5 ms·

Choosing Cloud Foundry for the UK Government's Platform as a Service

37 points by henryaj 11y ago

jacques_chester 11y ago
Looks like they're going for the full ecosystem of CF development tools too -- BOSH for deployment, Pivotal Tracker for managing work, Concourse for CI. [Obligatory disclaimer that I work for Pivotal, the main donor of engineering effort to Cloud Foundry].
- EngineerBetter 11y ago
  (Disclosure: I worked at Pivotal for a bit, as well as a consultancy supplying services to Her Maj's Government) Yeah, and that's a good call in my book. Concourse + Bosh makes open source CF manageable. I've heard stories of people trying to deploy OS CF without Bosh, and it ending in a world of pain. I wish Bosh had a better user experience - in fact, I gave a talk alluding to that at CF Summit Berlin. It's got some great qualities missing in other tools, but I dare say most of the folks reading this will never had heard of it. Declarative, convergent, effectively immutable infrastructure-as-code across all the major IaaS providers. Great to see UK Government IT modernising. Can't wait for HMRC to catch up!
  - madaxe_again 11y ago
    Great to see UK Government IT modernising. Can't wait for HMRC to catch up! You haven't seen that many publicly funded technology projects, I take it? GDS are a monopoly, and the govt don't care about using what they're making - they're just going through the motions, spending the money. So, while this is notable from a technical pov, don't kid yourself that this'll be anything other than a billion pound cash cow for the nepotistic web of government. How's that nhs digitisation (NPfIT) going? Oh, it isn't?
    - EngineerBetter 11y ago
      You haven't seen that many publicly funded technology projects, I take it? I have as it happens. Ex-colleagues happen to be working on some, which is rather entertaining as some of those involved are particular left-leaning! Government buying policy has moved to replace the massive SI consultancies that were holding the Government to ransom with nine-figure contracts to support (and deliver) legacy systems (think 00's era EJB nonsense). GDS is part of that move to more modern working practices, and I for one welcome it. Governments need IT systems. I would prefer they were delivered with open source platforms and agile methodologies. I'm interested to hear your ideas for an alternative.
      - djaychela 11y ago
        Glad to see I'm not the only one who believes that governments should try to deliver using open source - the improvement that can be made to society in general from taking this approach is immense, IMO. There are so many areas where doing so will benefit everyone, eventually.
      - flarg 11y ago
        Not as negative as the OP - but I have worked within govt projects - and the engagement between GDS and the civil service has always seemed really poor to me; I 100% share GDS' ideals and standards - but somehow it seems to go more wrong than right. I think it's too easy to blame the civil service - GDS should be able to deal with this.
    - edsykes 11y ago
      it's happening, but there's a lot of work to do: http://www.equalexperts.com/hmrc-digital-platform-as-a-club/ http://www.equalexperts.com/hmrc-digital-platform-as-a-club/
- twic 11y ago
  Are they seriously going to use Concourse? That's not mentioned in the article, that I can see.
  - EngineerBetter 11y ago
    They are - it's in the GitHub repositories: https://github.com/alphagov/paas-cf/tree/master/concourse https://github.com/alphagov/paas-cf/tree/master/concourse I should prolly mention that I was lucky enough to work with one of the Concourse authors, and also think it is awesome. Every other CI server I've used has induced rage!
    - twic 11y ago
      I was interviewed by one of the Concourse authors when i applied to Pivotal; probably the same one, given that you seem to be in London. I think Concourse is a huge step in the right direction for CI, and we've used it on a few projects, but last time we did, a few months ago, it struck me as not quite ready for prime time yet.
      - EngineerBetter 11y ago
        Ha - if it was in 2014, I was probably in the office! I don't think it's hit version 1.0 yet, which would explain its rough edges. I find it interesting that it shares a lot of philosophies with Bosh.
        jacques_chester 11y ago
        Alex Suraci was working less than 50M from Dmitry Kalinin when Concourse was born and put to work on the Diego team. So in a way it comes as no surprise.
        twic 11y ago
        Both of the founders were Cloud Foundry developers, and so had undergone thorough BOSH indoctrination. You can absolutely see that Concourse comes from the same philosophy as Cloud Foundry itself; it's virtually an answer to the question "what would a PaaS for CI look like"?
jksmith 11y ago
Another project free of generics, exceptions and heavy abstractions strikes again. Great to see Vulcand usage.

37 points by henryaj 11y ago

Looks like they're going for the full ecosystem of CF development tools too -- BOSH for deployment, Pivotal Tracker for managing work, Concourse for CI. [Obligatory disclaimer that I work for Pivotal, the main donor of engineering effort to Cloud Foundry].

EngineerBetter 11y ago
(Disclosure: I worked at Pivotal for a bit, as well as a consultancy supplying services to Her Maj's Government) Yeah, and that's a good call in my book. Concourse + Bosh makes open source CF manageable. I've heard stories of people trying to deploy OS CF without Bosh, and it ending in a world of pain. I wish Bosh had a better user experience - in fact, I gave a talk alluding to that at CF Summit Berlin. It's got some great qualities missing in other tools, but I dare say most of the folks reading this will never had heard of it. Declarative, convergent, effectively immutable infrastructure-as-code across all the major IaaS providers. Great to see UK Government IT modernising. Can't wait for HMRC to catch up!
- madaxe_again 11y ago
  Great to see UK Government IT modernising. Can't wait for HMRC to catch up! You haven't seen that many publicly funded technology projects, I take it? GDS are a monopoly, and the govt don't care about using what they're making - they're just going through the motions, spending the money. So, while this is notable from a technical pov, don't kid yourself that this'll be anything other than a billion pound cash cow for the nepotistic web of government. How's that nhs digitisation (NPfIT) going? Oh, it isn't?
  - EngineerBetter 11y ago
    You haven't seen that many publicly funded technology projects, I take it? I have as it happens. Ex-colleagues happen to be working on some, which is rather entertaining as some of those involved are particular left-leaning! Government buying policy has moved to replace the massive SI consultancies that were holding the Government to ransom with nine-figure contracts to support (and deliver) legacy systems (think 00's era EJB nonsense). GDS is part of that move to more modern working practices, and I for one welcome it. Governments need IT systems. I would prefer they were delivered with open source platforms and agile methodologies. I'm interested to hear your ideas for an alternative.
    - djaychela 11y ago
      Glad to see I'm not the only one who believes that governments should try to deliver using open source - the improvement that can be made to society in general from taking this approach is immense, IMO. There are so many areas where doing so will benefit everyone, eventually.
    - flarg 11y ago
      Not as negative as the OP - but I have worked within govt projects - and the engagement between GDS and the civil service has always seemed really poor to me; I 100% share GDS' ideals and standards - but somehow it seems to go more wrong than right. I think it's too easy to blame the civil service - GDS should be able to deal with this.
  - edsykes 11y ago
    it's happening, but there's a lot of work to do: http://www.equalexperts.com/hmrc-digital-platform-as-a-club/ http://www.equalexperts.com/hmrc-digital-platform-as-a-club/
twic 11y ago
Are they seriously going to use Concourse? That's not mentioned in the article, that I can see.
- EngineerBetter 11y ago
  They are - it's in the GitHub repositories: https://github.com/alphagov/paas-cf/tree/master/concourse https://github.com/alphagov/paas-cf/tree/master/concourse I should prolly mention that I was lucky enough to work with one of the Concourse authors, and also think it is awesome. Every other CI server I've used has induced rage!
  - twic 11y ago
    I was interviewed by one of the Concourse authors when i applied to Pivotal; probably the same one, given that you seem to be in London. I think Concourse is a huge step in the right direction for CI, and we've used it on a few projects, but last time we did, a few months ago, it struck me as not quite ready for prime time yet.
    - EngineerBetter 11y ago
      Ha - if it was in 2014, I was probably in the office! I don't think it's hit version 1.0 yet, which would explain its rough edges. I find it interesting that it shares a lot of philosophies with Bosh.
      - jacques_chester 11y ago
        Alex Suraci was working less than 50M from Dmitry Kalinin when Concourse was born and put to work on the Diego team. So in a way it comes as no surprise.
        twic 11y ago
        Both of the founders were Cloud Foundry developers, and so had undergone thorough BOSH indoctrination. You can absolutely see that Concourse comes from the same philosophy as Cloud Foundry itself; it's virtually an answer to the question "what would a PaaS for CI look like"?

jksmith 11y ago

Another project free of generics, exceptions and heavy abstractions strikes again. Great to see Vulcand usage.