Practical Operations Podcast

Episode 137 - Amin Astaneh

Wed, 28 Jun 2023 09:00:00 -0400

Where we have Amin Astaneh on as a guest to discuss DevOps transitions, culture, consultancies and how to move forward in this career.

Episode 136 - Homelabs

Mon, 01 May 2023 09:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss Breandans homelab projects, and some of the reasons folks in our field take this hobby on that looks an awful lot like work.

Episode 135 - Resisting Automation

Mon, 27 Mar 2023 09:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss people’s tendencies to resist automation of tasks, for whatever reason.

Episode 134 - ChatGPT

Mon, 13 Mar 2023 09:00:00 -0500

Where we ChatGPT, Large Language Models and the dangers of trusting AI tools to be correct.

Episode 133 - Shadow IT

Mon, 25 Jul 2022 09:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss how damaging Shadow IT can be, how to identify it, how to think about it, and some strategies for getting rid of it.

Episode 132 - HollywoodOS - The Net

Mon, 18 Apr 2022 00:09:00 -0400

Where look at Hollywood’s inability to get technology in movies even remotely correct… this time, we’re talking about “The Net”, a 1995 Sandra Bullock movie, where so many things are just… wrong.

Episode 131 - COVID, Burnout, And The Great Resignation

Tue, 08 Mar 2022 15:30:00 -0500

Where we discuss the longer term effects of Covid, burnout, and The Great Resignation.

Episode 130 - VSCode and Cloud IDEs

Tue, 22 Feb 2022 08:00:00 -0500

Where we discuss another thing that is eating the world - Visual Studio Code. We also talk about IDEs in general.

Episode 129 - BeyondCorp

Mon, 24 Jan 2022 09:00:00 -0500

Where we discuss setting up a zero-trust network access policy - what Google referrs to as “BeyondCorp”.

Episode 128 - 2021 How We Haven't Missed Ya

Fri, 31 Dec 2021 11:30:00 -0500

Where we discuss the end of 2021 and what we expect in 2022.

Episode 127 - Scaling Humans

Sun, 12 Dec 2021 20:40:25 -0500

Where we discuss how to scale things when the human element is the limited capacity.

Episode 126 - SRE Doesn't Scale

Mon, 29 Nov 2021 09:00:00 -0500

Where we discuss Tyler Treat’s essay about how the paradigm of SRE doesn’t scale.

Episode 125 - Observability Defined

Mon, 15 Nov 2021 09:00:00 -0500

Where we discuss observability, prompted by a post on The New Stack by Charity Majors, looking at the current state of observability in the industry.

Episode 124 - Enforcing Structure On Production

Fri, 22 Oct 2021 09:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss grappling with getting structure into our production lives; be it terraform, Active Directory or AWS accounts.

Episode 123 - Outsourcing and Insourcing

Tue, 05 Oct 2021 09:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss outsourcing and insourcing - when to buy a product, when to staff a team, and when to do it all yourself.

Episode 122 - Cloudstations and Remote Graphical Workstations

Mon, 20 Sep 2021 09:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss the use of AWS Cloudstations and graphical remote desktop environments to get $work done.

Episode 121 - Personal Workstations Away From The Home Office

Mon, 23 Aug 2021 09:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss how we get personal things done away from our work from home workstations, while whishcasting about tech that we think should exist.

Episode 120 - Building Teams with Jim Browne

Mon, 09 Aug 2021 09:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss building, managing and fostering healthy team dynamics, with a special guest, Jim Browne.

Episode 119 - Conducting Interviews

Mon, 26 Jul 2021 09:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss interviewing - good versus bad questions, cultural issues, and how to avoid common pitfalls, bias and other things that are problematic.

Episode 118 - Imposter Syndrome

Mon, 12 Jul 2021 09:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss imposter syndrome and how it changes work dynamics for the worse.

Episode 117 - Human Input and Output

Fri, 04 Jun 2021 00:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss human input and output. Who are we kidding? We talked about mechanical keyboards, with very mild diversions into trackballs, trackpads and monitors. This is a notes-heavy episode, please look at the shownotes!

Episode 116 - How The Fundamental Constants of The Universe Hate Us And Want Us To Fail

Fri, 21 May 2021 09:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss one of the fundamental physical constants that is always trying to bring us down - the speed of light - and how latency for round trip times impacts programming, systems design, and organizational behavior.

Episode 115 - Your Employer Isn't Your Family

Fri, 07 May 2021 09:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss the seperation of work and personal life, and why such a seperation is both crucial and hard to do.

Episode 114 - Terraforming Existing Clouds

Fri, 23 Apr 2021 00:09:00 -0400

Where we discuss getting control of an existing, organically built cloud environment, and how to structure said control. Monolitic terraform? Hundreds of terraform projects? CloudFormations? Control Tower?

Episode 113 - Licensing

Fri, 09 Apr 2021 09:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss licensing and how it intersects with everything we do - from Elastic adopting Mongo’s SSPL to the mess that was made public with Wireguard, PFSense and BSD. Licenses are important, folks, choose them well and with purpose, ideally with a laywer in the room.

Episode 112 - Large Scale Networking With Brian Miller

Sat, 27 Mar 2021 12:00:05 -0400

Where we talk with Brian Miller about running large scale networks for a major university and his adventures in Internet2, IPv6 and wireless all come up.

Episode 111 - Host Your Own Code

Fri, 12 Mar 2021 09:00:00 -0500

Where we discuss the risks you take using package managers and code you do not host yourself.

Episode 110 - Planning For Failure, or a Failure To Plan

Fri, 26 Feb 2021 09:00:00 -0500

Where we discuss the failure of the Texas energy grid and how it relates to a failure to plan ahead. We look at active/active, n+1 and other cases where redundancy sneaks away from you.

Episode 109 - Deplatforming

Fri, 12 Feb 2021 09:00:00 -0500

Where we discuss deplatforming, through the lens of what happened to social media sites after the political upheaval in early January.

Episode 108 - Kubernetes with Seth McCombs

Fri, 29 Jan 2021 09:00:00 -0500

Where we discuss the state of the Kubernetes project with someone who knows a lot about it - Seth McCombs. Seth, a Cloud Orchestration Software Engineer at Workday, is member of Kubernetes SIG-Release and SIG-Docs. The conversation covers the qualities of building communities, the road ahead, and the things he likes the most about the project.

Episode 107 - New Opportunities

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 09:00:00 -0500

Where we discuss how to handle opportunities - ones at your current job, how to approach new jobs, and tackling some of the personal sides of things.

Episode 106 - The Ending Of The Year

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 09:00:00 -0500

Where we discuss the year this was, what we thought it was going to be, and how wrong we really were. We also discuss the future a little bit, and try to find patterns in this chaos.

Episode 105 - Modern TLS

Fri, 18 Dec 2020 09:00:00 -0500

Where we talk with Darren Fallis about some of the reasons you should really upgrade to a modern TLS version, and what that means in practical terms. At the moment, this is TLS 1.3, but as with all advice - especially security related advice - please stay current!

Episode 104 - Bootstrapping a Career with Evan Bloom

Fri, 04 Dec 2020 09:00:00 -0500

Where we talk with Evan Bloom about getting started in this industry, coming from a very different world of music. This includes where to get started with linux, programming and generally how to look at the careers we talk about on this podcast.

Episode 103 - Pet Peeves

Fri, 20 Nov 2020 09:00:00 -0500

Where we talk about our pet peeves - technical red flags that tell you something about an environment isn’t right.

Episode 102 - The Lies We Tell Ourselves

Fri, 06 Nov 2020 09:00:00 -0500

Where we talk about the many lies we tell ourselves, even when we know better.

Episode 101 - Long Term Configuration Management

Fri, 23 Oct 2020 09:00:00 -0400

Where we talk about some mergers and aquisitions in the configuration management space and discuss somewhat about where the industry is headed.

Episode 100 - DevOps and Site Reliability Engineering, Revisited

Fri, 09 Oct 2020 09:00:00 -0400

Where we revisit our first episode, The Culture of DevOps, and talk about what’s changed in the last 5 years, including the growth of the Site Reliability Engineering movement to implement DevOps, and some thoughts about the next 5 years.

Episode 99 - Elasticsearch Distributions

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 09:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss Elasticsearch’s X-Pack as compared to the OpenDistro For Elasticsearch, and talk a little bit about being a good citizen for open source projects.

Episode 98 - Histograms and Service Level Objectives

Fri, 11 Sep 2020 09:00:00 -0400

Where we talk about what Service Level Objectives actually are and why they are so important in the field of Site Reliability Engineering. We cover the definition of an SLO, how they relate to error budgets, and take a look at various implementations of time series databases' support for calculating accurate percentiles.

Episode 97 - Threat Modeling with Greg Harris

Fri, 28 Aug 2020 09:00:00 -0400

Where we interview Greg Harris, Principal Security Engineer at Fitbit. We cover security issues around BeyondCorp, VPNs, Docker, and vulnerability scanning. With Greg we learn how to stop reacting to security incidents and instead focus on building threat models for your software and company to forecast and prevent them.

Episode 96 - ARM and the Future of Computing

Wed, 12 Aug 2020 12:51:36 -0400

Where we discuss the possible rise of ARM on the desktop as a replacement or challenge to the supremecy of Intel’s venerable x86_64 instruction set.

Episode 95 - Being Cloud Agnostic

Fri, 31 Jul 2020 09:00:00 -0400

Where we talk about being multi-cloud, along with the reasons and challenges of doing so, and talk about if it is really worth it.

Episode 94 - Findability With JP Sherman

Fri, 17 Jul 2020 09:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss findability and search with a special guest - JP Sherman, the Manager of Search and Findability at Red Hat.

Episode 93 - Linux On The Desktop

Thu, 02 Jul 2020 23:29:43 -0400

Where we talk about building a modern linux desktop, for both personal and professional use. There’s some talk about Intel vs AMD, Apple and ARM, and video cards… all in good fun.

Episode 92 - CloudTruth and Configuration Management

Fri, 19 Jun 2020 09:00:00 -0400

Where we talk to CloudTruth’s Matt Conway and Greg Arnette about why they are configuration management geeks, and some of the realities of looking at problems with configuration management in mind.

Episode 91 - Is DevNetOps a Thing? With Brandon Peskin

Fri, 05 Jun 2020 09:00:00 -0400

Where we talk at length with Brandon Peskin, a Sysadmin turned Network Engineer, who has pretty much seen and done it all - from microwave repeaters across parking lots to massively redundant datacenter to cloud migration projects.

Episode 90 - Practice

Fri, 22 May 2020 09:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss practice, and how it makes everything easier - for both personal and professional things.

Episode 89 - Simple Systems Are More Available

Fri, 08 May 2020 09:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss Greg Kogan’s Article, “Simple Systems Have Less Downtime” and rant about simplicity and how to choose what things to spend time running.

About

Sat, 25 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Practical Operations is a pragmatic podcast about the difference between running your IT organization the “Right Way” and the Practical Way. Your hosts talk about the theory of small to web scale operations and DevOps and then discuss how to get the most out of these tools in practice. Your hosts Breandan Dezendorf, Ken Mink, Jack Neely, and Jarod Watkins have over 70 years of IT experience. Practical experience in small companies and research groups of only a handful of people to large multinational technology companies, cloud providers, and major universities.

Special Episode - Considerations For Moving An Engineering Organization Fully Remote

Fri, 24 Apr 2020 09:00:00 -0400

Where we invite Ashi Sheth, the Senior Manager of Global End User Services at LinkedIn, to talk about the logistical and personal considerations of moving a 20,000 user organization to full-time remote work with very little advanced notice.

Episode 88 - Experimenting With Kubernetes On ARM

Fri, 10 Apr 2020 09:00:00 -0400

Where we talk to Ken Mink about his trials and tribulations setting up a Raspberry Pi/Rock64 Kubernetes cluster.

Episode 87 - You Don't (Always) Need Kubernetes

Fri, 27 Mar 2020 08:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss the fact that for many environments, Kubernetes may be overkill. That said, it still has an important role to play.

Special Episode - Preparing For Pandemic Triggered Remote Work

Mon, 16 Mar 2020 09:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss the mass migration of the tech community to remote work due to the COVID-19 pandemic, even if only on a temporary basis.

Episode 86 - Moving Back To The Monolith

Fri, 13 Mar 2020 08:00:00 -0500

Where we discuss the future of microservices… is it the monolith?

Episode 85 - Concurrency vs Parallelism in Systems Design

Fri, 28 Feb 2020 09:00:00 -0500

Where we discuss concurrency and parallelism in systems design, and touch on programming languages and challenges a little bit.

Episode 84 - Observability Best Practices

Fri, 14 Feb 2020 09:00:00 -0500

Where we discuss best practices around selecting technologies and strategies for building an observability stack.

Episode 83 - Analog Tools For a Digital World - Part 2

Fri, 31 Jan 2020 13:22:00 -0500

Where we discuss analog tools for an work-from-home digital world. Desk ergonomics, common utility items, and other considerations to make life easier.

Episode 82 - Analog Tools For a Digital World

Tue, 21 Jan 2020 14:45:00 -0500

Where we discuss analog tools for an on-the-go digital world. Everyday Carry Bags, the contents of said bags, and our preferences for notebooks and writing implements.

Episode 81 - The End Of The Year

Fri, 03 Jan 2020 10:00:00 -0500

Where we talk about evens in 2019 and expectations of 2020.

Episode 80 - Revisiting Immutable Infrastructure

Fri, 20 Dec 2019 10:00:00 -0500

Where we talk (again) about immutable infrastructure, especially now that Kubernetes has a mature way to handle state, the statefulset.

Episode 79 - Professional Certifications and Exams

Fri, 06 Dec 2019 12:00:00 -0500

Where we discuss professional certifications, exams and some of the pitfalls and caveats that go along with them.

Episode 78 - Retractions and Reactions

Fri, 22 Nov 2019 09:00:00 -0500

Where we talk about the tendancy the internet at large has to overract to things, including two examples of this. The GitLab User Tracking terms of service and subsequent rollback, and the Terraform Azure provider id issue.

Episode 77 - Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery

Tue, 05 Nov 2019 14:00:00 -0500

Where we discuss continuous integration and continuous delivery including some of the tools and strategies.

Episode 76 - Signposts of Scalable Systems

Fri, 18 Oct 2019 12:00:00 -0500

Where we discuss the signposts of scalable systems. How to evaluate application state, inputs, and outputs help judge if it can handle scaling up.

Episode 75 - Single Board Computers

Tue, 03 Sep 2019 09:45:00 -0500

Where we discuss single board linux computers with special guest Ken Mink.

Episode 74 - Small Office/Home Office Networking

Thu, 25 Jul 2019 14:00:00 -0500

Where we discuss small office and home office networking gear.

Episode 73 - Conference Calls

Fri, 19 Jul 2019 09:00:00 -0500

Where we discuss conference calls and microphone etiquette.

Episode 72 - A Tale of Three Postmortems

Fri, 12 Jul 2019 17:00:00 -0500

Where we discuss three incident postmortems; two written by CloudFlare and one by AWS.

Episode 71 - Long Term Prometheus Metrics Storage

Fri, 05 Jul 2019 14:00:00 -0500

Where we discuss long term metrics storage, primarily for Prometheus.

Episode 70 - Monitorama 2019 PDX Recap

Thu, 27 Jun 2019 14:00:00 -0500

Where we recap Monitorama PDX 2019 and talk about our favorite talks and events.

Episode 69 - Neat Prometheus Tricks

Wed, 12 Jun 2019 09:15:00 -0500

Where we discuss Jack Neely’s Monitorama 2019 PDX lighting talk - 5 Neat Prometheus Tricks.

Episode 68 - Monitorama PDX 2019

Tue, 28 May 2019 14:00:00 -0500

Where we discuss our plans for Monitorama, one of our favorite conferences.

Episode 67 - Not Invented Here

Mon, 20 May 2019 09:00:00 -0500

Where we discuss Not Invented Here, or the tendency in technology companies to needlessly reinvent the wheel.

Episode 66: Diminishing Returns

Tue, 23 Apr 2019 09:00:00 -0500

Where we discuss the Nintey-Nintey Rule and overall the idea of diminishing returns.

Episode 65: Troubleshooting

Thu, 14 Mar 2019 09:00:00 -0500

Where we discuss one of the core skills - troubleshooting. Stay alert. Keep your laser handy.

Episode 64: Resumes and Interviews

Fri, 01 Feb 2019 09:00:00 -0500

Where we discuss resumes and interviews.

Episode 63 - The Turning Of The Year

Thu, 10 Jan 2019 09:00:00 -0500

Where we discuss the end of 2018 and what we see coming in 2019, including things we missed in 2018’s predictions show.

Episode 62 - Immutable Infrastructure

Mon, 26 Nov 2018 22:00:50 -0500

Where we discuss the pros and cons of immutable infrastructure.

Episode 61: Tech Mergers And Acquisitions - RedHat and IBM

Thu, 15 Nov 2018 12:00:00 -0500

Where we talk about IBMs purchase of RedHat, and some of the past implications of tech tech mergers and acquisitions.

Episode 60: Deeper Into Kubernetes

Mon, 05 Nov 2018 14:00:00 -0500

Where we talk more about Kubernetes and dig a little deeper into why it has become so popular.

Episode 59 - Cheap Kubernetes For Everyone

Mon, 29 Oct 2018 09:30:00 -0400

Where we talk about Caleb Doxseys article titled Kubernetes: The Surprisingly Affordable Platform for Personal Projects.

Episode 58 - The Sandboxing Cycle

Thu, 18 Oct 2018 12:00:00 -0400

Where we talk about XKCD #2044, The Sandboxing Cycle. It’s pervasive in all things we do, and it can really limit how we operate.

Episode 57 - Rolling Out MFA

Fri, 05 Oct 2018 09:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss rolling out multi factor authentication with Darren Fallis.

Episode 56 - Sysadmin And Small Office Security

Fri, 07 Sep 2018 09:45:00 -0400

Where we discuss security again, moving up to more sensitive users and begin the discussion of implementing a Single Sign On solution for users.

Episode 55 - End User Security

Sat, 25 Aug 2018 12:41:00 -0400

Where we talk about the basics of end-user security best practices, mostly focused on passwords, MFA tokens and computer hygiene.

Episode 54 - How To Have An Outage (Part 1)

Fri, 03 Aug 2018 17:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss the initial phases of preparing for a planned outage and reacting to an unplanned one.

Episode 53: When We Are The Problem

Fri, 20 Jul 2018 14:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss that old interview chestnut: Tell me about a time you’ve broken something.

Episode 52 - Technical Solutions for Social Problems

Wed, 11 Jul 2018 12:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss why using technical solutions rarely solve social problems, or solve them very poorly.

Episode 51 - Divide and Conquer

Wed, 04 Jul 2018 12:00:50 -0400

Where we discuss the relative merits of splitting large, monolithic multi-tenant applications into smaller single tenant ones.

Episode 50 - You Have Too Many Alerts

Thu, 28 Jun 2018 09:20:00 -0400

Where we discuss how we’re all buried in alerts, but we don’t need that many.

Episode 49 - Monitorama 2018 Recap

Wed, 20 Jun 2018 20:18:00 -0400

Where we discuss Monitorama 2018 (PDX), and the return of a reasonable publication schedule.

Episode 48: The Year Ahead (and Behind)

Sun, 31 Dec 2017 12:00:00 -0500

Where we discuss tech trends in 2017 and what we’re looking forward to in 2018.

Episode 47 - Efficient Meetings

Mon, 04 Dec 2017 10:00:00 -0500

Where we discuss the reasons to have meetings, and some gudielines on making them less awful for everyone involved.

Episode 46 - Service Design Documentation

Sun, 26 Nov 2017 19:12:00 -0500

Where we discuss guidelines for documenting, designing and deploying services.

Episode 45 - Social and Technical Contracts For Teams

Mon, 06 Nov 2017 17:20:00 -0500

Where we discuss the social and technical contracts that should be considered when setting up a working group, both long-standing and ad-hoc.

Episode 44 - Onboarding

Fri, 06 Oct 2017 12:00:05 -0400

Where we discuss onboarding new employees - both as a new hire and as a team bringing someone on.

Episode 43 - Revisiting Backups

Wed, 06 Sep 2017 13:55:00 -0400

Where we discuss backups for contractors and small businesses in wake of the Crashplan For Home product exiting the market.

Episode 42 - Choosing A License

Thu, 17 Aug 2017 09:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss available software licensing, both for code you have written and code you are thinking of adopting into your projects.

Episode 41 - Get Up And Speak Already!

Mon, 24 Jul 2017 11:34:00 -0400

Where we discuss the importance of being able to give short (or long) presentations, and some practical advice for getting started.

Episode 40 - Conway's Law and Confirmation Bias

Tue, 11 Jul 2017 14:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss Conway’s Law. which is the tendency of teams to build software that reflects the communication patterns of the larger organization, as well as confirmation biases and the Dunning Kruger effect, which blinds people to new ways to escape from the traps they set for themselves.

Episode 39 - Is Nagios Viable?

Fri, 30 Jun 2017 16:30:00 -0400

Where we discuss the Nagios monitoring project, and how relevant it is in this day and age. (Hint: we think the answer is YES)

Episode 38 - Scripted Installs vs Golden Images

Sat, 24 Jun 2017 20:47:00 -0400

Where we discuss scripted installs vs golden images vs immutable infrastructure via containers.

Episode 37 - Repeatability and Reliability

Tue, 13 Jun 2017 12:25:00 -0400

Where we discuss repeatability and reliability in systems design, why it’s important and what it means for your job.

Episode 36 - The Tenents of Microservice Monitoring

Fri, 02 Jun 2017 09:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss pratical guidelines for expanding your monitoring platform to cover the new and challenging world of Microservice (and Service Oriented Architecture) monitoring, with brief side trips into log tracing and fostering healthy culture.

Episode 35 - Scaling Metric Delivery Pipelines

Sat, 20 May 2017 23:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss how to run statsd and metrics pipelines at a scale of over 750,000 packets per second.

Episode 34 - Modern Filesystems

Mon, 15 May 2017 12:24:18 -0400

Where we discuss the evolution of modern filesystems.

Episode 33 - Considering Elasticsearch as a Time Series Database

Mon, 08 May 2017 08:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss using Elasticsearch (along with Kibana, Timelion and Kafka) as a Timeseries Database (TSDB). It has several drawbacks over traditional timeseries storage engines, mostly in storage efficiency, but has other unique attributes that may overcome these drawbacks in the right use case.

Episode 32 - The Trouble With Histograms

Wed, 19 Apr 2017 14:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss histograms as the best data type ever, and the complexities of actually using them in Prometheus. For the most part, this is Jack Neely’s domain of expertise, so he does most of the talking in this episode.

Episode 31 - Finding Privacy On The Internet

Mon, 10 Apr 2017 21:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss how to find privacy on the internet, both for yourself at home and for users of your services.

Episode 30 - The S3 Outage

Mon, 27 Mar 2017 09:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss the AWS S3 outage on February the 28th, which was due to an operations error, and relevant discussions about outages and how to learn from mistakes.

Episode 29 - Multi Factor Authentication

Thu, 02 Mar 2017 09:00:00 -0500

Where we discuss multifactor authentication (MFA), often called Two Factor Authentication (2FA). We talk a little bit about the history and then the practical implications of hardware tokens to assist with this security best practice.

Episode 28 - The Year Ahead and Behind

Sat, 21 Jan 2017 18:00:00 -0500

Where we discuss highlights of the last year and things we’re looking forward to in 2017. Comments for the episode are welcome - at the bottom of the show notes for the episode there is a Disqus setup, or you can email us at feedback@operations.fm

Episode 27: Bitterness Is The Death Of Culture

Thu, 05 Jan 2017 21:00:52 -0500

Where we discuss how bitterness can be the worst aspect of a job and some helpful advice to avoid it.

Episode 26 - You Are Not Paid To Build Systems

Thu, 08 Dec 2016 20:56:35 -0500

Where we discuss the tendency of Operations and DevOps folks to build complex systems, and the fact that we aren’t paid to build systems. We’re paid to produce value to the organization. This episode was kicked off by BraveNewGeek’s post, You Are Not Paid To Write Code.

Episode 25 - Chat Tools

Wed, 30 Nov 2016 08:30:00 -0500

Where we discuss the history and use of chat tools.

Episode 24 - Side Projects

Fri, 04 Nov 2016 09:17:00 -0400

Where we discuss side projects. Not consulting or side work, but projects that let us scratch itches we get at work but aren’t officially sanctioned.

Episode 23 - Programming Languages

Wed, 26 Oct 2016 08:30:00 -0400

Where we come back to sanity from last episode’s departure into Solaris runtimes and instead talk about operations support of programming languages. Go, Python, Ruby and others are discussed as well as test driven development. Comments for the episode are welcome - at the bottom of the show notes for the episode there is a Disqus setup, or you can email us at feedback@operations.fm Links for Episode 23: Habitat fq jlog Why gets() is bad

Episode 22 - Non-Linux Distributions

Fri, 14 Oct 2016 20:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss operating systems outside the traditional Linux fare. OpenSolaris, SolarisNext, Illumos, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, oh my! Comments for the episode are welcome - at the bottom of the show notes for the episode there is a Disqus setup, or you can email us at feedback@operations.fm Links for Episode 22: SystemD Security Vulnerability Talk about exposing systemd to web APIs Illumos Illimos Based Distribtons BTRFS Joyent Triton Joyent SmartOS Solaris Network Virtualization - Project Crossbow ZFS and Ubuntu Licensing RedHat Ceph OpenBSD Security ZFS and Apple

Episode 21 - Internet Criticism

Thu, 15 Sep 2016 20:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss the often savage and insensitive nature of dealing with other people on the internet and some gentle advice on how to make everyone’s life a little less awful. Having an opinion on the internet means you need a thick skin. Comments for the episode are welcome - at the bottom of the show notes for the episode there is a Disqus setup, or you can email us at feedback@operations.

Episode 20 - ScrumOps with Special Guest Judson Drennan

Fri, 09 Sep 2016 23:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss Kanban, Agile and Scrum with special guest, Judson Drennan. Judson is a Product Owner at VitalSource Technologies, and has done a lot of management of complex technology teams.

Episode 19 - When Things Break

Thu, 01 Sep 2016 23:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss incident management practices, and walk through some of the important things to do during a service outage or degradation event.

Episode 18 - Infrastructure for Small Shops

Wed, 24 Aug 2016 12:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss the avoidable pitfalls of infrastructure decisions early in an organization’s life. Most of these can be avoided with some extra thought up front when setting up core services - networking, directory services and deployment decisions can stick with a team long after the people doing the implementation have left.

Episode 17 - Log Aggregation, Metrics and Data Analysis

Wed, 17 Aug 2016 09:15:00 -0400

Where we discuss the differences between logs and metrics, and some of the pratical applications there of. Also, discussions of the pitfalls of percentiles (why averaging percentiles yields worse than useless data).

Episode 16 - Personal Work Environments

Fri, 05 Aug 2016 22:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss our personal work environments, both digital and physical. Comments for the episode are welcome - at the bottom of the show notes for the episode there is a Disqus setup, or you can email us at feedback@operations.fm Links for Episode 16: Intrex Jarvis Sit-Stand Desk Standesk.co Alera Elusion Task Chair iTerm2 version 3 SetTerminalStyle Synergy Homebrew LastPass CrashPlan The awesome window manager Spectacle

Episode 15 - Using The Cloud

Sun, 05 Jun 2016 22:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss why the cloud is useful and when it can be risky, depending on your models. Comments for the episode are welcome - at the bottom of the show notes for the episode there is a Disqus setup, or you can email us at feedback@operations.fm Links for Episode 15: ZFS on rsync.net Let’s Encrypt a static S3 site apt-s3 yum-s3 Amazon Talk About Scaling Internal Resources

Episode 14 - Planning For Failure

Wed, 04 May 2016 12:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss failure. It happens to everyone, and it will happen to you. We cover some of the general cases to consider, and talk a little about backups and the cloud.

Episode 13 - Systems Design

Tue, 26 Apr 2016 12:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss the human side of systems design. Comments for the episode are welcome - at the bottom of the show notes for the episode there is a Disqus setup, or you can email us at feedback@operations.fm

Episode 12 - Loadbalancers

Wed, 23 Mar 2016 12:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss the relative merits of software loadbalancers we’ve used and loved, and share our general distain for proprietary hardware based offerings. Comments for the episode are welcome - at the bottom of the show notes for the episode there is a Disqus setup, or you can email us at feedback@operations.fm Links for Episode 12: CloudFlare DDoS Blackholes Google Maglev Mikrotik

Episode 11 - Job Transitions

Fri, 18 Mar 2016 12:00:00 -0400

Where we discuss leaving and starting new jobs.

Episode 10 - Configuration Management

Thu, 25 Feb 2016 12:00:00 -0500

Where we discuss various merits of configuration management systems, notably the relative use cases for Puppet and Ansible, and some of the finer points of using both. Comments for the episode are welcome - at the bottom of the show notes for the episode there is a Disqus setup, or you can email us at feedback@operations.fm Links for Episode 10: Encrypt Your Data Using Hiera-Eyaml confd hiera-vault r10k mgmt

Episode 9 - Init Systems

Wed, 17 Feb 2016 12:00:00 -0500

Where we discuss the downfalls of modern init systems.

Episode 8 - Working From Home

Fri, 05 Feb 2016 13:30:00 -0500

Where we discuss working from home.

Episode 7 - Breaking Up The Lumbering Monolith

Wed, 20 Jan 2016 12:00:00 -0500

Where we discuss why to break large monolith applications into smaller pieces, and Breandan goes on for far too long about the ELK stack and Jack can’t stop talking about Graphite Storage. Jarod speaks to the frustrations of being an Operations Engineer supporting an application that can’t be broken up any time soon, and talks about realistic load balancing options.

Episode 6 - Looking Ahead

Mon, 04 Jan 2016 12:00:00 -0500

Where we discuss technologies in 2015 that we have come to appreciate, and our realistic hopes for 2016. Kafka, Prometheus, Elixr are mentioned, and we have the usual grumblings about databases.

Episode 5 - Data Storage

Tue, 22 Dec 2015 09:00:00 -0500

Where we discuss the merits and use cases for Relational Data Bases, Document Storage and touch on key-value stores for time series work. Jarod discusses the reasons you should never ever use MySQL (and use postgres instead), Breandan talks to Elasticsearch and Jack dives a bit into columnar datastores.

Episode 4 - Systems Programing Languages and Packaging

Thu, 17 Dec 2015 09:00:00 -0500

Where we discuss the relative merits of Perl, Python, Ruby, and Go. We also touch upon Rust and Swift. There are also discussions about code hygiene, notably in the preferred indentation: Jarod is a 2-space man, Jack prefers 4, and Breandan sits firmly in the tab-as-indent camp. There are mentions of Rust, Swift, Scala, Akka and the pitfalls of Java and the JVM. Finally, we discuss how to package languages and libraries for use on platforms we deploy software to - with a bonus conversation about Docker as a packaging format, relative done-ness and using it in production.

Episode 3 - Advanced Metrics and Monitoring

Thu, 03 Dec 2015 09:00:00 -0500

Episode 3 of the Practical Operations Podcast, where we talk about how more advanced use cased for metrics based monitoring and the relative pros and cons of different time series databases.

Episode 2 - How To Stop The Bleeding

Mon, 30 Nov 2015 09:00:00 -0500

Episode 2 of the Practical Operations Podcast, where we talk about how to get your monitoring systems under control and stop the bleeding - getting rid of the unacknowledged wall of critical alerts in the system. This is important to tackle, because without it, you can not understand what is actually happening in your environment.

Episode 1 - Introduction and The Culture of DevOps

Wed, 18 Nov 2015 08:00:00 -0500

The initial episode of the Practical Operations Podcast, where we introduce ourselves (poorly) and talk about the culture that surrounds DevOps, and why it is more than just a job description.

First Post

Mon, 19 Oct 2015 21:10:27 -0400

Hello? Is this thing on? Practical Operations Podcast welcomes you to our site! We are just getting started so bare with us. Or, better yet, leave us feedback in the Disqus comments.