The last mile problem for DevOps is Operations. "The last mile" is an economic concept, born in the telco industry, that describes the last bit of effort that is required to extract the benefit of significant previous investments. The metaphor is a good fit for the relationship between DevOps and Operations.
With the release of Rundeck 3.0, version numbers and release timing will now be synchronized across open source Rundeck and Rundeck Pro products.
In this edition of TWL, I'm highlighting a roundtable discussion that Alan Shimel (DevOps.com) moderated at the DevOps Enterprise Summit London 2018. The other participants are John Willis (SJ Technologies), Cornelia Davis (Pivotal), and myself.
The primary topic of discussion is the state of flux in which the operations field finds itself. We considered both the new infrastructure technologies and the new ways of working that are emerging.
Rundeck 3.0 is on its way. Featuring a full refresh of the UI and a significant upgrade of internal components, this is a big step forward for both the Rundeck open source project and Rundeck Pro. It is exciting enough that we are leaping from 2.x to 3.0 numbering.
IT Operations has always been difficult. There is always too much work to do, not enough time to do it, and frequent interrupts. Moreover, there is the relentless pressure from executives who hold the view that everything takes too long, breaks too often, and costs too much.
In search of improvement, we have repeatedly bet on new tools to improve our work. We’ve cycled through new platforms (e.g., Virtualization, Cloud, Docker, Kubernetes) and new automation (e.g., Puppet, Chef, Ansible). While each comes with its own merits, has the stress and overload on operations fundamentally changed?
Enterprises have also spent the past two decades liberally applying Management frameworks like ITIL and COBIT. Would an average operations engineer say things have gotten better or worse?
In the midst of all of this, there is conventional wisdom that rarely gets questioned.
In this edition of Talks We Like, we are highlighting "A Story of Being On Call" by Charity Majors at Monki Gras 2018. This talk is ostensibly about making on call better. But, it is really about managing systems and human beings smartly and humanely to get the best out of both.
