much to see. Nesbitt’s voice is a delightful slice of Americana.

Two Step Lessons

  • You’ve got good choices if you want to learn how to two-step on Thursday. Sam’s Town Point and the White Horse cater to newbies who want to learn how to put a little twang in their electric slide.

Large Brush Collection, Little Mazarn, Jenny Carson at Feels So Good

  • FSG started out as a differently named screenprinting shop and showed up at a few local tech conferences making shirts for attendees to-order. They’re chill people and put on a great series of shows at the shop.

Greg Koch at the 04 Center

  • Pretty sure Koch is going to tear the A-frame roof of the sucker. If you’re into groovy six-string acrobatics this will be a fun outing.

The Arc Angels with Madam Radar at Riverbend Centre

  • Again, probably going to have to miss this one For Reasons, but I’m not happy about it. Grab this chance to see some of our local greats burn the house down.

Manny Velazquez at the Little Longhorn Saloon

  • Manny V knows country music, puts on a good show, and Austin’s lucky to have him. Classic country sound at a fun little venue.

May 5th: The Blues Specialists at The Continental Club

  • The Blues Specialists have been holding down the Continental Club for ages with their Texas-style jump blues. If that sounds even a little like your jam, it’s absolutely your jam. Get you to the Continental, friend.

The Psychedelic Furs at ACL Live at the Moody Theater.

  • You a Furs fan? This would be a decent opportunity to catch them. The Moody Theater is a fine place to see a show. Oh, and apparently Evan Dando too, as a treat.

Charlie Robison at Gruene Hall

  • Charlie Robison is a genuine Austin treasure, and Gruene Hall is a stellar venue to see him perform. One of the finest singer-songwriters to come out of a town overflowing with them.

Wild Child at Emo’s

  • Austin indie pop band, they’ve got a lot of fun songs. The vocalist reminds me of my favorite New Orleans chanteuse.

Austin tasty eats

local food recommended by a local (it me, I grew up here)

Start here with this guide from Paul Czarkowski and friends for stuffing your face around this place. It could be somewhat out of date, things change pretty fast around here. I’ll add some notes of my own here even though I’ve contributed to that before:

Central TX BBQ

  • Don’t bother with the BBQ sides, it’s all about the meat. Have a nice salad somewhere else before and after or maybe a smoothie from Juiceland. Kerlin BBQ has sadly closed up shop, although they do still sell tasty kolaches. Gourdough’s may have closed too, which would be a blessing for my waistline.

Quesabirria tacos

  • These are still pretty hot right now, but prepare yourself. You dip the tacos in the cup of consomme and it all drips, this ain’t for fancy dress occasions. Bring extra napkins, and eat em fast before the tacos cool off from the griddle.

La Tunita 512 – 2400 Burleson Rd

  • this was one of Austin’s first offerings for quesabirria de res, and they’re delicious.

Actual Tacos

  • There’s Tacodeli and Torchy’s for the white people food that’s pretty tasty, and then there are tacos. These are taco joints.

Cuantos Tacos – 1108 E 12th St

  • Located about a mile away from the Alumni Center, Cuantos serves the sort of tacos you might find in CDMX. They’re good.

Veracruz All Natural (and Veracruz Fonda)

  • Somewhat fancy, somewhat down-to-earth, Veracruz is tasty and I am happy to recommend them to you.

Other Items Of Interest

If you’re spending any amount of time here and need something not covered by this guide feel free to holler at me on whatever social media platform you favor and can find me, I’ll be happy to come up with something that’ll put a smile on your face. I’m glad you’re going to be at the conference, please say hi or wave in my general direction if you get a chance!

Shaun

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by | April 17, 2023 · 4:42 pm

New DevOps Courses Are Out!

James and I were revising one of our LinkedIn Learning courses, DevOps Foundations: Infrastructure as Code to keep up with the times, and while we were out there filming we knocked out some new courses as well!

DevOps for Managers talks about DevOps from the management perspective. What do you need to know, and how can you best unlock the success of the teams you’re working with when they are – or want to – excel at DevOps?

DevOps Antipatterns explores some common pitfalls that people fall into when starting out (or, even, later…)

Check them out! For reference here’s our whole curriculum that the agile admins have put out to help you in your path to thriving in tech.

Agile Admin LinkedIn Learning Courses

DevOps 101

DevOps 200-level

DevOps 300-level

DevOps 400-level

DevSecOps

Cloud Native

Observability

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