IaC Rookie Questions

Provisioning and deploying services by hand has finally pushed me to my limit, and I've forced myself to sit down and learn how to deploy my infra with code.

I'm looking for some advice on a deployment method for my hybrid microservices:

Option A: Run deployments independent from code builds, intending to run them once to spin up services at the beginning of a project and then only rerun them when tweaks or updates need to be made

Option B: Bundle the IaC deployments, integrating them into their respective microservice code bases so that on each deployment of the software, my IaC deployments will run and deploy if resources are missing or update as necessary.

I'm leaning towards option B, but A would lead to faster build times and potentially be easier to maintain. Of course, I wonder if that's true, as this is my first go.

An aspect I like about option B is letting each microservice be responsible for what it needs and handling spinning up resources for different slots like dev, QA, staging etc...

I'm using Azure, basic ARM templates for now and GitHub Actions. I will likely migrate to Bicep or Terraform or something once I have my head wrapped around all this, but that's a convo for another day :D

https://redd.it/zyh1i7
@r_devops

DevOps security Question: public EC2 Instances

Hi All -


I'm building a Python task to list all of my publicly accessible EC2 instances (I'm using an unSkript Jupyter Notebook for the call, so the call into EC2 looks different than vanilla Python):

    ec2Client = handle.client('ec2', region_name=region)
    res = aws_get_paginator(ec2Client, "describe_instances", "Reservations")

    result={}
        # Iterate through the list of instances
    for reservation in res:
         for instance in reservation['Instances']:
            #print("instance",instance)
            instance_id = instance['InstanceId']
            public_DNS = instance['PublicDnsName']
            if len(public_DNS)>0:
                public_ip = instance['PublicIpAddress']
                result[instance_id] = {"public DNS": public_DNS,"public IP":public_ip}
    return(result)

This works great.

I can further use the

instance['LaunchTime']

to filter for instances that launched in the last hour (24 hours, etc.). (the use case is creating a "Hey - did you know there's a new public EC2 instance in your Cloud?" type of alert).

However, I can't find a way to find out when a SecurityGroup was added to an instance. Is there an easy way to determine the timestamp? (this would allow for the alert "Hey did you know that Instance i-xyz123 became public in the last hour?")


Thanks!

https://redd.it/zwojuf
@r_devops

What should I ask mid/senior-level DevOps applicants in an interview?

Hey folks,
I'm a DevOps intern (currently first and alone) at my company. We now have a requirement for mid/senior DevOps engineers, as some clients are asking us to handle their entire DevOps department, primarily consisting of implementing DevOps with cicd, Iac, Cloud architecture, and scalability + availability for the starters.


The issue is, except me, everybody is ONLY and ONLY experienced developer, and when we sit and ask the applicants, the questions I feel we are asking aren't doing the justice for the post we want the employee at.
I, being a student & intern, still holds huge knowledge in my field, still, even though I feel my questions are too theoretical or easy, also one mistake we did was, we didn't set up any assignments so there is a huge no. of weed in the applicants with high but shallow experience.
Can u suggest to me how should I conduct the interview, like should I also start asking them to do some practical stuff in the interview?
Also how long an interview should go, as there is so much to ask, to test them, even 1hr seems less.


Any response will be appreciated, thanks..!!

https://redd.it/zwt1rd
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Looking for job advice- struggling in new role

I've been working as a jr DevOps engineer for a few months now (I previously worked as a Java dev) and I desperately want to quit; I'm wondering if my situation is fairly typical and I'm being overly critical of my org, or if this is objectively bad and I should be looking elsewhere for work.

​

I'm working on a team of about 10 people to maintain a decent-sized software suite for a few hundred users. (I feel like we're a little overstaffed and not doing enough, but that's beside my point.) There is virtually no documentation of anything in the environment, the little documentation that does exist is way out of date. Whenever I ask anyone for information I'll get a different answer from each person; even for something as simple as starting a service, 3 different people will provide 3 different answers and they're often all wrong. There's no correlated logging and no monitoring of the environment- users complain directly to the ops team if services are down. It's also extremely difficult to learn what is supposed to be happening because everyone kind of does their own thing, so someone might decide to test out a script and bring down a node, but someone else might notice the node is down and try to bring it back up during this testing thus frustrating both parties and making it hard to determine what is supposed to be happening at any given time. These problems have all been brought up in team meetings and one-on-ones with managers, but there never seems to be any action taken. What should I be doing to change my situation- is it to keep trying to make changes where I am, or does this sound like a lost cause?

https://redd.it/zwk2mm
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How frequently should I be looking to get a pay raise in devops?

I've been programming professionally for 2 years, and have specialized in devops for 6 months. I landed a good role at a company for 70K. I have my AWS certified developer associate cert and knew about containerization but knew nothing about Kubernetes and other technologies. I have expanded my knowledge a lot and feel that I am making good contributions to the company and the codebase. I know my salary is not too far under what it should be for my level of experience and education (bootcamp, no degree before my first job which I held for 1.5 years before my current position).

When should I ask my employer for a raise? Should I set my sights on a yearly pay increase in the field of devops? What have you experienced in your career?

Thanks.

https://redd.it/zwnfll
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Does anyone have an AWS exam benifit coupon.

Hi, I'm going to be giving the AWS certified solutions architect exam soon. So does anyone have a AWS certified exam benefits coupon to spare. Apparently anyone who has successfully passed an exam gets this coupon for future exams. Thanks in advance :)

PS: it's in the benefits section of your exam profile on AWS training and certificates

https://redd.it/zwj3ng
@r_devops

tools for Predictive monitoring(AI/ML)

Hello everyone,

I am currently looking for platforms that can help me in predictive monitoring. Do you happen to have some experience with any tools. I am actually looking for something that can do better than Watson AIOps.

https://redd.it/zwb8vr
@r_devops

Datadog: I do not understand the pricing model, please help me estimate my bills

Hi all,
I am running a small scale home lab and I have a need for log management and email alerting. It is very very basic and very small scale, we are talking \~100 log entries a day and 1 Monitor job to look for some keywords and send me emails notifications.

Up till now I've been running my own EFK stack (plus Elastalert) but it's way too powerful and complex for my use case.

I have tried Datadog and was able to build the log management and email alerting I needed in a few hours starting from scratch and not nowing the plaform. Everything seems to work perfectly and I must say I am quite happy with the product.

My problem is: I have no idea how much this is going to cost me. The description of the plans are not clear, or rather I don't know how to read it.

For now I am using the Trial subscription and I still have 14 days in front of me. What will happen when the trial finishes ?

The Free plan does not include Logs nor Monitors, so I am assuming I need the Pro plan, is this correct?

I see on the pricing page of the Pro plan two items for "Log Ingestion" and "Indexed Logs", what is the difference between the two? I do not see a price item for my log "Monitor" - is this included somewhere else?

Then I sort of remember seeing somewhere that you have to have minimum one host activated and indeed after creating my account I needed to connect one agent before being able to do anything. Now I have disabled my host so that there is nothing showing under "Infrastructure". Am I still going to be charged for 1 host at 15$/mo ?

Thank you for your help.

https://redd.it/zz4naq
@r_devops

I'm starting a new position as a DevOps release engineer and i'm looking for some tips

Hi all, i've received a job offer in some company that developing iOS and Android applications. I've accepted the offer, cause i don't really have a possibility to choose from and i'd gladly accept any deal in this harsh times.

No clouds, all infrastructure is on-premise. The main tool is Jenkins. (Plus some Python scripts to maintain the apps) I have to write pipelines which will build applications with "xcode" etc and i don't have any previous experience with building mobile applications.

Would you guys please recommend me some materials to get started before i get into that position from the next year? Probably some of you are also working as a release engineers? I'd be happy to hear some advice from you!

https://redd.it/zyzmur
@r_devops

GitHub Actions Course - DevOps Docker Course

Link here: https://youtu.be/ylHfetX3QlU

https://redd.it/zz8b78
@r_devops

Database guidance

Hi All,

Need your suggestion on a solution
Currently there is an multi tier app setup in cloud which was migrated by me from on-prem
I am not very much aware about database
Now people are talking about schema instances and stuff like that
My requirement is simple I created a new enviroment now I need to have a new database for that
How should I ask my dAtabase team ? So that they can understand it better
I am looking for a solution like
If it’s dev env then point to some connection string type

How to convey this technically or do you guys have any suggestions


P.S : can’t use existing database have to create a new infra
If creating new infra what are all the steps that are need to be done

Fellow database heroes please help

https://redd.it/zzcpoy
@r_devops

Changing career from QA to DevOps, need advice.

Hi, I have been working as a Quality Assurance professional for about 10 years now and last 5 of which I was solely dedicated myself as a Test Automation Engineer. Although I love what I do, it is kind of getting dry. I tried switching the industry but last couple of years, this field has become overtly competitive. Being asked leetcode DSA type questions are kind of a norm now and I’m really bad at it. These questions might be related to what I do but honestly I have never needed to use them in any of my automation frameworks that I’ve built.

Anyway, coming back to my original topic, I’m looking to switch my careers. I’m at my early 30s. DevOps is interesting and seems very tool specific. I might be wrong but would love to know your opinions on it. I’m personally looking for something, where I won’t be facing those dreadful leetcode type questions in the interview. I’m a quick learner and love to solve puzzles or any kind of problems. I love workin with data a lot as well(thought about Data Engineering as well). Do you think at this stage changing my career to DevOps makes any sense?

https://redd.it/zzbior
@r_devops

Connect versions deployed in different environments

We have a branch per environment i.e

* dev branch deploys to the Development env
* staging branch deploys to the Staging env
* master branch deploys to the Prod env

We create a new build for each env (Because of how the serverless framework works and understand that it is not ideal). Currently, the version is stored in a Config service (AWS SSM) outside of the source files.

I am looking to keep a consistent version when the same code is deployed to different environments. Currently, the version number is incremented independently in each pipeline for each environment with no way to know if version 1.1.3 deployed on the env Devis the same as version 1.1.0 deployed on staging env.

We use the "Merge Commit" strategy in Bitbucket so a Git tag added to a commit in the source branch is not linked to the Merge commit that gets added to the target branch on PR merge.

What options do I have to maintain the same version number across envs for the same codebase?

https://redd.it/zzepmw
@r_devops

Which environments do you use/support?

I'm about to implement new infrastructure and I was wondering what environments (e.g. dev, test, staging, prod etc.) you use?

If you would have a greenfield project, which environments would you try to implement and how would they relate to each other and what is the purpose of each env. (how does one env. differ from the other)?

https://redd.it/zz5sqc
@r_devops

Any good Python programming (for DevOps specifically) recommendations?

Any good Python programming (for DevOps specifically) book's recommendations?

https://redd.it/zzj287
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Any freelance devops charging for value instead of time?

I'm a software dev agency. Along with developing solutions we set up and manage client servers. As we started to get bigger and bigger clients were getting asked to set up more complex systems. Currently we charge by time but I think devops is better suited to charge by value. For example setting up a server takes me a few minutes with scripts I have.

Any other people here charging fixed fees and can share some ideas of pricing? I'm in the US.

https://redd.it/zzji7v
@r_devops

DOFD Certification: Earn Better Career Opportunities! - iSecPrep

https://www.isecprep.com/2022/12/30/dofd-certification-earn-better-career-opportunities/

\#DevOpsFoundation #DOFD #DevOpsInstituteDevOpsFoundation #DevOpsInstitute #DevOpsInstituteDOFD #DevOpsInstituteCertifiedDevOpsFoundation #CertifiedDevOpsFoundation #DevOpsInstituteExam #DevOpsInstituteCertification #DevOpsInstituteDevOpsFoundationExam #DevOpsInstituteDevOpsFoundationCertification #DevOpsInstituteDOFDExam #DevOpsInstituteDOFDCertification #DevOpsInstituteCertifiedDevOpsFoundationExam #DevOpsInstituteCertifiedDevOpsFoundationCertification #DevOpsFoundationExam #DevOpsFoundationCertification #DOFDExam #DOFDCertification #DOFDMockTest #DOFDPracticeExam #DOFDQuestions #DOFDSyllabus

https://redd.it/zzmqdg
@r_devops

What kubernetes is used for production?

We have developed and deployed my web app in munikube and kubectl. We want to put it in production. I read that minikube is meant for development and not deployment. Then what open source and free options do we have for deployment in local / in-house infrastructure? Is it just that I should be using kubeadm instead of minikube?

https://redd.it/zyvnit
@r_devops

AIOps tools

Hey everyone,
I am currently looking for AiOps tools to integrate with our tool stack. Can someone share experience with some of the platforms.
Thanks!

https://redd.it/zwauun
@r_devops

Git config inside dockerfile using HTTPS? (Azure DevOps)

I'm trying to authenticate with ADO so I can install one of remote requirements for my python app. This is what works locally:

RUN git config --global credential.helper 'cache'; echo "protocol=https\n\
host=dev.azure.com\n\
username=${AZURE_USERNAME}\n\
password=${AZURE_PASSWORD}" | \
git credential approve && \
pip install --no-cache-dir --upgrade pip setuptools && \
pip install --no-cache-dir -r /tmp/requirements/requirements-remote.txt

However, this uses auto-generated credentials (temporary password). SSH doesn't work in our use case. How do I go about this so I don't have to update my password every single time on pipeline run?

https://redd.it/zvk0cv
@r_devops

Need guidance on career path

I have 5 years of experience in AWS Cloud/ DevOps engineer, i have written automation script using python and lambda service, i am certified in AWS SA, Developer associate and CKA, Now a days company wants full stack + DevOps as requirement, I am confused of future career path in DevOps as i dont have software engineer experience to become architect now i am thinking of switching to backend engineer to gain experience to learn about the end to end process,
Is it advisable to do so?

https://redd.it/zurnvb
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