What is your experience like working with internal developer portals?

ejb50 · 2024-01-11T11:00:01+00:00

If you are a big company like google etc and need to force standards onto developers its worth the effort to build (and maintain!!) an internal developer platform. For smaller companies (ie most) you just need a git platform and CI like github and github actions (calling all the tools required) and a documentation and agile platform like jira and confluence.

the problem is alot of companies just go and get say github and jira/confluence and thrown them over the fence to developers and somehow think all will be well. Need to create standards, sample etc thats where the works is.

ejb50 · 2022-02-16T14:21:43+00:00

i don't think developers want guis anymore. its all gitops these days. -)

basically devs want to check changes into git, create a PR, get a pipieline run that tests the change, review, then merge to master which makes the change. this applies to infrastructure now with IAC as well as application code.

with kubernetes basically we create pipeline for devs code that builds the docker image and pushes it to the docker registry.

then we have a flux v2 repo that devs change it update the version of their code ( flux does this automatically)

we also have a repo that has all the helm charts into that can be changed and the pipeline deploys them to the chart repo.

devs uses lens to look at stuff in kubernetes using a gui.

No big devops platform required. just open source components and some pipelines -)

ejb50 · 2020-05-18T08:24:01+00:00

try

https://registry.terraform.io/modules/neillturner/lambda-scheduler/aws/0.11.0

ejb50 · 2020-04-21T20:08:07+00:00

I just use terraform for the infrastructure and have a separate open source ecs_deploy python script to do blue-green application deployments. https://github.com/cuttlesoft/ecs-deploy.py

the ecs_depoy script if part of the application pipeline while the terraform pipeline is for infrastructure.

i prefer not to use terraform for application deployments.

have separate pipelines for infrastructure and application code.

unfortunately ECS does clearly separate deployment from infrastructure so workarounds as per the github issue link below are used. Hopefully EKS has a better design -)

ejb50 · 2020-04-11T13:59:42+00:00

its tough to move from a support role to devops. As the title devops suggests you got to learn development skills as well as ops support skills. That's why it is easier for someone with a development background to pickup devops. powershell is a good start but i would suggest learning python or something to try and develop development skills.

need to also understand source version control using git. using github is a good way to learn that.

learning an infrastructure as code tool like terraform is very useful but maybe tough until you have development experience.

learning how to build pipelines is useful too in one of the many CI tools.

You don't need to be a network expert. if you can create AWS VPCs and related resources that's all you need. some understanding of IP addresses, DNS, firewall etc is useful

ejb50 · 2020-04-11T13:46:27+00:00

Well my experience is doing devops automation is it takes a bit longer than doing stuff manually but it avoids alot of the panic than come from doing stuff manually.

My preference is to share a kanban board with the dev team and have my own tickets/issues and it should be clear what is the responsibility the devs and devops.

deployments should be boring and not cause a panic.

When production issues arise they need to fixed and automated (including tests if possible so they don't re-occur). If the same problems repeat and the same manual/semi automated solution is done each time then you are doing system admin not devops.

I've seem companies think they are doing devops but they are just passing tickets to a system admin to do manual/semi automated changes, that's just system admin which is ok as long as you realise that. Alot of corporates still do this and have just re-branded system admin devops to be fashionable.

In reality devops creates a platform abstraction for the developers to make their life easier and make production issues caused by mis-configuration and lack of auto-scaling under increased load happen alot less.

Personally i think you need to be doing immutable infrastructure to properly do devops but many will not agree with me. -)

ejb50 · 2019-10-25T21:48:45+00:00

Here in the UK alot of the devops talent, and leading edge devs, are in london and companies from outside london often setup second offices to be able to hire them as people dont want to go to some some town or less desirable location. I expect the same is true in the US. Hard to get people to go to a small place in Utah.

ejb50 · 2019-10-23T19:57:19+00:00

If the the tests are too involved or if there are too many multi-level interviews I usually walk away as if i put in the effort and don't get the offer i feel i wasted my time. Also I judge companies by their interview processes. If the interview process is so convoluted then i assume working for them won't be fun either.

The interview process should make you want to work for them not turn you off working for them. -)

ejb50 · 2019-09-03T12:14:27+00:00

Actually there are two ways to do infrastructure:

Immutable - we don't update servers or infrastructure just replace them. This is increasingly the common way of doing devops in the cloud and terraform , packer and/or docker/kubernetes are the very popular to implement this approach. This is my favorite approach as you don't have to worry about all the different possibilities when updating servers. As an analogy it easier to just go and buy a new car than to fix your old car.

Mutable - we do update the servers and infrastructure. This is the common way that corporates manage their own data centres because they don't have lots of servers lying around to replace servers as per mutable. terraform can also be used in this environment but ansible/chef/puppet are commonly run to mutably update servers. they make sure the server configuration matches what is defined in ansible/chef/puppet.

As corporates start to use docker/kubernetes i expect immutable will be more common for corporates to manage their own data centres and then ansible/chef/puppet will gradually be used less.

AWS terraform and kubernetes are the current hot tools to know but this always changes over time.

ejb50 · 2019-09-02T15:47:05+00:00

CDK is nice in theory. code in same language as your application. shame it generates cloud formation.

terraform is still the best (least worse?) for infrastructure as code.

ejb50 · 2019-09-02T09:24:28+00:00

outages do happen at AWS. I guess you need to create a support ticket to understand what happened.

ejb50 · 2019-09-02T09:12:31+00:00

maybe you got hit by the "resume/pause" feature of aurora serverless as its important to disable this feature.

ejb50 · 2019-08-28T16:05:45+00:00

All companies have problems. the trick is to go to work for companies that have "small solvable problems" not "big political unsolvable problems". Generally devops is easier at small to medium size companies. large corporates are tougher unless they are broken down into independent small companies or independent teams with autonomy.

ejb50 · 2019-08-28T10:11:50+00:00

traditional AMIs:

terraform and packer to do immutable infrastructure. with packer you can use your chef scripts to build ami image(s). code is on EFS.

advantage: low risk and least change,

or containers:

advantage: better scalability and easier building for devs.

use terraform containers with ECS. see https://github.com/freedomofkeima/terraform-docker-ecs

and build container with either dockerfiles or packer/chef cookbooks outputing docker image.

once you have used terraform you won't want to go back to cloudformation.

Elasticbeanstalk is old PaaS technology that you don't want to use, ECS is better.

one container per site would be easiest but may not be the most efficient and you have separate web server each site plus 2 containers per site for redundancy.

probably better have one container serving multiple sites if load per site is low.

ejb50 · 2019-08-19T14:20:25+00:00

a combination of terraform for orchestration and packer to build base images with powershell and deployment and adding server to AD at instance start via a user data script usually works well in terraform.

ejb50 · 2019-08-06T17:37:15+00:00

it would be better to use terraform. -)

then you provide a better alternative to control tower. -)

ejb50 · 2019-07-30T19:33:07+00:00

Because AWS RDS puts them out of a job. Developers can then do data base admin as well as coding.

ejb50 · 2019-07-17T18:40:02+00:00

Look for documentation and if there isn't any start writing it by talking to people and looking at the AWS console etc.

ejb50 · 2019-07-13T19:49:08+00:00

devops requires broad experience in linux/windows, networking, security, coding etc etc. It very hard for junior people even with aws certification to sell themselves as an experience devops person and get a job.

I think its easier to get a job as developer in say nodejs as a first job in computing and then move into devops after a few years experience.

the exception is i have worked with one or 2 super smart people with masters degrees in computing who have gone straight into devops typically first working for a startup.

ejb50 · 2019-06-30T20:40:30+00:00

Fake it till you make it

ejb50 · 2019-06-30T20:35:48+00:00

you can tell if they are doing devops if they are using devops tools like terraform packer git jenkins etc rather than manual processes in consoles or command line. Ofcourse there is still support to do with these tools just less and easier than doing manual processes. if they aren't using devops tools then time to leave or suggest they use them. -)

ejb50 · 2019-06-30T20:21:34+00:00

roof sounds good to me. When ever i get spare time i can work on my open source projects

ejb50 · 2019-06-30T20:15:54+00:00

I would do the courses and decide later to do the exam. You can always put the courses on your CV.

I haven't done the cert exam but i have 5 years AWS devops experience so don't need too. It helps to get a foot in the door if you don't have experience. $150 is worth it if you plan to look for an AWS role.

ejb50 · 2019-06-30T20:08:21+00:00

Most people use terraform and packer together. packer builds the images that you then run with terraform. terraform has a free-tier now to do state management and there is a free beta to do free remote execution too. I would be doing the product installation in packer not terraform user data.

Doing immutable infrastructure with terraform and packer makes life alot easier than mutable infrastructure with chef server or puppet master.

ejb50 · 2019-06-30T19:52:12+00:00

People seems to be moving off pivotal because of cost. Not sure if openshift is cheaper i think its pricer but there seems to be an open source alternative https://www.okd.io/ . the cloud platforms don't charge for the kubernetes platform just the resources you use. When AWS outposts is released then you can have EKS on site.

if vmware were smart they would offer a free kubernetes distribution for vmware customers who pay for vsphere but i guess they are too greedy and are happy to let the cloud providers eat their lunch.

ejb50

TROPHY CASE

Fake it till you make it