This document discusses infrastructure operations agility and the journey of a sysadmin. It covers topics like infrastructure as code, observability, resiliency, production operations, and managing change and incidents. It also discusses the struggle to balance business needs, outcomes, and running the business. Case studies on automating servers and microservices on the cloud are presented. The document emphasizes that culture, structures, and priorities are key ingredients for infrastructure operations agility. It advocates for implicit trust, transparency, and nurturing people.

1. INFRA-OPS AGILITY
A Sysadmin’s Journey

2. HISTORY

3. TECHNOLOGY

4. PEOPLE & CULTURE

5. ABOUT ME
• Sys-admin by choice, 20 yrs of building &
troubleshooting technology, people and culture.
• Ex-Programmer
• Ex-Sr. Director, Directi
• Ex-VP, Technology, EIG APAC
• Partner /Technology Consultant @ xnsio
• Passion
• Lurk
• Learn
• Practise
• Lead
• Share

6. “Buzz-word free!”

7. INFRA-OPS AGILITY
• Infrastructure as code
• Speed
• Repeatable
• Reliable
• Abstraction
• Best practices
• Resilient Architectures
• HA
• DR/BCP
• Load balancing
• Scale up / down
• Eventually consistent
• Observability
• Logging
• Monitoring
• Metrics
• Tracing
• Dashboards
• Production Operations
• Software Operations
• Managing change
• Managing incidents
• Postmortems
• Chaos Engineering

8. Photo by Eiliv-Sonas Aceron on Unsplash
THE “NOW” STRUGGLE
Need -> Business (Complexity) -> Outcomes
Need
Outcomes
PM
Sales
Mgmt
HRSupport
Mktg
Compliance
IT
Finance
Dev
Ops
Legal

9. THE “NOW” STRUGGLE
Need
Outcomes
PM
Sales
Mgmt
HRSupport
Mktg
Complian
ce
IT
Finance
Dev
Ops
Legal
Features
Bugs
Incidents
Improvements
Compliance
Recruitment
Learning
People
Attritions
Finance
Building
Capabilities
- Nurtures
- Improves
- Reduces waste
Running the
Business
- Works
- Imperfect
- Significant waste

10. THE “NOW” STRUGGLE
Need
Outcomes
PM
Mgmt
HR
Support
Compli
ance
Finance
Dev
Ops
Features
Bugs
Incidents
Improvements
Compliance
Recruitment
Learning
People
Attritions
Finance
Building
Capabilities
- Implicit goals
- Lack of focus &
org. impetus
Running the
Business
- Waterfall
- Interrupts
- Surprises
- Support role
- Manual work
- Chaos
- Helplessness
- Stressfull

11. Case Study - How we automated 1000s of
servers
Getting Started
Continuos
Improvement
Resiliency Onwards Lessons Learnt
• No handcrafting,
Reduce self-
inflicted pain and
interruptions.
• Config Mgmt.
• Continuous
Delivery
• Change Mgmt.
• Incident Mgmt.
• Inventory
• OS deployment
automation.
• Improve SLAs
• Alerts to
Incidents to
Escalations
• Postmortems
• Orchestration
• From central team
structure to
product oriented.
• Pushing
responsibility to
the edges.
• Operable
Architectures
• Improve Resiliency
• Eliminate
SPOF’s
• HA
• DR
• Backups &
Restores
• Predictable
operations :
Document, test &
automate technical
process like
upgrades, restores
etc
• Adopting new
practices &
technologies
• Openstack
• Containers
• Cloud
• Security integrated
into development/
operations.
• Independent team
objectives to
squads / tribes.
• Buy vs Build
• Continuous
learning &
improvement
mentality is a pre-
requisite.
• Infrastructure as
code is a software
project.
• People need
autonomy,
consistent
feedback &
encouragement to
pursue their ideas.
• Implicit trust based
environment.
Building alignment with stakeholders and business leadership is a skill. Understand
the business nuances, know where to invest time and backup with facts. You will get
support. When you find support, execute fast. Successful outcomes builds trust.

12. Case Study - Micro services on the cloud
Getting Started Priorities Next steps
Continuos
Improvement
Lessons Learnt
• Review Infra-ops
agility.
• Production
Operations
• Observability
• Resiliency
• Infra. as Code
• Outcome oriented
structures.
• Stabilise
production
operations.
• Change
• Incidents
• Alert Fatigue
• Measure Business
SLAs / MTTRs
• Automate software
delivery.
• Improve Infra as
Code.
• Improve software
quality
• Performance,
availability and
feature velocity as
needs increases
complexity.
• Chaos Engineering
- Inject faults , learn
& iterate.
• Improve
Observability.
• Integrate security &
compliance into
development.
• Adopt new
practices &
technologies
• Build technology
capabilities / not
just functionality.
• Context is key.
• Seek Information.
• Understanding
business,
development ,
operations needs
lets you make
better decisions.
Infra-ops agility in a micro-services and cloud environment is a MUST required
engineering capability. Technology & business leaders need to plan upfront, hire the
right skills, create the right structures and optimise for not just feature velocity but
also ability to manage evolving complexity.

13. THREE KEY
INGREDIENTS

14. CULTURE
• ImplicitTrust
• Transparency
• Zero politics
• Embraces
Vulnerability
• Provides emotional
safety
• Nurtures People
• No BS feedback
• Coaching
• Learning
• Ownership
• Outcomes
• Builds life long friendships

15. STRUCTURES
Technology Product
Engineering Leadership
Dev Mgr Ops Mgr
Product
Mgr
Outcome1
Devs
Ops
UX
Outcome 2
Devs
Ops
UX
Dev Mgr Ops Mgr
Product
Mgr
Outcome1
Devs
Ops
UX
Outcome 2
Devs
Ops
UX

16. PRIORITIES
Dev Mgr
Ops Mgr
Product
Mgr
Shared goals
Operations
Automation
Features/Bugs
Incidents
Compliance
Recruitment
1:1s
Finance
Adhoc
Manual Work
People
Regulatory
Planned
Unplanned
With a long term vision
of building capabilities

17. SKILLS
Technology Product
Engineering Leadership
Dev Mgr Ops Mgr
Product
Mgr
Outcome1
Devs
Ops
UX
Outcome 2
Devs
Ops
UX
• Software Dev + Ops skills
• Product thinking traits
• EmergentTechnologies
• Great people & leadership skills
• Technology vision, Quality delivery,
Engineering Culture
• Product thinking & UI/UX skills
• Software Development
experience
• Great people & leadership skills
• Customer, Product vision,
Strategy
Specialists
Effective
Engineers
• Software Dev Expert
• Infra-ops understanding
• People, Priorities & Outcomes
• Product , UI, UX expert
• Software Dev & Infra-ops understanding
• People, Priorities & Outcomes
• Infra-ops expert
• Software Dev & Product understanding
• People, Priorities & Outcomes

18. THANKS
• Twitter : @dushyanthh
• https://medium.com/
@dushyanthh
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/
dushyy/