Don't get siloed!

1. DevOps – Operations Challenges
Vijaya Kokkili
QA Manager | CommerceHub
vkokkili@gmail.com
@vkokkili

2. Sharing experience

3. How do other roles fit in DevOps?
• Microservices
• Cloud services
• Containers and Pods
But how are these effecting QA, DBA, IT?
Step 1 Step 2
Development Operations

4. How did DevOps evolve?
Frustration……
Lack of Communication
Lack of Collaboration
Increase in time and labor to deliver
Increase in time to maintain software systems

5. DevOps is not…..
A methodology X
A tool X
A process X

6. What is DevOps?
• It is a culture
• A mindset with the goal of stabilizing technology delivery via effective
collaboration
• Breaking barriers between teams
Encourages…
• Collaboration
• Communication
• More accountable
• Fast deliveries
• Continuous improvement

7. Traditional Ops
• IT infrastructure used to be a service published to the rest of the
organization
• All new requests were made to and executed by the operations team
With DevOps
The process is becoming more democratized and collaborative

8. How we started DevOps?
Project
Management
Developers Quality
Assurance
DBA Operation
Support
PM1 Dev1 QA1 DBA1 Ops1
PM2 Dev2 QA2 DBA2 Ops2
PM3 Dev3 QA3 DBA3 Ops3
PM4 Dev4 QA4 DBA4 Ops4
Dev Manager QA Manager DBA Manager Ops ManagerPS Manager

9. Challenge #1
Ownership wars
Is DevOps crushing operations?
• Do you feel control of decision-making is shifting from DBA to developer?
• Do you feel like you’re always saying “no” to developers?
Or, do you suspect that’s the impression that your coworkers have of you?
• Do you feel surprised by requests from the application development
teams or feel disconnected from what they are doing?
 Embrace shared tools and shared approaches
 Foster culture within its daily activities

10. Challenge #2
“App/Tool for that” generation
• Business users knowledge of tools
• Free trial of the tool
• Open source or SaaS based tools
Leverage shared services concept

11. Misaligned Tools
Development and Operations teams always had different set of tools
and process to deliver software
Tools/Process Type Dev/QA Ops
Issue Tracking Jira SalesForce
Version Control
Repository
ClearCase Shared drive
Monitoring None DynaTrace
Build Maven N/A
Deployment
process
Adhoc scripts Manual + Scripts
Testing Junit, QTP None

12. Challenge #3
Legacy meets cloud
• It is a cloud era
• We want to move fast
• Hybrid environments
• New components built in cloud
• Monolithic application to microservices
Get ready to become a matchmaker

13. Challenge #4
Testing of application
Functional testing – Wait until application is fully ready
Smoke testing…..
Test Plans
 Contract Testing
 Microservices Testing
(http://martinfowler.com/articles/microservice-testing/)
 Behavior Driven Development (BDD)
(https://cucumber.io/)

14. Challenge #5
Time and Budget constraints
• Massive technology shifts
• Head count
• Training on new technologies
• Hiring new skills
• On-premise tool Vs SaaS application
Need for change on how IT budgets are structured

15. Challenge #6
Global Teams
• Time zone
• Communication
• Understanding priorities
 Does this work in the DevOps culture?

16. Probable solutions
• Require all steps to deliver a s/w be automated in CD :
There is no reason to spend time separately for release
preparation
• Test every change: Not just code changes.
But also data and configuration changes.
• Staged and automated delivery pipeline: No need for separate effort to
release. Most recent version is always ready to release
• Deploy frequently : as code is ready (even partial chunk), release it!
• Test in production: Develop with ON/OFF and ability for limited user
release (Canary release)
• Include DBA’s on SQL commits

17. Probable solutions (Contd…)
• Monitoring tools : For all environments
• Infrastructure automation: Puppet, Chef
• Tools to produce h/w: Virtualization tools
• CI, Build tools, Testing tools…….

18. Leave the past
Network administrators day-to-day work is no longer about manually
configuring individual network devices by hand. As organizations embrace
SDN, infrastructure orchestration and self service, less and less time needs to
be spent doing “busy work”, and more time needs to be spent on
architecture, planning and deep problem solving.
The future of devops and continuous delivery is a progressive move toward
increasing selfservice offerings from vendors

19. Need for change
 Operation teams need to change with the changing philosophies
 Concept of NoDBA
• Familiarize with NoSQL technologies
 Share information and insights

20. Numbers talk…
Findings from the 2015 State of DevOps Report:
(Based on responses from over 20,000 tech professionals worldwide)
 High-performing IT organizations experience 60X fewer failures and
recover from failure 168X faster than their lower-performing peers. They
also deploy 30X more frequently with 200X shorter lead times
 Lean management and continuous delivery practices create the conditions
for delivering value faster, sustainably
 High performance is achievable no matter if your apps are greenfield,
brownfield or legacy
 DevOps initiatives launched solely by C-level executives or from the
grassroots are less likely to succeed

21. Finally….
The key to navigating these challenges is to embrace these changes:
• Culture
• Process
• Technologies
See challenges as opportunities

22. CommerceHub Careers
http://www.commercehub.com/about-us/careers/

23. Q & A’s
@vkokkili
vkokkili@gmail.com