Operations is increasingly responsible for deploying and
managing applications within this architecture, requiring traditionally
developer-oriented skills like integration, programming and testing as well as
greater collaboration to meet business and operational goals for performance,
security, and availability. To maintain the economy of scale necessary to keep
up with the volatility of modern data center environments, operations is
adopting modern development methodologies and practices.
cloud computing and virtualization have elevated the API as the next
generation management paradigm across IT, driven by the proliferation of
virtualization and pressure on IT to become more efficient. In response,
infrastructure is becoming more programmable, allowing IT to automate,
integrate and manage continuous delivery of applications within the context of
an overarching operational framework.
The role of infrastructure vendors
in devops is to enable the automation, integration, and lifecycle management of
applications and infrastructure services through APIs, programmable interfaces
and reusable services. By embracing the toolsets, APIs, and methodologies of
devops, infrastructure vendors can enable IT to create repeatable processes
with faster feedback mechanisms that support the continuous and dynamic
delivery cycle required to achieve efficiency and stability within operations.
DEVOPS MORE THAN ORCHESTRATING VM PROVISIONING
Most of the attention paid to devops
today is focused on automating the virtual machine provisioning process. Do you
use scripts? Cloned images? Boot scripts or APIs? Open Source tools?
But devops is more than that and
it’s not what you use. You don’t suddenly get to claim you’re “doing devops”
because you use a framework instead of custom scripts, or vice-versa. Devops is
a broader, iterative agile methodology that enables refinement and eventually
optimization of operational processes. Devops is lifecycle management with the
goal of continuous delivery of applications achieved through the discovery,
refinement and optimization of repeatable processes. Those processes must
necessarily extend beyond the virtual machine. The bulk of time required to
deploy an application to the end-user lies not in provisioning it, but in
provisioning it in the context of the entire application delivery chain.
Security, access, web application
security, load
balancing, acceleration, optimization. These
are the services that comprise an application delivery network, through which
the application is secured, optimized and accelerated. These services must be
defined and provisioned as well. Through the iterative development of the
appropriate (read: most optimal) policies to deliver specific applications,
devops is able to refine the policies and the process until it is
repeatable.
Like enterprise architects, devops
practitioners will see patterns emerge from the repetition that clearly
indicate an ability to reuse operational processes and make them repeatable.
Codifying in some way these patterns shortens the overall process. Iterations refine
until the process is optimized and applications can be completely deployed in
as short a time as possible. And like enterprise architects, devops
practitioners know that these processes span the silos that exist in data
centers today. From development to security to the network; the process of
deploying an application to the end-user requires components from each of these
concerns and thus devops must figure out how to build bridges between the ivory
towers of the data center. Devops must discern how best to integrate processes
from each concern into a holistic, application-focused operational deployment
process.
To achieve this, infrastructure must
be programmable, it must present the means by which it can be included the
processes. We know, for example, that there are over 1200 network attributes
spanning multiple concerns that must be configured in the application delivery
network to successfully deploy Microsoft Exchange to ensure it is secure, fast
and available. Codifying that piece of the deployment equation as a repeatable,
automated process goes a long way toward reducing the average time to end-user
from 3 months down to something more acceptable.
Infrastructure vendors must seek to
aid those on their devops journey by not only providing the APIs and
programmable interfaces, but actively building an ecosystem of devops-focused
solutions that can be delivered to devops practitioners. It is not enough to
say “here is an API”, go forth and integrate. Devops practitioners are not
developers, and while an API in some cases may be exactly what is required,
more often than not organizations are adopting platforms and frameworks through
which devops will be executed. Infrastructure vendors must recognize this
reality and cooperatively develop the integrations and the means to codify
repeatable patterns. The collaboration across silos in the data center is
difficult, but necessary. Infrastructure vendors who cross market lines, as it
were, to cooperatively develop integrations that address the technological
concerns of collaboration will make the people and process collaboration
responsibility of devops a much less difficult task.
Devops is not something you build,
it’s something you do.
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