1. Help a SysAd Out!
Ideas and Practices to (hopefully)
make your next project go smoother.
Or….
How I learned to stop worrying and
learned to love
the process.
2. A little about myself…
Alex Juarez LOVES HIS JOB! Alex Juarez does not
like bios. He does like cooking and bourbon.
Curious to know more? Ask him @mralexjuarez
5. Quick Survey
How many people are one of the following:
– Systems Administrators ?
– Project Managers ?
– Developers ?
– DBAs ?
– Jack of all Trades ?
– The ENTIRE IT department?
– Just happy to be here?
6. So What Are We Talking About Today?
Process
DevOps Rules
Recovery
Profiling
7. Why Do We Care?
¯_(ツ)_/¯
• Continuity
• Being able to recover from disaster
• Save Time
• Save Headaches.
8. Processes
Return on your Time
Recovery Most
– Backups
– Version Control
Deployment
– System Deployment
– Project Task Management
Profiling
– Web Load Testing
– Server Load Testing
– Keep Statistics
Least
9. Backups! Backups! Backups!
Know what you are backing up.
Know how you are backing it up.
Know how to restore it.
( This goes for everybody on the team)
Test it!
12. Application Profiling
“My Site is slow! Tune it!”
1. What is considered slow?
2. What metric are you trying to improve?
3. Was ANYTHING recently changed?
4. Can we reproduce the issue?
5. What are the most expensive operations your code does?
6. Does your database have a data set similar to production?
16. Recapitulation ( Recap)
Return on your Time
Recovery Most
– Backups
– Version Control
Deployment
– System Deployment
– Project Task Management
Profiling
– Web Load Testing
– Server Load Testing
– Keep Statistics
Least
17. Questions?
I may have answers?
Or at lease know some people who will.
Thank you for coming!There are a lot of options so I appreciate your time.
They asked for a bio; they never used it.So here it is so those 20 minutes didn’t go to waste.As I may have mentioned before, my name is Alex Juarez.
I pulled this from the website.Just a few line items.All backed by Fanatical Support.That’s the department I am in.I am support tech on the floor day in and day out.More lately I’ve been pulled to a few projects.At the end of the day I love helping customers with technology.
People always put this note in the end after having everybody take notes during their talk.Also proof that I didn’t write this talk this morning right before this.I wrote it last night.
Systems administrators? -- Part of a large team? Small team?Project Managers? -- Maybe you were a former system admin?Developers? -- You guys are cool to.Jack of All Trades – SysAdmin / Developer / DCOPs / Network Admin / Windows AdminDBAs? – We heart you all to.Entire IT department? There is something to be said for the power of one. They are usually over worked.How about just happy to be here? – If nobody raises their hand here it’s just going to be a very loooong talk.
We’re going to cover a lot of things, but it really comes down to process.You could call it Devops, you could call it rules, some of the stuff falls under process and other sections fall under application profiling.
Why are we talking about this? Why am I talking to you about this?We are talking about this because it is important.I feel as an administrator in a hosting environment we have a unique experience in that we deal with so many different environments every day. Typically we see individual environments between 10 and 20 servers. Those servers are grouped in to different pools. Web pools, db pool etc etc.And while for some people that may be _their_ environment, we are part of of that environment multiple time during the day.In each one of those instances we’re the fresh eyes helping out customers.In talking to customers fairly often we see that a lot of these processes while easy to implement, often fall by the way side.The first one is probably the overstated and respectively under implemented . . .
What are we going to talk about today? – Really it can be summed up in one word. And that is process.As I mentioned earlier, the underlying themes here are ideas and processes to help make your next { code | project } release a smoother. I am just here presenting ideas its up to you to take it back to your team and implement the processes.We are going to break it out in to three main sectionsRecovery DeploymentProfilingWhat do I want you all to walk away with?Hopefully at the end of this talk I’ve mentioned something that you can take back and improve on.
I couldn’t have a talk on process and not mention backing your files up.Know what you are backing up!Are you backing up all of the needed files for your application?Know how to restore it!Having a backup but not being able to restore it is, guess what, as good as not having a backup.Test it!Same as I just mentioned; really only the act of restoring a backup determines if you are successfully taking backups.Example: At Rackspace to backup our MySQL databases we use Holland Backup Manager to backup our MySQL installs.We have a our MBU install that kicks off at a particular time. Before that we have holland kick off and do a dump of the database. For those who can not have locking on the database we setup replication and dump off of that database.http://hollandbackup.org/Lastly, having two copies of your project on your desktop does not count as a back up. That’s just really bad version control. Which brings me to . . . .
It’s always a relief when I see a customer is using version control.Is your developer using it? Why not? Even for a one man project.Why you may ask?Ever have a cat sit down on your keyboard?Ever had the new guy accidently delete a single file?
Cloud Computing changes the game here.Iron servers take some time to physically deployIn either case these tools can help you take a fresh install to production ready in a mater of minutes.Chef friend Do it!Do it Again!Now do it faster
Application ProfilingShould be done before going live and not right before going live.In general I start off by asking the following questions whenever a user has an issue with the site being slow. There are actually a lot more questions we would go through in the troubleshooting efforts, but profiling a slow site could be a whole other talk.And really these questions are to start conversation and get both of us thinking.