About a year ago I accepted a new job in an enterprise Linux environment, running ~450 Linux servers. These servers were running on an internal network and had never been updated. Most work was done ad-hoc and in response to issues or failure. I transformed the team to a pro-active way of working where automation was key. By solving the most frequent problems first, we found the time to automate more and more. Every server was updated and configuration management was introduced. One interesting year later I've automated myself out of my job. The team can easily handle the (now much lighter) workload without me. Users are happy, so mission completed! Configuration management is done using CFEngine 3 and we use other DevOps style tools like Git and Vagrant. In this talk I'll talk about the journey we took and answer: - What was the problem with the old way of working? - How did we implement configuration management in an already running environment? - Why did we choose CFEngine 3? - What is the new way of working? - What are the lessons learned? - How to automate yourself out of your job? The presentation will also focus on the process of getting there and the lessons learned, so others can benefit. The presentation was given in the FOSDEM Configuration Management devroom at February 1st 2014 @12:00

1. agement
ration Man ux Team
se: Configu erprise Lin
Use ca
in an ent
How I
automated
job
myself out
of my
FOSDEM’14 - Feb 1st, 2014 - Brussels
@remibergsma

2. @remibergsma

3. Today’s story:
1
Use case
with results.
2
How to do
it yourself.
@remibergsma

4. I am
Remi Bergsma
Engineer with a passion for automation.
@remibergsma

5. Enterprise?
Semi-government organization.
@remibergsma

6. @remibergsma

7. users
Too many of the same incidents.
@remibergsma

8. To go from
fire
fighting
prevention.
to
@remibergsma

9. The building blocks are
Git, CFEngine3
and Vagrant.
@remibergsma

10. Workflow
Dev
Beta
PreProd
Feature
Feature
@remibergsma
Production

11. Git repository

12. Involve users,
they look from a different perspective.
@remibergsma

13. @remibergsma

14. users
Significant drop in incidents.
@remibergsma

15. Phase 1:
WTF!
Find out what problems to fix.
@remibergsma

16. Phase 2:
Save time by applying
quick wins.
@remibergsma

17. Phase 3:
Implement
configmgmt
and build your baseline.
@remibergsma

18. Phase 4:
scale
out
up.
@remibergsma
and

19. Phase 5:
Relax,
you’re now in control.
@remibergsma

20. “ automate
Every 18 months,
yourself out of your job
”
--- Someone @Google, long time ago (Thanks Kris!)
@remibergsma

21. Recap
Replace manual work with configmgmt
1. WTF: Find out what to fix
2. Save time with quick wins
3. Setup configmgmt baseline
4. Scale out & scale up
5. Relax: full control!
your code
ys version
Alwa
@remibergsma

22. Whatever happens,
use configmgmt.
And please spread the word!
@remibergsma

23. Get in touch!
Follow me on Twitter
I will post the slides soon.
remi@remi.nl
blog.remibergsma.com
@remibergsma

24. Thank you!
@remibergsma

25. Credits
Changing permissions animation: http://
devopsreactions.tumblr.com/post/73295491766/changingpermissions-that-are-enforced-by-cfengine
Fireman Sam Team: http://kidzpadz.co.uk/images/products/
63500102343_00.jpg
Fireman Sam relax: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thebigsheep/
5905236905/sizes/l/
Kris Buytaert mentions the quote “Every 18 months, automate
yourself out of your job” in his presentation:
http://www.slideshare.net/KrisBuytaert/the-future-of-sysadmin
on slide 38.
@remibergsma

26. License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons AttributionShareAlike 4.0 International License.
@remibergsma