3 ms·

I'd also recommend any sysadmin to start looking into an automation framework like Chef, Puppet, Ansible, or any other of the myriad options.

by jaryd 13y ago

ams6110 13y ago
Absolutely. Automate relentlessly. As a bonus, the recipes/playbooks you develop serve as documentation for how things are configured.
- jaryd 13y ago
  Yeah that's a huge bonus that I didn't anticipate before beginning. My cookbooks are essentially dynamic documentation that morph with my changes in system requirements.
- sergiosgc 13y ago
  Better yet, version controlled changes to recipes are an excellent logbook for sysadmin teams.
protomyth 13y ago
Automation is a fine thing except for some of this damn "enterprise software" that not only doesn't automate real well[1], but actually cannot be installed on VMWare[2] or even go to a hot swap machine[3]. Sysadmins always love government required software and stuff bought before we got there. 1) luckily backup seem to be reasonably automation friendly 2) "We do not support virtualization of any kind" 3) tied to hardware on one machine - f'n brilliant.
- jaryd 13y ago
  You might find this interesting: http://www.slideshare.net/opscode/chef-vmwarewebinarslidessept2013 http://www.slideshare.net/opscode/chef-vmwarewebinarslidesse... I personally haven't tried building environments on VMWare as I run pretty much everything in AWS. However, this presentation looks promising.
  - protomyth 13y ago
    Since the government vendor's software "cannot run" VMWare, I cannot quite use the results.
WestCoastJustin 13y ago
> start looking into an automation framework Cannot stress this enough! There is a sea change happening and sysadmins run the risk of being swept away unless they learn about automation (puppet/chef) software and cloud infrastructure services (openstack/aws). My new years resolution is to release screencasts on these very subjects. I have already released one on Learning Puppet with Vagrant @ http://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/8-learning-puppet-with-vagrant http://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/8-learning-puppet-with-vag... if anyone is interested.
- nikhilji 13y ago
  Good stuff! Thanks!
- gmjosack 13y ago
  I don't know if you're aware, but configuration management is not a new concept. CFEngine was started in '93. CFEngine2 which is popular among many sysadmins came out in '98. While configuration management has definitely had some improvements it's not THAT far from what we've been using for decades now.
pault 13y ago
I just started digging into chef with the intention of using with AWS opsworks and... holy complexity. There just doesn't seem to be any obvious entry point, as far as I can tell. I've spent two entire days searching and there doesn't seem to be anything in between "hello wordpress" and "read this 300+ page user manual". Can anyone recommend a hands on guide for setting up a multi-node stack with opsworks that isn't just plain vanilla templates? I was really impressed by Richard Seroter's videos on AWS at pluralsight, but they are more of a 30,000 foot overview and gloss over implementation details, for the most part (even at 10+ hours). The project I'm working on is mostly a pretty straightforward node service running on postgres, but it uses some custom services that need to scale horizontally, and host sensitive data that should probably be running in a VPC. Edit: I'm also having a difficult time trying to figure out how to get up to speed with chef in the specific context of opsworks, since most of the chef-specific courseware I can find assumes I'm using a hosted chef server, and I'm not quite sure how that overlaps with the opsworks flavor. It's starting to feel like I'll be at this for another week before I can get even a simple stack running.
- mateuszf 13y ago
  Try with ansible.
  - deckiedan 13y ago
    Agreed. As well as the reasonably good ansible documentation, checkout the ansible-examples github repo. ( https://github.com/ansible/ansible-examples https://github.com/ansible/ansible-examples ) There's a few initial 'conventions' to figure out (roles, group vars, playbooks), but then it's so incredibly simple to get into. My dad is playing with a raspberry pi at home, wanting to set up a web kiosk thing. I'd been doing something similar a few months ago for work, so I send him my ansible playbook. He could follow it as if it were a plain text checklist/tutorial, without needing ansible at all. If he wants to automate it, he can. That, I think, is one of the benefits of ansible. It's not a lot more work than just writing an overview of what you need to do in the first place, but with the benefit of it being repeatable and automated.
- blueskin_ 13y ago

I'd also recommend any sysadmin to start looking into an automation framework like Chef, Puppet, Ansible, or any other of the myriad options.

by jaryd 13y ago

I'd also recommend any sysadmin to start looking into an automation framework like Chef, Puppet, Ansible, or any other of the myriad options.

ams6110 13y ago

Absolutely. Automate relentlessly. As a bonus, the recipes/playbooks you develop serve as documentation for how things are configured.

jaryd 13y ago
Yeah that's a huge bonus that I didn't anticipate before beginning. My cookbooks are essentially dynamic documentation that morph with my changes in system requirements.
sergiosgc 13y ago
Better yet, version controlled changes to recipes are an excellent logbook for sysadmin teams.

protomyth 13y ago

Automation is a fine thing except for some of this damn "enterprise software" that not only doesn't automate real well[1], but actually cannot be installed on VMWare[2] or even go to a hot swap machine[3]. Sysadmins always love government required software and stuff bought before we got there. 1) luckily backup seem to be reasonably automation friendly 2) "We do not support virtualization of any kind" 3) tied to hardware on one machine - f'n brilliant.

jaryd 13y ago
You might find this interesting: http://www.slideshare.net/opscode/chef-vmwarewebinarslidessept2013 http://www.slideshare.net/opscode/chef-vmwarewebinarslidesse... I personally haven't tried building environments on VMWare as I run pretty much everything in AWS. However, this presentation looks promising.
- protomyth 13y ago
  Since the government vendor's software "cannot run" VMWare, I cannot quite use the results.

WestCoastJustin 13y ago

> start looking into an automation framework Cannot stress this enough! There is a sea change happening and sysadmins run the risk of being swept away unless they learn about automation (puppet/chef) software and cloud infrastructure services (openstack/aws). My new years resolution is to release screencasts on these very subjects. I have already released one on Learning Puppet with Vagrant @ http://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/8-learning-puppet-with-vagrant http://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/8-learning-puppet-with-vag... if anyone is interested.

nikhilji 13y ago
Good stuff! Thanks!
gmjosack 13y ago
I don't know if you're aware, but configuration management is not a new concept. CFEngine was started in '93. CFEngine2 which is popular among many sysadmins came out in '98. While configuration management has definitely had some improvements it's not THAT far from what we've been using for decades now.

pault 13y ago

I just started digging into chef with the intention of using with AWS opsworks and... holy complexity. There just doesn't seem to be any obvious entry point, as far as I can tell. I've spent two entire days searching and there doesn't seem to be anything in between "hello wordpress" and "read this 300+ page user manual". Can anyone recommend a hands on guide for setting up a multi-node stack with opsworks that isn't just plain vanilla templates? I was really impressed by Richard Seroter's videos on AWS at pluralsight, but they are more of a 30,000 foot overview and gloss over implementation details, for the most part (even at 10+ hours). The project I'm working on is mostly a pretty straightforward node service running on postgres, but it uses some custom services that need to scale horizontally, and host sensitive data that should probably be running in a VPC. Edit: I'm also having a difficult time trying to figure out how to get up to speed with chef in the specific context of opsworks, since most of the chef-specific courseware I can find assumes I'm using a hosted chef server, and I'm not quite sure how that overlaps with the opsworks flavor. It's starting to feel like I'll be at this for another week before I can get even a simple stack running.

mateuszf 13y ago
Try with ansible.
- deckiedan 13y ago
  Agreed. As well as the reasonably good ansible documentation, checkout the ansible-examples github repo. ( https://github.com/ansible/ansible-examples https://github.com/ansible/ansible-examples ) There's a few initial 'conventions' to figure out (roles, group vars, playbooks), but then it's so incredibly simple to get into. My dad is playing with a raspberry pi at home, wanting to set up a web kiosk thing. I'd been doing something similar a few months ago for work, so I send him my ansible playbook. He could follow it as if it were a plain text checklist/tutorial, without needing ansible at all. If he wants to automate it, he can. That, I think, is one of the benefits of ansible. It's not a lot more work than just writing an overview of what you need to do in the first place, but with the benefit of it being repeatable and automated.
blueskin_ 13y ago