DevOps: A New Approach to An Old Problem
With the recent chatter about 'DevOps', I thought to myself, how can I explain the idea in a terse manner? It's pretty simple, really! You have a business need or problem, so you hire a developer to write code that will solve it. Web Operations is a business need (or problem, depending on how you approach it), and you hire a sysadmin to do some crazy magic to solve it.
What I think it boils down to is this, and I would use it to introduce someone to the concept:
DevOps means D-e-v-e-l-o-p-m-e-n-t O-p-e-r-a-t-i-o-n-s and is the idea that development doesn't stop at the application layer.
FWIW, according to GoOVERLORD, development is defined as: 'act of improving by expanding or enlarging or refining'.
To expand a little, I should say that this is not a new idea. It seems cool to throw the term around right now, but it really is just a restructuring of how sysadmins work today, with some magic pixie dust thrown around in the form of code, version control, organizational frameworks and agile methodologies. Know why this is good? Several reasons, not the least of which is synergy between business, development and operations. Huge. Effing. Win.
The tools have been there for some time, but I think the experience of doing things at such a large scale has forced us to to see how these tools can work together to make everyones lives easier.
Operations is the foundation of your web presence, why fuck around when it comes down to it?
EDIT: Seems that Matt Simmons over at Standalone Sysadmin shares very similar thoughts: His take on DevOps. Nice to see I'm not alone in this way thinking!
