The Rundeck Blog

In this edition of TWL, we are highlighting a classic that was a contributing spark to the creation of the DevOps movement.

If you flash back to 2009, the idea of a Dev leader and an Ops leader co-presenting was an odd one. You would expect them to be at different conferences, speaking on different topics. So not only was the pairing considered unusual, their content was remarkable.

The idea of tight integration between Dev and Ops to safely achieve a rate of change that was more than ten deployments per day? That was unheard of and widely considered unsafe and foolish. But, there was Paul Hammond and John Allspaw explaining how they did it and how well it was working.

This video tells the story of a typical SRE journey with Rundeck. First, using Rundeck for creating standard operating procedures and checklists. Second, using Rundeck to safely enable Operations as a Service so others who are traditionally outside of the operations organization can execute operations procedures.

In this edition of Talks We Like (TWL), I'm highlighting a talk that should be watched by anyone who is interested in the performance and effectiveness of Operations teams.

This is John Allspaw, noted operations leader turned researcher, presenting at DevOps Enterprise Summit 2017 in San Francisco.

John makes the case that our industry needs to prioritize human performance. He discusses how humans understand and interact with complex systems, especially in the face of incidents.

Rundeck's Key Storage is a set of functionality that allows you to securely store private keys, public keys, passwords, and other secrets for use in your Rundeck jobs.

Do you...

• Need a private key to ssh to a remote node?
• Need to use a key to access other tools?
• Need to use a password/passphrase for accessing APIs, databases, network devices?
• Need your scripts to have access to passwords when they execute within Rundeck?

Rundeck's Key Storage facility makes all of this a lot easier.

It has been interesting to watch how Rundeck spreads in organizations who are also adopting SRE practices. The emerging role of SRE (Site Reliability Engineering) focuses on using software engineering skills to build and operate highly-reliable and highly-scalable services.

Their Rundeck usage can be divided up into two categories that I call "helping me" and "helping you".

Going to SREcon Americas this week? Stop by the Rundeck booth in the exhibit hall.