The Beginnings of DevOps

Uncategorized

One of the first problems that people see DevOps as a solution to is the creation of software release packages. The real problem that you’re fighting against is the common misconception between repeatability and reproducibility. Here’s my take.

Repeatability is a measure of the likelihood that, having produced one result from an experiment, you can try the same experiment, with the same setup, and produce that exact same result.

The reproducibility of data is a measure of whether results in a paper can be attained by a different research team, using the same methods. This shows that the results obtained are not artifacts of the unique setup in one research lab.

https://www.technologynetworks.com/informatics/articles/repeatability-vs-reproducibility-317157

Though these definitions are from another branch of science, they very much apply. A “works on my machine” developer likely has very repeatable results but not reproducible ones. This mindset isn’t conducive to the development process of your team because it’s a deflection of where the problem lies. If your code works on your machine and nowhere else it’s not someone else’s problem.

The simplest DevOps process should be one that forces reproducible results. If code lacks reproducibility (features not working correctly) it’s the process’ job to make sure that issue is taken care of. Your team must create code that has reproducible outputs and your DevOps solution must be repeatable, if it’s not then is it really helping you?

Giving Azure VM’s Environmental Variables through ARM templates.

azure, Main Blog Posts

My Problem

I’m building a one-click deployment arm template for UiPath’s Orchestrator. As part of this I’m trying to pass connection information into my VM through the environmental variables. I’ve only found a way to pass one environment variable in at a time. The example found here falls apart as soon as you start running multiple commands

My Solution

This solution doesn’t meet my expectations but my hand is being forced unless I can find a better way. Since I’ve got a reliable way to get one string value into my environment, I’ve taken to cramming everything I need into that one variable and parsing it out. It’s working for now, but for my use-case I really only need 3 values. If my requirements were any larger I’d be wrestling with a real beast.

More Info

I’m running into this problem because as part of the installation of UiPath’s Orchestrator, I need to connect it with a database. I’ve opted to use the azure sql server and need to use values that are determined during deployment. It seems to me that the Custom Script Extension is just what I need, minus this shortfall. This is all being done so that within my organization whenever someone needs an instance of Orchestrator we’ve got everything set up and ready to go. Right now it’s ~10 minutes from the start of the deployment to having a working instance. Hopefully shorter if I can transition from having to remote into the server and run a script to that script being run automatically.

The Hunt for Auto-Shutdown of Azure Government Cloud Virtual Machines

azure, Main Blog Posts

I’ve spent the last week hunting for a way to shutdown and start vms in azure. My first idea was to create a site that could be used by people on my team to start and stop the vms as needed. Following that line of logic I eventually found this site. It describes the government cloud endpoints by listing the public endpoints alongside them. Fortunately, I found this while writing this post; after I found the solution I ultimately went with. By not finding that mapping of endpoints I was forced to scour further for the answer to my problem. That solution lies here. With this I was able to quickly set up an automation that did most of what I wanted (the shutting down of the vms off hours) and it helped me realize that I didn’t need to worry about doing everything I had originally intended. There was never a need to go to a website to start up the vms as the entire team already has access. Turns out the better solution to my problem meant that I didn’t have to write any code, contrary to my development focused mind.