It’s Monday. The door flies open, your boss enters the room and shouts: “We need DevSecNetOps now! Otherwise we are doomed!” Apparently he has met someone on the golf course over the weekend… What is DevOps any way and how to start your journey when you are a medium sized company – this session will give some insights from a consultant perspective and talk about actual roadblocks, which you will encounter, one way or the other.

1. DevOps im Mittelstand
Falk Stern | stackconf | 16.6.2020

2. ▪ How to get started with automation
▪ Insight into processes and workflows
▪ Tips for tools that might fit your workflows
▪ No ”one-size-fits-all” solution
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What can you expect from this talk?

3. ▪ Linux & Network Admin for ~25 years
▪ Automating stuff for 20 years, starting with FAI and cfengine
▪ Leading operations teams for 8 years
▪ “DevOps” and network consulting for the last 3 years
▪ “good enough” knowledge of operations, automation, monitoring
▪ Focus on Linux/Unix
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Who am I and why am I allowed to talk about this?

4. ▪ Small and medium-sized enterprises in DACH
▪ Difficult to translate, up to 50M€ of revenue, up to 499 employees
▪ Family ownership
▪ Long term focus
▪ Industry focused, machinery, auto parts, chemicals
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Mittelstand?

5. ▪ Technology focused on commercial, off-the-shelf tooling
▪ Open Source is regarded badly, although there are notable exceptions
▪ Strong dependency on service providers
▪ Small IT departments - IT is seen as a necessity, not an enabler
▪ Many different applications
▪ Not enough time
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“Mittelstand” Technology Stack

6. “We are the pit crew. We chase the 9's; we are lazy and refuse to
do anything manually more than once.”
“DevOps is a method, not a job description”
https://theagileadmin.com/what-is-devops/
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What’s DevOps

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What’s DevOps
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Devops-toolchain.svg

8. ▪ “But our CxO told us we would be faster/better/stronger!”
▪ “You have to use $tool to be modern!”
▪ “Somebody said we have to use containers!”
▪ DevOps is a journey, not a destination
▪ Not just tools, not just culture
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Do we need DevOps?

9. NO**You don’t need this, but it will make your life easier
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Do we need DevOps?

10. ▪ Start small
▪ Break internal silos
▪ Talk to other teams (regularly!)
▪ Cultural shift needs management support
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Getting started

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Getting started
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Devops-toolchain.svg

12. ▪ Learn and use git for already present scripts
▪ Setup gitea or GitLab
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Getting started

13. ▪ Use automation tools
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Getting started
#!/bin/bash
for server in a b c d;
do ssh root@$server "apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade”
done
---
- name: software upgrade
hosts: linux_servers
remote_user: root
tasks:
- name: apt upgrade
apt:
update_cache: yes
upgrade: dist

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Use automation tools
---
- name: software upgrade
hosts: all_servers
remote_user: root
tasks:
- name: Install all security updates
apt:
update_cache: yes
upgrade: dist
when: ansible_os_family == 'Debian'
- name: Install all security updates with automatic reboots
win_updates:
category_names:
- SecurityUpdates
reboot: yes
when: ansible_os_family == 'Windows'

15. ▪ Document your setup
▪ Use an internal wiki
▪ If you do not have an inventory tool, start using one
▪ Excel isn’t
▪ Strong contenders
− Netbox (even has an Ansible inventory plugin)
− Racktables (a bit dated, no API)
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Documentation is key

16. ▪ You want to be able to see if something breaks
▪ Only monitor actionable items
▪ Build your monitoring from your automation
▪ e.g. Icinga2 is very easy to configure by Ansible
▪ Centralize logging with graylog
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Monitor your stuff

17. ▪ Communicate your capacity to other teams
▪ Have dashboards, use Grafana on big screens
▪ Ask other departments about upcoming projects
▪ Keep some headroom for the unexpected
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Plan capacity

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Plan capacity
Source: https://grafana.com/grafana/dashboards/8159

19. ▪ Continous Integration / Continous Deployment
▪ Run stuff, when you commit code
▪ Have your scripts syntax checked
▪ Run automatically, when things are updated
▪ Tools: Jenkins, drone.io, GitLab
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Cherry on top – CI/CD

20. ▪ Automation reduces errors
▪ Trivial things don’t take away brain capacity
▪ Your servers are consistent and reliable
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Why DevOps?

21. ▪ Visualize your work
▪ Have an issue tracker
▪ Try Kanban, put some post-its on a wall
▪ Meet regularly for 5-10 minutes in the morning
▪ Spend time reflecting your work
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Adding transparency

22. ▪ Start small
▪ Make your work visible
▪ Experiment with tools and methods
▪ Communicate, either directly or through management
▪ Set achievable goals
▪ Automate what you can, document what you can’t
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Wrapping it up

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Thank you for listening