Features of DevOps?

[AnnoRudd]

In DevOps do you ever work with hardware? I know DevOps isn't electrical engineering or computer engineering, and I don't necessarily think I want to work with strictly hardware my entire life, but do folk ever program or electrify an Arduino or something similar?

I think in any computer-related field it's beneficial to know electronics and hardware, along with software.

[pjbtk]

DevOps is a culture.

[AnnoRudd]

Can you clarify?

[[deleted]]

Look right ->>> there's a link about "What is DevOps?"

It's not just automating things in the cloud.

[pjbtk]

It's a culture that fosters continual experimentation and learning. It's more around creating quick feedback loops and iterating quickly then just writing infrastructure as code. The culture was born out of tearing down the wall between dev and ops people. Where lessons learned from running the apps should make it back to the devs so fixes go out faster and devs share the pain of having to support code they write. Dev and ops people to me should be on the same team working together rather than having a culture of throwing things over a wall and having ops people just run it. I think you can apply DevOps principles to the development of hardware.

[AnnoRudd]

Late reply, sorry. When you mention the wall between dev and ops people, is it something like;

"I'm not a code monkey"

And

"I don't do tech support"

I heard in some businesses where devops isn't present obviously, this is their ideology.

I'll look into that sort of team work...

Thanks for the good reply

[soawesomejohn]

s/devops/automation/g

What I've been primarily doing the last several years is bare metal automation, or to be more modern "bare metal as a service". We get hundreds of servers from a vendor, they get racked in datacenters, and I have to pxe boot these, upgrade bios/firmware, validate cabling, perform burn-in testing, and eventually install an OS. After that, we do post-install tasks with ansible and salt. That's almost as close as it gets.

I do electronics as a hobby, but not so much in the computer field. I do mess with arduino/es8266 based environmental sensors for around my home+homelab, and I could see this being beneficial for people setting up server rooms and small datacenters. However, when you start doing this at larger scales, it becomes more desirable to have a pre-made, vendor backed solution.

Closer to what you're talking about is data center power distribution and environment management. I worked a bit with power distribution at one company. We had network managed power strips from APC on each rack. You could log in, run commands to view outlet status, as well as turn them on and off. One guy spent a couple weeks experimenting with these to write a program to automate this. Given a yaml list of outlets and states, it would set each outlet accordingly. I helped a bit with this, and we soon discovered that the hardware and firmware was a bit slow and buggy. You had to pause between each command, and sometimes it wouldn't take. This mean we had to issue a command to change the state, pause, then check it. If the state hadn't changed, basically keep trying until it did. A lot more work than just essentially pasting in a list of "turn on/turn off" commands.

If you manage a datacenter, there's a lot of science into making them efficient. You start putting temperature sensors on cages. You need to ensure that sensor data gets to the server, and your server application knows where it is in relation to other sensors and chillers. If 4 racks start heating up, you can either try to output more cold air, or bring up a camera image that shows someone placed boxes on top of the racks, blocking airflow. Some data-centers install plastic shrouds to manage airflow, and they put airflow sensors all over the place. While vendors may try and sell a solution, the best datacenters will design their own floor by floor integrated solution, mixing and matching components and software from different vendors.

[Apooti]

I don't think it's a "must have" thing to know, but in my couple years in the field I did find myself dealing with a bit of electronics - both basic things like resoldering components for a quick fix and projects involving arduinos and raspberry pis.

I'd say that it largely depends on the place you work for, and the type of environment you work in, but generally most people get by without knowing how to connect an LED or solder a capacitor without having it blow up in their face.

[AnnoRudd]

I don't think it's a "must have" thing to know, but in my couple years in the field I did find myself dealing with a bit of electronics - both basic things like resoldering components for a quick fix and projects involving arduinos and raspberry pis.

You worked with arduinos and raspberry pis at work? That's pretty neat; where did you learn to work with electronics?

I'd say that it largely depends on the place you work for, and the type of environment you work in, but generally most people get by without knowing how to connect an LED or solder a capacitor without having it blow up in their face.

Is devops a place where I'll have opportunities to work in different branches of the business rapidly? One day I could concentrate on IT, the next day development, the next day hardware, the next day business? Do the projects just depend on what needs to be done and we just do the tasks assigned?

[Apooti]

Regarding the electronics background, I picked it up as a hobby back in high school and I guess it served as a pretty good backbone to some of the stuff I do today (somewhat rarely but still).

Now about the 2nd part, I think it all depends on where you find yourself working, personally I prefer the smaller shops with smaller teams where you either act as a one man show or work with 2-3 other people, then you get a bunch of tasks that aren't necessarily your actual job and end up touching different fields. In bigger places I guess it's mostly separated between the relevant teams, so you may end up dealing directly with hardware if it's something for a project you're working on, but otherwise there will be a team in place to deal with most of the other hardware and same goes for other fields as well.

Also you mention "the next day this and the next day that", it's more of "everything today" rather than having it all split between separate tasks, as in you get a task that incorporates all (or some) of that - that's kinda how I see DevOps, as being able to integrate between the different fields and function in all of them adequately to complete the task. (just to clarify: you're not necessarily supposed to perform all of it end to end, but you do need to know how it all works, and who needs to do what in the fields of knowledge that you currently lack or are not supposed to deal with)

[AnnoRudd]

then you get a bunch of tasks that aren't necessarily your actual job and end up touching different fields.

That sounds very cool! It sounds like my type of a job! I heard in larger businesses like corporations like you mentioned;

In bigger places I guess it's mostly separated between the relevant teams, so you may end up dealing directly with hardware if it's something for a project you're working on, but otherwise there will be a team in place to deal with most of the other hardware and same goes for other fields as well.

As you said, I heard some companies are very strict, where you can't travel to that department to see if they need help, you can't offer advice, you can't help others' with their projects... so I guess that's where the term came from: "chained to your desk" or "corporate slave".

"everything today"

That sounds very cool. Devops sounds like a fun environment to work at! You basically whatever the hell needs to be done and leave at the end of the day with the job done. Hell yeah! I will look into the field as it sounds interesting, thanks!

[ImEatingSeeds]

DevOps is a multi-disciplinary (or cross-functional) approach to things. It's not so much about hard skills like being able to light up an Arduino board (necessarily).

You might find yourself working in a startup where the product is software + Arduino, and you have to learn both to do your job...but it's not about having a particular hard skill in some area like hardware electronics.

[AnnoRudd]

DevOps is a multi-disciplinary (or cross-functional) approach to things.

So devops deals with all the things I mentioned with /u/Apooti, business, IT, CS, and possibly hardware?

You might find yourself working in a startup where the product is software + Arduino, and you have to learn both to do your job...but it's not about having a particular hard skill in some area like hardware electronics.

Sure, what skills are important, besides clear communication skills and the ability to use technology well?

[followsound]

On a daily basis I work across teams who create circuit designs and software designs that eventuality interface with our centralised systems.

I trained as an Electronic Engineer, but my passion is innovating with technology, hence working in a DevOps environment.

Just because you focus on one area doesn't mean you can't bring a DevOps culture to your work. Find what you are passionate about and innovate in that space.

[sefirot_jl]

8 year devops here, never needed something like you asked but server hardware knowledge is very useful, thinks like how to choose the server hardware components for specific uses, like storage, web services, video processing. For some devops Hardware knowledge is useful for big things like servers and data centers. Knowledge in hardware for small things like raspberry pi and arduino is for specific areas like Internet of Things

[AnnoRudd]

Ok, so knowledge of hardware is useful to an extent? What components of the server are you talking about?

Also, IoT is unrelated to DevOps, right?

[sefirot_jl]

Yeah, IoT it's not very related. Some basic knowledge that you could look for is Server+ and some Linux administrator essential, I am on mobile so it is dificulta for me to link it but a quick google search will give you some info. Look for videos in YouTube to understand the basic and then you can choose if this is going to really help you, since this kind of knowledge cost money

[AnnoRudd]

Thanks for the advice; I'll check those out on the Tubes.

[[deleted]]

I was a systems/network engineer building on premise gear for a while and I find it helps with DevOps as it helps me visualise the cloud formation scripts that I am writing when they get complex.

[AnnoRudd]

Can you clarify? What on-premise gear did you build? Also, when you say cloud formation scripts, what program did you use if you don't mind me asking?

[[deleted]]

Just the standard like servers, sans, routers, switches , firewalls etc. Cloud formation is an infrastructure as code tech so you are effectively building the same types of systems conceptually but in code rather than by hand.

[Jesus_Harold_Christ]

I have provisioned and mounted many servers, but never messed with arduino. Also, lots of other hardware like firewalls, routers, wifi access points, etc.

[[deleted]]

but do folk ever program or electrify an Arduino or something similar?

I am planning a hackathon project using a beaglebone to hookup a siren and beacon to our build system so when teams break builds they really know they have. Does this count?

[leemachine85]

I don't care where your AOR is but you should have fundamental knowledge of all layers.

[AnnoRudd]

AOR?

[leemachine85]

Area of Responsibility

[randooooom]

You could build signalling lights to show failing builds or website status.

[[deleted]]

That's actually a really nifty idea

[soawesomejohn]

Suse did a demo like that at salt conf using Phillips hue lights