New to Cloud, new to AWS, new to Devops, new to the company - we're doing multi-region active-active

I've recently gotten my first 'real' DevOps job after being a traditional sysadmin for a while and only having to care about resources that were maybe used by tens of people at a time. My new company does custom development and has started to get into the tens-of-thousands region quite recently. I'm currently the only ops person there. (Like 99% of companies, we of course don't use "real" devops.)

I'm now tasked with two projects that will require high availability with zero experience in any of Terraform, cloud, AWS or providing services on this scale at all. (I started on 21-02-01 and on these projects some 1-2 weeks later.) One of the projects is even multi-region active-active which I've gathered is pretty much the pinnacle of achievements in cloud tech. Another will require insane throughput - large numbers of terabytes of video processing a day.

I've been making decent process on implementing these infrastructures but I'm quite terrified of what will happen when the products launch. So far, I've been able to write a few test services that show the basic principle does work (i. e. cross-region replication and such) but I have absolutely no idea how that relates to practical application development. (No background in dev work.) Yesterday, I didn't even know cloud-init existed, today we're absolutely relying on it for some core services. And I still have absolutely no idea how to implement a large number of things I'm supposed to finish next week, like KMS or CloudWatch - I haven't even started reading about them. It seems achievable to make them work as well if you only read enough Stackexchange threads but ... is that really all there is to building a good architecture?

I'm doing my best to try to learn all these services and how Terraform maps to them but it's just entirely overwhelming - especially when you factor in that I also have to predict the cost of the resulting infrastructure. One of these projects will launch next weekend because it's time-sensitive. I don't even know what my question in this post is, maybe I'm just venting, but... help?

To note, the company is not malicious at all, it's pretty much still a startup and the bosses' mentality is literally "Fuck yeah!". I think they just don't realize what they're getting into. If this goes well, it might be a career-defining moment for me because I know that they do reward performance. One of them also invited me over for drinks tomorrow so it'd be awesome if I had some appropriate way to express how I feel by then.

Edit: I've also made sure to very explicitly state that I have no idea what I'm doing on Slack so I don't think I have to worry about personal liability.

https://redd.it/m3qh1i
@r_devops

Part IV: Klustered - Live Kubernetes Debugging

Hi,

Another week, another episode. Thank you for the continued kind words, it really makes it all worth while to know that watching me suffer is helping other people with their Kubernetes journies; so thank you for getting in touch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp6zvBIo5KM

​

This episode was rather amusing, our first cluster breaks (a pair, Matt Moore [Knative\] and Dan Pop [Falco\]) decided to amuse themselves by the cluster suffered a death by a thousand paper cuts.

The second cluster was a tough one, I won't give anything away; but it was difficult due to the lack of errors; it's funny when you see what happened.

​

Enjoy!

https://redd.it/m3nlgg
@r_devops

When would you consider one knows enough to put "familiar with Terraform and Python" on their resume? And are my blog entries helping or hurting me in the job search? Hoping to get my resume more attention - interested in cloud/aws - but may have to start with a sysadmin role?

Here is my resume. https://imgur.com/a/eqAJGgG

I'm the type of person who never tries to B/S people with my resume. It may just be my lack of confidence in myself, but even though I might be able to talk about terraform and python, I'm worried I'll be expected to do something I am not capable of. Of course, I feel I could certainly learn it.

On my resume I list my personal website that hosts my resume, a link to my linked in page, and some blog entries where I discuss what I am learning. an example of a blog entry is...

​

Setting up an Ubuntu server using Terraform

For this project I wanted to learn the basics of Terraform. I first installed and set up Visual Studio Code because it's a nice interface and came highly recommend from other users online. Then I wrote out what I wanted my deployment to look like such as my subnets, internet gateway, and security groups.

​

Once I knew what I wanted to build, I felt the best way to get started with Terraform is to use HashiCorp's documentation because they provide examples of how to do things that you can easily modify to fit what you're trying to do. However, it can be a little difficult to navigate their website so I spent a lot of time googling "terraform aws [resource I was trying to deploy\]". For example, "terraform aws vpc" pointed me to the Hashicorp documentation for deploying a vpc into aws using Terraform which also gave me example code of a vpc deployment I used to launch my vpc.

​

After a lot of googling and converting my plans into Terraform code, I went through and made sure all my subnets, IP address assignments, security groups, etc. were accurate and built in a way that wouldn't cause any errors. Of course, once I entered the "terraform apply" command I was made aware of some typos which I quickly fixed and then finally once my code was successfully executed, I had a publicly accessible Ubuntu webserver!

​

What is great about Terraform is I can easily deploy resources in AWS without having to manually do dozens and dozens of clicks in the AWS console. Being able to quickly grab some code I've used in a previous deployment to use in a new deployment is also something I'd like to learn about in the future as well as the power of automation. But for now, I just wanted to learn the basics so I can start to see potential there is in infrastructure as code.

​

Please note the link below points to an elastic IP but I may terminate the instance as I do more testing so it may not be active 24/7.

​

[link redacted\]

​

​

If this is stupid, PLEASE let me know so I can fix or remove it. I am not looking for sugar coated responses. I am seeking feedback from those in the field.


I have already had my resume reviewed several times in the r/ITCareerQuestions sub and now feel I'm ready to apply for jobs but would LOVE to put "familiar with Terraform and Python" on my resume or some variation. At least so I could get past HR and have an opportunity to sell myself!

​

Thank you and I hope the sub will permit this post and it doesn't violates any rules! If this is inappropriate for the sub, please advise on a better sub as I'm not 100% familiar with all the subs. :)

https://redd.it/m3m6np
@r_devops

Is jfrog artifactory good for the long run, or nah?

My org is looking to standardize on one repo manager (we are currently using nexus and bitbucket depending on the team).

Lately we've been trying to be a forward looking org because we don't want to get fuckin stuck again (lol) on a tool that will become less relevant over time.

So my main question is to those that use jfrog, will it still be relevant to your org years down the road? Also any feedback you have about the trajectory of the product would be so help.

View Poll

https://redd.it/m3m6e3
@r_devops

Some general questions about DBs and cloud

I'm looking for some insights into cloud management with DevOps culture in mind. I won't go into much detail, I just need some general information/resources that I can follow, about these topics:


1. When to use container services like Fargate, ACI, App Service? If the project isn't big enough, is it worth to migrate from more traditional approach (so VM instances with docker-compose running inside)?
2. Managed DBs - I totally get their advantages and I'm a huge fan. But they are expensive. How many instances should be deployed? Let's assume that I have 5 independent projects and each project has dev/staging/prod environments. Should I have 15 DB servers (instances) running? Or can I perhaps run one DB instance and serve dev/staging environments from there and keep prod instances seperate? Important: I mean database server instances, not databases.

I've been trying to find some info online but most docs don't go into that much detail. Could you give me some more insight on how to run this type of infra? Mind you, the projects are not big, the databases are 1-2 GB in size (dev/staging DBs much less than that). What approach would you choose and why?

https://redd.it/m3lotp
@r_devops

Where do you go for networking (the people kind)?

I tried to google it but "devops networking" returns results about networking between servers >_<

https://redd.it/m4b3bd
@r_devops

MySQL 5.6 -> postgres 13 ?

Do you guys know of any open source tools for replicating GCP MySQL to GCP Postgres.

I have a live MySQL db and I want to make a Postgres read replica

https://redd.it/m4dxcr
@r_devops

seeking app: wiki/Note-taking, cross-platform, code-friendly

What does everyone else use as a cross-platform, preferably cloud-stored, code-block friendly note-taking app?

I have been on MS OneNote (web edition) because it's free and does all the above except for code-block handling. I might just be accustomed to tools that see markdown-isms and implements them.
I don't want to run a wiki but the content I'm putting into this are very much like wiki content.

So yea, what's everyone else using for keeping their notes and knowledge in a portable place?

https://redd.it/m480lm
@r_devops

New job - confusion!

Hi

Bit of background. I am from a traditional network engineering background and recently started a role at a large company as a 'Devnetops' engineer. The role is primarily cloud vpn, expressroute/direct connects and load balancer deployments to allow clients to access services. In all honesty I don't see much Devops going on apart from a few scripts to speed up deployment of said resources, however I would like understand where I would be best place focusing my efforts to improve things or if it's even possible in .

The big problem I see currently is that most teams are silod (one team works with deploying cloud environment (network/security and servers), one is responsible for the applications the customers consume and we do the 'frontend' connectivity. How everything is done by the other teams I have no idea yet. My main focus is on what we can do in our team. A couple of the guys have a bunch of powershell scripts that are maintained in git that are used to deploy/modify the resources we are responsible for. These are great but there is some vague talk about moving to terraform as this would allow us to work across multiple cloud providers. The other talk is around using Jenkins pipelines.

The confusion I have is whether or not this approach is ideal or should even be pursued based on the nature of the tasks we carryout in our silod nature. (We have 100s of clients - do we just maintain vpn/lb IaC for these whilst every thing else is missing? Is it worth the effort of maintaining IaC for these particular things that might change regularly?). To me it almost makes sense to just expand upon the scripting and maybe have a web form that is used to execute tasks to deploy or modify. I guess I'm new in the role so maybe I am missing a bunch of context and things behind the scenes, but this is my initial thoughts.

As anyone any experience in a similar role that could maybe share some thoughts? As mentioned, this is all new to me, but I am very keen to take a learning path that will be beneficial to our operations and team and don't want to go down an avenue that will be wasted in my current role.

https://redd.it/m438gm
@r_devops

Any good ERD (entity relationship diagram) tool suggestions? Ie. Schemaspy?

Our team used Schemaspy spy years before but want to integrate something on our new system. Wanted to see if there are any new tools on the market worth considering. For context we want to visualize the connections in our DB schema.

Google search returned a smattering but nothing seemed to stand out.

https://redd.it/m42art
@r_devops

Github action failing

I'm trying to implement a pipeline for an app of mine but one command keeps failing when I run it in the pipeline.

https://github.com/tonsV2/urbantz/runs/2102059359?checksuitefocus=true

When I run the helmfile command locally it exits with 0. In the pipeline it actually manage to deploy the chart but still returns 1.

Any clue about what I'm doing wrong?

https://redd.it/m44ww9
@r_devops

DevOps on Linux Terminal

I am trying to groom a community of students with only Linux terminal devices. I am new to DevOps, but been programming for about a decade (Nothing intense, mostly vanilla).
What tools for a DevOps pipeline can one work with entirely on Linux Terminal?

### What I currently offer them:
- Linux commands (basics and intermediary)*
- Neovim
- Git
- Github (gh)
- Mariadb/pgsql (sql)
- Docker

### What I think should be Added (I have little to no experience with some of the tools):
- Kubernetes basics (kubectl)
- Ansible/Terraform/Some other IAC basics (I don't know which plays better with the Terminal)
- AWS CLI basics*
- GCloud CLI basics
- Azure CLI basics
- Digital Ocean CLI basics

**What do you think? What will you add or remove? I'll really like thoughts on IAC of choice for Linux terminal.**

(*Cloud CLI basics mean like VM and container provisioning)

https://redd.it/m44sw4
@r_devops

Prometheus Metrics using CLI

Hi there,

I have a test case, wherein I have to deploy Prometheus to capture the pods and node-specific metrics, such as metrics exposes by node exporter and Kube-state-metrics? The servers are very isolated with no connectivity to the web UI or any dashboard? Need some help to understand, how can we get these metrics in JSON or any other format using any CLI tool? Because of the environment restriction of no access to the web UI or dashboards, cannot deploy Grafana? Your suggestions will be a huge help.


Thanks,

https://redd.it/m4lb3x
@r_devops

Looking for CD tool that tracks git commit

Hi, I’m looking for a CD tool that can track if a git commit reaches a certain stage. Is this something commonly offered or am I asking for too much? 🙏

https://redd.it/m41xx2
@r_devops

Secure Mailserver

I plan to create an absolutely secure mail server. Is it enough to not connect it to the internet?

https://redd.it/m488ag
@r_devops

RN CI/CD

As part of our startup, we are building 3 RN apps and I want your recommendations for a suitable (not expensive) CI/CD solutions.
Any Ideas?

https://redd.it/m408ax
@r_devops

INTERVIEW Q

Hello Guys,

I want to create one file that file name must be same as username of the system by Ansible in 10 different System.

https://redd.it/m44z5j
@r_devops

Battle-tested way to configure a Jenkins server on AWS using IaC/CaC?

Hi, I'm working on a project with mission critical aspects where we need to deliver changes to APIs, web apps a couple times a day. I have a task to have everything done by code. I'm trying to decide on a good practice to deploy the Jenkins server on AWS. Also, I'm not sure if the server has to be a highly available server or not, on what factors is that decided?

Any recommendation is appreciated. Thanks!

https://redd.it/m5207h
@r_devops

How can I change Jfrog Artifactory mimetypes.xml file if I use Artifactory Cloud

Didn't find a way to change it since I don't see a way to access the file on the backend

https://redd.it/m50lh4
@r_devops

Preview environments per Pull Request using AWS CDK and Github Actions

Hello all, I published my first tech article explaining the steps to create your own isolated environments in your Github Pull Request using the awesome AWS CDK.

Here is the link : https://dev.to/jgoux/preview-environments-per-pull-request-using-aws-cdk-and-github-actions-bfi

&#x200B;

It was a great experience writing it. :)

https://redd.it/m4zyji
@r_devops