A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend the #DevOpsDaysOhio conference and it was so enlightening for to talk with all the practitioners in the DevOps arena. For those that don’t know I was the technical subject matter expert for my organizations Java application server environment for a number of years until I transitioned into a role within our EA organization shepherding our application server and middleware domain.
I had tried to introduce continuous integration and continuous delivery concepts (without knowing it) during my tenure as an engineer back in 2013. I had even spoke at IBM’s Impact conference about it; it was titled “Lightweight WebSphere Application Server Deployment Automation”. The high level overview was that by mixing Perl and JRuby I developed a lightweight reusable framework for installing and deploying (with configurations) WAS and IHS across our environment. We leveraged other freely available tools, like Git and Jenkins, we were able to handle the rapid growth of our infrastructure with a reusable and consistent method to install our software stack. Automating the deployment of this stack got us down from two or three day installation and configurations to about 15 minutes. This could have been real game changing for us; unfortunately the rigorous environment that we operated in left little time to do much more than initial pass (and management wasn’t willing or able to prioritize it).
Fast forward two years and the leader of my area, within EA, returned back from the DevOps Enterprise Summit with a sense of energy and focus around the DevOps movement. He gave us all copies of Gene Kim’s “The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win”. It’s a pretty easy read that really hit home with what I have seen over the 10 years of my IT career. The story was a little over the top in how the timeline of events took place; however the struggles that all business face as it pertains to delivering IT capabilities is real and that’s why I enjoyed the #DevOpsDaysOhio conference so much.
So why did I title the name of the site “The IT Herd”? A common analogy, within the DevOps community, is to treat your infrastructure like cattle and not pets. This has really made me evaluate how IT solutions are handled. Gone are the days that if a service, application, or platform is unhealthy we spend so much time trying to bring it back to life…we really need to be at a point where we can kill it and bring in new ones. So let’s bring on the herd! I’m going to start using this space to discuss what I’ve learned through readings, experimentation, and practice. My hope is that sharing will help others that are just starting to dabble into the practice of DevOps.