devopsdays Copenhagen April 24-25, 2018 https://www.devopsdays.org/events/2018-copenhagen/ In this talk, you will hear about the DevOps journey in our company, from the initial brown-field all-manual state, to our current partially automated situation and the strategic destination of a fully automated and monitored process. In equilibrium between an high-level view and useful practical tips, we will touch on what informed our decisions, in terms of priorities and technologies, some lessons learned in setting up Infrastructure-as-Code using Terraform for Azure, and how the legacy constraints helped or hindered.

1. There and Back Again
a DevOps journey
Giulio Vian
25th April 2018
giulio.dev@casavian.eu
@giulio_vian

2. Few words about me
2
giulio.dev@casavian.eu
@giulio_vian
http://blog.casavian.eu/
https://tfsaggregator.github.io
Hardware spec:
1KB RAM (upg. 16KB)
4KB ROM

3. What we will talk about?
Introduction
Company state & Whys
What’s the plan?
Infrastructure-as-Code
Layer 1 – Terraform
Layer 2 – DSC
Layer 3 – Pipelines
Wrap-up
3
100-level
Deck on SlideShare
Bibliography at the end

4. Introduction
Company state & Whys

5. No green-field
3 Active Directory domains
+ workgroup
3 test environments
2 production environments
All manually built
Mainly manual deployments
TeraByte-size SQL instances
VPN connections
Centralized version control
4 source code branches

6. Technology soup
Hosting
OS & DB
Language

7. Most important applications use

8. Issues
Downtime
New releases
Windows Update
Lack of Scalability
Don’t touch it mindset

9. Growth crisis

10. What’s the plan?

11. Myth #7 DevOps is Only for Open
Source Software

12. People
New hires
VP of Technology
Scrum Master
DevOps Lead
Agile training

13. Investment
Training
Resources
Tools
Quality

14. R
e
b
i
u
l
d

15. Automation Pillars
Infrastructure Application stack Pipelines

16. Execution environment
Operating System
O.S. Modules
Local Services, Libraries
Application
Network & External Services
Data
16

17. To the cloud

18. Summary
Everything automated
Nothing comes for free
Arrange technologies
Spread knowledge

19. Infrastructure Pillar

20. Terraform DSL
resource "azurerm_virtual_machine" "vm_demo" {
name = "demovm"
location = "westeurope"
resource_group_name = "tf-demo"
network_interface_ids =
["${azurerm_network_interface.vm_demo.id}"]
vm_size = "Standard_B2s"
storage_image_reference {
publisher = "MicrosoftWindowsServer"
offer = "WindowsServerSemiAnnual"
sku = "Datacenter-Core-1709-smalldisk"
version = "latest"
}
storage_os_disk {
name = "demovm-osdisk"
caching = "ReadWrite"
create_option = "FromImage"
}
storage_data_disk {
name = "demovm-datadisk"
create_option = "Empty"
lun = 0
disk_size_gb = "10"
}
os_profile {
computer_name = "DEMOVM"
admin_username = "${var.vm_admin_username}"
admin_password = "${var.vm_admin_password}"
}
os_profile_windows_config {
provision_vm_agent = true
enable_automatic_upgrades = false
}
}

21. How it works
Command line tool
terraform init
terraform plan -out temp.json
terraform apply temp.json
Resource providers
State (metadata)

22. Things to get right
State in reliable share location
Azure Storage, S3
Folder structure
Naming
Source control

23. Before you do anything rash, like pressing another
button, may I make an alternative suggestion?
Doctor Who © BBC
Story 79
Season 12, Episode 20

24. Summary
Learn Terraform way
Learn its role
Think, don’t hack
Easy to drop in pipelines
…but will you do it?

25. Application stack Pillar

26. Desired State Configuration (DSC)
Configuration MyBox
{
# Install the IIS role
WindowsFeature IIS
{
Ensure = "Present"
Name = "Web-Server"
}
# Install the ASP .NET 4.5 role
WindowsFeature AspNet45
{
Ensure = "Present"
Name = "Web-Asp-Net45"
}
#...
}
Reboots
Modes
Local / Push
Pull
ConfigurationMode
ApplyOnly
ApplyAndMonitor 
ApplyAndAutocorrect
PowerShell Gallery

27. DSC best friend
Configuration MyOtherBox
{
#...
cChocoInstaller InstallChoco
{
DependsOn = '[Script]SetRemoteSignedExecutionPolicy'
InstallDir = $chocoDir
}
cChocoPackageInstaller Chrome
{
Name = 'googlechrome'
DependsOn = '[cChocoInstaller]InstallChoco'
Ensure = 'Present'
}
#...
}
Chocolatey Package Manager
Endorsement?
No trust?
Own Internal Package
Repository Server
Study
chocolateyInstall.ps1

28. Working together
(upload local scripts)
Custom Pull Server
Pushing from Terraform
via Deploy pipeline step
Azure Automation

29. Summary
Best friend for Windows
Robust
Easy to centralize
Plan for security
Plan for modularity

30. CI/CD Pipeline Pillar

31. Working together (2)
Version Control
Infrastructure as Code
Defining releases
Access control
Authorization
Auditing

32. Pipelines unfolding
one pipeline is not enough for all of us…
Integral deploy
Über-arching test and deploy
Partial paths
Just DB or App
Hotfix path
Other operations
Disaster Recovery

33. Wrap-up
33

34. Working software
over comprehensive
documentation
IaC embodies this Agile Principle!

35. Other interesting topics
In progress
Documentation
Agile training
Task force
Future Backlog
Trunk-based development
Feature toggles
Database migrations
Architectural redesign
Doctor Who © BBC
Story 214a
Series 6, Episode 1

36. To know more
Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software
Releases through Build, Test, and
Deployment Automation — J.Humble,
D.Farley (Addison-Wesley)
https://www.amazon.com/Continuous-
Delivery/dp/0321601912/
The DevOps Handbook — G.Kim, P.Debois,
J.Willis, J.Humble (IT Revolution Press)
https://www.amazon.com/DevOps-Handbook-
World-Class-Reliability-
Organizations/dp/1942788002/
36

37. To know more (cont’d)
Terraform - Up and Running: Writing
Infrastructure as Code — Y.Brikman
(O′Reilly)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1491
977086/
The DSC Book — Don Jones and Melissa
Januszko (O′Reilly)
https://leanpub.com/the-dsc-book
1491977086/
37

38. To know more (cont’d again)
Refactoring Databases — Scott J Ambler and
Pramod J. Sadalage (Addison-Wesley)
https://www.amazon.com/Refactoring-Databases-
Evolutionary-paperback-Addison-Wesley/dp/0321774515/
DevOps on the Microsoft Stack — Wouter de
Kort (Apress)
https://www.amazon.com/DevOps-Microsoft-Stack-Wouter-
Kort/dp/1484214471/
Beginning Build and Release Management with
TFS 2017 and VSTS — Chandrasekara, Chaminda
(Apress)
http://www.apress.com/gp/book/9781484228104
38

39. Links
https://continuousdelivery.com/
https://www.terraform.io/
https://github.com/giuliov/terraform-fun
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/key-vault/
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/best-practices-availability-paired-regions
https://martinfowler.com/articles/evodb.html
http://databaserefactoring.com/
http://agiledata.org/essays/databaseRefactoring.html
http://martinfowler.com/articles/feature-toggles.html
https://launchdarkly.com/
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/buckh/2016/09/30/controlling-exposure-through-feature-flags-in-vs-team-services/
http://www.powershellgallery.com/
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/dsc/overview
https://itrevolution.com/devops-handbook-debunking-devops-myths/
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40. Brick by brick