Slide deck used during the Software Operability webinar on July 1st. http://highops.com/events/software-operability-webinar/

1. OPERATIONS IDEAS DELIVERED
OPERABILITY: A
DEVOPS
CORNERSTONE
1st July 2014

2. WELCOME
2

3. WEBINAR OUTLINE
3
INTRODUCTION
Marco Abis
CEO of HIGHOPS
2-5 minutes
SOFTWARE
OPERABILITY
Matthew Skelton
CNO of HIGHOPS
35-40 minutes
Q&A
15 minutes
#OPERABILITY

4. ABOUT HIGHOPS

5. OPERATIONS IDEAS DELIVERED
The first Operability-minded blend of Developers and Operations
professionals in the market, uniquely positioned to provide both
Professional and Managed Services for the full tech stack.
• We believe the challenges in delivering innovative solutions are almost
never about the technology. They are about the people.
• Standardising on reliable, predictable platforms takes the technical
discussions off the table and lets companies focus on their real issues:
spending time and mental energy solving business-changing problems.
• Shift your IT investments from maintenance to innovation: we help you
transform your operations from a cost center to a competitive advantage.
We enable your software development teams to work faster and ship more
often while making your operations resilient, reducing your operating costs
and making it scale more effectively.
5

6. GET THE EBOOK
• Free eBook from HIGHOPS
• http://bit.ly/OperabilityEbook
• 6000 words, with full
references & further reading
6

7. MATTHEW SKELTON
• Building, deploying, and operating
commercial software systems since 1998
• Sectors: finance, healthcare, insurance,
medical, oil & gas, travel, telecoms, …
• Research/study: cybernetics, neuroscience
• An engineering approach to software
systems
• Author of HIGHOPS eBook
‘Operability: a DevOps Cornerstone’
7

8. TODAY • What is software operability?
• Core operability concepts
• Why a focus on operability is so crucial in
2014
• How operability relates to DevOps
• How we can improve operability in our
software
8

9. WHAT IS SOFTWARE OPERABILITY
9

10. OPERABILITY
• Relates to the Latin verb ‘to work’
• Operate: to make something work
• Operational: a state of ‘working’
• Opera: a [musical] work
• Cooperate: work together
• Interoperability: separate things working together
10

11. BENEFITS OF GOOD OPERABILITY
• Fewer operational problems
• Reduced cost of ownership
• Software is easy to:
– Deploy
– Test
– Interrogate
• Simpler failure modes
• Rapid fault diagnosis
11

12. INCLUDE OPS PEOPLE IN USER STORIES
12

13. OPERABILITY
• A measure of how well the software system
works in Production
• Must work well for both:
– End-users
– Operations team
13

14. CORE OPERABILITY CONCEPTS
14

15. EXAMPLE OPERATIONAL ACTIVITIES
• Deployment
• Monitoring
• Diagnostics
• Debugging
• Check current state
• Reconfigure
• Inspect and determine dependencies
• Clear down data
• Capacity planning
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16. 16
HOOKS TRACEABILITY

17. 17
RELIABILITY RESILIENCE

18. 18
LOGGING CONFIGURABILITY
DEBUG | 2008-09-06 10:51:44,817 |
DefaultBeanDefinitionDocumentReader.java | 86 | Loading bean
definitions
DEBUG | 2008-09-06 10:51:44,848 | AbstractBeanDefinitionReader.java |
185 | Loaded 5 bean definitions from location pattern [samContext.xml]
INFO | 2008-09-06 10:51:44,848 | XmlBeanDefinitionReader.java | 323 |
Loading XML bean definitions from class path resource [tmfContext.xml]
DEBUG | 2008-09-06 10:51:44,848 | DefaultDocumentLoader.java | 72 |
Using JAXP provider
[com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.jaxp.DocumentBuilderFactoryImpl]
DEBUG | 2008-09-06 10:51:44,848 | BeansDtdResolver.java | 72 | Found
beans DTD [http://www.springframework.org/dtd/spring-beans.dtd] in
classpath: spring-beans.dtd
DEBUG | 2008-09-06 10:51:44,864 |
DefaultBeanDefinitionDocumentReader.java | 86 | Loading bean
definitions
DEBUG | 2008-09-06 10:51:45,458 |
AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java | 411 | Finished creating
instance of bean 'MS-SQL'
DEBUG | 2008-09-06 10:51:45,458 | DefaultSingletonBeanRegistry.java |
213 | Creating shared instance of singleton bean 'MySQL'

19. WHY A FOCUS ON OPERABILITY IS SO
CRUCIAL IN 2014

20. BUSINESS DEMAND FOR CHANGE
20

21. COMPLEX, DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS
21

22. HOW OPERABILITY RELATES TO
DEVOPS
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23. WITHOUT DEVOPS?
• Painful deployments
• Application restarts
• Load-balancer
workarounds
• Poor performance under
load
• Difficult to find and
diagnose errors
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“I want change!”
“I want stability!”

24. DevOps
• Development + Operations teams (+ others) collaborating closely
• Shared goals and incentives
• CAMS
– Culture
– Automation
– Measurement
– Sharing
• Lack of ‘blame culture’
• Learning through iteration
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25. CAMS PILLARS
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26. CAMS SUPPORTS OPERABILITY
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27. HOW WE CAN IMPROVE OPERABILITY
IN OUR SOFTWARE
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28. TREAT OPERATIONS AS HIGH-SKILL
28

29. TALK ABOUT ‘OPERATIONAL
FEATURES’, NOT ‘NON-FUNCTIONAL
REQUIREMENTS’
29

30. AVOID A SEPARATE ‘PRODUCTION-
IZATION OR ‘HARDENING’ PHASE
30

31. AVOID PRODUCTION-SPECIFIC
TOOLING
31

32. HAVE DEVELOPERS AND PRODUCT
OWNERS ON CALL
32

33. THE DEV TEAMS WRITE A DRAFT RUN
BOOK
33

34. MAKE OPS PROBLEMS VISIBLE
34

35. TEST FOR OPERABILITY IN A
DEPLOYMENT PIPELINE
35

36. REVIEW
36

37. WHAT IS SOFTWARE OPERABILITY?
A measure of how well the software system works
in Production
Both for end users and for Ops users
37

38. CORE OPERABILITY CONCEPTS
• Operational hooks
• Traceability
• Reliability
• Resilience
• First-class logging
• Configurability
38

39. WHY A FOCUS ON OPERABILITY IS SO CRUCIAL IN 2014
• ‘Cloud’ (software-defined infrastructure) has enabled
much more rapid rollout of infrastructure
• Businesses are demanding more rapid and
successful changes to software systems
• The potential for error is increased as systems
become more distributed and complex
39

40. HOW OPERABILITY RELATES TO DEVOPS
• DevOps: Development + Operations in close
collaboration
• DevOps can lead to improved operability
• The CAMS pillars of DevOps support better
operability
40

41. HOW WE CAN IMPROVE OPERABILITY IN OUR SOFTWARE
• Treat Ops as high-skill
• ‘Operational Features’ not NFRs
• Avoid a separate ‘hardening’ phase
• Avoid Production-specific tooling
• Dev teams and Product Owners on call
• Dev teams write a draft Run Book
• Make Ops problems visible
• Test for operability in a CD deployment pipeline
41

42. SUMMARY
• What is software operability?
• Core operability concepts
• Why a focus on operability is so crucial in 2014
• How operability relates to DevOps
• How we can improve operability in our software
42

43. Q & A
#operability
43

44. THANKS & PARTING THOUGHTS
• http://bit.ly/OperabilityEbook
• @gotHighOps
• info@highops.com
• We’re hiring!!! http://highops.com/jobs/
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