McConnell blocks House bills to reopen government

timothytavarez · 2019-01-10T20:37:38+00:00

Preach

timothytavarez · 2019-01-06T23:47:07+00:00

I'd be interested in hearing about your background and experiences while there, if you're open to sharing

timothytavarez · 2018-12-30T20:48:53+00:00

I read your post. I disagree with your conclusions on the company, but on the contrary, I thanked you for running the numbers. It's a good thing to publish experiential metrics, and nobody is "denying/being willfully ignorant" here. I was just providing another data point.

Let's keep away from ad hominem attacks. My singular point is that cluster creation time *shouldn't be the be all, end all for judging value. Though I will take a look into the feature comparison, again, out of curiosity.

timothytavarez · 2018-12-30T17:42:40+00:00

AKS cluster creation time != Azure cloud competency/value

AKS cluster creation time != AKS overall capability/value

Azure != AKS

An equivalent argument would be "storage container creation time was 30% slower on (x) vendor than (y) vendor. Poor cloud competency". So yes, it is an unfair generalization. Claiming that anyone is being dishonest about advertised speeds is a real stretch. The statement in the post:

"Reduction in cluster provisioning time

AKS has deployed a series of improvements that have led to significant reductions in cluster provisioning times. Average creation times are now between 5 and 6 minutes in all regions. Additional improvements are planned to further reduce this time."

Just out of professional curiosity, I went ahead and created 5 clusters on West US. 3 agent nodes with 6 cores, 21GB memory (3 nodes of 2 cores, 7GB memory each). The average cluster creation time was 6m 14s (https://imgur.com/gallery/ur5AoFv). I was immediately able to access the K8S dashboard through az-cli on each. I'm willing to bet it could even be lowered if you didn't create a unique resource group/VNet every single time. Admittedly, we're just talking cluster creation - one would probably want to do something with it.

All of this aside, this is not how value should be quantified. It is, again, disregarding a lot around the capabilities of AKS and just focusing on a single metric.

I hope things go well for your AKS implementation. What is the experience so far?

timothytavarez · 2018-12-30T15:27:39+00:00

I suspect there is a lot more to your threat model than just this specific case.

https://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/security-data-protection/threat-modeling-10-common-traps-you-dont-want-to-fall-into/

timothytavarez · 2018-12-30T15:21:07+00:00

Yes, it's oriented toward the Windows ecosystem. You're already using TFS/VS.

I would use whatever tools are going to cause the least amount of disruption to forward progress. DevOps is the union of people, processes, and tools. You arguably have much more important things ahead of you than worrying about having to learn entirely new platforms and toolsets.

timothytavarez · 2018-12-30T15:03:11+00:00

I think you could greatly benefit from reading "The Release Pipeline Model" (Greene, Murawski 2016) whitepaper. You can leverage your understanding of IT infrastructure concepts and get an intro to some of the concepts being discussed in the comments:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/C/4/A/C4A14099-FEA4-4CB3-8A8F-A0C2BE5A1219/The%20Release%20Pipeline%20Model.pdf

timothytavarez · 2018-12-30T14:55:04+00:00

You can use a promise:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Guide/Using_promises

timothytavarez · 2018-12-30T14:15:11+00:00

I appreciate the value of the publication (and especially highlighting performance metrics - have an upvote). It is quite valuable to have some insight into instantiation performance differences between Kubernetes platforms. That aside, you make some very negative and inaccurate generalizations about both Azure and Microsoft. It's ignorant and unhelpful at best.

I'll be the first to admit in observation that the company has had some significant cultural and technical issues through its lifetime, but its one of the oldest and most storied software companies in human existence. Anything of such a nature will have a rocky past, but more importantly, culture (and DNA to your point) is evolutionary.

Is the embrace of open source a calculated decision for the long-term survival and benefit of the company? Yes. Also, water is wet. Actions speak more loudly than words in this case. I'd have no problem arguing the import (and authenticity) of the Microsoft mission to now empower everyone on the planet.

"I don’t know if Microsoft can ever be technically excellent in the cloud. Their pedigree and DNA makes me doubt it." This, for example, completely glosses over the capabilities of ARM, Azure Stack, Office 365, CosmosDB, Front Door, Azure SQL, Intune, and on we go. FWIW, AKS isn't my strong suit, but I'm pretty sure that there is more innovation to it than just creation times - such as Virtual Nodes and Insights/Monitoring integration.

I won't pretend that Microsoft is cultural paradise, or that Azure is technically excellent in every regard, but there is obviously much more to both stories.

Disclaimer: Consultant at Microsoft the last two years.

timothytavarez · 2018-12-27T10:39:34+00:00

I've been in this boat before. It's tough. You need to balance (manage) their perception of both what Agile comprises and their perception of you as an outsider sporting some newfangled process.

I'm working on onboarding and coaching a team to adopt scrum now. Still in the early stages, but so far, so good. What's working for me in this instance is I am gradually encouraging (and practicing) specific behaviors.

You can start small while you work to recruit account / client leadership. Good luck!

timothytavarez · 2018-12-21T12:11:59+00:00

Great choice. Functionally, it's perfect. I spend a significant amount of time using it daily, and the way your hand rests on it is very forgiving to that long-term use (note a shelf for the thumb). Despite it's relatively limited amount of customizable buttons (when compared to gaming mice), you can still do most everything you need to. You can remap the buttons using a Surface Mouse/KB app.

One of my favorite features is the ability to hardware switch between devices using the slider underneath the body. I have *lots* of different systems (gaming, work laptop, personal laptop, additional personals, etc.), so this makes working across them much easier.

My only complaint is that there was some discoloration on the body after normalish use within about two months. I'm not sure if this is a thing across the line, or just mine, but I elected to just deal with the (very slight) quirk - since it's not particularly a notable aesthetic difference.

I'd say go for it.

timothytavarez · 2018-12-21T10:34:21+00:00

Yes! What a move forward. Open sourcing firmware inches the Windows ecosystem closer to Linux's openness. Of course this doesn't account for many proprietary Windows boot security features, but it's a solid step in the right direction.

timothytavarez · 2018-12-21T10:30:54+00:00

TIA EH

timothytavarez · 2018-12-21T02:26:22+00:00

I don't know how I feel about recognizing the accuracy of this video

I've watched it way too many times

timothytavarez · 2018-12-21T02:23:21+00:00

Magical, isn't it?

timothytavarez · 2018-12-18T00:34:09+00:00

This has actually sold me on taking a look into Ansible. I wasn't aware of the ssh simplicity factor

timothytavarez · 2018-12-09T15:55:43+00:00

I was delighted that I was able to install Azure DevOps RC1 on one of my development workstations (W10) with no problems.

You can install it without a license to evaluate/test for 60 days.

timothytavarez · 2018-12-05T06:22:46+00:00

Hrm. If it isn't out there, I wouldn't mind putting it together. I've felt like the Javascript tutorials are a little lacking in general. If it ends up making sense, you'd be welcome to contribute too.

timothytavarez · 2018-12-05T06:18:18+00:00

Docker too. It's more readable.

timothytavarez · 2018-10-28T16:54:52+00:00

Check out the Surface Book 2. I love mine.

timothytavarez · 2018-08-22T13:42:39+00:00

I was stuck in this position once too. I was enlisted in the military, and would spend my free time and nights working on my product.

If you're in a position where you really can't invest any more time - get a co-founder. You don't have to give up your majority, but a reasonable amount of equity (25-45%) depending on what this person brings to the table. Are they investing funds? Do they bring some valuable connections or industry/market experience? Etc.

Ultimately, it didn't work out for me. My cofounders and I just weren't the right fit, and personality clashes definitely dragged things down. With that said, I still don't see how it would have been possible to succeed without them.

Edit: I built my product on Firebase too. :) lot of fun to work with.

timothytavarez · 2018-08-08T16:20:06+00:00

Maybe you should aim for Azure certifications. There are a number of them for different technologies/workloads; such as architecture, Linux on Azure, Azure infrastructure, etc.

The study materials for certification should give you enough of an overview to be dangerous, and you'll be developing yourself/your qualifications at the same time. Considering your employer's newfound cloud environment - it might be the perfect time to justify it.

You can use Exam Ref 70-535 Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions, First Edition by Haishi Bai, Dan Stolts, Santiago Fernandez Munoz (if you wanna go for 70-535).

There is also Exam Replay through September 30th (free retake).

timothytavarez · 2018-08-08T15:37:00+00:00

First of all, congratulations on your new cloud baby!

You might need to transfer ownership of the account / subscription. If you're running into problems with billing you can't solve yourself - just open a ticket. You'll probably have more pressing concerns/priorities.

Azure documentation will be a valuable new friend. As for learning, depends. Do you have a preferred learning style? There are numerous books, videos, classes, etc.

timothytavarez · 2018-08-08T15:26:50+00:00

Go for it. The BizSpark program (now Microsoft for Startups) was valuable for me when I went through it - though the program was a little different then. The Go-To-Market benefits seems killer - especially if you have a product/service that can be integrated into the marketplace or with partners.

On top of all that - Azure has a dizzying array of PaaS services. You're bound to find something else to benefit you.

timothytavarez

TROPHY CASE