Why and How SREs Can Benefit from Feature Flags

Anyone else take advantage of feature flags in their roles as SREs? We do all the time and found it helpful. We wrote a bit about it!

https://redd.it/svljbe
@r_devops

CI/CD Lifecycle example for embedded Software development?

Hey folks!

im struggeling to wrap my head around how a practical real-life example of a functioning (automated) CI/CD Lifecycle for a company specialised in the development of firmware and in general embedded software could look like.
Could you guys provide some examples of a DevOps workflow in this context? And maybe even the tools used?

Greetings and thanks in advance!

https://redd.it/sveb41
@r_devops

Suggestions for a low-cost managed load balancer / rewriting proxy

I have a customer who wants to overlay two websites: they have a.acmecorp.com and b.acmecorp.com. They want www.acmecorp.com/foo/* to proxy a.acmecorp.com/foo and everything not under the foo hierarchy to come from b.acmecorp.com

Of course I can create a haproxy / nginx / relayd but is there a company out there that specialises in host this sort of thing?

https://redd.it/svzgu4
@r_devops

DevOps home lab suggestions

Looking to build a homelab to try out DevOps tools on VMs to simulate similar env. From cicd to repo, artifactory, sast, dast, automated test tools, performance tool, Jira, confluence to monitoring, siem.

Would the following be suitable? Seems like it can only sustain 7 VMs concurrently if each VM is allocated 8gb ram.

Mobo - ASUS Prime Z690-P D4
CPU - Intel Core i9-12900K
RAM - Corsair Vengeance LPX 64GB (2x 32GB) DDR4 3200(PC4-25600) C161.35V
SSD - WD Black SN850 NVMe PCIe M.2 2TB
HDD - WD Black 6TB (2016)

https://redd.it/sw1pc6
@r_devops

Average salary for the DevOps role and the responsibilities that comes with it.

What are some of the average salaries that an individual can expect for a DevOps role (both Jr. and Sr.).

Also along with it what are some of the day to day responsibilities that he/she has to take for the role aka what are some day to day activities he/she needs to perform.

And last, how do you reach there 😅. What kind of skills do you acquire and tools you would learn.

https://redd.it/sw4cc1
@r_devops

project idea

Hi, i want to pratice my skills so my goal is to make some simple website, i need some interesting idea for pulling data and show on my web, do u maybe have some ideas?

https://redd.it/sw5w0g
@r_devops

Manually edit maven settings in Artifactory?

I've set up a maven Artifactory but can't for the heck of me figure out how to edit maven settings.xml file manually.

Is there a way to access the file directly via sftp or something similar so that I can edit it in a text editor after I generate it via the web interface?

I've checked the official artifactory wiki page and it just says "or you can edit it manually" without specifying how.

https://redd.it/sw8d3r
@r_devops

What's the best way to pivot to AWS from Azure?

I'm a devops engineer with 2.5 years of experience. I've mostly worked on Azure, only some AWS. I've been at my new job (consulting) for 6 months now (4 of which were on the bench). They've put me on a non-public cloud project despite me stating in my interview and multiple other times I'd like to be put forward for an AWS project. Will it be harder to pivot over to AWS if I've primarily used Azure? I'm not sure whether to tell my company or just look for a new job. I've also been ordered by the client I need to be in the office 3 days a week, which I'm really dreading.

Edit: I've got experience with Jenkins, Terraform, Python, Azure.

https://redd.it/sw8adu
@r_devops

Expectation from Google Tech job interview

Hi, I am from Infrastructure /Devops background. got ping from google for interview. what areas should i focus more ? is it coding/system design/DS & Algo or Devops tools and cloud ?

https://redd.it/svr375
@r_devops

Salary Sharing Thread

This thread is for sharing recent new grad offers you've gotten or current salaries.

Please only post an offer if you're including hard numbers, but feel free to use a throwaway account if you're concerned about anonymity.

Education:

Prior Experience:

Company/Industry:

Title:

Tenure length:

Location:

Base Pay

Relocation/Signing Bonus:

Stock and/or recurring bonuses:

Total comp

https://redd.it/swbma9
@r_devops

What do you do if a release fails integration testing?

Let's say you are doing trunk based development, and you've created a branch to build a release. Lets calling it version 1.1.0. Your CI/CD system pulls code from branch, successfully builds, stores artifacts and then deploys to integration, where you also do QA quick QA testing.
QA finds some issues so that you do not want to push this to production. Do you:

1. Delete the branch 1.1.0, make additional changes to trunk and "rerelease"
2. Abandon the branch, create a new branch 1.1.1, and never release 1.1.0 into production. Perhaps even delete branch 1.1.0

My sense is that we should go with 2.0, i.e. once a release version goes into staging, there is no going back. You fail the release if QA finds and issue and then fix in trunk, create a new branch 1.1.1 and start the release process again.

I'm also struggling a bit with the idea of only branching off trunk, not off of a release branch. Here's an example:
Version 2.1.0 is in production, and there is a bug. Trunk is not "ready" to release. The idea that trunk is always ready to release is something that we're not comfortable with, given QA, and the need for business to coordinate on some releases.


Currently what we do, is debug off of version 2.1.0, and find the issue. We then branch 2.1.0 to 2.1.1, a patch branch, release from there, and then decide if the patch needs to be merged back to trunk. I don't think having to "remember" to merge back to trunk is an issue, because 1) The code in trunk may have changed enough to not need the patch. 2) Bugs in production that have to be patched immediately is rare. Usually bugs can wait for the next "stable" release, in which case we develop the patch in trunk.


Thoughts?

https://redd.it/swcurp
@r_devops

Salary Sharing Thread

This thread is for sharing recent offers you've gotten or current salaries.

Please only post an offer if you're including hard numbers, but feel free to use a throwaway account if you're concerned about anonymity.

Education:

Prior Experience:

Company/Industry:

Title:

Tenure length:

Location:

Base Pay

Relocation/Signing Bonus:

Stock and/or recurring bonuses:

Total comp

https://redd.it/swbma9
@r_devops

How do you balance between work and learning?

DevOps is quite a big field and it’s evolving very fast, a lot of tools involved…
If you’re working 40 hours per week, what is your strategy for keeping up to date in the field?

https://redd.it/swf3j2
@r_devops

Expectation from Google Tech job interview

Hi, I am from Infrastructure /Devops background. got ping from google for interview. what areas should i focus more ? is it coding/system design/DS & Algo or Devops tools and cloud ?

https://redd.it/svr375
@r_devops

Please save me! Zabbix 6.0 "connection of type "unencrypted" is not allowed for host"

I just set up a Zabbix server 6.0. I also installed a macOS agent.
A connection was working.
I then set up psk encryption on the server and agent side.
I Have done this many times, made the psk file then went on the config file and set it up right.
Had 2 other people triple-check my work. 
Server and agent ends are set up correctly, but not establishing a connection.

When I go to agent logs, I get this:

no active checks on server [IP\]: connection of type "unencrypted" is not allowed for host "Jays-MacBook-Pro-2"

Not sure where I would go from here since like I said, everything is triple-checked by 2 other people. Both the agent and server sides are correct.

I even have Linux and Windows servers that I encrypted before I did macOS since I know mac does not like to play nice.

Please save me, thanks!

https://redd.it/suz3nl
@r_devops

Is it wrong not to take a job at a company because they base their salary on geolocation?

Some context: I live in the USA, in a HCOL area (top 5% in the nation). I've recently been engaged in early discussions with several large companies in search of a new job.

For the most part, these organizations are willing to pay top dollar for talent, regardless of where they are physically located. There have been a couple, however, that have come right out and said that since I am in a HCOL area, I should expect to earn towards the upper end of their compensation range. Since they brought this up, it's left me with a negative impression of their hiring practices and how they value their employees.

I do want to say that I understand where they're coming from, in that since WFH is more widely adopted, the pool of talent from which they can recruit has vastly increased. This has led to more workers accepting lower wages since their COL is so much lower. This is just the reality we live in now.

Where I see things differently is that it's really none of the company's business where I or others are physically located, since the quality of services provided will be the same regardless of where we live. If I were to establish my salary in my current area, and then move to rural Iowa, I can't see how they would make a case for adjusting my salary to reflect that. I know sure as shit that they would not give me a raise if I were to pack my bags and move to the Bay Area.

Anyone have similar experience in interviews, or even with a company you've been with for a while?

TL;DR - companies I'm interviewing with say that salary is dependent on where I live, because of this I'm hesitant to continue seeking a job with them

https://redd.it/swmvpl
@r_devops

Is it wrong not to take a job at a company because they base their salary on geolocation?

Some context: I live in the USA, in a HCOL area (top 5% in the nation). I've recently been engaged in early discussions with several large companies in search of a new job.

For the most part, these organizations are willing to pay top dollar for talent, regardless of where they are physically located. There have been a couple, however, that have come right out and said that since I am in a HCOL area, I should expect to earn towards the upper end of their compensation range. Since they brought this up, it's left me with a negative impression of their hiring practices and how they value their employees.

I do want to say that I understand where they're coming from, in that since WFH is more widely adopted, the pool of talent from which they can recruit has vastly increased. This has led to more workers accepting lower wages since their COL is so much lower. This is just the reality we live in now.

Where I see things differently is that it's really none of the company's business where I or others are physically located, since the quality of services provided will be the same regardless of where we live. If I were to establish my salary in my current area, and then move to rural Iowa, I can't see how they would make a case for adjusting my salary to reflect that. I know sure as shit that they would not give me a raise if I were to pack my bags and move to the Bay Area.

Anyone have similar experience in interviews, or even with a company you've been with for a while?

TL;DR - companies I'm interviewing with say that salary is dependent on where I live, because of this I'm hesitant to continue seeking a job with them

https://redd.it/swmvpl
@r_devops

I just signed on to a new DevOps role at a trading firm in October and regret not negotiating harder. What do I do?

I have five years of experience managing and developing for multi tenant on-prem Kubernetes deployments at a major US financial institution. I made 110k a year in base salary for four years without a raise.

In October I received an offer for 160k a year, 0 stock, 0 signing bonus from a trading firm. I immediately accepted their first offer without any negotiation at all. I now regret not pushing harder in negotiations as I recently discovered that other people who have the same position and title as me are making much more than that. I have only recently discovered my value as an engineer after years of being in a crappy work environment have shrunk my confidence.

What would you do in my position? Try and negotiate a raise? I have only been there four months.

https://redd.it/swljfg
@r_devops

Would it be possible to get a job abroad? US/Canada

Hi guys,

I'm a 35yr old guy with 10 yrs experience in IT operations - sysadmin with automation skills from eastern Europe.

So a bit of background:

\- started with an internship as helpdesk (windows support) – 3 months

\- call center agent with english (windows/dialup support) – 3 months

\- sysadmin with linux, my first "real" job for a software development company, where i learnt a lot of stuff: linux, monitoring (mostly nagios), some basic DBA and SQL, basic networking, middleware: apache, jboss, IIS, scripting (bash, batch), iptables, virtual machines, took CCNA courses – 3 yrs

\- managed services for a middle sized telecom provider: mostly linux sysadmin level 3 with some light architecture design for external customers, worked with VMWare cloud infrastructure, monitoring: check_mk, mysql, also learnt about load-balancing, disaster recovery – 3 yrs +

\- cloud infra engineer for a large telecom company, top employer: the project was supposed to handle infra migration to the cloud (mostly AWS) but it didn’t work out because of external factors.

Anyways they provided some basic AWS training (AWS essentials and Architecting on AWS), I played with free tier and a bit of terraform but no real production experience, also worked on producing high level design documentation about migration plan. - 8 months

\- cloud engineer in operational team level 3 for another telco company, also top employer: worked with openstack, kubernetes, docker, ansible, git, rabbitmq, mysql, galera, ceph storage. A lot of troubleshooting.

The product is a private cloud solution based on openstack running inside a k8s cluster that ‘dev team’ put toghether with opensource stuff. ‘Dev Team’ are not software developers, mostly we use ansible/helm charts to deploy our cloud solution and provide extra functionality according to internal customer needs.

Did some internal trainings on k8s, terraform, learned more on resiliency, HA solutions since the product is built with that in mind.

Also worked on writing/executing test cases mostly for operations and maintenance and resiliency.

At some point my title changed to ‘senior’

Recently I got more involved into the ‘dev’ side of things, mostly working with ansible and hopefully other stuff to come- 3 yrs

I don’t have a bachelor degree, been to university but hated it, most of the stuff they teached me is totally useless for my career and I left it.

I know some basic python but I’m not strong on development side or OOP. I've done mostly scripting (bash)

Regarding CI/CD, we have CI environment and jenkins pipelines but I haven’t worked with that myself too much since there is not much changing in there and there is no ‘need’

Recently have been thinking on searching for a job in another country (english speaking). I understand that for US/Canada I would need some kind of employer ‘sponsorship’

The way I see it I have some devops skills but I might not have ‘all’ skills.

So would it be possible to get a job as devops or something similar to what I currently do?

If so what is the approach to take to start applying for such jobs? Could I just simply apply through linkedin? (sorry for the long post)

https://redd.it/swgta4
@r_devops

Career Advice

Am I being unrealistic looking for a 9-5 job non-scrum DevOps job without bleeding over into the weekends? I can only work at one speed and it’s slow and I’m wondering if I should leave DevOps altogether or try looking for a similar org as my last employer?
I’ve been working as a DevOps engineer for the past 5 years. Before working in DevOps I worked in various other IT positions for 10 years. I recently left an org ( 5 years ) as a DevOps engineer keeping a reasonable 8-5 without on-call and TC 110k. The reason for leaving was due to being acquired by a large electronics company and layoffs were approaching. My new job is terrible, 30% of my time is in scrum meetings and lots of bleed over into the weekends. It seems like my slowness with the current job is going to cause me significant issues. FWIW I did question my current employer about time expectations, scrum, and meetings during the interview process and received different answers to what is actually current with the company. TC to me isn't an issue if the position fits what I'm looking for. Thanks for listening.

https://redd.it/swbzwi
@r_devops

Using Prometheus metrics to trigger autoscaling in aws.

My company want us to stop using cloud watch as a part of cost cutting measures, but we are using cloud watch to trigger autoscaling in aws for certain scenarios, is there a way to achieve the same using Prometheus to trigger autoscaling when the cpu or memory usage goes high.

https://redd.it/sundmu
@r_devops