Do DevOps tools really exist? | Hacker News Reader

Do DevOps tools really exist?

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38 pointstodsul10 comments

I agree that it's harder than it should be. I think are some great tools, but they're not easy for most organizations to integrate unless there is a really big push to make it happen.

I've been playing around with Blueprint [1] because I like the idea of being able to dip a toe in without plunging in the deepend with Chef/Puppet.

[1] http://devstructure.com/blueprint/

We're massive fans of Blueprint. Richard et al did an amazing job with it. Anything that lowers the friction for use of Chef and Puppet is a great thing. We're looking forward to working more closely with the Blueprint guys with what we're doing as they are definitely fellow travellers in the fight to make the best tools easier to use :)

Hey, nice to see someone cares enough to post and comment on my blog.

BryantD, if you work in a place where testers review Puppet manifests that's awesome. It's fair to say I was generalising. I believe that the tools should be doing more to encourage it.

"I believe that the tools should be doing more to encourage it."

Can you provide an example of what that means? E.G. What should Jenkins be doing differently to encourage sysadmins to use it? What should Puppet be doing differently to encourage developers to use it?

What we want to see in "DevOps" tools is collaboration and visibility baked in. A tester in an Enterprise is unlikely to start writing Puppet manifests. If they could contribute notes and requirements to one though, perhaps even in a format that could be converted into a manifests then that would be a very powerful thing.

That's fair!

In my talk at the last GDC Online, I called for technical operations groups to engage QA in testing their tools: puppet manifests, cobbler installations, whatever. If I thought everyone was doing it I would have left that slide out.

I am not currently in a position which has me evaluating tools, but you are now on my list of tools to look at. I will admit it'd be nice to be able to give testers friendlier interfaces.

"Are testers reviewing Puppet manifests?"

Yes.

"Do sysadmins typically contribute to Jenkins projects?"

Yes.

Tools are what you make of 'em, man.

How about dev ops service providers? It seems like service companies with dev ops expertise are either website builders or hosting providers. The former is not interested unless they are building a new site (DevOps and upward in the stack). The later is not interested unless they are hosting everything (DevOps and downward in the stack).

Best part: "Whilst the benefits of this specialisation have been understood since Adam Smith profiled the original Pinterest[asterisk] we still need to acknowledge their impact on collaboration."

[asterisk] Featured Pin Factory in the Division of Labour (it was a hot startup, sweeping the 1776 Crunchies)

Stoked someone noticed :)

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