Tag: Continuous Integration

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Understanding Cloud-Native Collaboration and DevOps Culture for the New Engineer

As a new engineer, understanding cloud-native collaboration and DevOps culture is important for several reasons.

First, it is essential for building and deploying cloud-native applications. These practices emphasize collaboration and communication between teams such as development, operations, and security, and aim to streamline the development and deployment process. By understanding how they work, you can build, deploy, and manage cloud-native applications more effectively.

Second, they allow for faster time-to-market. By promoting collaboration and communication between teams, development and deployment can be sped up, leading to faster time-to-market.

Third, they promote better quality of the applications. By promoting collaboration and communication between teams, more thorough testing and debugging can be done, resulting in better quality of the application.

Fourth, they allow for better scalability. By promoting collaboration and communication between teams, resources can be allocated and scaled up or down as needed, without incurring additional costs.

In summary, understanding cloud-native collaboration and DevOps culture is important because it is essential for building and deploying cloud-native applications, allows for faster time-to-market, promotes better quality of the applications, and allows for better scalability. It is a powerful tool for building and deploying applications in a cloud environment and is essential for any engineer working in the field today.

Learning Materials

Here’s a list to get you started learning about cloud-native collaboration and DevOps culture. Note that some of these links may not be free and may require a subscription or payment. I receive no affiliate payments for these links.

Beginner:

Intermediate:

Advanced:

Videos to Watch

Cloud Native DevOps Explained

This video outlines the steps for migrating an application to a cloud-native approach, including breaking it into a pipeline, building and packaging components, running tests, and scanning for vulnerabilities. It also covers the use of DevOps and continuous delivery, as well as frameworks for test-driven development.

A Possible Learning Path

Hands-on experience: Start by setting up a simple Kubernetes cluster and experimenting with different DevOps tools such as Jenkins, Ansible, and Helm. This can be done by following tutorials and guides, and deploying these tools on a cloud platform like AWS, Azure, or GCP.

Theoretical learning: Once you have a basic understanding of DevOps, you can begin to explore the underlying concepts and technologies such as continuous integration, continuous delivery, and infrastructure as code. This can be done through online resources such as tutorials, courses, and documentation provided by Kubernetes, as well as books and blogs on the topic.

Understanding the principles and best practices: DevOps is an important aspect of a microservices architecture, so it’s important to understand the key principles and best practices of DevOps, such as collaboration, automation, and monitoring.

Joining a community: Joining a community of Kubernetes enthusiasts will help you connect with other people who are learning and working with DevOps for Kubernetes. This can be done through online forums, meetups, and social media groups.

Practice, practice, practice: As with any new technology, the best way to learn is by doing. The more you practice deploying and using DevOps tools in a Kubernetes cluster, the more comfortable and proficient you will become with the technology.

A Note from the Architect

OK, let’s talk about DevOps. So, what is it exactly? Well, DevOps is all about breaking down the barriers between development and operations teams, and promoting a culture of collaboration and communication. The goal is to speed up the software delivery process, improve quality, and increase efficiency.

Now, you might be wondering why we want to practice DevOps. Well, in the past, development and operations teams often worked in silos, which led to a lot of delays and inefficiencies. With DevOps, we’re able to bring those teams together and get everyone working towards the same goal: delivering high-quality software quickly and efficiently.

There are a few key principles of DevOps that we like to follow. One of the most important is automation. By automating as many processes as possible, we’re able to speed up the delivery process and reduce the likelihood of errors. Another key principle is continuous integration and delivery. By integrating code changes frequently and delivering them to production as soon as they’re ready, we’re able to get feedback and make improvements more quickly.

Now, when it comes to cloud native approaches like developing on Kubernetes, they fit really well within DevOps practices. By using containerization and orchestration, we’re able to automate the deployment and scaling of our applications, which helps us move faster and be more efficient.

As an individual team member, you can contribute to the DevOps culture by being open to feedback and suggestions, and by being willing to work collaboratively with other teams. Some good practices for a new engineer or developer to pick up include learning how to use automation tools, getting familiar with containerization and orchestration, and practicing continuous integration and delivery.

You might be wondering how DevOps is related to agile and SRE. Well, DevOps is closely related to agile, as both focus on delivering software quickly and efficiently. SRE, on the other hand, is all about ensuring the reliability and availability of software in production. All these practices come together to make sure the software is delivered fast, reliable and with high availability.

Finally, let me tell you, before DevOps became a common practice, IT departments faced a lot of problems. There were often delays in getting new features or updates to production, and there were also a lot of communication issues between development and operations teams. DevOps helps us to overcome all these problems.

Well, dear reader, we’ve come to the end of our series of blog posts on cloud native technologies and practices, and especially Kubernetes. Well, this won’t be my last post on Kubernetes, but at least as far as it relates to this series. I hope you’ve found the information we’ve covered to be helpful and informative.

Throughout the series, we’ve talked about a lot of different topics, including security, CICD, DevOps, and containerization. These are all critical concepts for anyone working in the cloud, and I want to emphasize that these concepts aren’t just short-lived trends, but tools and ideas that will serve you well for many years of your career.

We’ve covered a lot of ground in these posts, but there’s still so much more to learn about cloud native technologies and practices. As you continue to grow and develop your skills, I hope you’ll keep these concepts in mind and continue to explore the many different ways that they can be applied in your work.

I also want to take a moment to thank you for your time, support, and the conversations we’ve had throughout the series. Your feedback and input have been invaluable in helping to make these posts a success, and I appreciate the time you’ve taken to read and engage with the content.

As you continue your journey in cloud native technologies, keep in mind that it’s a constantly evolving landscape, and there will always be more to learn and explore. But with the concepts and tools we’ve covered in this series, you’ll be well-equipped to navigate this exciting and rapidly changing field.

Thanks again for reading and I hope you enjoyed the series. Let’s continue the conversation and explore even more of this exciting field together!

Connect with Shawn
Connect with Shawn

Connect with me on LinkedIn. It’s where I’m most active, and it’s the easiest way to connect with me.

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An Introduction to Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD): Understanding the Benefits, Learning Materials, Videos to Watch and a Possible Learning Path

As a new engineer, understanding the concept of continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) is important for several reasons.

First, CI/CD is a key component of cloud native application development. It is the process of automatically building, testing, and deploying code changes as soon as they are committed to the code repository. By understanding how CI/CD works, you will be able to build, deploy, and manage cloud-native applications more effectively.

Second, CI/CD allows for faster development and deployment. By automating the build, test, and deployment process, it enables developers to make changes to the code and have them deployed to production faster. This facilitates faster innovation and time-to-market for new features.

Third, CI/CD promotes better collaboration and DevOps culture. By automating the process of building, testing, and deploying code changes, it becomes easier for different teams and developers to work together on the same application.

Fourth, CI/CD allows for better quality and reliability of the software. By automating the testing process, it ensures that code changes are tested as soon as they are made, which helps to catch any bugs or errors early in the development cycle.

In summary, as a new engineer, understanding the concept of CI/CD is important because it is a key component of cloud native application development, allows for faster development and deployment, promotes better collaboration and DevOps culture, and allows for better quality and reliability of the software. It is a powerful tool for building and deploying applications in a cloud environment and is essential for any engineer working in the field today.

Learning Materials

Here’s a list to get you started learning about CI/CD. Note that some of these links may not be free and may require a subscription or payment. I receive no affiliate payments for these links.

Beginner:

Intermediate:

Advanced:

Videos to Watch

The Foundations of Continuous Delivery

Continuous Delivery is a revolutionary approach to software development that focuses on efficient feedback, strong engineering discipline, reducing the amount of work, and cycle time reduction. Automation is essential to reducing cycle time and the deployment pipeline is used to prove that changes are fit for production.

Possible Learning Path

Hands-on experience: Start by setting up a simple Kubernetes cluster and experimenting with different CI/CD tools such as Jenkins, Travis CI, and GitLab CI/CD. This can be done by following tutorials and guides and deploying these tools on a cloud platform like AWS, Azure, or GCP.

Theoretical learning: Once you have a basic understanding of CI/CD, you can begin to explore the underlying concepts and technologies such as pipeline management, version control, and testing. This can be done through online resources such as tutorials, courses, and documentation provided by CI/CD tools, as well as books and blogs on the topic.

Understanding the principles and best practices: CI/CD is an important aspect of modern software development, so it’s important to understand the key principles and best practices of CI/CD such as automation, testing, and deployment.

Joining a community: Joining a community of CI/CD enthusiasts will help you connect with other people who are learning and working with CI/CD for Kubernetes. This can be done through online forums, meetups, and social media groups.

Practice, practice, practice: As with any new technology, the best way to learn is by doing. The more you practice deploying and using CI/CD tools in a Kubernetes cluster, the more comfortable and proficient you will become with the technology.

A Note from the Architect

I’m about to tell you how I used to publish my websites way back in the day. You see, back then, many of us actually kept a really powerful server under our desks. I had such a server. This server had a network card with two different IP addresses bound to it. One was a Public IP address. Yes, I had a public IP address bound directly onto the network card of the server sitting under my desk. I also had a private IP address so that I could share the website’s folder on the network for the whole company.

Ok, stop laughing, you’re making me feel bad. I haven’t even mentioned the fact that I edited my Active Server Pages directly from that folder. That’s right, changes went directly from development to the internet with no steps in between. I had lots of files that were named things like, “about-us.asp.old, about-us.asp.older, about-us.asp.donotuse.’

Well, luckily those days are behind us. Today we use CICD (Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment).

CICD is a software development practice that involves automatically building, testing, and deploying code changes. The basic idea behind CICD is to catch and fix errors as early as possible, which helps to prevent bugs and other issues from making it into production. This is accomplished by integrating the code changes into a central repository and then running a series of automated tests and builds.

It’s more popular now because it helps to improve software quality, increase collaboration among developers, and reduce time to market for new features. It also helps to ensure that software is always in a releasable state, which makes it easier to roll out new features and bug fixes.

One of the key enablers of CICD is version control. Version control is a necessity for modern development because it allows developers to track changes to the codebase over time, collaborate with other developers, and roll back to a previous version if something goes wrong. There’s no longer a need to append extra extensions onto files you might want to keep as backup.

Pipelines help to ensure quality by automating the process of building, testing, and deploying code changes. This makes it easier to catch and fix errors early in the development process, which helps to prevent bugs and other issues from making it into production. It can also help with security by establishing a software supply chain. When code changes are automatically built, tested and deployed, it’s easier to track, identify and isolate any malicious code that may have been introduced in the codebase.

Basically, CICD is a software development practice that involves automatically building, testing, and deploying code changes. It helps to improve software quality, increase collaboration among developers, and reduce time to market for new features. Version control is a necessity for modern development, and pipelines help to ensure quality and can help with security by establishing a software supply chain.

Connect with Shawn
Connect with Shawn

Connect with me on LinkedIn. It’s where I’m most active, and it’s the easiest way to connect with me.

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Why Should a New Engineer Learn the Cloud Native Concepts?

As a new engineer, learning cloud native concepts is important for several reasons.

First, cloud computing is becoming increasingly popular and is now the norm for many organizations. Many companies are moving away from traditional on-premises data centers and migrating their infrastructure and applications to the cloud. Knowing how to build, deploy, and manage cloud-native applications will give you a valuable skill set that is in high demand in the job market.

Second, cloud native concepts and technologies are designed to be flexible, scalable, and efficient. They enable faster development and deployment of applications and make it easier to handle the increasing demand for more computing power and storage. By learning these concepts, you will be able to build applications that can handle large amounts of traffic and data and can easily scale up or down as needed.

Third, cloud native concepts and technologies are designed to work well together. They are all part of a larger ecosystem that is designed to make it easy for developers to build, deploy, and manage applications on cloud infrastructure. By learning these concepts, you will be able to take advantage of the full range of cloud-native tools and services, and will be able to create more powerful and efficient applications.

In summary, as a new engineer, learning cloud native concepts will give you a valuable skill set, allow you to build flexible, scalable, and efficient applications, and enable you to take advantage of the full range of cloud-native tools and services. It is an essential skill set for many companies today and will be essential in the future.

What is Cloud Native?

Cloud native is a term used to describe an approach to building, deploying, and running applications on cloud infrastructure. It involves containerization, microservices architecture, and the use of cloud-native tools and services.

Containerization packages software, its dependencies, and configuration files together in a lightweight and portable container, allowing it to run consistently across different environments.

Microservices architecture designs and builds software as a collection of small, independent services that communicate with each other via well-defined APIs. This approach enables faster development, easier scaling, and more flexible deployment options.

Cloud-native tools and services are designed specifically for cloud environments and provide capabilities such as auto-scaling, load balancing, and service discovery. They allow for faster and more efficient deployment and management of applications.

In summary, cloud native is a way of designing, building, and running applications on cloud infrastructure. It leverages containerization and microservices architecture, and utilizes cloud-native tools and services for faster and more efficient deployment and management of applications. As a new engineer, it is important to understand these concepts and how they work together in order to build cloud-native applications.

Learning Materials

Here’s a list to get you started learning about Cloud Native. Note that some of these links may not be free and may require a subscription or payment. I receive no affiliate payments for these links.

Beginner:

Intermediate:

Advanced:

Videos to watch

What is Cloud Native and Why Should I Care?

Wealth Grid is a mid-sized firm that has product and service market fit, but is struggling to shorten its time to value and stay off the front page news. To do this, they must embrace cloud native technologies, but this is not business as usual. With the help of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, Wealth Grid can learn from their mistakes and use tools and techniques to achieve their goals.

Expert talk: Cloud Native & Serverless • Matt Turner & Eric Johnson • GOTO 2022

Matt Turner and Eric Johnson discuss the importance of Cloud Native Concepts for the new engineer to learn, such as Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery, and the benefits of testing in production to catch certain classes of bugs.

A Possible Learning Path

Hands-on experience: It is important to start by experimenting with different cloud providers, such as AWS, Azure, and GCP, to understand the basic concepts and services offered by each. This can be done by creating a free account and following tutorials and guides to build and deploy simple applications.

Theoretical learning: Once you have a basic understanding of cloud computing, you can begin to explore cloud native concepts such as containerization, microservices, and service discovery. This can be done through online resources such as tutorials, courses, and documentation provided by cloud providers, as well as books and blogs on the topic.

Joining a community: Joining a community of cloud native enthusiasts will help you connect with other people learning and working with cloud native technology. This can be done through online forums, meetups, and social media groups.

Practice, practice, practice: As with any new technology, the best way to learn is by doing. The more you practice building and deploying cloud native applications, the more comfortable and proficient you will become with the technology.

Specialize in a specific cloud provider: Cloud providers each have their own set of services and ways of working, so it is beneficial to specialize in one or two providers that align with your business or career goals.

A Note From the Architect

Don’t be intimidated by the volume of information you’ll need to learn to be proficient in cloud-native technologies. Because I have a secret for you from a twenty-five year veteran. There’s little chance you’ll ever be much more than competent. You may be able to master a few of these subject areas, and that’s great if you do, but it’s not necessary if you truly understand one important thing.

I call this important thing, “The Why”.

In each of these articles where I present an important topic from big concepts in cloud-native development I will give you my opinion based on personal experience as to why you should consider using this technology, what are other possibilities, and what are the trade offs.

I believe that ‘The Why’ is one of the most important parts of a technology consideration. So what is the, “why,” of Cloud Native? In my opinion, it’s the ability to develop and deliver solutions on their built-to-fit platform. Even though there’s still a huge market for large systems like SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, and Oracle, the future belongs to value created solutions running on platforms that best fit their need.

I’m sure some people are wondering if everything really needs to be containerized. No, there are plenty of alternative options for running your workloads that don’t involve containers.

As a developer, I have come across several alternatives to cloud native technologies. One alternative is using virtual machines (VMs) instead of containers. VMs offer a higher level of isolation and security, but they also have a larger footprint and are less portable. Another alternative is using on-premises infrastructure, which provides greater control over data and security, but also comes with higher costs and maintenance responsibilities.

Another alternative is using a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) instead of containers. PaaS provides a higher level of abstraction and can simplify the deployment process, but it also limits the level of control and customization that you have over the infrastructure.

It’s important to note that, while these alternatives can be viable options depending on the specific use case, they often trade off some of the benefits of cloud native technologies such as scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency. Ultimately, it’s important to weigh the tradeoffs and choose the solution that best aligns with the needs of your project and organization.

What I hope to accomplish with this series is to open your eyes to the possibilities of what Cloud Native has to offer.

Connect with Shawn
Connect with Shawn

Connect with me on LinkedIn. It’s where I’m most active, and it’s the easiest way to connect with me.

Shawn’s LinkedIn