What do you do as a DevOps Engineer? Are you paid overtime for being on call or when you are deploying IaC?

What do you do as a DevOps Engineer? Are you paid overtime for being on call or when you are deploying IaC?

https://redd.it/enj05c
@r_devops

I made go library to pull AWS product/feature announcements

Hope some of you can make use of it!

https://github.com/circa10a/go-aws-news

https://redd.it/eng961
@r_devops

This connection is Not Private

I recently signed with pre-made Wordpress droplet on DigitalOcean. I set everything up with www when it prompted me.

But now when I try to load up the website I am getting an error. I tried typing the name with and without www

I am using letsencrypt SSL for which I used the option with www

​

Any ideas how I can solve this? Could it be because Nameserver has not propagated completely yet? Do I need to do some URL redirect? Any feedback on this is appreciated.

Thank you

https://redd.it/enirnu
@r_devops

Maybe You Don't Need Kubernetes

As 2019 has gone by, [this article](https://endler.dev/2019/maybe-you-dont-need-kubernetes/) is one that stands out when i think back. I see lots of posts here from people wanting to learn the new buzz, but IMHO, a far more valuable trait is the ability to find the right tool for the job.

This becomes increasing important if you work (or want to work) at a small/medium sized company where you truly have the potential to influence the company's outcome. Chances are, that in a larger organization, you might be more valuable for being nose deep in k8s - and if you enjoy this - good for you!

The takeaway from the article is more or less: don't use Kubernetes just because everybody else does. Carefully evaluate your requirements and check which tool fits the bill.

https://redd.it/enphaw
@r_devops

Which US State or City in your experience offers the best for an overall DevOps experience, in terms of salary, quality of living, healthy balance of work/life, job satisfaction, and the number of available jobs? Why?

I'm assuming someone who makes 100K in Silicon Valley doesn't have the same quality of life as someone who makes 100K in Texas.

https://redd.it/enrc9g
@r_devops

Created an Octopus Deploy PowerShell module

Still in progress (just started it an hour ago or so). I've been working a lot with Octopus and saw a ton of great REST API examples, but no modules to interact with it. This is going to be a fun project :).

[https://github.com/AdminTurnedDevOps/OctopusDeploy-PowerShell](https://github.com/AdminTurnedDevOps/OctopusDeploy-PowerShell)

https://redd.it/enqcv6
@r_devops

What to use for CD in 2020?

At my previous job, we had a **Jenkins** cluster that used to build (CI) and continuously deploy to all the different environments. However, there was a lot of effort that went to continuously scale and manage Jenkins. Managing pipelines via Jenkinfiles was also mostly copy-paste and a lot of the server configuration could not be managed as infrastructure-as-code.

At my current job, we are using Github actions (for CI) to build and create docker images that are then *manually deployed* to our **Kubernetes** cluster. I want to enable continuous deployment to remove the friction between code push and rolling it out to different environments. Our setup includes **Vault** for secrets and the CD solution should be able to fetch the secrets for different environments to then deploy the app to Kubernetes. For this obviously, it will need the right privileges and we are not comfortable an external system having such access to such critical parts of our infrastructure. (Are the concerns invalid?)

It's 2020 and I feel that there has to be a better way of doing things than going the self-hosted Jenkins way especially if it could be infrastructure-as-code. I am looking at [https://landscape.cncf.io/category=continuous-integration-delivery&format=card-mode&grouping=category](https://landscape.cncf.io/category=continuous-integration-delivery&format=card-mode&grouping=category) but not sure which is the right tool.

Any advice, suggestion is welcome.

https://redd.it/enpacv
@r_devops

Our field deserves more than pissant low-payed contracts and I'm tired of it. Maybe we should unionize.

How the hell are we, as DevOps Engineers, with our experience and our knowledge, have no choice than to be pulled more and more into 6ish month (maybe +) contracts (aka contract to fire) that can end in a heartbeat and both don't offer benefits nor any job security?

I have been told by recruiters that this "contract" model is the new trend and seen it on the ground that it's taking over our field.

Why do we have this experience and don't get so much as a sick day or even the basic benefits of health insurance? Wages are way down when I have to seek some way paying for rent myself.

I am disgusted by this new model that takes us for granted and I feel like I'm nearing retirement at 37 with the insanity of it all. Requirements are up, competition is up, but wages and everything else are down. Benefits are absolutely zero when contractors are the second-class of DevOps Engineers.

Yet somehow we are still in-demand.

This is supposed to be an in-demand field but from where I'm at in the Bay Area it's a goddamn race to the bottom on the job market. The Bay should be an icon of success for its workers, not a dumpster fire of workers' rights.

We get nothing here nearly all the time.

I've always been loathe to the unions in other industries because they've never helped me. That being said, I think we need to rise up against this race to the bottom and I want some real organization to combat this contract dystopia.

I am tired of being exploited and wrangled around and shit on and I want a better life for everyone here and in this field.

Thank you for reading my rant.

https://redd.it/enm9ae
@r_devops

Starting a DevOps Consulting Firm

Has anyone tried starting a small consulting firm specializing in DevOps? Can you share you success/failure stories and maybe provide any tips for me?

https://redd.it/enlqgl
@r_devops

Ansible Alternatives?

We're looking for fairly basic remote command execution (update config files on many machines etc.) for a few dozen servers (too many servers to deal with manually but not huge). Ansible looks straightforward, but it doesn't support 2FA thru a jump box with keyboard-interactive (Google Authenticator). They have no plans to support this either. Any other alternatives?

https://redd.it/enydjx
@r_devops

Do you use any tools for handling production outages and post-mortems?

Production downtime can be pretty stressful, so you don't really want to be figuring out how to organize the team during one. We currently use PagerDuty to handle on-call and alerting, but once something actually happens, it's just the wild-West in Slack, Jira, and Google Docs. Problems this creates:

\- The whole thing relies on one or two of our best engineers to take charge and really organize the team. Any new or junior engineers have to be managed during the time, rather than being able to help efficiently.

\- Our dev channel in Slack can become a mess, especially if people who aren't actively helping start chatting

\- There's no enforcement of how to approach the whole process, including all the things that go into good post-mortem. Again, it's just up to one or two of our senior engineers that have handled everything historically, but we're starting to outgrow that.

\- Post-mortems tend to get lost (it would be really difficult for me to dig up links to every post-mortem for the last few years).

Is this a problem other people have?

https://redd.it/enwzhu
@r_devops

Tuning Blameless Postmortems

Hi! I wrote a post about my thoughts on postmortems and their shortcomings in practice. Feedback appreciated, especially on writing style and clarity.

[https://medium.com/@jimjh/tuning-blameless-postmortems-37a949c152b](https://medium.com/@jimjh/tuning-blameless-postmortems-37a949c152b)

I have noticed 2 common pitfalls with postmortems:

* a reluctance to name individuals and study their mental models, resulting in shallow analysis, and
* a drift toward bureaucracy and short-term patches, especially when the real, durable solutions are expensive to implement.

https://redd.it/envfyg
@r_devops

Mesos is Dead. Why did Kubernetes Kill it?

title

https://redd.it/enwzrz
@r_devops

How likely was the vent on Death Star added to the design by an out source worker that never cares?

In a galaxy far, far away. There was an out source worker working on a contract project for fixing the thermal simulation failure on the reaction core of the Death Star. He was paid a quarter of the wage of a Jedi trainee and works 12 hours a day, but was assigned to this blocker issue with a 2 week deadline attached.

To his delight, a flaw on the simulation software was discovered. Simply add some straight vents from the surface to the core, the simulation will no longer fail any tests. He discovered that if only one vent can be added for tests to pass, which has the smallest footprint in the design, the vent should be at least 2 meters wide. "This footprint is small enough on a 160-km sphere for anyone to figure out", he had in mind. With the time constrain rolling over him, he submitted a merge request with the change.

The request was reviewed by a full-time imperial engineer, an individual contributor who has no responsibility on contractors. He questioned the design and started an email thread, requiring the contractor to explain WTH he was adding to the design but got no reply. Couple days later, the design owner logged in and checkout the contractor's branch. Run test, no warning, no error! But there is a comment? Screw it for more work, he would just merge it.

2 days to deadline, the Imperial PM responsible for thermal simulation project finally showed up and asked everyone to close on it. He saw some resolved discussion on the updated design, the all-green spread sheet of simulation results and the pressure sent down from the command chain from Darth Vader himself, everything should be good to go.

The design was then built to the mighty ultimate weapon of the Empire, with the vent a contractor added there for fixing some test cases. As the result, the vent was not even blasting out plasma wind from the core and 2 proton torpedoes flew through it with no much resistance.

https://redd.it/env3jz
@r_devops

How much do you need to earn in SF Bay in order to live a decent life, and put away at least 2-4K in savings per month? Also, it is possible to go back to school part-time, to do your Masters, while having a full-time job as a DevOps Engineer? What do you recommend?



https://redd.it/entxe9
@r_devops

DevOps Interview Questions

Title says it all. I am currently a DevOps engineer and I am curious to hear what interviews questions you guys are asked. I would like to build on this to create a guide for myself and, if it's comprehensive enough, share it back with the community. Any guides you guys have would be great.

Now I know interviews vary in terms of difficulty. I come from a developer background and I feel as if those interview have been a bit more exhaustive. They would bombard me with programming questions and coding puzzles. So far my experience with devops roles has been very pleasant. For the most part, they would ask me about my role and the tools I use, and my proficiency with them. Overall, these interviews have be more like a casual conversation as oppose to a hostile programming interrogation.

Would love to hear about your experience and some "Gotcha" questions.
Ill start first, I found that a lot of interviewers have asked me about DevOps best practices, and found that the answers they where looking for came straight from the AWS White-paper "Practicing Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery on AWS".

https://redd.it/eo5r1q
@r_devops

Starting out with DevOps, what would you do?

We're at the early stages of our DevOps journey, learning as we go. I thought I'd ask you some questions if you could start your journey again:

* What would you do differently, and why?
* What tools would you consider using now that weren't available at the time or you weren't aware of?
* What would your advice be to anyone starting out on this journey, where do you begin, what do you start to build and create first, environments, build tools, automation?
* Finally, do you believe DevOps is essential in today's modern cloud landscape - are there any other real or emerging alternatives?

Thanks!

https://redd.it/eo2sfk
@r_devops

Why Google/AWS/Azure's bandwidth is 10x more expensive than competition?

Cloud provider bandwidth pricing:

​

Google Cloud \[1\]: $0.105/GB (max) - $0.06/GB (min)

AWS \[2\]: $0.09/GB (max) - $0.05/GB (min)

Azure \[3\]: $0.087/GB (max) - $0.05/GB (min)

​

Linode \[4\]: $0.02/GB

DigitalOcean \[5\]: $0.01/GiB

Cloudflare \[6\]: Freemium (but they can suspend you without warning)

​

In comparison, I pay \~60$/Month for 1Gbit/s up/down internet at home, which means \~$0.0002/GB, which is 300x cheaper than Google Cloud's bandwidth.

​

How is this possible? Is it purely because of the top trio's market dominance? Or competitors are just taking the loss to get attract customers?

​

\[1\] [https://cloud.google.com/network-tiers/pricing](https://cloud.google.com/network-tiers/pricing)

\[2\] [https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/on-demand/](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/on-demand/)

\[3\] [https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/bandwidth/](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/bandwidth/)

\[4\] [https://www.linode.com/community/questions/11427/bandwidth-charging](https://www.linode.com/community/questions/11427/bandwidth-charging)

\[5\] [https://www.digitalocean.com/docs/accounts/billing/bandwidth/](https://www.digitalocean.com/docs/accounts/billing/bandwidth/)

\[6\] [https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/88659/how-can-cloudflare-offer-a-free-cdn-with-unlimited-bandwidth](https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/88659/how-can-cloudflare-offer-a-free-cdn-with-unlimited-bandwidth)

https://redd.it/eo43oz
@r_devops

Tools to backup databases in the cloud?

We are running postgres, mongodb, redis, ... databases in our kubernetes cluster on bare-metal servers.

Currently we use jenkins and shell scripts that run mongodump or similar.

Curious what you guys are using and if there is a tool available that helps with that task.

Every tool I found (velero / stash) just backups the persistent volumes. I am worried about data corruption here if there are write operations during backup.

https://redd.it/eo5yzu
@r_devops

Repo architecture

Hello I am about to publish my first open source project and I am a little confused how to organize GitHub repositories for it. Project is composed of 2 (3) elements: Frontend created in angular, backend created in spring boot, and third element which contain init scripts and docker-compose file to run it.

At first I was thinking about publishing 3 repos. It would be easy to create travis-ci scripts to build app and create docker image with separate context of backend and frontend. But more as I think of it it is really hard for anyone else but me understand and navigate through code base.

What is Your experience with such cases? It is better to create multiple repos or one with folders like frontend, backend, scripts? In second example how to handle CI? Building an app in single pipeline when changing only backend will cause to rebuild frontend as well.

https://redd.it/eo1b9q
@r_devops

How do you prefer to get help when you have questions about APIs?

Hi everyone,

I am a user researcher for a cybersecurity company and I am currently working on a project about API support.

I have created a really quick survey (less than two minutes) and would really appreciate it if some of you could answer my questions. I promise that I am not selling anything: I am only doing research. You could think of it like you are helping fellow API users around the world (which you really would be). :)

Here is my survey: [How do you get help with APIs?](https://surveys.hotjar.com/s?siteId=793793&surveyId=149005)

Thank you so much and have a great day! Also please don't hesitate to PM me if you have any questions about the survey.

https://redd.it/eob3nq
@r_devops