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Ron Popeil Never

Had It So Good

Wes Eklund & Warren Myers

4 Sep 2014

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Who Are We?

  • Wes Eklund
    • Developer (PHP & Android)
    • @weseklund
  • Warren Myers
    • Data Center & Cloud Automation Professional
    • https://antipaucity.com | @warrenmyers

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What Are You Doing!?

  • 100 Developers Across 7 Teams Start On A New Project …
    • 1 full day per dev per workstation for their active environment
    • IT support for Dev, Test, Prod server environments
  • Client Requirements Shift
    • (This never happens…)
    • Whatinthebloodymonkey … :(

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What Are You Doing!?

  • Small Web Hosting Company Has 600 Customers...
    • Every customer has at least one VPS (VM)
    • Company standard is CentOS 6 for VMs
    • Every server is built … by hand
  • CentOS 7 Is Released ... Company Standard Goes to Windows
    • Whatinthebloodymonkey … :(

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Why Automate?

  • If you have to ask …
  • Art is amazing ...
    • When you have time
    • When cost is no concern
  • Tools are awesome … to start automating
    • As a start
    • As an intermediary
    • As an iterative improvement
  • Automation
    • What is the goal?
    • Eliminate your own job!

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Tools Overview

  • Types of automation tools
    • Licensing
    • Architectural approach
  • Supported platforms
    • Windows
    • Linux/Unix
  • Target audience
    • Developers
    • SysAdmins

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How They Work - Ops

  • Puppet, Chef
    • Agent based
    • Centralized
    • Pull oriented
  • Cfengine
    • Non agent based
    • Distributed-ish
    • Push-me/Pull-you model
  • Ansible
    • Non agent based
    • Centralized
    • Push oriented
  • HP Server Automation ($$$)
    • Agent based
    • Centralized
    • Push oriented

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How Vagrant Works

  • Basically: wrapper for your favorite VM provider
    • AWS, DO, VirtualBox ...
  • Creates network map to your project files
    • Host share to VM
  • Declarative configuration language
    • Instantiates VM (describe & provision)
  • Vagrant config files in project root (vc magic happiness)
  • Plays nice with industry-standard provisioning tools

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Sysadmin Example

  • Manual
    • Install RHEL - by hand
    • Install updates - by hand
    • Install software - by hand
    • Configure - by hand
  • Automating
    • Kickstart
    • Template
  • Automation
    • Kickstart/Template -> Software policies -> Automated updates -> Config management

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Dev Example - Vagrant / DO

  • Installed Prereqs
    • VirtualBox (my local VM provider)
    • Vagrant
    • DO Vagrant plugin (my remote VM provider)
      • vagrant plugin install vagrant-digitalocean

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Questions?

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Links

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Meetup Chores

What?

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When?

�Who?