I’m a little perplexed by some posts doing the rounds during the evolutions of what DevOps is that claim it is not Systems Administration …

Well I for one say if that is the case then no one should be a “DevOps” without a background in Systems administration … let me explain.

Primarily I work with redhat rpm based systems for web application hosting at what I’d call an advanced level stracing, calling on linux c api’s as needed, fixing packaged and upstreaming the fixes, bug reporting etc (In my opinion something anyone using Opensource in their business should be doing!), I’m not going to go into complete detail on the tools and how I use them on a day to day basis as this moves from the point of this post entirely (that and it would take FAR too long to write …)

I also as part of my job I work in python, ruby, php, bash, tcl, c, c++, whatever tool is needed to do the job, let me say that again for clarity whatever tool is needed to do the job.

I could be a DBA, Sysadmin, TechSupport, Pentester at any given point of the day.

I analyse and profile web applications then go on to design hosting solutions for said applications.

I promote the use of SCM (Git in particular), unit testing and I’ve begun looking at Continuous integration methodologies.

I’m a commiter on the EPEL Openstack packages (Admittedly not as often as I would like at the moment … deadlines …), I also have upstream commits for libcloud and boxgrinder.

I work to the ethos that downtime is not acceptable, EVER! And if that means I have to profile, bugfix and code to ensure that is not the case then I will, I call it adapting and not being rigid.

I am presently looking at Chef to compliment my planned deploy of Openstack, for which I will be writing the configurations, this will in turn allow the development team to get on with their jobs, I already use kickstarts for my KVM deployments, Chef seems like the next logical step.

And whilst “The Cloud” has met with my skepticism, this is more to do with the over marketing claiming it is the solution to all your aliments … once you get past all the marketing fluff it is the way forward, and has been as such since a long time before “The Cloud” fluff came along.

So in short, I’m a Systems Administrator and I work damned hard to ensure those systems I administer stay online, if that means I need to work as a Developer, Pentester etc … then I will.

Whilst I can see that Devops in its current form could be stand alone from Systems Administration, it shouldn’t be …

You should not carry out Devops without a knowing the platforms you are deploying to, it’s like being a Cardiologist having spent 20 minutes on Operation (Yes overly melodramatic metaphor, remember uptime for me is that important.)

So what does that make me? aside from an overly paranoid uptime chanting nutter?

On Another note Saiweb.co.uk is 7 years old 26/03/2012 … I should really add more content …