Few things make my blood boil than a recruiter spamming me with 'DevOps Engineer'CV's, just because someone's worked with AWS and uses Puppet and whatever else doesn't make them a DevOps engineer (I don't even believe there is such a job title), what that person is, is an automation expert. If they were some sort of DevOps coach or similar, their CV would have much more focus on the cultural change, or working with both Dev and Ops teams, not software automation.... Rant over
Wednesday 24 June 2015
Tuesday 23 June 2015
Open container project
We've not delved in to containers at work yet (still working on walking before running), but already some of our key suppliers are talking to us about providing future versions of their software as containers.
Therefore we'll need to get on that journey, and with all these types of emerging technologies, choosing the right horse to back is always a key decision. Docker has clearly led the market, and is a real buzzword at the moment, but with the recent play Microsoft have made with the Microserver announcements, the market is becoming more crowded.
This all got more complicated when some of the vendors (Docker) started talking about different standards, which was never going to help the consumer.
So the announcement at Dockercom yesterday (neatly summarised by TechCrunch here), where all the big players (Docker, CoreOS, Google, Microsoft, VMWare Amazon etc.) will all play nicely together, with docker donating their container format is a massive boon for us consumers.
It was also interesting to note that the odd one out (it seems to me) in the Open Container Project is Goldman Sachs, everyone else is a technology company. Interesting move for a bank, but clearly one that thinks of itself also as a technology company
Therefore we'll need to get on that journey, and with all these types of emerging technologies, choosing the right horse to back is always a key decision. Docker has clearly led the market, and is a real buzzword at the moment, but with the recent play Microsoft have made with the Microserver announcements, the market is becoming more crowded.
This all got more complicated when some of the vendors (Docker) started talking about different standards, which was never going to help the consumer.
So the announcement at Dockercom yesterday (neatly summarised by TechCrunch here), where all the big players (Docker, CoreOS, Google, Microsoft, VMWare Amazon etc.) will all play nicely together, with docker donating their container format is a massive boon for us consumers.
It was also interesting to note that the odd one out (it seems to me) in the Open Container Project is Goldman Sachs, everyone else is a technology company. Interesting move for a bank, but clearly one that thinks of itself also as a technology company
Monday 15 June 2015
US Government OPM hack
Interesting and rather scary insight into another big US government security breach, the OPM (Office of Personnel Management) has been hacked, and large numbers (up to 14 million) of government staff's data stolen. The article talks about how until 2013 they didn't have anyone in an IT security role, see the quote below...
" The OPM had no IT security staff until 2013, and it showed. The agency was harshly criticized for its lax security in an inspector general’s report released last November that cited its lack of encryption and the agency’s failure to track its equipment. Investigators found that the OPM failed to maintain an inventory list of all of its servers and databases and didn’t even know all the systems that were connected to its networks. The agency also failed to use multi-factor authentication for workers accessing the systems remotely from home or on the road."
It seems incredible that a government agency has been so lax even in the last 2 years, I hope the UK government is taking better care of its staff's data.... (that might be a big hope)
http://www.wired.com/2015/06/opm-breach-security-privacy-debacle/
" The OPM had no IT security staff until 2013, and it showed. The agency was harshly criticized for its lax security in an inspector general’s report released last November that cited its lack of encryption and the agency’s failure to track its equipment. Investigators found that the OPM failed to maintain an inventory list of all of its servers and databases and didn’t even know all the systems that were connected to its networks. The agency also failed to use multi-factor authentication for workers accessing the systems remotely from home or on the road."
It seems incredible that a government agency has been so lax even in the last 2 years, I hope the UK government is taking better care of its staff's data.... (that might be a big hope)
http://www.wired.com/2015/06/opm-breach-security-privacy-debacle/
Facebook hardware
You might of heard of OCP, Facebook Open sourcing it's hardware designs (Facebook righty state that hardware is not a competitive advantage to them), so making it freely available to anyone doesn't hurt them.
They started doing this around 6-7 years ago and now it's starting to become mainstream. A couple of points in this article jumped out at me though...
Firstly that "Goldman Sachs has committed that "80% of its servers would be OCP." It will only buy regular commercial servers for oddball, outlier applications, where it doesn't make sense to spend time on custom designs.
And secondly that HP is now becoming an OCP partner, and will build a range of OCP compatible hardware, which is cannibalising their own server line up, but it's an interesting move by HP, and one to keep an eye on.
Full article here : http://uk.businessinsider.com/facebook-open-compute-project-history-2015-6
They started doing this around 6-7 years ago and now it's starting to become mainstream. A couple of points in this article jumped out at me though...
Firstly that "Goldman Sachs has committed that "80% of its servers would be OCP." It will only buy regular commercial servers for oddball, outlier applications, where it doesn't make sense to spend time on custom designs.
And secondly that HP is now becoming an OCP partner, and will build a range of OCP compatible hardware, which is cannibalising their own server line up, but it's an interesting move by HP, and one to keep an eye on.
Full article here : http://uk.businessinsider.com/facebook-open-compute-project-history-2015-6