{"id":9518,"date":"2016-06-14T10:44:27","date_gmt":"2016-06-14T17:44:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aerocominc.com\/info\/?p=9518"},"modified":"2017-05-11T09:25:31","modified_gmt":"2017-05-11T16:25:31","slug":"cloud-therapy-ep-007-automate-server-tasks-to-level-up-in-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aerocominc.com\/info\/cloud-therapy-ep-007-automate-server-tasks-to-level-up-in-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Cloud Therapy: EP 007 &#8211; Automate Server Tasks to Level Up in IT"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aerocominc.com\/info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Automate-Server-Tasks-to-Level-Up-in-IT.jpg\" rel='magnific'><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-9519\" src=\"https:\/\/www.aerocominc.com\/info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Automate-Server-Tasks-to-Level-Up-in-IT.jpg\" alt=\"Automate Server Tasks to Level Up in IT\" width=\"578\" height=\"321\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.aerocominc.com\/info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Automate-Server-Tasks-to-Level-Up-in-IT.jpg 810w, https:\/\/www.aerocominc.com\/info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Automate-Server-Tasks-to-Level-Up-in-IT-300x167.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.aerocominc.com\/info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Automate-Server-Tasks-to-Level-Up-in-IT-250x139.jpg 250w, https:\/\/www.aerocominc.com\/info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Automate-Server-Tasks-to-Level-Up-in-IT-600x333.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 578px) 100vw, 578px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/stevetarver\/\" target=\"_blank\">Steve Tarver<\/a>, Principal Engineer at <span style=\"text-decoration: underline; color: #ff6600;\"><a style=\"color: #ff6600; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.aerocominc.com\/company-profile\/centurylink-alliance\" target=\"_blank\">CenturyLink<\/a><\/span> discusses several ways IT professionals and Sys Admins can &#8220;Level Up,&#8221; and become an extremely valued and sought-after professional, through using automation and shifting to a Dev Ops mindset.<\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"border: none;\" src=\"\/\/html5-player.libsyn.com\/embed\/episode\/id\/4431932\/height\/90\/width\/640\/theme\/custom\/autonext\/no\/thumbnail\/yes\/autoplay\/no\/preload\/no\/no_addthis\/no\/direction\/backward\/render-playlist\/no\/custom-color\/87A93A\/\" width=\"640\" height=\"90\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Want to hear more Cloud Therapy? Find us on <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/cloud-therapy-aerocominc.com\/id1112772590?mt=2\" target=\"_blank\">iTunes<\/a><\/span> and <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stitcher.com\/podcast\/cloud-therapy-with-aerocominccom?refid=stpr\" target=\"_blank\">Stitcher<\/a><\/span>!<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\"><strong>Thousands of cloud and telecom service providers&#8230; Click below to skip to your company&#8217;s top 3 &#8220;best fit.&#8221;<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><script src=\"\/\/static.leadpages.net\/leadboxes\/current\/embed.js\" async=\"\" defer=\"defer\"><\/script><button style=\"background: #f26e22; border-color: #f26e22; border-radius: 4px; color: #ffffff; display: inline-block; vertical-align: middle; padding: 16px 32px; min-width: 192px; border: 1px solid #f26e22; font-size: 1rem; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; text-align: center; outline: 0; line-height: 1; cursor: pointer; -webkit-transition: background 0.3s, color 0.3s, border 0.3s; transition: background 0.3s, color 0.3s, border 0.3s; box-shadow: 0px 5px 5px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6);\" data-leadbox-popup=\"144249073f72a2:136337e37f46dc\">MY TOP 3<\/button> <\/p>\n<h5><em>See full transcript below:<\/em><\/h5>\n<p>\u00a0 Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Are you a sysadmin or IT manager, and you\u2019re working for a company and you really want to move up, and you really want to listen to podcasts all the time that tell you about new ideas that are going on in the industry, and listen to the people who are in the forefront of innovation in terms of IT? You really want to do all these things, but you have no time? You are so busy keeping the lights green every day and putting out fires that there\u2019s no way you have any amount of time for self-improvement or career improvement? Well, if that\u2019s the case, today, I have an awesome guest for you. His name is Steve Tarver. He\u2019s the Principal Engineer at <span style=\"color: #ff6600;\"><a style=\"color: #ff6600;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.aerocominc.com\/company-profile\/centurylink-alliance\">CenturyLink<\/a><\/span>. The cool thing about Steve is he is a great person to have this conversation because he is, basically, doing a very similar job for CenturyLink that you guys are doing currently. He knows what it\u2019s like \u2013 he\u2019s been in the trenches \u2013 and he\u2019s found ways to free up his time through little tips and tricks he\u2019s done through automating some things, through changing his mindset on a couple of things. I think it\u2019d be really interesting for you guys to hear it. At the very least, I think, you guys will get a couple of great reminders.<a href=\"https:\/\/aerocominc.lpages.co\/leadbox\/1419819f3f72a2%3A136337e37f46dc\/5704147139559424\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img class=\"alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/lh3.googleusercontent.com\/RB-xlCBQ9RJ3324Drdj1avFds6qFpI54rToFB1RpABQxRsBxoYdZZjmYtZ4jpb5ZvtOyI9Dgb0SVc5tv95OwTQ=s0\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><script src=\"https:\/\/aerocominc.lpages.co\/leadbox-1491596925.js\" type=\"text\/javascript\" data-leadbox=\"1419819f3f72a2:136337e37f46dc\" data-url=\"https:\/\/aerocominc.lpages.co\/leadbox\/1419819f3f72a2%3A136337e37f46dc\/5704147139559424\/\" data-config=\"%7B%7D\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>We also have a free gift to offer you today, as we always do. This is a list of questions that if you\u2019re shopping for <span style=\"color: #ff6600;\"><a style=\"color: #ff6600;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aerocominc.com\/info\/our-products\/cloud\/servers-desktop-infrastructure\/public-shared-cloud-servers\/\" target=\"_blank\">Cloud VM<\/a><\/span> providers, you definitely have to ask yourself prior to shopping. It will help you and your IT team find the best Cloud VM provider quickly.<\/p>\n<p>To get that list of questions, I think there\u2019s twenty-five or so, I took hours, and hours, and hours talking to all these different Cloud VM service providers, ones that you\u2019ve heard of and ones that you\u2019ve never heard of, and asking them what they do well. Based on those conversations, I created a list of questions that will help you find providers like this.<\/p>\n<p>If you want the list of questions that took me hours to compile, I\u2019ll give it to you for free. All you have to do is text the word \u201cCLOUDVM\u201d to the number 44-222. Again, just text the word \u201cCLOUDVM\u201d to the number 44-222 and we will email you a free list of all those CloudVM questions.<\/p>\n<p>Alright. Let\u2019s get to this interview with Steve Tarver.<\/p>\n<p>Hi, Steve. Thanks for coming on the program.<\/p>\n<p>Steve:\u00a0\u00a0 Hey, Mike. Glad to be here.<\/p>\n<p>Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Awesome. Can you take a minute to fill in the blanks a little bit and tell us a little bit about yourself both professionally and personally?<\/p>\n<p>Steve:\u00a0\u00a0 Sure. I live out in the Colorado Mountains, elevation 8450, at a town that\u2019s so small, it doesn\u2019t even have residential postal service, and I just love it. My wife and I live a couple of blocks from the White River National Forest, so in the winter there\u2019s lots of snowboarding, snowshoeing, and getting into the backcountry, in the summer lots of mountain biking, and hiking, and getting into the backcountry.<\/p>\n<p>Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Wow.<\/p>\n<p>Steve:\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah, it\u2019s cool. Beyond that, I\u2019m a foodie. I really like Mexican, Indian, and Italian food. I usually enjoy my own cooking the most. I use yoga to keep my head and body in shape and I really enjoy experiencing other cultures through music, food, and their stories.<\/p>\n<p>Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Awesome. Wow, you are a well-rounded individual. That\u2019s awesome.<\/p>\n<p>Steve:\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah, it\u2019s a lot of fun \u2013 keeps me busy.<\/p>\n<p>Professionally, I\u2019ve been in the programming game for a couple of decades now. I\u2019ve worked in research, and startups, consultancies, small businesses, and large corporations \u2013 had a lot of diversity there. I\u2019ve been involved with Science, shrink wrapped developer tools, computer languages, financial industry, real-time data distribution, server automation, and common IT functionality. Today I\u2019m working with the CenturyLink Cloud Business Unit, more specifically, with the Database as a Service team.<\/p>\n<p>Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019s great. That\u2019s awesome. How long have you been with CenturyLink?<\/p>\n<p>Steve:\u00a0\u00a0 Through various purchases and reorganizations, just celebrated my ten-year anniversary.<\/p>\n<p>Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Oh, wow. So, you\u2019re a long-timer over there.<\/p>\n<p>Steve:\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah. They\u2019re doing something right \u2013 keeping me around.<\/p>\n<p>Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And that\u2019s cool you get to live in the mountains at the same time.<\/p>\n<p>Steve:\u00a0\u00a0 Definitely.<\/p>\n<p>Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah, that\u2019s fun. Okay, great. Tell us a little bit about what you\u2019re going to talk to us about today.<\/p>\n<p>Steve:\u00a0\u00a0 Let\u2019s start with where I work. I work in a <span style=\"color: #ff6600;\"><a style=\"color: #ff6600;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/DevOps\" target=\"_blank\">DevOps<\/a><\/span> environment. This is a two-pizza sized teams, agile processes \u2013 you\u2019ve got a product owner, an analyst, an engineering manager, and a contributor. I really enjoy this work environment compared to the traditional IT, kind of, monolithic efficiency approach.<\/p>\n<p>The difference there, when people make this migration \u2013 this is the future of enterprise IT \u2013 is that we can take a couple of these ideas and incorporate them into our work as sysadmins and really clear our work schedules, get rid of the tedium, and allow us to focus on the important things. So, no matter where you or your organization are in migration from a traditional enterprise IT to a cloud-based enterprise IT or just cloud adoption, you\u00a0 can incorporate some of these DevOps ideas, and really eliminate the tedious work, level up your skillset, build your resume, generally, become a highly desirable employee above what you already are.<\/p>\n<p>Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019s really cool. My mistake, sorry. I meant to ask you a little bit about what your day-to-day is right now with CenturyLink. You mentioned it a little bit. You mentioned you\u2019re, kind of, in a DevOps environment. Can you give us a background on what your role is at CenturyLink and how that applies to DevOps?<\/p>\n<p>Steve:\u00a0\u00a0 Well, as we piece DevOps together, we\u2019ve got these different, kind of, big roles, like, the product owner owns the vision of the product, the analyst owns the business side of it, the engineering manager is the head of all the other people that are just contributors. The contributors are going to be DBAs, and operators, sysadmins, business developers. I\u2019m a principal engineer, that\u2019s really just a title and those get, kind of, weird between companies. What does that mean in software engineering? It means you have some mastery of some programming languages, broad technology, and framework knowledge, you have built large systems, but most importantly, to me is you have whole product concern, and responsibility, and some leadership skills.<\/p>\n<p>So, how does that play out? Well, I get to move around a little bit. Last year, I was investigating new implementations and sales strategies for a sagging business sector. Then, this year I was assigned the database as a service team. Man, I\u2019m just a contributor on that team. I go out and I code features every day. Also, I\u2019m looking at new technologies and processes, and trying to figure out how we can incorporate those into our system to really smooth out our processes and make us a really high-scale, high-performing team, and then also figure out how that applies to other teams in the larger organizations, so that we can propagate those best practices throughout the whole organization.<\/p>\n<p>Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Okay. So, you not only work for a service provider who, obviously, sells services that can be sold to the sysadmins, and DevOps teams, and so forth, but you actually do that job on a day-to-day basis as well, so you, kind of, know both sides of the fence.<\/p>\n<p>Steve:\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah. We\u2019re building the product and we\u2019re living the dream. We\u2019ve constructed a great work environment, and they take in the consideration, everything from what your office looks like to your process, business process, and your development process.<\/p>\n<p>Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cool. Yeah. So, you\u2019re going to talk to us a little bit about how to, like you said, clear the clutter and increase the amount of time that you can spend on the fun stuff, right?<\/p>\n<p>Steve:\u00a0\u00a0 Sure.<\/p>\n<p>Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Alright, let\u2019s dive into it.<\/p>\n<p>Steve:\u00a0\u00a0 So, when I look at this\u2026 I\u2019m really interested in this space where we have the traditional enterprise IT and we\u2019re trying to migrate, trying to level up, improve our businesses, our corporations, and also our personal lives. When I look at that, and I talked a little bit about how we can pull in some of these DevOps ideas no matter where we are and use them to improve ourselves and make a bigger contribution to the corporation.<\/p>\n<p>I also get to see a lot of individual teams go through this migration, so I see patterns emerge and that\u2019s where I came up with some of these ideas. So, the first ideas are reimagining yourself as an ops developer. The reason this is important is because many operators are so busy keeping the lights green that they have no time to think about how they work or how they improve their situation. So, what if you took the simple step of reimagining yourself as an ops developer instead of a sysadmin or an operator?<\/p>\n<p>In the DevOps world, we have the notion of business developers and ops developers. Ops developers believe the mantra \u201cAutomate or die\u201d and they focus on programming to solve their problems. They use IT automation tools like Ansible and Saltstack, and Chef, or Puppet to manage infrastructure, and language is like Python or Ruby to interact with the platform as a service and the various service APIs to automate or in remediation.<\/p>\n<p>This family of IT automation \u2013 and I\u2019ll use Ansible as a concrete example \u2013 they let you define your infrastructure. They\u2019re usually declarative in nature and you define the end state that you want.<\/p>\n<p>So, today, I might get a ticket requesting a new web server. I\u2019ll go out, and I\u2019ll create the server, and I\u2019ll SSH to it, apt-get update, apt-get install Nginx, and then service nginx start.<\/p>\n<p>In contrast, in Ansible, I\u2019ll write a role-named web server and then a yaml file in the role, it\u2019ll have an apt-get update and install, and do the service start. Then, in the playbook, I can call the API to create the server. So, now I\u2019ve got one line that I can execute from my command line that will run this complete Ansible playbook, and is going to create the server, and applies the role \u201cweb server\u201d to that new VM.<\/p>\n<p>Now, instead of twenty or thirty minutes, maybe to remember how to set up NGINX and actually do it, I can Ansible up the NGINX playbook one shell command. Beyond that, you could define a corporate standard with much more sophisticated configuration and everybody could use that. Then, beyond that, you can evolve the role to remove old versions and install new ones to upgrade a fleet of servers. So, see how we\u2019re building on this, kind of, atomic unit to get more and more value out of it, but each thing is a programming step.<\/p>\n<p>Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Got it.<\/p>\n<p>Steve:\u00a0\u00a0 Now imagine if you apply that approach to the HAProxy that sits in front of the web server, the middle or large server, and the data stores, so it\u2019s your whole stack. Also, remember that you\u2019re going to have to do this for a new product in dev, in QA, and also in prod. Look at all that time that you\u2019re saving.<\/p>\n<p>So, each of these IT automation tools is pretty cool and they have their own way of managing server drift and, of course, updating server-installed software. There\u2019s a little bit of a learning curve, but there are a ton of Ansible playbooks on Github that will provide great starting points for NGINX or any of these common infrastructure components. All you have to do is start with one of those and evolve it to suit your needs. So, that\u2019s getting all of your infrastructure in place, controlling drift, like, people go out and mess with the circle a little bit, and you want to bring it back to a known state.<\/p>\n<p>But, what about remediation? Let\u2019s say you resize your attached storage, and you df -h, and the and the size is just not right, so you figure out how to rescan the devices and correct the problem. Well, you can do this with an Ansible ad hoc command. This is just one command line in the shell, go out and SSH out, and run the commands that you need to remediate this issue.<\/p>\n<p>The advantage of this is that you\u2019re eliminating the SSH part and the bash script part. When you have an ad hoc command or just a very simple playbook to do this, it becomes a one-liner. You can capture all of the information that you found out while you\u2019re investigating the error, and to remediate it, and how to make sure that it\u2019s completed properly with this Ansible playbook or this script that runs the ad hoc command. What\u2019s cool about that is, now you\u2019ve captured all that knowledge, you can give this to the junior staff and that\u2019s both a training aid and is also getting stuff off your plate.<\/p>\n<p>Next, all cloud providers provide robust REST APIs for their platforms and all the services. They do a pretty good job of documenting those APIs. So, armed with Python or Ruby, it\u2019s pretty trivial to peace these APIs together to generate useful reports or usage monitoring. All of these things come together to, really, eliminate the repetitive kind of task that you do. When you code them, it\u2019s also very easy to give to your junior staff or even developers or other people that could safely run these fixes. So, that\u2019s my first idea.<\/p>\n<p>Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019s really cool. What I love about how you\u2019re explaining it, Steve, is that you are using words that I have no clue what they are, but I know our audience does, which is great. There, I think, a lot of our audience is really following along with you, but from my standpoint, I still get the gist. The whole point is looking at it from \u2013 when you say like reimagine yourself as an ops developer, you\u2019re trying to automate stuff, so you\u2019re, kind of, taking a step back and saying, \u201cLook at all the different processes that I\u2019m going through. Is there a way to really automate these things and make them faster,\u201d is that correct?<\/p>\n<p>Steve:\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019s exactly it. That\u2019s the key to that strategy is that you want to go out and do the remediation, figure out what\u2019s going on with this bug, really understand it, and then you create one fix, and you do that one time. Then, you can use that one piece of code everywhere. You don\u2019t have to go through that twenty or thirty that it took you to figure out what the heck is going on here?<\/p>\n<p>Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah, that\u2019s great. Now, just from a devil\u2019s advocate standpoint \u2013 what do you think the one objection that a sysadmin might have to that, if we\u2019re telling them to do that? What\u2019s the barrier that\u2019s really standing in their way? Is it knowledge to be able to automate it? Is it familiarity with the programs that it takes to automate it? Or, is it something else that you think might be standing in their way?<\/p>\n<p>Steve:\u00a0\u00a0 Well, there are a couple of things. I love what motivates people and understanding that. So, at first, getting started with any of these programs \u2013 we use Ansible and Saltstack primarily. There\u2019s a bit of a learning curve, so it takes longer and you\u2019ve got people banging on your door, \u201cI need this up now.\u201d That stops you from jumping in. Then, there\u2019s also, you know, sysadmins are the heroes, because when you\u2019re stuff just goes crazy, they\u2019re the guys that bring it back in line. That\u2019s pretty addictive stuff, you know? So, being able, I guess, to combat or to counter those objections, get your system running, and then take a half hour\/an hour afterwards to, kind of, retro the situation, and set aside some time to create this automation to fix this problem.<\/p>\n<p>In the modern world, it\u2019s not whether you have these alerts come up, these outages come up. That doesn\u2019t matter. We know that\u2019s going to happen \u2013 that\u2019s a given. What matters is how fast you can get the systems back online. When you can recognize the key attributes of a system, apply automated remediation to it, and get that system back up in a few minutes as opposed to twenty or thirty that would take you to remember, you know, \u201cWhat was really going on here and what was the fix?\u201d man, you are going to stand out.<\/p>\n<p>Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah. I think that\u2019s what\u2019s important to recognize too is sometimes it\u2019s like, \u201cWell, why do I put all that effort into something, into trying to do all that and go outside of my comfort zone? Hey, it\u2019s working now and everything\u2019s fine,\u201d but we all want to get promoted, we all want to get recognized, we all want to put things on our resume. That\u2019s really the mentality that will get you there, I think, is if you\u2019re really trying to think in the company\u2019s best interest. If you do that, although it doesn\u2019t seem like it works out for you in the short term, it, kind of, puts more work on your plate for the same amount of money, the long term, that\u2019s really the right thinking.<\/p>\n<p>Steve:\u00a0\u00a0 Well, you know what it does? It starts you down this path where you have more free time and you\u2019re elevating your thought process. \u00a0\u00a0 Instead of diving in and doing really repetitive things, you solve that problem and now you\u2019re able to have some free time to think about, \u201cWell, what other problems could I solve and get off my plate to free up more time?\u201d You\u2019re elevating the level of thought that you\u2019re applying to your task.<\/p>\n<p>Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019s awesome. Fantastic. Okay, what\u2019s next?<\/p>\n<p>Steve:\u00a0\u00a0 Well, next, I think, what a really cool idea is to create a developer proof of concept account. One thing that limits business agility is resource constraints. If developers don\u2019t have access to on-demand temporary servers, it\u2019s really difficult to experiment with new technologies, frameworks, or other strategies like improving your continuous delivery pipeline.<\/p>\n<p>Now, if you\u2019re lucky enough to be able to provide developers with those services very quickly\u2026 It could be one of those tedious tasks that just eat away at your day. What if, instead, you created a developer PoC account with your cloud provider and gave your developers the keys to the kingdom \u2013 let them manage it.<\/p>\n<p>So, every cloud provider should be able to create a sub-account on your main account \u2013 and there are varying levels of sophistication and limiting resource use (monitoring, billing charges, that kind of stuff) \u2013 you can work with pretty much whatever any of the major providers give you. Now, you have some empowered, happy developers that are ready to really just revolutionize your org.<\/p>\n<p>Now, a little bit on expectations here. When developers first get this facility, they may not know what to do with it. No worries, because no servers, no charges. But, as the developers start to wrap their heads around the idea of, \u201cI can have a server any time I want. It only takes a couple of minutes to spin it up and I can tear it down before lunch,\u201d man, you\u2019ll see that facility is used more and more, and soon the developers just won\u2019t know how they lived without it.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s one of the radical transformations I saw this year &#8211; just in myself, having this ability to spin up a new Percona management system or any of these other little technologies that I want to play with. It can be a short-lived server or I can let it stay around for a couple of weeks and let other people play with it and see what ideas I\u2019m trying to promote \u2013 very cool stuff.<\/p>\n<p>Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah. The first thing that comes to mind is, just like you said, is \u2013 will they know what to do with it? Is there anything that you suggest throwing out there to them to, kind of, spur their creativity, too, kind of get them started? Kind of like when you write a paper or you have to write something, it\u2019s always that first paragraph, that first sentence that\u2019s the hardest for them. Are there any suggestions or tips you might have to, kind of, spur their creativity and give them some ideas as to what they might do or where they might start? I think, there\u2019s probably a little gap there where they\u2019re thinking, \u201cWhat could I do?\u201d \u201cWhat do I start with? I can\u2019t reinvent the wheel on anything we\u2019re doing.\u201d What are your thoughts on that?<\/p>\n<p>Steve:\u00a0\u00a0 Okay. Here\u2019s an area that bridges operations and the business developer side: and that\u2019s logging. How do we do logging? It\u2019s also an underlooked, underserved market because, the developers, it\u2019s, kind of, their own little private playground and they log what helps them develop the product. But, then, if you\u2019re an operator, you need to read those logs, it\u2019s like, \u201cWhat in the world is going on? I\u2019m missing this piece of information and that\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There are two main aspects to developer-based logging. That\u2019s going to be the kind of logging that you use to remediate a specific issue and that you use to, kind of, understand how your application is performing under load and over time. The first one is \u2013 you see this, kind of, diary-based entries, like, received a request to create a new server and then just all the steps that it takes to do it. The second thing is really interesting to operators and sysadmins and that\u2019s the ability to understand how many requests to create a server happened this hour, last week, how does it vary over the last seven days.<\/p>\n<p>So, logging systems that are typical like Splunk or the ELK Stack, those kinds of things, they\u2019re not that good at doing that kind of thing and they\u2019re also difficult to include all the information that you want. However, there\u2019s another system called Prometheus, and this is one that\u2019s coming up. It\u2019s a really great system. It is really adept at analyzing time series-based data. So, you can set an adapter upon, let\u2019s say, you have a job, an app, on a Tomcat. You can hook up the Prometheus server to the access log, and then pipe it into this Prometheus server, and very easily write queries to see all these information the operators want.<\/p>\n<p>Very long description there, so let\u2019s go back and recap. Developers come out and they see these new technologies like Prometheus, and it\u2019s getting a lot of good press because it\u2019s an outstanding system, and they want to try it out. Now, with their proof of concept account, they can go spin up a server and install Prometheus, and play with it, make that last for a day, they can tear it down, save some dollars. Then, they can stand it up again, let it run for a couple of weeks, collect some data, and let the operators play with it, let other developers play with it. This becomes their proof of concept. Do we want to include this as a standard part of our infrastructure? So, that\u2019s a very specific example. Operations can do this do once you have this little PoC area.<\/p>\n<p>Get out there and listen to the people that are changing the industry. Listen to what they have to say in the podcast. When they come up with these great ideas or an interesting technology, you can carve out in, like, a morning and go whip up a new server because it, literally, takes just a few minutes, then you SSH out to it, install the software, and you can play with it. This is the garden that all these great ideas grow in.<\/p>\n<p>Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Very cool. I get exactly what you\u2019re saying. I think that\u2019s a really good example to help spur some creativity there. Now, being someone who\u2019s had experience with this, do you have any tips or warnings about the other side of the spectrum as far as the restraints or constraints that you want to place on these servers or, kind of, rules that you might want to set up to prevent the other thing from happening, them doing it too much or taking it too far?<\/p>\n<p>Steve:\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah, sure. Each cloud provider is going to have a little bit different level of sophistication in the monitoring and the kind of limits that you can put on an individual account. For instance, one provider might allow you to say, \u201cI only want this account to be able to use, say, 50 CPUs.\u201d That\u2019s great, but if they don\u2019t have that, there are workarounds \u2013 you can create automation.<\/p>\n<p>So, first, when you start up a new server, if you\u2019re doing it, you can just set the lifetime of the server. Create a new server, down at the bottom you click a little box, and say, \u201cAutomatically delete the server after three days.\u201d If you\u2019re doing it for the developers, they can say, \u201cHey, I want one for three days,\u201d and you can set it up for them or they can do that themselves. This is a great way to minimize cost.<\/p>\n<p>Now, also, you don\u2019t get charged when your servers aren\u2019t running. One thing you can do is you can turn down all these fully-configured servers at night and on the weekend, and write an automation, as we discussed before, using Python and the platform as a service APIs.<\/p>\n<p>Another thing you can do is really make the developers culpable for their account. If you can\u2019t directly limit them, make them culpable for it. You can set up an allowance, and then you can create and automate report generation that shows how much they\u2019ve used over the given month, what they\u2019re tracking, say, \u201cWe\u2019re going to let you have $250 to spend each month on servers.\u201d When you give them that goal and you give them a way to track what they\u2019re spending, then developers will just eat that up. You\u2019ll be surprised at how well they stick within guidelines.<\/p>\n<p>Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Very cool. Great tips. Okay. Any other good points to level up?<\/p>\n<p>Steve:\u00a0\u00a0 Well, I had one more. This is to have the developers create and manage the infrastructure automation. We\u2019ve already talked a little bit about how Ansible, Chef, Puppet, and Saltstack work, right? We\u2019ve identified that we have fewer sysadmins and more work to do. Let\u2019s look at this situation. Let\u2019s think through how augmenting existing infrastructure happens in traditional enterprise IT.<\/p>\n<p>So, the developers go through \u2013 they have a new idea, they get a new product going, right? They come to you and they say, \u201cI have a new application and I need another Tomcat to host it.\u201d You whip up a new server, install a Tomcat, and you turn it over.<\/p>\n<p>Day 2: Developer says, \u201cI need these modifications to the server.\u201d You apply the changes, notify the developers.<\/p>\n<p>Day 3: Developer says, \u201cI need these modifications to the Tomcat instance,\u201d so you apply the changes, notify the developer.<\/p>\n<p>By the way, there are probably some miscommunications along the way, and you had to redo some of those changes, and there are probably several reiterations.<\/p>\n<p>About day 25 the developer say, \u201cWe\u2019re ready to move the app to the testing environment,\u201d so you repeat all the work that you did in the dev environment in a new testing environment.<\/p>\n<p>Now, the developer say, about day 45, \u201cWe\u2019re ready to move the app to prod,\u201d so you repeat all the work that you\u2019ve done in testing and in dev.<\/p>\n<p>I go through this, kind of, long example to show just how much work there is that you\u2019re being asked to do. Well, what if we made the developers responsible for developing the infrastructure\/automation that sets up this system? Right off the bat, you\u2019ve eliminated the communication overhead and all the miscommunications that happen \u2013 the developers are doing it themselves. You\u2019ve also eliminated delays while one group waits on another. These both benefit the company through increased business agility, but you\u2019ve also cleared a lot off your plate.<\/p>\n<p>In this scenario, the ops developer is put in, kind of, a supervisory code review role. The business developers have their own PoC account, as we discussed earlier, and they can develop and prove-out their Ansible playbooks. Then, they can come to the ops developer for some help and a final review to make sure they\u2019re catching the edge cases, and have proper configuration, and all that kind of stuff \u2013 that final seal of approval from operations, the experts, on infrastructure.<\/p>\n<p>Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Awesome. I think that makes a lot of sense because if they\u2019re creating it, they own it. Obviously, they\u2019re going to be hands-on and really close to what\u2019s going on, so it gives them empowerment as well.<\/p>\n<p>Steve:\u00a0\u00a0 I agree and that\u2019s what I\u2019ve seen.<\/p>\n<p>Now, another hint on adoption for this\u2026 At first, developers will balk. It\u2019s more for them to do. It\u2019s expanding what they do. But, once they get over that hump, they get over that learning curve \u2013 this is where the operators, or sysadmins, or ops developers can help out by teaching them and get them over that hump. Once they\u2019ve gotten over the hump, they\u2019ll love it because they\u2019re not waiting on anybody else \u2013 the world is in their hands. It gives them a great feeling of empowerment and control over their destiny.<\/p>\n<p>Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Right. Very cool. Now that they have all these free time from this great advice that you gave them, what are they supposed to do with all these time?<\/p>\n<p>Steve:\u00a0\u00a0 Level up. Because, you know, you\u2019re stuck just with the tedium, now you\u2019re free to find out what all the new cool stuff is going on. There are people that are really pushing the operations and sysadmin world, people like Andrew Clay Shafer, Mitchell Hashimoto, see what they\u2019re doing and how they approach this. All of this is going to let you think about problems at a much higher level, which is so much more satisfying and, of course, it\u2019s a great career-builder. It makes you more valuable to your company or any other future employer.<\/p>\n<p>Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Absolutely. Very cool advice. Very good topic. Thank you so much for sharing all that stuff with us.<\/p>\n<p>Steve:\u00a0\u00a0 Excellent. I was happy to.<\/p>\n<p>Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Alright. Now, I\u2019d like to shift a little bit to something a little more lighthearted and quite a bit off-topic. Steve, one thing we always like to talk to our guests about is: tell us something funny \u2013 lighten our day up a little bit. Tell us, what\u2019s the funniest, or strangest, or coolest thing you\u2019ve ever seen in the workplace?<\/p>\n<p>Steve:\u00a0\u00a0 Well, it\u2019s, kind of, a constant, sort of, behavior with this new team. Let me describe a little bit where I work. Our team room is this huge rectangle with a couch and a large screen T.V. with a front. I\u2019m a remote worker, so I sit in a Google Hangout all day on this big screen T.V. So, I can see the whole room and my head is on this big screen T.V. They\u2019ll jack with me and put mustaches or hats on me during meetings, and sometimes maximize the hangout so there\u2019s this giant Max Headroom, kind of, disembodied head on the T.V.<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s great about that is somebody will come in from another team, they\u2019re on a mission, and they\u2019ll start a conversation with somebody sitting on the couch, and I\u2019m right behind them. I\u2019ll say, \u201cHey, Brad,\u201d and they\u2019ll jump and they\u2019ll turn around. They\u2019ll see my huge head and their face is just perfect. Is that a big brother kind of funny? I don\u2019t know. It never gets old.<\/p>\n<p>Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019s cool. Yeah, it\u2019s almost like borderline prank. I mean, it just sets up so many possible pranks. That\u2019s awesome.<\/p>\n<p>Steve:\u00a0\u00a0 Well, it\u2019s like that though. It\u2019s, kind of, like a frat house. I\u2019m sitting in this hangout and I can see everyone in the room, kind of, like a reality T.V. show. I\u2019ll watch plans unfold and one Nerf ball or Nerf dart will fly across the monitor fence in the middle of the room. Then, another, and then retaliation, and then sometimes there\u2019ll be a minor skirmish that breaks out. It\u2019s really cool to watch a bunch of thirty-something nerds just pranking and laughing at work.<\/p>\n<p>Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019s pretty cool. Now, I\u2019m just curious. Is the Google Hangout \u2013 is it set up all day long? Are you, basically, on the screen all day long or is it just certain periods of time where you pop in and you\u2019re talking to a couple of people? Or, is it just like constantly monitoring you like big brother, like you\u2019re sitting there?<\/p>\n<p>Steve:\u00a0\u00a0 Well, you know, it\u2019s a little bit like big brother, but you can change the way that you think about it. I\u2019ve got my hangout right in front of the camera, so I\u2019m making good eye contact with the people, and they\u2019ve got theirs, and they can see me and see what I\u2019m doing. Maybe I\u2019ll have my headphones off and they\u2019ll know I\u2019m not listening or I\u2019ll be blanked out.<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s really cool about it is anybody can walk up to me anytime and just start talking. They\u2019ll come down, they\u2019ll bring their computer up, sit down on the couch, and ask me a question, or they can yell at me from across the room, and I can Screenhero, you know, write to them directly, we can pair program on it. In the DevOps world, there\u2019s a lot of pair programming that goes on. Like this morning, we sat down, everybody at the couch, me at the Google hangout, and we\u2019re writing Ansible roles and playbooks. Pretty cool stuff.<\/p>\n<p>Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That is pretty cool. I guess, my self-conscious side of me is just thinking like, \u201cGosh. Am I sitting there with my jaw wide open all day long staring and everybody\u2019s seeing me in a way that I don\u2019t want to be seen?\u201d Heaven forbid I pick my nose or something and forget that I\u2019m on camera, and everybody\u2019s like, \u201cWhat is he doing over there?\u201d or something, I guess. But, after a while, you probably just get used to it, huh?<\/p>\n<p>Steve:\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah. You\u2019ve got to be able to laugh at yourself. We don\u2019t really have cubes or anything like that. It\u2019s a big open space, everybody sits next to each other, so people are going to see you if you\u2019re doing that anyway.<\/p>\n<p>Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019s hilarious. That\u2019s great. So, are they watching you right now as we speak?<\/p>\n<p>Steve:\u00a0\u00a0 No, I turned that off. It\u2019s too distracting.<\/p>\n<p>Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah. I was thinking, yeah, they\u2019re going to be like, \u201cHey, quick question,\u201d and you\u2019re going to be giving them sign language like, \u201cNot now. On. Podcast.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Steve:\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah. Heavy on the sign language, probably.<\/p>\n<p>Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah. That\u2019s cool. Alright. Now that we\u2019ve learned a little bit about you and, obviously, know that you know what you\u2019re talking about when it comes to DevOps, and sysadmins, and some really good tips, why don\u2019t you take a minute about to tell us a little bit about what\u2019s going on at CenturyLink that you\u2019re excited about and what everybody should know about what you guys are doing?<\/p>\n<p>Steve:\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah, great. Well, since your audience already knows telecom, they probably know CenturyLink for its telecom and its networking chops, but CenturyLink is a huge company. It\u2019s like 43,000 employees.<\/p>\n<p>Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Holy cow. That\u2019s a lot.<\/p>\n<p>Steve:\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s vast. The telecom and networking isn\u2019t all they do. Two years ago they bought Tier 3 to gain a stronger position in the cloud marker and that\u2019s the part of the company that I work in, more specifically, as I mentioned before, with database as a service team.<\/p>\n<p>So, following on our team of simplifying a sysadmin\u2019s life, what if you or your developers could just press a button and have a database in a couple of minutes? You wouldn\u2019t have to create a server, SSH to it, and then apt-get update\/install dance, set up the password, set up backups, maybe do a little tuning \u2013 you or the developer would just press a button. This really changes the game when you\u2019re thinking about developer PoCs. These are MySQL compatible databases that we have tuned for a well-balanced read\/write load. They already have backups running nightly and you have a replication option for when you move your app to prod.<\/p>\n<p>Developers have easy access to the database through the MySQL workbench. So, as a PoC, developers will probably start with a 1 CPU, 1 Gb RAM, 1 Gb disk kind of database, and then as they load test, they can push another button, maybe a couple of buttons, and push the CPU count, the RAM, the storage to tune it to what\u2019s expected for the production load.<\/p>\n<p>The service that we provide, this DBaaS (database as a service) has a full public API, so you can provision databases and your infrastructure automation, as we talked about before. This can be just a normal part of your stack. Our services went GA at the end of January and we\u2019re adding features at a pretty rapid clip.<\/p>\n<p>If you want to try this out, new customers have a free trial. This is really easy to sign up for. You can go to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ctl.io\">http:\/\/www.ctl.io<\/a> and click \u201cFree Trial\u201d at the top right \u2013 this little button. You\u2019ll get a verification code on your phone, you enter that, enter some personal details and a credit card, and you get $500 in credit. If you are going to use this just for the database service, to try it out, you get a 1 CPU, 1 Gb RAM, 1 Gb disk database for $0.02 an hour \u2013 that\u2019s $16.50 a month. So, if you ran this database 24\/7, you can run it for 30 bucks just for free, just to try this system out. Now, you can use that credit on any of the other facilities as well.\u00a0 So, that\u2019s all pretty cool stuff.<\/p>\n<p>One of the other cool things that we do at CenturyLink is every team contributes to the blogs. We have some pretty nice blogs. I\u2019d like to encourage people to go out and look at what we have to say about, kind of, the whole, well, every way that we work. You can go out there and find things like how we get the best use out of Chef, how our agile processes work, how we redesigned our offices to focus on engineering joy and really easy, impromptu collaboration.<\/p>\n<p>There are also, of course, articles about getting started on the platform, using the services, and building applications with our Ansible, Node, Java, .Net, PHP, Python, all the SDKs that we provide to make it easy to interact with our platform. We can probably put the URLs in the show notes.<\/p>\n<p>Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Absolutely. If any of our listeners are thinking about some of your products or would just like to maybe chat with you about a couple of things they are thinking about regarding the topic that you brought up, would you be okay if they contacted us if we set up, like, a three-way call or something like that?<\/p>\n<p>Steve:\u00a0\u00a0 Sure. I\u2019m sure we can work something out.<\/p>\n<p>Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Awesome. Fantastic. So, if anybody wants to talk to Steve about something specific, just shoot us an email. Tell us what you\u2019d like to talk to him about and we\u2019ll send it over to him and try to set something up. But, other than that, it\u2019s been fantastic. Thanks a lot for coming on the show today, Steve.<\/p>\n<p>Steve:\u00a0\u00a0 Great. It was a joy to be here with you, Mike.<\/p>\n<p>Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Alright. Well, hopefully, we\u2019ll be talking soon with some people. Again, thanks for coming on.<\/p>\n<p>Steve:\u00a0\u00a0 You\u2019re very welcome.<\/p>\n<p>Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Alright, IT Nation, what did you think about that? Wasn\u2019t Steve great? You can tell by the way he\u2019s throwing out some of those terms there \u2013 he\u2019s done that stuff, man. He\u2019s really been in the trenches and knows what he\u2019s talking about. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.<\/p>\n<p>Also, just wanted to drop you a quick note, as we\u2019re recording this, this last weekend, I attended an event. It was called the McKennaClaire Party for a Purpose. If you know anything about our company, you know that we support brain cancer or pediatric brain cancer research, especially through the McKennaClaire organization. If you want to know more about that, click on \u201cWhy Pediatric Brain Cancer?\u201d on our website and it\u2019ll tell you the whole story about our background.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s just a big reminder to me of what\u2019s really important. This disease, this pediatric brain cancer research is called DIPG. It is a monster of a cancer that affects seven-year-old kids, typically, and it has a 0% survival rate. Basically, these parents have to watch their kids slowly deteriorate and pass away right before their eyes within six to nine months. It\u2019s horrible. It is a horrible monster of a disease. We\u2019re doing everything we can as a company to fight it.<\/p>\n<p>The cool thing is all you guys have to do to help us out is to go on to our website, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.AeroComInc.com\">http:\/\/www.AeroComInc.com<\/a> and write reviews on your providers. For every review that you write, we will $1 towards pediatric brain cancer research, which, basically, goes to the McKenna Claire Foundation and researching all this stuff. I know with more research money, they\u2019re going to find a cure for this thing, because they haven\u2019t had a lot of research funding up to this point, and now they\u2019re finally making some breakthroughs and they\u2019re getting places.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s just not right that any parent should have to go through this kind of thing. We all die. We\u2019re all going to die. Death is normal, but this is just something that hits close to home with little kids. It\u2019s just not necessary. So, just a quick note there \u2013 don\u2019t want to bum you guys out too bad, but just a reminder \u2013 something I was thinking about. Everyone can contribute. It\u2019s really easy \u2013 you just go on and write a review. You don\u2019t have to donate money. We\u2019ll donate the money. Just go ahead and write a review and we\u2019ll do that, so just a quick reminder there<\/p>\n<p>Also, just another quick reminder about our free gift, the list of CloudVM questions. These are the list of questions, that I took hours, and hours, and hours of research to compile, that you should ask yourself prior to shopping CloudVM providers. It will help you find a perfect CloudVM provider for your company a lot faster than it normally would.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ll give it to you for free. All you have to do is text the word \u201cCLOUDVM\u201d to the number 44-222. Again, text the word \u201cCLOUDVM\u201d to the number 44-222 and we will email you a free copy of that list of twenty-five or so questions that I have for you. Hopefully, that will help you the next time you\u2019re shopping.<\/p>\n<p>Alright. Until next time. Enjoy your day and I wish you all the green lights in the world today.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Steve Tarver, Principal Engineer at CenturyLink discusses several ways IT professionals and Sys Admins can &#8220;Level Up,&#8221; and become an extremely valued and sought-after professional, through using automation and shifting to a Dev Ops mindset. Want to hear more Cloud<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aerocominc.com\/info\/cloud-therapy-ep-007-automate-server-tasks-to-level-up-in-it\/\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\">Read more &#8250;<\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":9519,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[371],"tags":[662,661,422,429,664,665,426,424,590,428,423,651,601,660,271,564,663],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aerocominc.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9518"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aerocominc.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aerocominc.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aerocominc.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aerocominc.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.aerocominc.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aerocominc.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aerocominc.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aerocominc.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aerocominc.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}