Infra-As-Code: Overview

This post will be the final one on the series about Infra-As-Code and I will keep this one short as we have covered a good bit over the past few weeks. So I will only be doing a quick overview of what we have covered in regards to methodologies and processes over this series. As well as I want to ensure that we finish up by reinforcing what we have covered.

Remember we will be adopting new ways of delivering services to our customers by taking a more programmatic approach which also should involve testing and development phases (something new to most right?). At the initial phase of a new request we should have an open discussion with everyone that should be involved in the duration of the new implementation. This open discussion should cover the specifics of a test plan and when a reasonable timeline should be reached. We should also be leveraging version control for our configurations and/or code and we accomplish by using Git repos. To further benefit our version control we should adopt a continuous integration/delivery solution such as Jenkins. By using a CI/CD solution we are able to automate the testing of our configuration changes and receive the results of those tests. This not only saves us the manual tasks that can be somewhat time consuming but also ensures consistency of our testing. And when we are ready for sign-off to move into production we should leverage a code-review system and peer review. Code-review adds in an additional layer of checks against the configuration changes we intend on making. And our peer review is for us to have a follow-up open discussions covering the results of our testing and development phases with those who were involved in our initial open discussion. And once we have final sign-off and all parties are in agreement on the deliverables we can leverage the same CI/CD solution as we did in our test/dev phases to ensure consistency.

  • I always go back and forth about the datamining stuff. On the one hand there is something about having my every action fed back into a system and analyzed for profit motives.  On the other hand whenever i sit down on another person's computer and see the garbage that gets advertised to them all day I'm glad my browser is tailors to only show me ads for tools and vacations.

  • I've enjoyed what you've shared.  Recent trends and predictions make me wonder in what ways Solarwinds can more automatically learn what users want, and how you'll automatically adjust and apply those changes and new directions.

    I've recently been confronted with the idea of future web-serving devices (like SmartPhones and audio players) sharing much more of your information with a wider variety of sources.  For example, imagine your car's radio sharing information about when you changed stations, or when you turned the volume up, or after what songs or verses (or political statements or advertisements) you changed to a different source.

    Sharing that information automatically to the radio station would guide them to better serve your preferences.  Sharing that info to recording companies and performing artists would teach them what you really like--and what songs and sounds don't turn your crank.

    And finally, politicians would learn what statements you object to, and which statements you support--in real time.

    I can see many benefits--but only if the majority of people react the way I do to music and advertisements and politics.  If I'm in minority, I'll end up even further in the minority . . .

    Imagine if Solarwinds' products shared which views we chose most often, which reports were most run, and which questions we sent most often about how to accomplish a task with their products.  The future could look brighter much more quickly.

  • very good

    This practice is aessenial to that eviter losses mainly in investments.

  • Good followup.

    Thanks for the series as it was informative and helpful to some who haven't ventured down this path yet.

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