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Tag: CloudOps

  • Coming Soon: AutoOps

    Coming Soon: AutoOps

    I’ve spent a lot of time looking at products in the DevOps toolchain and paying attention to where they are going, what they are doing that is new and how they are differentiated. That has led me to one inescapable conclusion: AutoOps is on the way.

    What is AutoOps?

    AutoOps is full robotic automation; the continuing progression of what has been building for the last couple of years. We have DevOps, GitOps, DevSecOps, IaC, CloudOps, AIOps … and the list is still growing. But they all move toward one thing: AutoOps.

    Now that development has been fully integrated into DevOps, the market is moving to do the same for operations. It is harder with operations because DevOps had Agile, but it is coming. And it is coming to your org.

    That is a good thing, in my opinion. Compliance almost demands it; what we currently call AI enables it and staffing in hard macroeconomic times will make it appealing.

    The questions that you should start asking now are what does the organization need to enable rapid deployment, management and upgrades while leaving humans in control for the majority of decisions?

    Some of you are living this. I have a friend that is in a GitOps shop with automated CloudOps where they are implementing AIOps to handle minor day-to-day things and monitoring for drift … but they’re the exception; most of us are nowhere near there.

    Knowing that is where we are heading means you can plan – and it is glaringly obvious this is where we are heading. Vendors are branching from their current subset of XOps to take us there and eventually, we will have a full end-to-end vendor that can do everything from GitOps to fully automated rollout, green/blue deployment, monitoring and drift correction with human intervention only where the organization wants it. Some vendors are already very close to this environment and I expect that several will get there in the next year or two via acquisitions or partnerships.

    We just don’t think of the overall DevOps/concept to retirement SDLC process in the absolute terms that AutoOps requires, but we’re going to want to because the environment is changing. The changes are for the better, but they will be massive and cause disruptions. However, they’ll make everything better in the end by eliminating error-producing bits while leaving us in control of the flow and process.

    Start Planning for AutoOps

    So start planning, understand what your organization wants and needs from the coming full-robotic automation I call AutoOps, and keep kicking rear. Eventually, we’ll have systems that can do a lot of Dev and Ops work, but that day is a ways off, and will require people to manage the systems that manage the systems… Funny but true.

    *I’ve never seen AutoOps used anywhere with regards to IT, I just thought it describes where we’re headed pretty well. Let me know if you’ve seen a better term coined by a smarter person. Or a not-smarter person that has a cooler name for it.

  • What Is a Cloud Operations Engineer?

    What Is a Cloud Operations Engineer?

    CloudOps, short for cloud operations, refers to the processes, tools and strategies employed to manage, monitor and optimize the performance, security and availability of cloud-based infrastructure, applications and services. It encompasses a set of best practices and methodologies that ensure the smooth functioning of cloud environments, including resource provisioning, configuration management, automation, deployment, monitoring and incident response. The primary goal of CloudOps is to maintain reliable, scalable and cost-effective cloud solutions that meet the needs of businesses and their end-users.

    What is a Cloud Operations Engineer?

    A cloud operations engineer is a professional responsible for managing, monitoring and optimizing cloud-based infrastructure, applications and services within an organization. They play a crucial role in ensuring the smooth functioning of cloud environments by handling tasks such as resource provisioning, configuration management, deployment, automation and incident response. 

    Additionally, they collaborate with development and IT teams to design and implement scalable, secure and cost-effective cloud solutions that align with business objectives and end-user requirements. Cloud operations engineers must possess a deep understanding of cloud computing technologies, platforms and best practices, as well as strong problem-solving, communication and collaboration skills.

    Responsibilities and Roles of a CloudOps Engineer

    A CloudOps engineer plays a vital role in managing and maintaining cloud infrastructure and services. Their responsibilities and roles might include:

    • Cloud infrastructure management: Design, deploy and maintain cloud infrastructure, ensuring optimal performance, security and scalability.
    • Cloud migration: Responsible for planning, executing and managing cloud migration of applications, workloads and infrastructure from on-premises or other cloud environments to a target cloud platform.
    • Resource provisioning: Allocate and manage cloud resources such as compute, storage and networking to meet the needs of applications and services.
    • Configuration management: Define and implement infrastructure configurations and manage changes to maintain consistency across environments.
    • Automation: Develop and implement automation scripts and tools to streamline and simplify repetitive tasks, improving efficiency and reducing human error.
    • Monitoring: Set up and maintain monitoring tools to track the performance, availability and security of cloud services, proactively identifying and resolving issues.
    • Incident response: Troubleshoot and resolve incidents, collaborating with development and IT teams to minimize downtime and maintain service quality.
    • Security and compliance: Implement and enforce security policies, best practices and compliance requirements to protect sensitive data and maintain cloud infrastructure integrity.
    • Cost optimization: Monitor and analyze cloud resource usage to identify opportunities for cost savings, recommending and implementing cost optimizations.
    • Backup and disaster recovery: Develop and maintain backup and disaster recovery plans to ensure data and application availability during unforeseen events.
    • Collaboration and communication: Work closely with development, IT and business teams to ensure alignment with project goals and provide guidance on cloud best practices.
    • Continuous improvement: Stay up-to-date with emerging cloud technologies, platforms and trends, continuously improving cloud operations and adapting to changing requirements.
    • Documentation: Create and maintain comprehensive documentation of cloud infrastructure, configurations, processes and procedures to ensure knowledge sharing and team collaboration.

    How to Become a CloudOps Engineer

    Becoming a CloudOps engineer typically requires a combination of education, relevant experience and certifications. The following steps can help you pursue a career as a CloudOps engineer:

    • Gain foundational knowledge: To become a CloudOps engineer, you will need a solid foundation in IT infrastructure, networking and cloud technologies. You can gain this knowledge through a degree in computer science or information technology or through certifications such as AWS Certified Solutions Architect or Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect.
    • Develop cloud skills: CloudOps engineers need to have expertise in cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure or Google Cloud. You can gain experience by working with cloud technologies in your current job or by creating personal projects on cloud platforms.
    • Learn automation tools: CloudOps engineers need to automate infrastructure and deployments using tools like Ansible, Puppet, Chef or Terraform. You can learn these tools through online courses or tutorials.
    • Develop soft skills: CloudOps engineers need strong communication, collaboration and problem-solving skills. You can develop these skills by working in team-based environments, attending networking events or conferences and taking courses or workshops in communication and collaboration.
    • Gain experience: To become a CloudOps engineer, you need hands-on experience in deploying, managing and monitoring cloud infrastructure. You can gain this experience by working on cloud projects, participating in hackathons or contributing to open source cloud projects.
    • Consider certification: CloudOps engineers can demonstrate their expertise through certification programs such as AWS Certified DevOps Engineer or Microsoft Certified: Azure DevOps Engineer. Certification can help you stand out in a competitive job market and demonstrate your proficiency in cloud technologies.

    Conclusion

    In conclusion, a cloud operations engineer is an essential professional in today’s cloud-centric IT landscape. They play a critical role in managing, monitoring, and optimizing cloud infrastructure, ensuring that applications and services run efficiently, securely and cost-effectively. 

    With a deep understanding of cloud technologies, platforms and best practices, they collaborate with various teams to align cloud solutions with business objectives and end-user needs. As cloud adoption continues to grow across industries, the demand for skilled cloud operations engineers is expected to rise, making it a promising career path for those seeking opportunities in the ever-evolving world of cloud computing.

  • 5 Best Practices for Implementing Cloud-Native DevOps

    5 Best Practices for Implementing Cloud-Native DevOps

    As the world transitions to cloud-native offerings as an industry norm, DevOps is gaining traction for its critical role in supporting more efficient IT infrastructure. DevOps is designed to boost collaboration and communication by streamlining the automation process to expedite the creation and deployment of applications. Implementing cloud-native DevOps requires organizations to make a massive cultural shift. Without this change, businesses are unlikely to be as competitive or fully utilize the innovations the cloud has to offer. 

    There’s always a risk in adopting new technology. Following are five best practices to accelerate your company’s implementation process and address potential challenges head-on.

    1. Think cloud, adopt the cloud.

    Optimize technology with a variety of tools tailored for the cloud. Understanding how technology works in the open source environment that cloud-native DevOps relies on is as essential to successfully managing the components as it is to selecting the right tool for you. Don’t get locked into using one tool. Instead, select the right tool for each task while remaining as cloud-agnostic as possible.  

    2. Implement a dynamic security strategy.

    Not considering security is one of the most common pitfalls organizations encounter when using emerging technology. Security must be built into cloud-native development workflows and thought processes and diligently monitored. If funds are available, appoint a chief security officer responsible for scrutinizing DevOps security in the cloud and creating playbooks for each alert triggered. Cybersecurity is becoming more complex due to the unpredictable nature of adversaries and the sheer volume of technologies involved in each solution. One way to start is with a bug bounty program that can bring hackers to your side of the court.

    3. Commit to ongoing training.

    Perform a self-audit and/or penetration testing to reveal weaknesses in company technology, procedures and people. Invest in training to effectively address any gaps in cloud skills. Providing development opportunities will also improve employee engagement and retention, which is a challenge for many employers. Make sure your employees give ongoing feedback to the training’s content, its maintenance and evolution.

    While it may be tempting only to emphasize new-hire training, the rapidly changing technology landscape requires training efforts be geared toward ongoing learning for the entire team. This investment will pay dividends, with DevOps and the cloud netting major long-term savings. To make training more efficient, it can be conducted remotely. Integrate and target training based on employees’ job functions,  but don’t forget about non-IT employees—they must also have a basic understanding of cloud and cloud-native.

    4. Once, twice, automate!

    Automation is critical to minimize software development life cycle friction and eliminate dependence on manual labor. Provisioning networks, infrastructure, application deployment and setup can be automated and versioned with infrastructure-as-code (IaC) tools (such as Terraform). There are also endless automation opportunities for containers, cloud computing, security, testing, monitoring and more. For instance, containers allow developers to compartmentalize applications to work on components without worrying about their potential impact in other areas–making it easier to construct consistent, tangle-free deployments. However, it may be challenging to manage multiple versions, requiring infrastructure and testing investment.

    5. Performance-test your tests.

    Automated testing will save developers time and reduce human errors. It’ll also allow developers to take advantage of doubling up on testing, making sure every change is stable and benchmarked. Test during the development stage and lay the groundwork for an effective CI process, especially if you roll out patches regularly. Automated testing is easier in a cloud-based system and isn’t dependent on sufficient hardware to make it run properly, allowing cloud hosts to scale up or down easily.

    Final Takeaways

    Cloud-native DevOps is revolutionizing the way applications are being built and managed, and it starts with how we perceive our challenges. Embracing DevOps culture enables organizations to leverage cloud and cloud-native solutions to create reliable services that are easily scalable. While it may look resource-intensive, cloud-native DevOps is becoming a business necessity.

  • DevOps Principles, Implementations and Culture

    DevOps Principles, Implementations and Culture

    When organizations begin using DevOps for application development, many only reference DevOps as part of their infrastructure and select a subset of DevOps before understanding the cultural and process changes needed for success. Instead, organizations must first determine which ‘Ops’ approach best promotes a DevOps mindset and integrate their workflows into their culture. In doing so, these organizations will better align their development and operations teams on common goals and protocols.

    There are many variations and subgenres of DevOps. However, it’s important organizations understand the ‘Ops’ choices available and choose the one that’s right for them.

    Principles Vs. Implementation Differences

    General DevOps and its subgenres can be split into two groups. The first and “purest” are the principles that these terms focus on unifying two or more industries with operations.

    The second type is those that focus on an implementation type.

    Principle Types

    DevOps: Improving Technical Processes and Culture

    DevOps is the overarching umbrella term for operations that combine Agile development concepts with IT operations and fast-tracks the development and deployment of applications in cloud environments. While there are different subgenres of DevOps, each subgenre is a different application of DevOps methodology, all geared toward making development more agile, stable and efficient. Because DevOps shortens the development life cycle by a significant margin, this streamlined approach to application development is quite popular.

    DevSecOps: Adding Security Checks

    DevSecOps bakes additional security measures into the workflow. Where DevOps typically has security checks at the end of a cycle, IT pros that leverage DevSecOps integrate security early and often in their DevOps journeys. With DevSecOps, collaboration between developers, security specialists and ops is crucial to maintaining agility and delivery speed, but the extra layers of security can slow processes down. DevSecOps leverages fast testing and robust pipelines to favor better code integrity. This method can be beneficial if an organization needs to elevate security during development.

    NoOps: Reducing In-House Teams for Operations

    NoOps is the lofty vision that DevOps is so automated it doesn’t require in-house expertise, meaning no manual intervention is required in processes. NoOps differs from DevOps because there is less focus on Agile and process management. This process assumes that developers do not need to know how to use the automated tools and uses continuous integration techniques to allow developers to focus only on application development.

    Though NoOps speeds up the deployment processes, if used by itself, NoOps lacks open communication and team management. Successful implementation of NoOps is only achievable if an organization does not have lofty technical goals or if its development team is small but strong and able to handle development and operations.

    GitOps: Using Git to Automate

    GitOps has been gaining traction in the development industry over the past two years because of its use of Git to automate continuous delivery pipelines. GitOps is a robust and manageable form of operations because it uses Git as the single source of truth for operations. In addition, due to developers’ familiarity with Git and pull requests, there is no complicated tool to learn, and changes to existing workflows are often unnecessary.

    The GitOps method can also boast that it is backed by some of the market’s most innovative cloud services, thus automating the process of building an update, testing for errors, reviewing code and pushing the update to production. Because Git is the only source of truth with GitOps, it is vital to effectively fortify the Git repository to avoid needless commits or pull requests.

    CloudOps: Implementing Cloud-Native Features

    CloudOps attempts to take more advantage of cloud-native features offered by modern service providers. Since CloudOps focuses on distributed development and deployment, there is no single point of failure, making the whole cloud environment more reliable. In addition, certain parts of the workflow in this type of operation can go stateless, making it cost-efficient as organizations only pay for the resources they actually use. Though CloudOps can be time and cost-efficient, organizations must get the configuration right for the approach to be beneficial, which could mean added complications to configuring CI/CD pipelines.

    CIOps: Requiring CI Operators for Configuration

    Continuous integration Ops (CIOps) is the latest iteration of DevOps, requiring CI operators to configure the infrastructure needed to support new code before deployment. The manual inputs necessary to ensure CI jobs’ correct configuration and deployment location bring advantages and disadvantages. Control over infrastructure allows two deployments to have different infrastructure configurations. The major disadvantages are the required manual intervention leaves room for error and the need to link an organization’s CI tool to its API can pose security risks.

    CIOps is better-suited for smaller development environments where automation is an inconvenience. While CIOps gives developers flexibility in configuring cloud infrastructures, the approach takes time and effort to run smoothly.

    ITOps: Automating IT Management Pipelines

    IT is loosely defined as the management of end user or employee systems. They are the systems that are required to run a core business. The fundamental difference is that there is little to no development. If your business doesn’t require a software engineering team and can function solely on prebuilt applications, then ITOps is for you.

    ITOps is in charge of delivering and maintaining services, applications and the underlying technologies necessary to run a business, covering jobs like system administrator and network administrator. ITOps focuses on updating laptops and office networks in addition to highly-tested commercial software and solutions for constructing the infrastructure, making updating infrastructure components more complicated. When using ITOps, an organization’s CIO will focus on managing the system via automation. 

    Choosing the Best Op for an Organization

    Choosing between the variations of DevOps is a matter of finding an approach that works best for the kind of apps the organization is developing and the cloud infrastructure they use. Though all of the above Ops strategies are based on unique ideas, they tend to focus on the technical side. Contrarily, DevOps stands out for its ability to comprehensively improve workflows and streamline technical processes while fostering a culture of innovation and collaboration in an organization.

  • Achieving Reliable Observability Part 1 – Making Cloud-Native Observability More Robust

    Achieving Reliable Observability Part 1 – Making Cloud-Native Observability More Robust

    I was having a conversation with a CxO level customer as part of an AIOps/Observability workshop, and from what I could tell, most are confused about how to properly operationalize cloud-native production environments – especially the monitoring/observability portion. Here is how the conversation went.

    “Andy, we are thinking about getting [vendor] to use for our observability solution based on your recent research. What do you think?”

    “Well, I don’t want to endorse any specific vendor, as they are all good at what they do. But let’s talk about what you want to do, and what they can do for you, so you can figure out whether or not they are the right fit for you.” The conversation continued for a while, but the last piece is worthy of being called out specifically.

    “So, we will be running our production microservices in AWS in the ____ region. And we are planning to use this particular observability provider to monitor our Kubernetes clusters.”

    “Couple of items to discuss. First, you realize that this particular provider you are speaking of also runs in the same region of the same cloud provider as yours, right?”

    “We didn’t know that. Is that going to be a problem?”

    “Not particularly. However, you may get into a ‘circular dependency’ situation.”

    “What is that?”

    “Well, as an enterprise architect, I always call for separation of duties as a best practice. For example, having your developer testing the code is a bad idea, having your developer figuring out how to deploy is a bad idea. In much the same way as when your production services run in the same region as your monitoring software – how would you know about a production outage if the cloud region takes a hit, and your observability solution goes down at the same time your production services do?”

    “Should we dump them and go get this other solution instead?”

    “No, I am not saying that. Figure out what you are trying to achieve and have a plan for it. Selection of an observability tool should fit your overall strategy.”

    For those who don’t understand the above conversation, here is the reason why this scenario could be a problem.

    Coming from an enterprise architecture background, we were taught, as a best practice, to operationalize production systems to avoid circular dependencies. This includes not having two services depend on each other, or not to colocate monitoring, governance and compliance systems as part of the production systems themselves. If you were to monitor your production system, you would do it from a separate and isolated sub-system (server, data center rack, sub-net, etc.) to make sure that if your production system goes down, the monitoring system doesn’t go down, too.  The same goes for public cloud regions – although it’s unlikely, individual regions and services do experience outages. If your production infrastructure is running on the same services in the same region as your SaaS monitoring provider, not only won’t you be aware that your production systems are down, but you also won’t have the data to analyze what went wrong. The whole idea behind having a good observability system is to quickly know when things went bad, what went wrong, where the problem is and why it happened so you can quickly fix it. You can check out this blog where I explain this in detail.

    The best practice would be to either:

    1. Consider an observability solution that runs in a different region than your production workloads. Better yet, consider something that runs on a different cloud provider altogether. Although it is exceptionally rare, there have been instances of cloud service outages that cross regions. The chances of both cloud providers going down at the same time would be slim.For example, if the cloud region goes down (a region-wide outage in the cloud is quite possible, and seems to be more frequent of late), then your observability systems will also be down. You wouldn’t even know your production servers are down to switch to your backup systems unless you have a “hot” production backup. Not only will your customers find out about your outage before you do, but you won’t even be able to initiate your playbook, as you are not even aware that your production servers are down.
    2. Consider having your observability solution in a different location/region, yet still close enough to your production services so latency is very low. Most cloud providers operate in close proximity, so it is easy to find one.
    3. Another option is to get a solution that gives you deployment flexibility. For example, there are a couple of observability solutions that allow you to deploy it in any cloud and observe your production systems from anywhere – both in the cloud and on-premises.
    4. You can also consider sending the monitoring data from your instrumentation to two observability solution locations, but that will cost you slightly more. Or, ask what the vendor’s business continuity/disaster recovery plans are. While some think the costs might be much higher, I disagree, for a couple of reasons. First, because monitoring is mainly time-series metric data, so the volume and the cost to transport is not as high as logs or traces. Second, unless your observability provider is VPC peered, the chances are your data will be routed through the internet even though they are hosted in the same cloud provider. Hence, there will not be much more additional cost. Having observability data, all the time, about your production system is very critical during outages.
    5. A very commonly overlooked consideration is monitoring your full-stack observability system. While it is preferable to have the monitoring instance in every region where your production services run, it may not be feasible either because of cost or manageability. On such occasions, monitor the monitoring system. You could do synthetic monitoring by checking the monitoring API endpoints (or do random data inputs and check to ensure it worked) to make sure that your monitoring system is properly watching your production system. Better yet, find a monitoring vendor that will do this on your behalf.

    When/if you get the dreaded 2 a.m. call, what is your plan of action? Just think it through thoroughly before it happens and have a playbook ready, so you won’t have to panic in a crisis.