DevOps stuff

How to Survive Being a DevOps

In the ever-evolving landscape of technology, the role of DevOps has rapidly carved its indispensable niche. As experts bridging the chasm between development (Dev) and operations (Ops), DevOps professionals ensure that software is not just developed right, but also deployed right. Yet, I’m acutely aware of the current friction and debates regarding the longevity of the DevOps role, especially with emerging discussions about whether it will be overshadowed or even replaced by Platform Engineers. Regardless of these debates, the DevOps profession comes with its unique set of challenges. Here are some survival tips for thriving as a DevOps engineer:

Embrace Continuous Learning:
The tech world never stands still, and neither should you. Tools, platforms, and methodologies keep evolving. Stay updated with the latest in the field, attend webinars, workshops, and conferences.
Automate Everything:
The mantra of DevOps is automation. From continuous integration, continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines to infrastructure as code (IAC), the more you automate, the smoother your workflows will be.
Cultivate Soft Skills:
DevOps isn’t just about technical knowledge. Communication, empathy, and collaboration skills are equally crucial. Often, you’ll be the bridge between teams with differing objectives; soft skills will be invaluable.
Prioritize Work-Life Balance:
Burnout is a genuine concern in a role that can be 24/7 due to deployment schedules and uptime requirements. It’s essential to set boundaries, take breaks, and remember self-care.
Understand the Business:
To offer the best solutions, you need to understand the business requirements and goals. This will not only make you more effective but also showcase your value to the organization.
Establish Clear Communication Channels:
Since DevOps professionals often work at the intersection of various teams, establishing clear communication channels helps in reducing friction and miscommunication.
Celebrate Small Wins:
In a fast-paced environment, it’s easy to move from one task to another without recognizing achievements. Celebrating small wins helps keep motivation high and fosters a positive team environment.
Seek Feedback and Continuously Improve:
Constructive criticism is a tool for growth. Regularly seek feedback on your work, and be willing to iterate and improve upon your processes.
Stay Security Conscious:
With the rise of cyber threats, a DevOps professional must always be security-minded. Ensure that security best practices are ingrained in every step of the development and deployment process.
Build a Supportive Network:
Connect with fellow DevOps professionals. Having a support system can be an invaluable resource for sharing knowledge, best practices, and even venting about common challenges.

Mastering the role of a DevOps hinges on a balance of technical acumen, soft skills, and a proactive approach to one’s well-being. With the right strategies and mindset, I’m sure that WE can handle the challenges of this role with resilience and success.

October 6, 2023 by Fernando SRE DevOps stuff 0

SRE Perspectives: Dependency Management in Modern Infrastructures

Dependency management is a cornerstone of successful software projects, transcending programming languages and architectural frameworks. As we embrace the shift towards service-based and microservices architectures, managing dependencies efficiently becomes even more crucial.

While at first glance, dependency management might seem straightforward, the intricacies can catch engineering teams off-guard. What begins as simply adding a few lines of code can turn into a complex ordeal as systems scale and evolve.

Within this context, collaboration between different roles, from software architects to Site Reliability Engineers (SREs), becomes pivotal. While architects play a leading role in determining and managing dependencies, SREs contribute their expertise to ensure that dependencies do not jeopardize the system’s stability, security, or performance.

Best Practices in Dependency Management

Leverage Dependency Management Tools: Tools like Ant, Maven, and Gradle make the process transparent, centralizing dependencies for easy maintenance and enhancement.
Harness Artifact Management Solutions: Solutions such as Nexus, Archiva, and Artifactory provide centralized repository management and effective caching, optimizing dependency management and accelerating build times.
Expunge Unused Dependencies: Removing unused dependencies is akin to cleaning up dead code—it reduces challenges during updates and streamlines the codebase.
Uphold Consistent Versioning: Adhering to standard versioning conventions prevents compatibility issues and reduces complexity. Maintain Separate Configurations: Sharing configurations across projects can create unnecessary coupling. It’s best to maintain separate configurations, except in the cases of monoliths or monorepos.
Regularly Update Dependencies: Staying updated is essential to address bugs, security issues, and reduce technical debt, ensuring smooth deployments and service continuity.
Prudent Management of Shared Dependencies: Careful handling of shared libraries is essential to prevent over-coupling and challenges during updates.

The Holistic View of Dependency Management

Dependency management is more than just tool utilization, it’s an integral part of organizational culture and thoughtful automation. Recognizing its role in the software development lifecycle is critical, as neglect can lead to significant operational and maintenance challenges.

In environments fervently adopting CI/CD, observability, DevOps, and SRE practices, it’s easy for dependency management to be overlooked. However, its significance remains paramount. Effective dependency management not only enhances development efficiency but also fortifies the long-term success of tech initiatives. Thus, it deserves the attention and meticulous care of all stakeholders involved, from developers to SREs.

Navigating Kubernetes: Understanding and Addressing the OutOfPods Error

When maneuvering through Kubernetes, one might often encounter the notorious “OutOfPods” error. This error message is predominantly seen when delving into the details of a pod that has failed to be scheduled, illustrated in the example below:

Name:        user-api-server-7869b4c8d9-qw4zp
Namespace:   default
Priority:    0
Node:        <none>
Labels:      app=user-api-server
Annotations: <none>
Status:      Pending
Reason:      Unschedulable
IP:          <none>
IPs:         <none>

Events:
  Type     Reason           Age                 From               Message
  ----     ------           ----                ----               -------
  Warning  FailedScheduling 4m32s (x7 over 5m)  default-scheduler  0/6 nodes are available: 3 OutOfPods, 6 node(s) had taints that the pod didn't tolerate.

In this context, the “Reason” field is categorized as “Unschedulable,” and the “Message” field clarifies why the pod couldn’t be scheduled. In this scenario, three nodes have reached their scheduling capacity, denoted by “3 OutOfPods.”

Understanding the OutOfPods Error
The “OutOfPods” error signifies that a node has surpassed its pod allocation capacity. Each node within a Kubernetes cluster harbors a specific threshold on the number of pods it can operate, influenced by several factors including the node’s specific configuration and the overall cluster setting.

To investigate this limit, the command kubectl describe node can be employed:

Capacity:
  cpu:                1
  ephemeral-storage:  47145992Ki
  hugepages-1Gi:      0
  hugepages-2Mi:      0
  hugepages-32Mi:     0
  hugepages-64Ki:     0
  memory:             6058428Ki
  pods:               110

Both the “Capacity” and “Allocatable” fields illustrate the maximum number of pods that can be scheduled on the node.

Strategies to Mitigate OutOfPods Error
When confronted with an “OutOfPods” error, it reveals that the node has attained its capacity, and can’t accommodate any more pods until the current ones are terminated or additional resources are integrated.

Node Capacity:

Every node possesses a definitive limit on the pods it can run, influenced by the node’s resources and its configuration.
Solutions: Scale up the nodes if they are perpetually operating at or near capacity, or optimize resource requests and limits.

Cluster Scaling:

Implement auto-scaling solutions to dynamically adapt the number of nodes as needed, especially if your entire cluster is consistently approaching its capacity.

Pod Configuration:

Assess and review resource requests and limits to ensure that pods are not demanding more resources than necessary. Leverage Quality of Service (QoS) classes to aid the scheduler in making more informed decisions.
Implementing QoS Classes: In Kubernetes, pods are categorized into one of three QoS classes: Guaranteed, Burstable, and BestEffort, based on the resource requests and limits set on them.
.- Guaranteed: All containers in the pod have memory and CPU limits, and they are equal to the requests. Use this for critical pods that need specific resources.

.- Burstable: At least one container in the pod has a memory or CPU request. Use this for pods that require a minimum amount of resources to run but can use more resources when available.

.- BestEffort: The pod doesn’t have memory or CPU limits or requests. Use this for non-critical tasks that can run with the remaining resources.

Resource Fragmentation:

Employ affinity and anti-affinity rules to minimize fragmentation by intelligently placing the pods, ensuring optimal utilization of available resources.

Kubelet Configuration:

Adjusting the maxPods configuration option in the Kubelet configuration can alleviate “OutOfPods” errors by allowing more pods to run on a node, considering the node’s available resources.
Implementing Adjustment:
To adjust the maxPods value, you would typically need to modify the Kubelet configuration file, usually located at /var/lib/kubelet/config.yaml on the node. You need to do this on every node you want to adjust.
For example, open the Kubelet configuration file in a text editor:

sudo vim /var/lib/kubelet/config.yaml

Find the line with maxPods and adjust the value to the desired number, or add a new line with maxPods: if it’s not there.
Save and exit the text editor.
Restart the Kubelet service for the changes to take effect:

sudo systemctl restart kubelet

Conclusion

The OutOfPods error in Kubernetes underscores the criticality of proper resource management within a cluster. Addressing this can be achieved by optimizing node and pod configurations, conscientiously adjusting the maxPods value, and employing Quality of Service (QoS) classes to ensure effective resource allocation. By proactively implementing these strategies, operational hurdles can be avoided, maintaining a robust and efficient Kubernetes environment.

October 1, 2023 by Fernando SRE Cloud stuff DevOps stuff Kubernetes 0

Advancements in Infrastructure Automation for Future DevOps Success.

I’ve been a bit reflective due to an IaC task that has become a bit more complex, thus taking me longer to complete than initially anticipated, and I’ve realized there are some aspects I believe have room for improvement. I believe that infrastructure automation and infrastructure state management still have room to mature in order to become more effective. While tools like Terraform and Ansible have come a long way, there are several areas where improvement is needed:

1. Greater Resilience and Enhanced Rollback: Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools could advance by automatically detecting deployment failures and safely rolling back to a previous state without human intervention.

2. Tighter Integration with Cloud Services: IaC tools could integrate even more seamlessly with cloud services, simplifying the management of resources such as databases, load balancers, and container services, thereby streamlining the orchestration of complex infrastructures.

3. Advanced Secrets Management: Effective secrets management is critical in DevOps. IaC tools could enhance the way secrets are handled and stored, providing a more robust security layer and enabling automated secret rotation. I am aware that steps are currently being taken in this direction.

4. Predictive Analysis and Optimization: Tools utilizing predictive analytics to identify infrastructure bottlenecks or performance issues before they become actual problems, allowing for proactive optimization.

5. Improvements in Visualization and Monitoring: More advanced graphical interfaces and real-time monitoring tools that enable DevOps teams to understand and address issues more efficiently.

These are just a few examples IMHO of how maturing automation in infrastructure and state management could benefit DevOps teams in the future.

September 6, 2023 by Fernando SRE Cloud stuff DevOps stuff 0

DevOps and Plaform engineers differences, is DevOps death?

From my perspective DevOps is about combining development and operations into one coherent group or team capable of delivering applications from the initial concept all the way until production, and then, also making sure that it continues running in production right. I think it’s about creating those self-sufficient teams.

Platform engineering is about creating internal tooling, an internal platform that is tailor-made for the needs of a company that combines all the tools the company uses, and creates that abstraction layer on top that simplifies usage for everybody else.
A person might have seven years of experience in Terraform but it’s unrealistic to expect that everybody will know everything about it, and even more unrealistic that everybody will know everything about AWS, Azure, and so on, so Platform engineers are in charge of developing such internal tooling that simplifies specific processes in a company, and enables everybody else to do things instead of opening Jira tickets.

The question that keeps coming up is if DevOps is a sustainable career or if is DevOps dead?.
From my perspective, in the last 20 years, I’ve been a Computer Technician, Java developer, Java Senior developer, Network Administrator, Sysadmin, Software engineer, DevOps engineer, SRE, and probably some other things. But in all of those, I’ve done the same thing, I’ve implemented things to help businesses to be more profitable and to grow.
So the title really doesn’t matter, as long as you focus on adding value, you’re always going to have a job. So is DevOps dead? I don’t know. And I don’t really care. And sincerely, I don’t think you should either.

September 3, 2023 by Fernando SRE DevOps stuff 0

Getting into DevOps and its future, personal opinion.

DevOps is basically making the work of developers and operations automated more efficient and seamless, right? And since we have like a separate role as a DevOps engineer, basically what you do, the main responsibility is to take what developers have created and seamlessly in the most automated efficient, fast, secure, whatever way basically release it to the end users, right? So the whole process of taking that coded application, putting it on the end environment, and making it accessible to the end users in a secure way, in a highly performant available way, that’s the main responsibility of DevOps.

If you want to get into DevOps, you can use the software development entry as a first point, and then, even as a junior software developer, you can start transitioning into DevOps, because you would have enough foundational knowledge as a “prerequisite” to start learning the things that you need in DevOps.

DevOps is still relatively like, compared to other IT fields I would say relatively young, and there are a lot of things going on, there like a lot of dynamics, and you could see like a lot of different technologies that are being developed and invented for different use cases, or like problems that you have in the DevOps projects. And you also have like a lot of similar technologies developed in the same area, which is actually a sign of the fact that there is no one standardized solution for that. So I believe that the market trend, and the way that in the direction where DevOps is going to be developing, will be to standardize the processes more. To have like a few sets of tools that most of the projects, like 90% or maybe even more projects, will use. And all the rest of the technologies will just disappear because there has to be one winner in each category, so I think that’s going to be the trend versus now, where you have like ten or more different tools to choose from which are super similar for the same task, and then you have this thing, because none of them is super standardized, and the one that is mostly used, so you have to choose between them and evaluate them all the time.

But I think it’s going to standardize a lot more, and generally DevOps, because it’s becoming mainstream already, and we see that, that DevOps itself is going to become more clearly defined, and there will be like more clarity from the companies, what they expect from a DevOps engineer, where is the line between developer and DevOps engineer, where is the line between operations and DevOps.

I think that’s going to be in like, maybe four or five years, we’ll see that kind of standardization.

August 28, 2023 by Fernando SRE DevOps stuff 0