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I am in a similar boat. With DSC, I am increasingly excited with the idea end user computers can also shift to immutable, or approaching what we call immutable

by 616c 10y ago

I am in a similar boat. With DSC, I am increasingly excited with the idea end user computers can also shift to immutable, or approaching what we call immutable, infrastructure that has logically valid weight in the communities represented here. The problem? Culture. So many people do not understand when I say the following things: - Do not install with the GUI, please use the deployment system to document unattended installation. - You should not have to log into a computer and manually install and customize things, especially if you forget to document. - You should not be doing things, install, configuration change, with following this AND updating the team in your notes, so when I ask you, you in fact remember. These things are the product of less fires, as I see it, and why I too have to re-image everything (although is largely out of concern for any malware, especially with the majority of our userbase).

tikhonj 10y ago
Honestly, this is what got me most excited about NixOS. I mean, the underlying technology is spiffy, of course, but the real key is that it lets you configure everything declaratively while keeping track of different versions and actively pushes you in that direction. Doing things the "right" way is also the path of least resistance. Sometimes this is a bit annoying when you just want something to work but can't just hack it because the system files are hidden all over the place and papered over with symlinks, but in the long run it means your system configuration is way easier to maintain.
- 616c 10y ago
  I am very excited for NixOS, for me. In the professional IT sphere, outside of DevOps, this is so far away it is depressing. I spend my weekends with QubesOS, NixOS, and maybe in the future GuixSD and SubgraphOS as my therapy. I have started to look into a career transition into DevOps (please do not laugh, feel free to downvote) not because of how cool it looks or the increasing culture around it, but I need a break from the mainstream of throw everything and anything on the wall until it sticks without rigor, or your time is cheap automation is a very, very low priority since we pay you to do the tasks we dislike as more serious engineers (who also build some systems with checklists).
krylon 10y ago
I read about DSC a while ago, and it sounds very appealing. So far, though, I have not managed to actually get to know it personally, so to speak. We have over the past two years tried to move as much of the configuration as possible to GPOs, although they bring their own share of problems. On Unix-like systems, one can use log files to track down problems most of the time, on Windows it seems like logging is kind of an afterthought. I especially hate it when gpresult says it did apply a certain setting when upon inspecting the system the setting clearly has not been applied (or overriden by something else? Who knows?). It is frustrating because GPOs seem like such a great idea in theory.
- 616c 10y ago
  I have just read about it and the WMF (WMI Management Foundation) docs, whitepapers, and framework. I have not played much. GPO, and GPP (the preferences), are a nightmare. - The gpresult utility and rsop.msc tell you changes, but that does not mean much, because - GPO is async and requires sometimes a shutdown, not just a reboot (fom 5+ years of experience), so good luck dropping this crap on a dime; God help you - The Registry.pol files are not easily auditable or usable outside gpresult and rsop.msc - If you hit slow links, processing will be disabled; this is not slow all the time, but when 2% of the computers booting at 6:54AM on Tuesday it does not get applied - A whole bunch of other stuff I forget in this rant But I totally agree with you, such a pain. I have not had a lot of time for Salt, Puppet, and Chef. Whether it is in parallel or thanks to DSC (I saw some Powershell in one repo ... Ansible?) those tools are also a reality. I use an expensive SCCM alternative, but I am seriously considering proposing moving to one of the Chef/Puppet/Anisble/Salt stacks with SSH becoming a reality on Windows. All I can say is thank God.

by 616c 10y ago

tikhonj 10y ago

Honestly, this is what got me most excited about NixOS. I mean, the underlying technology is spiffy, of course, but the real key is that it lets you configure everything declaratively while keeping track of different versions and actively pushes you in that direction. Doing things the "right" way is also the path of least resistance. Sometimes this is a bit annoying when you just want something to work but can't just hack it because the system files are hidden all over the place and papered over with symlinks, but in the long run it means your system configuration is way easier to maintain.

616c 10y ago
I am very excited for NixOS, for me. In the professional IT sphere, outside of DevOps, this is so far away it is depressing. I spend my weekends with QubesOS, NixOS, and maybe in the future GuixSD and SubgraphOS as my therapy. I have started to look into a career transition into DevOps (please do not laugh, feel free to downvote) not because of how cool it looks or the increasing culture around it, but I need a break from the mainstream of throw everything and anything on the wall until it sticks without rigor, or your time is cheap automation is a very, very low priority since we pay you to do the tasks we dislike as more serious engineers (who also build some systems with checklists).

krylon 10y ago

I read about DSC a while ago, and it sounds very appealing. So far, though, I have not managed to actually get to know it personally, so to speak. We have over the past two years tried to move as much of the configuration as possible to GPOs, although they bring their own share of problems. On Unix-like systems, one can use log files to track down problems most of the time, on Windows it seems like logging is kind of an afterthought. I especially hate it when gpresult says it did apply a certain setting when upon inspecting the system the setting clearly has not been applied (or overriden by something else? Who knows?). It is frustrating because GPOs seem like such a great idea in theory.

616c 10y ago
I have just read about it and the WMF (WMI Management Foundation) docs, whitepapers, and framework. I have not played much. GPO, and GPP (the preferences), are a nightmare. - The gpresult utility and rsop.msc tell you changes, but that does not mean much, because - GPO is async and requires sometimes a shutdown, not just a reboot (fom 5+ years of experience), so good luck dropping this crap on a dime; God help you - The Registry.pol files are not easily auditable or usable outside gpresult and rsop.msc - If you hit slow links, processing will be disabled; this is not slow all the time, but when 2% of the computers booting at 6:54AM on Tuesday it does not get applied - A whole bunch of other stuff I forget in this rant But I totally agree with you, such a pain. I have not had a lot of time for Salt, Puppet, and Chef. Whether it is in parallel or thanks to DSC (I saw some Powershell in one repo ... Ansible?) those tools are also a reality. I use an expensive SCCM alternative, but I am seriously considering proposing moving to one of the Chef/Puppet/Anisble/Salt stacks with SSH becoming a reality on Windows. All I can say is thank God.