The DevOps Engineer thread

[throwaway4372]

As a dev I'm finding an increasing expectation that I should be editing yaml files for pipelines. I consider that to be devops responsibility. I have zero interest in being a yaml dev. I like the sound of .NET Aspire, which seems like it might help define the roles more clearly.

 

[opethdisciple]

Well there is an inside joke that in reality all we are are yaml engineers.

 

[Throrik]

Well there is an inside joke that in reality all we are are yaml engineers.

Before that it was XML/XLST and now it’s YAML/JSON. Thank god the days of XML/SOAP are mostly over.

 

[Django x2]

I recently applied for a DevOps Engineer role. I have over 12 years of experience as a software developer and thought it would be an interesting, relevant, but slightly different role. My application was turned down due to never actually holding the title 'DevOps Engineer'. However, I've managed the full stack of web development for 10+ years (coding practices, CI, releases, hosting, server management, etc.), but they simply ignored this and didn't give me a second look (they basically told me that when I asked).

Am I not really understanding what's truly involved in a DevOps Engineer role? Maybe I am underestimating what you guys do. No offence intended, I am genuinely interested in the role!

That's because none of the things you have experience in are related to DevOps.

 

[OspreyO]

There would be some overlap with our DevOps. But it's a very different mindset. I'm realising I don't really like it, partly because there's a lot of gatekeeping and I don't do it enough to build up expertise.

 

[OspreyO]

Ignore the negative look of this video. It's still very informative.

Thought this was pretty good. Have to say the constant change in our place is compounded by devops/infrastructure/operations constantly changing things.

 

[Cromulent]

I'm buiding a website that interacts with a FreeBSD host in order to create virtual machines and other network config. The website is likely to be done in Python or C# and the programs running on the FreeBSD host will either be C++ or Python.

I'm testing it all using VMware Fusion Pro on my Mac. I'll also be running a PostgreSQL server for the database.

 

[Throrik]

I'm buiding a website that interacts with a FreeBSD host in order to create virtual machines and other network config. The website is likely to be done in Python or C# and the programs running on the FreeBSD host will either be C++ or Python.

I'm testing it all using VMware Fusion Pro on my Mac. I'll also be running a PostgreSQL server for the database.

It's not exactly the same, but somewhat similar but the owner of openbsd.amsterdam did a talk on how he does this to a fairly decent scale, albeit not fully automated at the time, which was pretty interesting. I assume you might be using bhyve if you're going down the hypervisor route, whereas he uses vmd but might be worth a watch.

 

[Cromulent]

It's not exactly the same, but somewhat similar but the owner of openbsd.amsterdam did a talk on how he does this to a fairly decent scale, albeit not fully automated at the time, which was pretty interesting. I assume you might be using bhyve if you're going down the hypervisor route, whereas he uses vmd but might be worth a watch.

That looks very interesting. Thank you.

Yes, I am planning on using Bhyve but I was also thinking about using OpenBSD in the backend for the firewall and VPN as well.

 

[Dureth]

It's a bit blinkered of them if, with context, you've got all that experience. But also isn't it a bit of a step down for you? Like you've got the full stack background and you're looking at an operations role? Unless you're going to manage an operations team or something then it doesn't seem like a good career move.



The thing is the "but requiring development skills" isn't really much of a "but", it basically *is* still IT operations just slightly rebranded. Maybe they're more often writing Python scripts instead of Perl scripts and dealing with AWS, Azure etc.. instead of servers in data centers but good ops people have often had some coding skills in the past.

Originally it was a philosophy/methodology or set of practices to make development and operations work more seamlessly together... but now it's also used to refer to a role/job title, what would have been IT operations is now "DevOps", an IT operations Analysis = "DevOps Engineer" etc.. but it's very much the "Ops" part and not the "Dev".

This is the exactly my path into , a sys admin who wrote lots of Perl and managed on-prem and colo servers who moved into cloud infrastructure, Python, CI/CD, and eventually ML Ops (devops for machine learning).

The best part about moving from sys admin to devops was the rebranding of the role and the respect/understanding that comes from these activities being recognised as key elements of a solution architecture. It essentially enabled the paradigm shift from developers throwing finished code to OPs to run it to you build it you run it. This isn’t possible for all organisations but it’s very handy for startup and mid sized tech businesses.

For those interested the full path was:

* IT engineer
* Sys admin
* Data engineer
* Perl developer (full stack) with some c++
* Devops engineer
* Devops Lead
* Full stack/Data/Qa/Devops cross functional team manager
* Engineering Department head