devopsy.kinsta.cloud

Category: DevOps in the Cloud

  • Operational Intelligence: AI-Powered SRE Measurements and Observability

    Operational Intelligence: AI-Powered SRE Measurements and Observability

    In my recent blog, Revolutionizing the Nine Pillars of SRE with AI-Engineered Tools, I indicated AI can help analyze vast amounts of data from monitoring and observability systems, identifying patterns and correlations that may be difficult for humans to detect. In this blog, I explain, in more detail, how AI-engineered tools can be used to improve the site reliability engineering (SRE) measurements and observability pillar of practice.

    AI Use Cases for SRE Measurements and Observability

    Making Applications Observable: AI tools like Dynatrace can provide real-time observability of applications, identifying trends and anomalies that might not be evident from raw data. Challenges here include the potential for overwhelming amounts of data, which can be mitigated by AI’s capacity to analyze and prioritize this data effectively.

    Making Infrastructure Observable: Tools like New Relic and Datadog use AI to provide insights into the health and performance of infrastructure. The challenge here can be the complexity of modern, cloud-based infrastructures, but AI tools can model these systems and analyze their behavior to provide actionable insights.

    Monitoring Applications in Production: AI can be used to monitor applications in real-time, identifying potential issues before they impact users. Tools like Splunk use AI to monitor application logs, detect anomalies and automatically alert relevant teams. The key challenge here is filtering the signal from the noise, which AI can help by learning which anomalies are significant.

    Monitoring Production Infrastructure: AI can monitor infrastructure health and performance, predict maintenance needs and identify potential bottlenecks. Tools like Zenoss use machine learning to predict infrastructure failures before they occur. One of the main challenges here is the diversity of infrastructure components, but AI can handle multiple data sources and types and integrate this data into a comprehensive overview.

    Tracing and Logging: AI can help manage the vast amounts of data generated by modern logging and tracing systems, identifying patterns and correlations that might be difficult for humans to detect. Tools like Logz.io use AI to analyze log data, detect anomalies and provide actionable insights. One challenge can be the sheer volume of log data, but AI can handle this by focusing on patterns and anomalies and learning over time which issues are significant.

    Production Dashboard Design: AI can help design more effective dashboards by identifying which metrics are most relevant and should be highlighted. Tools like Grafana use machine learning to optimize dashboard layouts based on usage data. The challenge here is determining what information is most relevant, but AI can learn this from usage patterns and user feedback.

    Performance Forecasting: AI can help with predicting system performance based on current and historical data, helping to prevent performance issues before they arise. Tools like Virtana use AI to provide accurate forecasts of system performance, helping teams to plan for future capacity needs. The challenge here is the variability of performance data, but AI can handle this by identifying patterns and trends in the data.

    Automated Root Cause Analysis: AI can be instrumental in quickly identifying the root cause of issues in complex, distributed systems. Tools like RunWhen and Moogsoft use AI to correlate events across different systems and tools, significantly reducing the time to identify the root cause. The challenge here is the complexity of modern systems, but AI can handle this by analyzing data from multiple sources and identifying correlations that might not be evident to humans.

    RoadMap for SREs to Transform Measurements and Observability With AI

    Here is a practical roadmap that organizations can use to transition to AI tools for SRE measurements and observability.

    Understand the Current State: First, an organization needs to fully comprehend its existing monitoring and observability practices. This includes understanding what tools are currently in use, what metrics are being monitored and where the gaps in visibility exist.

    Define Goals and Objectives: The next step is to define what the organization hopes to achieve by implementing AI in its monitoring and observability practices. This could include goals like improving system performance, reducing downtime or predicting system failures before they occur.

    Identify the Right Tools: Evaluate different AI tools to help achieve these goals. This includes looking at AI-powered monitoring tools like Dynatrace, New Relic and Datadog, log analysis tools like Logz.io and Splunk and AI-driven observability platforms like Moogsoft and Zenoss.

    Test and Iterate: Implement the chosen tools on a small scale initially, using a test environment if possible. Monitor the results and adjust your approach as necessary. This step might involve tweaking the AI models, adjusting the data inputs or even trying a different tool if the initial choice doesn’t provide the expected results.

    Training and Upskilling: Ensure your teams are well-versed in using the chosen AI tools. This could include formal training sessions, workshops, or even bringing in external experts to provide guidance. This will help your team to effectively use these tools and get the maximum benefit from them.

    Full-Scale Deployment: Once testing has been successful and the team is comfortable with the tools, deploy them across your production environment. Continue to monitor their performance and make adjustments as necessary.

    Continual Evaluation and Adjustment: AI tools learn and improve over time. It’s important to regularly evaluate their performance and make adjustments as needed. This could involve feeding them new data types, adjusting their models or retraining them based on the latest performance data.

    Summary

    Harnessing the power of AI to revolutionize your SRE practices can propel your organization to new heights. AI tools can significantly enhance the measurements and observability pillar of SRE, providing unparalleled insights into application and infrastructure performance, enabling more efficient monitoring practices and ultimately driving improved system reliability and performance. These tools, such as Dynatrace, New Relic, Datadog, Logz.io and Moogsoft, can transform how your organization perceives and interacts with its technological environment, providing crucial visibility and actionable intelligence.

    Imagine a world where your monitoring systems not only alert you about a problem but also predict potential system failures before they occur and even recommend preventive actions. With the implementation of AI in your SRE practices, this can become a reality. By following a well-defined roadmap that begins with understanding your current state, defining your objectives, selecting the right AI tools, iteratively testing and upskilling your teams, you can pave the way for a future where improved system performance and reduced downtime are the norms. AI-powered SRE practices today can unlock a new era of operational efficiency and system reliability.

  • Broadcom Survey Surfaces Drive to Consolidate Automation Platforms

    Broadcom Survey Surfaces Drive to Consolidate Automation Platforms

    Broadcom this week published a global survey of 535 IT leaders that found more than three-quarters (78%) are moving to consolidate cloud automation tools and platforms. However, thus far, only 8% of respondents said they had completed that effort.

    Overall, the survey also found more than 81% already have multiple cloud automation solutions in place, and 70% noted this issue had created significant challenges, including increasing time to automate (59%), time to report (52%) and time to remediation (52%) and higher costs (49%). In addition, 46% noted it’s more difficult to troubleshoot IT environments, while 41% noted multiple tools increase compliance risks.

    IT teams also find that having multiple automation tools slows down software delivery (37%) and contributes to the over-provisioning of IT environments (32%).

    Aline Gerew, head of automation for the Agile Operations Division at Broadcom, said the multiple islands of automation that have evolved on various cloud computing platforms now need to be centralized to reduce the current level of friction in the cloud. Those efforts need to start with platforms capable of unifying observability across all the platforms employed, she added.

    The amount of consolidation that any IT organization can implement depends on the amount of political capital they have. In many cases, the applications and associated automation tools running in any given environment have been adopted by a department or business unit that exercises a lot of autonomy regarding IT. The issue that creates is multiple tools and platforms increase the total cost of IT. At a time when many organizations are experiencing economic headwinds, the need to reduce the total cost of IT naturally becomes a more pressing concern.

    Rather than consolidate automation tools and platforms, the simpler option is to deploy an automation framework that is designed to be integrated with the various tools and platforms that are already in place, noted Gerew. That approach enables automation to be applied at much higher levels of scale to reduce costs without forcing every arm of an organization to standardize on the same tools and platform, she noted.

    The survey found that, when it comes to cloud automation, the most important consideration factors are operational costs (62%), performance (53%) and operational efficiency (49%).

    Responsibility for cloud automation will naturally vary from one organization to the next, but the survey noted that 67% of respondents currently have a cloud architect on staff and another 33% are planning to hire one.

    That role is increasingly required as organizations find themselves managing a wide range of cloud computing environments, including software-as-a-service applications (57%), legacy applications that have been lifted into the cloud (56%), new cloud-native applications (46%) and legacy applications that have been refactored for the cloud (41%).

    It’s apparent that cloud computing environments are becoming more complex with each passing day. There may come a day when artificial intelligence (AI) helps reduce the level of complexity; in the meantime, IT organizations need to find ways to streamline the management of cloud computing environments. Today, those environments are made up of applications based on a wide range of increasingly divergent architectures as the rate of application deployments exceeds the retirement of legacy apps.

  • From DevOps to the Future: The Evolutionary Leap to Platform Engineering

    From DevOps to the Future: The Evolutionary Leap to Platform Engineering

    The paradigm of technology development never ceases to amaze. Over the past few decades, we’ve witnessed an unbroken chain of progress from traditional IT to Agile methodologies, from cloud computing to microservices and now, another leap is on the horizon. Enter the age of the platform engineer, a role that is swiftly emerging as a logical evolution of DevOps culture.

    From the Roots: Understanding DevOps

    DevOps revolutionized the way teams design, build and deliver software. With its advent, we saw the amalgamation of developers and operators into a single team, fostering a culture of collaboration and integration. The core idea was to tear down the traditional silos and ensure seamless interaction between different stakeholders in the development process.

    This unique approach has proven its mettle over time, bringing about shorter development cycles, higher deployment frequency, more dependable releases and quicker resolution of issues. DevOps set the stage for continuous delivery, integration and monitoring, thus speeding up the digital transformation of many organizations.

    The Evolution: Birth of the Platform Engineer

    As we delve further into the era of cloud-native technologies, containers and service meshes, the demands on the DevOps methodology have evolved. To cater to the increasing complexity and scale of modern infrastructures, we witness the emergence of a new breed of professionals, aptly titled platform engineers.

    This role is not just a renaming of the traditional DevOps engineer; it is an evolution. Platform engineers build upon the foundational practices of DevOps but go beyond by embracing a holistic view of the technology stack. They focus on creating platforms that provide a unified, consistent, and efficient environment for development and operations teams to work within.

    Platform Engineering: The Core Components

    Platform engineers possess a skillset that spans software development, infrastructure management, system operations, and, importantly, a deep understanding of the business context. They are entrusted with the design, construction and management of the underlying platforms supporting the deployment and scaling of applications.

    A significant part of the platform engineer’s role involves creating self-service infrastructures that empower teams to deliver software independently and efficiently. This can involve building and managing internal toolchains, maintaining cloud-native infrastructures, designing service observability systems and ensuring high levels of automation across the board. 

    The Future is Here: Embracing Platform Engineering

    The rise of the platform engineer signifies a shift towards more scalability, resilience and efficiency in managing modern tech ecosystems. It’s about leveraging technology to its fullest extent and creating a platform that is more than the sum of its parts. 

    As the technology landscape continues to evolve, the transition from DevOps to platform engineering may soon become the norm. It’s an exciting prospect, promising a future where innovative platforms can seamlessly integrate and orchestrate the complexities of the modern digital world. After all, in this era of rapid digital transformation, those who adapt will thrive. 

    In conclusion, the platform engineer role is not replacing DevOps but evolving from it, extending the principles that made DevOps so successful to meet the challenges and opportunities of the new tech era. As we continue this exciting journey into the future of software development and delivery, there’s no doubt that platform engineering will play an increasingly important role. 

  • Cisco Aligns With Nutanix on Hybrid Cloud Computing

    Cisco Aligns With Nutanix on Hybrid Cloud Computing

    Cisco and Nutanix this week announced a strategic partnership through which the two companies will collaborate to advance hybrid cloud computing.

    As part of that agreement, Cisco is committing to making AHV virtual machine software from Nutanix available from the edge to the cloud, starting with the Cisco Unified Compute Systems (UCS) rack and, soon after, blade servers.

    Jeremy Foster, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco Compute, said via a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform, Cisco will be able to centrally manage virtual machines from Nutanix alongside the other major virtual machines it already supports.

    In addition, the partnership will enable Cisco to apply multiple forms of artificial intelligence (AI) across a hybrid cloud computing environment, he added.

    Thomas Cornely, senior vice president of product management for Nutanix, said the goal is to provide IT teams with an opportunity to consolidate infrastructure across a hybrid cloud computing environment. In effect, Nutanix and Cisco are working toward converging the control planes across their entire respective portfolios, he added.

    The goal is to enable IT teams to streamline the number of platforms that need to be supported as part of an effort to reduce the total cost of IT, said Cornely.

    The issue that IT organizations regularly encounter is that each platform requires hiring additional IT personnel to manage. At a time when many organizations are encountering economic headwinds, there is a natural inclination to reduce the number of platforms as the size of the IT staff is reduced. Despite advances in automation, IT labor costs still represent the largest overall segment of any IT budget.

    It’s not clear how aggressively IT teams are consolidating IT infrastructure to reduce costs, but after more than a decade of continuous investments in IT, many organizations are discovering they are supporting a wide range of platforms. During a downturn, however, IT teams tend to more aggressively eliminate “snowflake” platforms that require unique skillsets to manage, noted Cornely.

    In the meantime, IT environments are also becoming more distributed as more workloads move to the network edge. Those workloads are not replacing applications running in on-premises or cloud computing environments, so the overall IT footprint will continue to increase. Given the chronic shortage of IT skills, the only way to effectively manage that IT estate will be to rely more on automation frameworks increasingly infused with AI.

    Each IT organization will need to determine for itself what level of automation to embrace, but Cisco is betting most will opt to rely on a SaaS platform provided by a vendor versus building and maintaining an IT management platform themselves. Regardless, legacy approaches that depend heavily on manual processes will increasingly give way to cloud-based platforms that can more easily manage workloads wherever they happen to be deployed.

    The issue now, as always, is funding the transition to new platforms to bring the total cost of IT back under control and eventually pay for themselves.

  • Google Adds App Modernization Tools to Generative AI Platform

    Google Adds App Modernization Tools to Generative AI Platform

    Google this week added automated refactoring capabilities to the generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools it makes available to write code on Google Cloud.

    In addition, Duet AI for Google Cloud is now integrated with Google’s Apigee API Management and Application Integration services. This makes it possible to design, create and publish application programming interfaces (APIs) using simple natural language prompts.

    These additions to the preview of Duet AI for Google Cloud were announced at the Google Cloud Next 2023 conference and are scheduled to be generally available later this year. The new capabilities promise to reduce the time and effort required to modernize applications.

    For example, DevOps teams can now convert code written in C++ into Go and migrate that application to Cloud SQL, the managed relational database service that Google provides. Via a natural language interface, these tasks are launched via a prompt from directly within a development environment.

    Priyanka Vergadia, a developer advocate for Google, told attendees these capabilities will reduce the need to rely on consultants to migrate applications and take up much less time. In addition, the overall quality of the code should improve using large language models (LLMs) that have been trained using code written by Google developers and best practices defined by Google software engineers.

    Organizations will save time and effort because the need for developers to understand how existing application code was constructed is eliminated, she noted.

    Google has also started to work with select enterprise IT teams to allow Duet AI to incorporate knowledge from their libraries and codebases to generate more context-aware code suggestions.

    In addition to writing code, Google is making a case for also using Duet AI in Google Cloud to monitor performance and troubleshoot IT issues by identifying correlations across application environments. For example, natural language prompts can be translated into PromQL queries to analyze time-series metrics. Duet AI can also provide intuitive explanations of complex log entries in Logs Explorer for easier root-cause analysis and provide suggestions for how to fix issues that surfaced in an error reporting tool.

    Duet AI is also incorporated into the Google BigQuery service to help developers write SQL and Python code to access and analyze data. It can generate full functions and code blocks, auto-suggest code completions and explain your code and SQL queries. Via a single SQL statement, a query can connect tables with the foundational AI models Google makes available via its Vertex AI service.

    At the same time, IT teams can optimize prompts using BigQuery Studio tools, perform text analysis or generate new attributes to enrich a BigQuery data model. Duet AI also enables IT teams to generate vector embeddings in BigQuery to create semantic searches and recommendation queries.

    It’s not clear whether generative AI capabilities will automate entire DevOps and DataOps workflows just yet, but many of the tasks that once required automation scripts will soon be automated by AI models embedded within DevOps platforms. The challenge and the opportunity is to determine how to make those capabilities available to drive DevOps workflows at unprecedented scale.

  • CDF Report: Steady Growth in Number of Jenkins Jobs Run

    CDF Report: Steady Growth in Number of Jenkins Jobs Run

    The Jenkins project that operates under the auspices of The Continuous Delivery Foundation (CDF) reported this week that over a two-year period, usage of pipelines grew 79%, with total workloads defined in the continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) platform growing 45% over the same period.

    Based on analysis conducted from June 2021 to June 2023, the report found the number of jobs defined increased from 27,105,176 jobs to 48,625,398 jobs per month. The number of all jobs defined on Jenkins increased from 50,785,205 to 73,746,418 jobs per month (45%).

    Sacha Labourey, a member of the governing board for the CDF and chief strategy officer at CloudBees, a provider of commercially supported instances of the open source Jenkins CI/CD platform, said it’s clear that more applications are being constructed by more organizations than ever using DevOps workflows.

    At present, the CDF reported there are now more than 600 active contributors to the Jenkins project. That level of support has made it possible for Jenkins to become a standard CI/CD platform. DevOps teams know there is a substantial open source community they can count on for support, said Labourey.

    The challenge now is how to centrally observe DevOps workflows to accelerate application development while at the same time giving developers more freedom to innovate. Platform engineering principles represent an opportunity to achieve that goal, as long as developers still have an opportunity to innovate and collaboratively address bottlenecks in DevOps workflows as they occur.

    The platform engineering team should be observing processes and proactively making recommendations and define a set of guardrails that ensure DevSecOps best practices are followed, he added.

    Otherwise, application developers are likely to view platform engineering as another effort by centralized IT teams to take power away from the developer, noted Labourey.

    Striking that balance is especially critical as the number of cloud-native applications being built and deployed alongside classic monolithic applications has significantly increased, he added. DevOps teams need to be able to centralize observability of what are two distinct styles of application development that tend to occur at a significantly different pace from one another, Labourey said.

    Hopefully, advances in artificial intelligence (AI) will make it easier for DevOps teams to strike the right balance between management and innovation. In the meantime, however, as the pace of application development continues to accelerate, each DevOps team will need to determine how best to evolve their existing workflows. That’s especially critical at a time when economic headwinds are requiring organizations to find ways to increase existing developer productivity rather than hire or contract additional developers.

    In the meantime, it’s apparent that DevOps, as a methodology for building and deploying applications faster, is here to stay. The next major challenge is finding a way to achieve that goal at levels of scale that require automation everywhere from the network edge to the cloud.

  • Apica Acquires LOGIQ.AI to Unify Observability

    Apica Acquires LOGIQ.AI to Unify Observability

    Apica, a provider of a synthetic monitoring and observability platform, has just raised an additional $10 million in funding and has agreed to acquire LOGIQ.AI. LOGIQ.AI is a provider of a data fabric infused with machine learning algorithms.

    Jason Haworth, chief product officer for Apica, said the data fabric developed by LOGIQ.AI will be incorporated into the Apica Ascent platform in the third quarter. The LOGIQ.AI addition will apply artificial intelligence (AI) in a way that both optimizes and enriches data collected by the company’s observability platform.

    At the core of the Apica Ascent platform is an indexing engine built on top of a Kubernetes platform that aggregates data such as logs, traces and network packets from multiple sources. As part of that process, the platform reduces storage costs by trimming excess data that can be stored in a data lake it provides or a third-party data lake a customer prefers.

    At the same time, Apica also enables DevOps teams to both normalize data collected from multiple sources and enrich it to add additional context, said Haworth.

    The overall goal is to provide a unified view of all IT data to accelerate faster root cause analysis and reduce the total cost of collecting the data required, he added.

    Apica is making a case for an observability platform that goes beyond collecting data from DevOps platforms. As IT environments become more complex, IT teams need to be able to correlate data collected from a wide range of data sources to accurately determine the root cause of an issue, said Haworth.

    The challenge is managing the massive amount of data that needs to be continuously collected, stored and analyzed to achieve that goal, he added. The acquisition of LOGIQ.AI will enable Apica to embed a data fabric that employs machine learning algorithms and other data science techniques to make it feasible to observe complex IT environments at scale, noted Haworth.

    It’s still early days as far as observability is concerned, but it’s clear that IT teams need to move beyond monitoring a pre-determined set of metrics to manage complex and dynamic application environments. The rate of change to application environments as updates are made requires an ability to query data to determine the root cause of issues that could be caused by any number of dependencies.

    The issue is that even when IT teams have access to an observability platform, they may not have the knowledge and expertise required to craft the queries needed to determine the root cause of an issue. Machine learning algorithms will play a major role in enabling IT teams to proactively discover issues that they can investigate using the suggested queries.

    It’s only a matter of time before most IT organizations unify observability data within a single platform. That will make it simpler for them to collaborate across teams and should result in fewer disruptions as IT issues are discovered more quickly. After all, the best kind of IT incident is the one that never happened or that was too trivial for anyone outside of IT to even notice.

  • VMware Previews Spring AI to Accelerate Java Development

    VMware Previews Spring AI to Accelerate Java Development

    At a SpringOne at VMware Explore event this week, VMware demonstrated a tool that uses abstractions to make it simpler to build Java applications that invoke multiple artificial intelligence (AI) components with minimal changes to code.

    The goal for the open source Spring AI project is to, for example, make it simpler to swap out AI models using an AiClient interface for invoking OpenAI and Azure OpenAI services. It also adds capabilities that promise to make it simpler for developers to query documentation using generative AI enabled by large language models (LLMs). An additional goal is to extend those capabilities to other Spring projects, including Spring Integration, Spring Batch and Spring Data.

    In addition, the Spring command line interface (CLI) has been extended to support Spring AI and the Spring Boot framework has been extended to help set up dependencies and classes more easily.

    The AI capabilities are part of several additions made to the widely used framework for building Java applications that address everything from automatically turning off instances of Spring running in a container, also known as scaling to zero, to using virtual threads to call external services in a way that reduces memory consumption.

    Those additional capabilities promise to make it more efficient to run Java applications in, for example, a cloud computing environment.

    Betty Junod, vice president of product marketing for modern applications and the Management Business Group at VMware, said generative AI capabilities should serve to make Spring more accessible by not having to click around as much to gain answers to questions.

    In general, VMware is betting that a larger percentage of the Java applications built using Spring will be deployed on the Tanzu platform the company has built on top of Kubernetes. That platform streamlines the application development process in a way that reduces the cognitive load on developers by eliminating the need to know how to work with YAML files or use Docker Compose to create containers.

    Despite the proliferation of alternatives to Java, it remains the primary programming language used by developers to build applications. The challenges involved with learning additional programming languages are high, so most developers would prefer to continue to use Java to build both monolithic and emerging cloud-native applications.

    In the meantime, AI is already widely employed to help developers write code faster. AI isn’t going to replace the need for developers, but it will increase the pace at which applications are being developed. As such, DevOps teams will soon see a significant increase in the amount of code moving through DevOps pipelines. The hope is that AI will be applied in a way that enables those DevOps teams to manage increasingly larger codebases.

    In fact, the way applications are built and deployed will drastically change now that the AI genie is out of the proverbial bottle. But it remains to be seen how quickly those advances will change the way DevOps is managed at a level of unprecedented scale.

  • How Platform Engineering Can Drive Digital Sobriety

    How Platform Engineering Can Drive Digital Sobriety

    If we’re being honest, the “green issue” currently isn’t the priority it needs to be for a lot of companies. At best, they are ticking the box marked ‘sustainability’ and paying lip service to a trendy topic. At worst, they are engaging in nothing more than greenwashing.

    Considering carbon emissions from cloud computing have now overtaken those from commercial aviation, this is disheartening for the IT sector. Unsurprisingly, most of these emissions come from inefficient use of the cloud due to overly complex processes and a lack of centralized oversight over cloud infrastructures. And if “emissions” sounds a bit vague, here’s a translation into dollars–$147 billion was wasted in 2022 in cloud spend.

    So, when it comes to reducing an organization’s cloud carbon footprint, there is clearly a financial incentive. Even for those who don’t believe in individual responsibility or worse, simply don’t care what kind of world we’ll leave future (and some present) humans to live in, there is money to be saved.

    The truth is that companies need to put sustainability first across the whole enterprise, and they need to do it now.

    A New Kind of Business

    Tackling departments one-by-one or singling out individual processes to make them more sustainable is not going to work. What organizations need is to stop thinking of sustainability as an afterthought and start incorporating it in the decision-making process from the get-go, maybe even as part of their very business model.

    This is the sort of business that places its people and the planet above profits. Progressive, modern companies that want to stay in business longer need to invest in their people and take care of the planet instead of chasing endless growth and ever-increasing profit because that, simply put, cannot last.

    As a culture, we’re currently at a turning point–late-stage capitalism is running its course, and more people are realizing that constant growth at the expense of well-being and the planet’s dwindling resources is not sustainable (in all senses of the word).

    For this to work, it’s about looking at business through a new prism.

    Driving Digital Sustainability From the Ground Up

    It’s not too late for businesses to become more sustainable. In fact, it is the best time to make life-saving changes. When it comes to tech specifically, there are a couple of things you can do, starting with two key things that need to change.

    First, cloud waste has been costing companies billions of dollars for years now. Organizations are set to spend nearly $600 billion on the cloud in 2023, but it seems that most people are still in the dark about the real environmental impact of cloud usage. As with most big corporate changes, it’s all about a change of mindset. We need to accelerate awareness and promote digital sobriety to inspire transformation and decision-making with GreenOps on the enterprise level.

    A cloud-first approach has long been the holy grail of IT. However, what we couldn’t anticipate is the sheer volume of resource usage and complexity that comes with it. We simply do not have the planetary resources to support this growth much longer. It’s time to become smarter, leaner and more environmentally conscious by using the “consume better” approach.

    Second, think about the KPIs. Change without success parameters will not work. While organizations have a key role in decreasing global cloud spend, they must have the right tools and references. They need to be able to assess the environmental impact of their digital choices at all decision levels.

    For the IT sector, this is where platform engineering comes into play. An internal developer platform can act as the critical piece that connects DevX, deployments, governance, security and observability.

    With green best practices and cloud carbon footprint visibility at every stage–from the dev deploying a new environment on the cloud to the CFO checking the monthly cloud bill–a platform engineering approach ensures not only organizational but also individual responsibility. When all tools are accessible and processes transparent, nothing gets lost in translation. This means less room for error and cloud waste.

    Ultimately, it’s About Consuming Better and Consuming Less

    Right now, these KPIs will be financially motivated, and rightly so. But there will come a time when progressive organizations will put their environmental impact at the forefront of their mission statement.

    The B-Corp certification, which evaluates companies in terms of their social and environmental performance, grew 63% in 2022. This shows the trend toward moving to a more inclusive and sustainable economy. Partly because it’s in the interest of the businesses’ long-term success and reducing costs, but partly because it is simply the right thing to do.

  • Strategic Roadmap for SREs: Software Deployments With AI

    Strategic Roadmap for SREs: Software Deployments With AI

    In my recent blog Revolutionizing the Nine Pillars of SRE with AI-Engineered Tools, I indicated that SREs can use AI and machine learning to optimize deployment strategies and minimize risks. In this blog, I explain, in more detail, how AI-engineered tools can be used to improve the pillar that I call deployments.

    SRE Use Cases for AI-Assisted Deployments

    Here are use cases for SREs to use AI to assist with software deployments.

    Pre-Deployment Preparation Activities: AI can analyze the deployment package to assess dependencies, predict potential conflicts and evaluate the readiness of the package for deployment. AI can also assist in configuration management, ensuring the correct configurations are applied based on the deployment environment. Tools like Harness Continuous Delivery use machine learning to predict the success of deployments based on previous patterns and trends.

    Deployment Decision Process Automation: AI can use data from past deployments, current system status and predictive analytics to decide the best time and method for deployment. It can assess the risk associated with the deployment and help in decision-making. Tools like IBM’s UrbanCode Deploy leverage AI to optimize deployment processes based on historical data.

    Deployment Orchestration Using Blue-Green: AI can help orchestrate Blue-Green deployments by managing the routing rules, monitoring the performance of the new environment and deciding when to switch traffic. Tools like Spinnaker, integrated with AI capabilities, can automate this process more effectively.

    Deployment Orchestration Using Canary: In Canary deployments, AI can analyze the performance of the canary instances in real-time, compare it with the baseline and make data-driven decisions about whether to proceed with the full deployment. Canary deployments can benefit from AI tools like Flagger, which automatically advance or roll back deployments based on key metrics.

    Deployment Orchestration Using Feature-Flag Rollouts: AI can help manage complex feature-flag rollouts, analyzing user behavior and system performance to optimize the rollout strategy. Tools like LaunchDarkly provide feature flag management and integrate machine learning for more sophisticated flag controls.

    In-Production Testing: AI can enable more effective testing in production by identifying unusual system behavior, predicting potential issues and recommending areas for focused testing. Chaos engineering tools like Gremlin integrate AI to automate the identification of system weaknesses.

    Decision-Making and Orchestration of Rollbacks: AI can monitor the health of the system post-deployment, making data-driven decisions about when a rollback is necessary. AI can also help orchestrate the rollback process to minimize disruption. Harness Continuous Delivery provides AI-driven rollback capabilities.

    Monitoring Performance of Deployed Artifacts: AI can analyze the performance of deployed artifacts, compare it with baseline performance, and predict potential performance issues. Tools like Dynatrace use AI to provide real-time performance monitoring and anomaly detection.

    RoadMap for SREs to Transform Deployments to Using AI

    Here is a practical roadmap for SREs to transition to using AI tools for deployment.

    Needs Assessment: Begin by understanding the current state of your deployment processes and identify areas where AI can bring the most benefits. This could be in deployment decision automation, deployment orchestration, in-production testing, rollback decision-making or performance monitoring.
    Tool Selection: Research AI-enabled tools that are available in the market that could fulfill your specific needs identified in step one. Some of these tools could include Harness Continuous Delivery, IBM’s UrbanCode Deploy, Spinnaker, Flagger, LaunchDarkly or Gremlin. Remember to evaluate these tools based on their features, scalability, compatibility with your existing systems and cost.
    Pilot Program: Implement a pilot program with the selected AI tools on a small scale or in a non-critical environment. This will allow you to evaluate the tool’s effectiveness, understand its strengths and weaknesses and refine its configuration and usage in your environment.
    Training: Ensure your SRE team is adequately trained to use the selected AI tools. This could involve formal training sessions, self-guided learning resources or hands-on practice in a sandbox environment. Remember, the tool is only as good as the person using it.
    Gradual Rollout: Once you’re confident in the tool’s effectiveness and your team’s ability to use it, begin a phased rollout of the tool in your production environment. Monitor closely and be ready to adjust as necessary.
    Continuous Improvement: Regularly review the tool’s effectiveness and look for ways to further optimize its usage. Stay informed about updates to the tool and industry best practices, and continually adjust your processes to stay ahead of the curve.

    Summary

    AI’s role in enhancing SRE practices, specifically software deployments, is revolutionizing the efficiency and reliability of deployment processes. From pre-deployment preparation to monitoring the performance of deployed artifacts, AI tools can automate complex tasks, make more informed decisions and improve the speed and reliability of deployments. Whether you’re using Blue-Green, Canary or feature-flag rollouts or you’re navigating decision-making for rollbacks, AI tools like Harness Continuous Delivery, UrbanCode Deploy, Spinnaker, Flagger, LaunchDarkly and Gremlin can be game-changers.

    However, transitioning to AI-driven deployments isn’t an overnight switch; it’s a journey that requires strategic planning and execution. Starting with a thorough needs assessment, choosing the right tools and implementing them via a pilot program is the first leg of this journey. Training your SRE team on these tools and rolling them out gradually in your production environment will ensure a smooth transition. And the journey doesn’t end there. Regular tool effectiveness reviews and staying up-to-date with the latest in the tool’s features and best industry practices will ensure that you’re getting the most out of AI in your deployment processes. Embrace the AI revolution in SRE to stay ahead of the curve in the fast-paced world of continuous software deployments.