Is it common to have nothing to do for basically... Weeks?

I've been at this company 2 years. Last six months I took a new position there being a "Lead" for automation development within a developer group. I'm not sure why "Lead" is in my job title because there's no other automation developers. I had thought more interesting work would be done, but it's all building in huge, legacy systems like an ancient POS codebase written in VB.NET or SAP systems.

Nothing wrong with those technologies but it isn't my skillset or interest, which everyone knew when I was offered the position. Instead the focus was on DevOps-y stuff like cloud automation, test automation, pipelines etc.

Maybe I just don't have enough big ideas, but there seems to be so little demand or interest in the work I do. I'll create pipelines to test and build the POS application. But when it comes down to it, they just keep doing local builds and deploying from their laptop with an ancient, home-grown windows desktop app. I suggest and report on how we can implement better deployment mechanisms, code quality tools, log aggregation. Management seems interested, then nothing happens (even when the cost of implementing this is fairly low)

I'll Introduce integrations to make collaboration easier with source control and JIRA. In the lead up management/teams will seem interested. Then no one uses it and that's that.

I get that part of my job is creating initiatives and finding situations where Automation can be applied. But on the day-to-day, the objectives and tasks I'm supposed to complete seem so wishy-washy that if I don't do anything no one notices. I can spend days doing absolutely no work without taking leave, and no one notices.

Most days I spend learning Kotlin and Android development because I want to transition to that area in a year or so.

https://redd.it/u8ks4q
@r_devops

Kerbi: a Helm Alternative - Looking for Initial Feedback

I'm sharing my new project with r/devops today to get initial reactions.

Docs: https://xavier-9.gitbook.io/kerbi/

Repo: https://github.com/xavier-mt/kerbi

This is non-commercial, and it is not a SaaS shoehorn.

# Perspective coming from of other tools

Helm, Kustomize, Kapitan, CDK8s, and KPT. My grading for the things I care about in these tools:

​

|Templating|Helm and Kustomize|Kapitan, KPT, CDK8s|
|:-|:-|:-|
|Feels familiar & native to K8s|8/10 and 9/10|5/10 average|
|DX^(1) scales w size/complexity|7/10 and 5/10|8.5/10 average|

​

|State & Revision MGMT|Helm and KPT|Everyone else|
|:-|:-|:-|
|Easy, built-in, feels native|10/10 and 8/10|N/A to 5/10|
|Loosely coupled w K8s|4.5/10|N/A to 10/10|

In the end, I still recommend Helm to most teams/projects. People already perceive Kubernetes as hard, and want the templating/state tool that feels most native to Kubernetes (99% of Kubernetes tutorials use YAML), vs an unfamiliar thing that itself must be learned.

Simplicity and stack integration seem like good predictors for adoption in modern languages, frameworks, and tooling. So again, Helm had every right to win (post Tiller...).

1: DX = Developer Experience

# Designing Kerbi

I set out to build something that you would describe to friends as: "a lot like Helm, but you can do fancier templating, and the state/release system doesn't highjack kubectl or touch your resources. And there's no app store.".

I call Kerbi a "Helm Alternative" as opposed to "a KPT alternative" or something else, because as explained above, I believe that Helm gets the important things right better than the others, and thus use it as the conceptual trunk.

Goal: score 8.5+/10 in each category:

​

|Criteria|Strategy|
|:-|:-|
|[Templating\] "Feels familiar and native to k8s" |Minimize overhead. Make trivial things trivial to do. Simple project structure, stick to YAML, stick to mature a templating language. |
|[Templating\] "DX scales w size/complexity" |Make it easy to write logic if needed, and make it easy to keep it separate from the your normal template files. Separate concerns. |
|[State & Revision\]. "Easy, built-in, feels native".|Make it obvious. Solve exactly the variable storage/retrieval problem, with as few new concepts as possible.|
|[State & Revision\]. "Loosely coupled w K8s"|Be a respectful neighbor with nothing to hide. Be powerful, while being minimally disruptive to existing Kubernetes workflows.|

​

Do you like it? I've been using Kerbi in production since last summer (transplanted from old repo), and it's working for me. Tell a friend, and let me know what you think.

https://redd.it/u8o89k
@r_devops

Any opinions on Aviatrix for managing a hybrid, multi-cloud network?

I was wondering if I could get some feedback and reviews from people who use Aviatrix. I'm currently looking for a way to centrally manage a hybrid and multi-cloud environment that feels a bit more native for networking folks. Also, I like that they have a terraform provider that I can utilize.

Interested in seeing other people's feelings about it.

https://redd.it/u8p5u1
@r_devops

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

Apparently I am a Software Developer rather than SRE now. Thanks all, it's been real. I'll be studying LeetCode for now on and forgetting everything I've learned as a SRE. I will no longer have to be on-call for infrastructure, I'll be throwing all problems that relate to my code and blaming DNS or/and the network, and working on implementing my own version of quicksort or timsort and call it indiesort. I will be building docker images locally on my laptop without any consideration for how it will be deployed in Kubernetes, since that is not my problem any more. Resource limits, auto scaling, data recovery, monitoring, and alerting? Also not my problem any more. I'll be finalizing my transition by unsubscribing from all SRE subs and forgetting everything I have learned in order to make room for software dev memes from twitter so it sounds like I know what I'm doing in client meetings. So long, and thanks for all the fish.

https://redd.it/u8uri2
@r_devops

For any junior DevOps folks out there, get comfortable with being absolutely clueless :)

So I started a DevOps internship with a cybersecurity firm roughly 5 months ago. My internship is gonna be over pretty shortly and I got the confirmation that they're going to be hiring me on full time. I've been lurking on this subreddit since the beginning of my internship constantly searching the key words "stress" & "too much to learn" in the search header lol.

I had absolutely no idea what I was getting myself into. DevOps is definitely not a role someone can just transition to in the course of several months. There's so much knowledge and expertise across different domains needed just to be able to do your job decently. On top of that, I had pretty much little to no prior experience doing development work. I did setup a couple servers on IBM cloud and did some small automation stuff to download anime torrents but that was about it.

My internship was extremely stressful. I spent a bunch of time outside of work and on the weekends just to stay afloat. I always constantly felt behind and my manager had very high expectations of me. I went from not knowing how to make a simple GET request to building out an API that connects connecting multiple pipelines and cloud services. I spent a lot of time troubleshooting very miniscule stuff like my script wasn't working because I wasn't in the right directory etc. I didn't get much help from my co-workers because they were always extremely busy so I got a ton of help from a lot of people online and bombarding stackoverflow.

I still feel extremely overwhelmed with my workload , but I've gotten a lot more comfortable with the process of learning how to find the right answers and asking the right questions. I'm really happy with how far I've came and for individuals out there who are seeking an entry level role in DevOps, I would highly recommend you to read the Phoenix project, study the architecture behind a couple tools like kube/aws code pipeline, get your hands dirty by doing some hands on stuff and know that it's okay to feel overwhelmed.

Coming from poverty, getting a full time job doing something that I find really cool and pays well is pretty bonkers to me. Now I just want to wrap up my comp sci degree, continue to learn as much as I can and spend my weekends doing some leisure activities.

Here's a brief itinerary of my internship experience.

1st Month:

\- Read and update documentation

\- Build some basic pipelines

2nd Month:

\- Shadow with another engineer on building an automated solution

\- Got into some trouble for just shadowing and not contributing to engineers work

3rd Month:

\- Build an automation solution for a niche use case

\- Destroy the automated solution because it's no longer needed

4th Month:

\- Work on building the automated solution again because business needs have changed and create an API for this automated solution for organization to use

5th Month:

\- Configure this API to connect with multiple cloud services. Interview with different stakeholder on different use cases for this automated solution

\- Bathe in glory

\- Go back to gym cuz I gained a crap ton of weight lol

https://redd.it/u93dxk
@r_devops

Looking for a good AWS/Google Cloud comparison tool/resource?

Hello everyone!

Not sure if this is the right place to post this, but I was wondering if anyone knew of a good resource out there that highlights the similarities and differences between AWS and the Google Cloud Platform as a whole? Things such as their different services, networking configuration processes, even tribal lingo too.

I'm interviewing for a new company and have spent all of my short DevOps career in the AWS architecture, and know very little about GCP. I've tried Googling for a decent resource but haven't found anything that explains more than just the equivalent services between the two.

https://redd.it/u9k8iz
@r_devops

How long does it take for your company to install software for you? (for restricted local admin environments)

I wrote a few weeks back about not having admin access.


One of the problems with not having local admin access is the inability to install software (which isn't a bad idea considering software installs are the most common attack vector). So I'm ok with this so long as the company process is built properly.


So I followed the company process, submitting a request to install Wireshark on my local machine. I submitted the request on April 6th, was asked on April 20th if I was "approved" to use this tool, and finally today (April 22nd) the software was made available to me in the software portal so I can actually install. It's a few versions behind at this point, but whatever, at least I finally have it installed.


So to recap, I could download and install Wireshark myself in <5 mins. Or, via my **awesome** company process, submit a request and have it installed 16 days later.


Am I crazy for thinking this is unnecessarily long? Wait a day, two days, three even? Sure, not everyone can jump on something right away. But does it really make sense for a software install (really, just a check box to enable it to appear in my software portal) take 16 days?


Yes, I work for a large financial organization and we are very bad with process and doing anything quick or modern... I've been here for a few years now and it's stuff like this that makes me want to jump. I've tolerated it for a few years and "gave it a chance" to improve, but after 3 years I think I've given it all the chance it deserves.

https://redd.it/u9ebo4
@r_devops

Who should be doing oncall?

At the company I work for, we are two DevOps engineers (myself and another colleague), and we have been doing the oncall duties for a few years. We manage all the infrastructure and we do are former full-stack engineers from the same company, so we have full context of the product code and the infrastructure as well. This means that, when an incident arise, we are very capable of solving it, including making product code changes when needed.

However, the company has grown a lot recently, both in the number of developers and the product itself (many new functionalities, etc.). My colleague and I are no longer writing product code every day, so it's hard to keep up with the product code changes. Meaning that we would probably need a considerable amount of time to understand what is going wrong with the code before we can solve it.

My question is, who is usually doing oncall at your current companies?

- If answer is the developer engineers ==> How can they respond when there's an issue related to infrastructure? (eg: a server instance going down)

- If answer is DevOps engineers or sys admins ==> How can they respond when there's an issue related to the product software? (eg: a non obvious software bug causing downtime or performance degradation)

https://redd.it/u9ligp
@r_devops

What would your ideal technical interview look like?

I am a DevOps engineer, not a recruiter. My team does technical/meet the team interviews for candidates. I want to make a technical interview process that avoids all the annoying shit other companies do. I have my own ideas but wanted to take into account other people's too.

For example: Fuck coding interviews. I don't care if you memorized the syntax, that's what Google is for. Plus I think most people are significantly worse at coding/typing when people are sitting there staring at them, so it's not an accurate measure of anything.

https://redd.it/u9sah8
@r_devops

What would your ideal technical interview look like?

I am a DevOps engineer, not a recruiter. My team does technical/meet the team interviews for candidates. I want to make a technical interview process that avoids all the annoying shit other companies do. I have my own ideas but wanted to take into account other people's too.

For example: Fuck coding interviews. I don't care if you memorized the syntax, that's what Google is for. Plus I think most people are significantly worse at coding/typing when people are sitting there staring at them, so it's not an accurate measure of anything.

https://redd.it/u9sah8
@r_devops

OpenSSL vulnerability CVE-2022-0778

Source: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/palo-alto-networks-firewalls-vpns-vulnerable-to-openssl-bug/amp/

Now that it's been patched, let's discuss - was anyone here impacted? We had Threat Prevention so nothing came up.

https://redd.it/u9wlbw
@r_devops

Terraform for Devops (Real world experience)

Guys, Would like to know few things about Terraform:

1. what does your day look like with Terraform?
2. Where do you store terraform State files and templates?
3. how do you use it in multi-account cloud environment?

Would be nice if you can give real world example of how large scale environment with terraform look like. Thankyou!

https://redd.it/u9oqp5
@r_devops

Pulumi as an alternative for Terraform?

Has anyone here worked with Pulumi before as an alternative to Terraform?

https://redd.it/ua3oby
@r_devops

I was denied a raise because I'm not from the US

I've been working for this company for a couple of years now, I joined as a senior devops, and last year I was promoted to head.

After a month, I found out I wasn't getting a raise because "I was already making way more money than average devops in the country I'm from". I argued that I'm not working for the country I'm from, and I'm not a devops anymore, to which my boss said "that's what they told me and it's based on the data they have, so bring me data"

Sure thing.

I started interviewing and getting certified, in a month I was able to get a few offers, all for senior devops, and all with bigger compensations. I also got certified, and the average salary for the people that have this certification is 150k USD a year. Yes, I know certs don't mean anything, but apparently, HR folks in my company like averages, so that's data they can understand. Or so I thought.

I was screenshotting and sending the certifications and offers to my boss as I was getting them, and my boss brought this to the HR's people's attention. I don't know what they talked but basically, my boss said that his hands were tied and that they can only give me a raise after I'm done with my current project, which is kind of critical for the company's existence.

So, I have conflicting parts of me trying to take action. My childish /r/nuclearrevenge inner voice says "let the project blow up and take your payment in blood" but I wouldn't sleep well with that, my boss is super cool and is trying his best, it looks like he has no voice in the company anymore, I'd rather quit and let them figure it out than pull a piece of shit move like that. Part of me wants to deliver the project and then quit, to professionally send a big fuck you "look at what you did". And part of me just wants to deliver the project and then deliver just the bare minimum not to get fired and pursue other projects on the side.

I'd love to hear some opinions and criticisms. Especially if I'm doing something wrong.

https://redd.it/uabiq3
@r_devops

What is all the fuzz about Terragrunt about?

Hi there,

I am reading about Terragrunt in this sub more and more. We are also using it in a project at work but still I don't get the real benefits over terraform. One of the mayor points is "modules". But - as I understand it - I can write modules in TF as well and configure them via parameters or variables. So I don't understand the real difference between the typical terragrunt.hcl files (that contain only the input parameters for all modules) and a typical .tfvars file (that does kind of the same)?

&#x200B;

What are your takes on that, where are the real benefits over TF and how did your structure betweens TF and TG change after adoption?

https://redd.it/uab5ji
@r_devops

when creating a Dockerfile, is it mandatory to put a COPY command? what will happen if I didn't put the copy command, Thank you



>FROM python:3.9
WORKDIR /project
RUN pip install --no-cache-dir -U pip
COPY requirements.txt .
RUN pip install -r requirements.txt
COPY . .
CMD ["python", "main.py"]

so my question is what will happen if i remove this and build the docker image,

https://redd.it/uapx2t
@r_devops

Introducing Git+ for GitLab, all-in-one GitLab App you need

After some time we are finally launching our Git+ App, that will allow you guys to perform lots of desktop GitLab operations directly from phone.

&#x200B;

Browsing latest notifications, reacting to Issues and Pull Requests, Organising Issues with labels, assignees, Browsing your files and code - all of that and more !



Available on both iOS and Android !

iOS:

https://apps.apple.com/sk/app/git-for-gitlab/id1607749970

Android:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gitlabplus.app&hl=en&gl=US

https://redd.it/uat1qs
@r_devops

Input on my study path to step into DevOps


Hey everyone, I need some feedback on my planned study path for the next few months. I've been a sysadmin for nearly 3 years and I want to move into a devops role in the near future.

My company has a devops team, but it's not in their interest to move me into there for the time being since I'm the only one in my current team for my region and timezone.


I was planning on going for the following certs to start applying to jobs:

- EX294 (RHCE, Ansible Cert. I have this exam on Tuesday)

- DO180 (another RH exam, intro to containers basically)

- Either AWS or Azure fundamentals exam

- Then terraform, not sure how accessible their certs are, but a friend recommended a TF course on Udemy

- I'm not following any particular program but I'm improving my scripting skills with bash/python

Do you guys thing this is a good starting point? I'd appreciate any suggestions :)

ps: I have an active RHLS, so any courses there take priority since they're free :)

https://redd.it/uarh7i
@r_devops

Help me understand vpc’s and calculating cidr range’s

As a software engineer, I’m ashamed to admit that I do not understand them. I want to stop feeling lost in conversations with our ops team.

What’s the best resource you’d point a junior on your team who wanted to learn?

https://redd.it/uaxbkx
@r_devops

Government SWE or Amazon Cloud support associate for path into Devops/SRE

Government SWE or AWS support job

I am about to graduate with a degree in computer science from a small state school and I currently have 2 offers. One with a government defense contractor as a software engineer , working with military weapons, aerospace , and other areas with the opportunity to gain a security clearance with a pay of 77k but will have to relocate. However, I sometimes see on here how government jobs are not too good for your career.

The other job is a cloud support associate role with Amazon web services starting at 67k but is fully remote. This job will focus on trouble shooting and solving customer cases with their cloud services. Amazon will provide training on the cloud services and this sounds like a great opportunity to learn a lot directly from Amazon and also have a top company on my resume early in my career.

Im leaning towards wanting a career in devops but not 100% sure of which area I want to go in yet. im looking for the best opportunity to learn and gain experience for future employment opportunities.

any suggestions or recommend a path I should take ?

https://redd.it/uaxjwi
@r_devops

DevOps conference List - may 2022 update

I have prepared a list of online conferences for DevOps and SREs.

The list is available on my blog (https://www.czerniga.it/2022/02/13/devops-online-conferences-list/) as well as on GitHub (https://github.com/czerniga/devops-online-conferences). If you want to add a new conference create a new Pull Request in the repository on GitHub.

I also list some upcoming conferences below:

|Date|Conference|Agenda|Price|
|:-|:-|:-|:-|
|26 – 27 April 2022|DevOpsDays Kraków 2022|https://dodkrakow.pl/schedule/|FREE|
|26 – 29 April 2022|DevOpsCon London|https://devopscon.io/london/program-london/|£ 512 - 1196|
|10 May 2022|DockerCon 2022|https://docker.events.cube365.net/dockercon/2022|FREE|
|10-12 May 2022|DevOps Enterprise Summit|n/a|$450|
|16-18 May 2022|ChefConf '22|https://www.chef.io/chefconf/agenda|FREE|
|16 – 20 May 2022|KubeCon / CloudNativeCon Europe 2022|https://events.linuxfoundation.org/kubecon-cloudnativecon-europe/program/schedule/|FREE / € 75|
|24-26 may 2022|DevOps Pro Europe 2022|https://devopspro.lt/schedule/|€ 270 – 1130|
|9 June 2022|Conf42: Site Reliability Engineering 2022|n/a|n/a|
|12-17 June 2022|Agile + DevOps West|https://agiledevopswest.techwell.com/program/schedule|n/a|
|20-23 June 2022|DevOpsCon Berlin|https://devopscon.io/berlin/program-berlin/|€ 476 - € 1169|

https://redd.it/ubgjhr
@r_devops