Nolio - Application Service Automation » Agile

Q&A: The Rise of DevOps

Daniel Kushner — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 06:47:12 +0000

Applications are getting more complex, and so are the environments into which they must be incorporated and updated. Mistakes are inevitable, and scripts often aren’t enough to release and manage applications across the data center so they don’t disrupt operations. One solution: a new, cross-department approach. To get a better understanding of what’s driving the adoption of DevOps, we turned to Eran Sher, executive vice president of products and business development and co-founder of Nolio, an application service automation provider.

http://esj.com/articles/2010/08/17/rise-of-devops.aspx

What Is This Devops Thing, Anyway?

Daniel Kushner — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 08:45:43 +0000

This is an older article written on Patrick Debois’ blog Just Enough Developed Infrastructure, by guest writer Stephen Nelson-Smith @lordcope a Technical Manager and Devop based in Hampshire, UK and author of Agile Sysadmin.

Discussing the two major questions in the DevOps movement; What problems are we trying to solve? and How does DevOps help?, Stephen dives head first into the details and explains about fear, risk, and siloisation. As a well behaved author, Stephen provides points for criticism and explains how one can get involved with this new movement.

http://www.jedi.be/blog/2010/02/12/what-is-this-devops-thing-anyway/

Rise of the machines: Power brokers in DevOps bonding!

Daniel Kushner — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 09:52:24 +0000

To some people, developers are ingenious innovative software generators. To others, they’re code hacking. Either way, the world they know is changing, and their role must evolve to take on more responsibility and be more accountable for the code and applications they create.

One of the more pressing challenges facing software development and delivery teams occurs when software is released and running in production. Deployment, release management and maintenance issues (especially in resolving problems once applications are working out in the field) are the bane of both the software production teams (the developers) and the operation teams alike. The problems are getting harder, not easier, with each technological and platform advance.

Knowing this hardship, you’d be hard pressed not to think that relationships between the developer and operations teams, called the DevOps bond, would be more in-tune to their respective requirements, shared challenges and goals, and be in general a lot more collaborative. Nothing can be further from the truth. The disconnect that exists between many development and operations teams is both legendary and ingrained.

The “throw it over the wall” attitude, a key culprit to the strained DevOps relationship, partly stems from the lack of deep and connected insight into deployed assets, process transactions and system configurations, as well as patches and management policies that exist in many production environments.

Agile Automation: Automating The Agile Release Process

admin — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 23:00:15 +0000

Agile methods promote a process that encourages frequent inspection and adaptation, the rapid delivery of high-quality software, and responding to changing circumstances rather than strictly following a plan. Therefore, automation is key for the success of the Agile release process.

To make sure Agile projects run smoothly and rapidly, companies must automate all repetitive activities – such as installing new builds of complex, multi-tier, multi-server software. Automating application updates in development and QA environments accelerates the release process, increases flexibility and efficiency, and enables companies to keep the Agile promise of efficient, rapid delivery of high-quality software.

In an Agile environment, software requirements are constantly changing. The Agile promise of ensuring customer satisfaction by rapid, continuous delivery of useful software means that software is delivered in less time, but each released build must still be fully tested. It’s obvious that in this type of environment, manual processes will fail. Manual processes can only work if your product is easy to deploy, such as a desktop application deployed on a single computer.

Automation of the Agile release process by Nolio enables companies to automate the deployment of testing labs and the updating of development environments several times a day. This allows developers and testers to always work with the latest build, even in complex application environments, which are constantly changing.

In the rapidly changing environment of the Agile release process, your business simply cannot afford slowing down or compromising product quality because of human errors, failures and downtime. Fully automating the Agile release process is the answer.

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Nolio Application Service Automation is a software platform for designing and executing automated application service workflows across the data center, enabling reliable, effective processes for the management of application change.