simple steps and tips to improve it infrastructure operations #yapcasia #yapcasiae

Simple steps and tips to improve IT infrastructure operations2015-08-22 15:30-16:30@ YAPC::Asia Tokyo 2015 (Day 2)

Yuichiro Saito (@koemu)

© Yuichiro Saito (@koemu), 2015 1

http://twitter.com/koemu


Information

• Feel free to take photos, tweet, and blog about this talk !

• Twitter hashtag: #yapcasiaE

• Slides will be uploaded to slideshare.



About Me



Yuichiro Saito (@koemu)

• Software Engineer @ HEARTBEATS Corp. (MSP)

• Specialty: Improve Engineering Productivity

• Work Experience: Stock analysis system development, CMS, EC, NLP, Smartphone game development, AR



http://heartbeats.jp/


Now on SALE !

Webアプリエンジニア養成読本



Question



What are you ?

• Software Engineer ?

• Operation Engineer ?

• Project Manager ?

• Other ?



TOC

• 0: Background

• 1: People WANT to talk about their problems

• 2: Involve closest person

• 3: Evaluating performance and beyond



0: Background



About HEARTBEATS (HB)

• MSP (Managed Service Provider1)

• 24/7 manned monitoring.

• Stable, secure, customer-centric service.

1 MSPAlliance, “Definition of Managed Services”, http://www.mspalliance.com/blog/definition-of-managed-services/ (Web)


http://www.mspalliance.com/blog/definition-of-managed-services/


In 2012

• External

• Raise of IaaS (AWS, etc ...)

• Easier to handle service instances with IaaS (compared to on-premise).

• Internal: Environment within HB

• Manual operations.

• Oh, It's archaic :-(



1: People WANT to talk about their problems



Changes

• More instances to operate than on-premise era.

• Able to handle instances with software.



Problems

• More overtime work

• Manual operations in the IaaS era !

• Decreasing efficiency

• Slow lead time.

• Delayed adoption of new technologies.



Wow, this is sucks !

• Miss out on business opportunities.

• We must abandon our manual operations, or else we will be left behind in the IaaS era.



We need improvement

• But... improvement is inseparable from resistance!

• But we still need to solve our problems.

• If I can make life easier for people, they will be more susceptible to improvement.

• DeMarco said: "People can't embrace change unless they feel safe."2

2 Tom DeMarco, “The Deadline: A Novel About Project Management”, Dorset House, 1997


http://tomdemarco.com/

http://tomdemarco.com/Books/deadline.html


Understanding the problem

• Find Hints

• We don't have comprehensive information.

• Identify "goal-reality" pairs3

• e.g.) Management principle (goal) - Efficiency (reality)

3 Eric G. Flamholtz, Yvonne Randle, “Growing Pains: Transitioning from an Entrepreneurship to a Professionally Managed Firm”, Jossey-Bass, 2000



Expectation

• "Inner Work Life"4

• Performance is affected by motivation.

• Motivation is affected by happiness.

4 Amabile, T.M. and Kramer, S.J., “Inner work life: understanding the subtext of business performance”, Harvard Business Review, pp. 72-83, May 2007


https://hbr.org/2007/05/inner-work-life-understanding-the-subtext-of-business-performance/

https://hbr.org/2007/05/inner-work-life-understanding-the-subtext-of-business-performance/


Research

• Interview

• Questionnaire



Two types of difficult tasks

1. Short time commitment and many repetitions.

2. Infrequent but long time commitment.



Short time and TOO MANY repeat

Cause• Inefficient manual operations.

• Operating environment is not automated.



Few repeats but LONG time

Cause• Requires manual operation, lack of sharing of

information.

• The replacement personnel runs into unexpected trouble due to lack of communication during transition.



Analysis parameters

• Two factor

• Difficulty

• COST



What's HARD ?

• Mental stress

• Workload

• Short lead time

• Dependent on individual skills

• Technical unfeasible



What's COST

• Preparation cost

• Development cost

• Introduction, training cost

• Cost impact to the organization



Our conclusion so far

1. People will be willing to change if they understand that it will make their life easier.

2. Identify what is making their life difficult.

3. Prioritize according to difficulty and cost.



2: Involve closest person



Case study: hb-acns



Developed internal product

• hb-agent5: Automatic server building tool

• hb-gendoc: Automatic document building tool

• Cacti bulk configuration tool

• hb-acns6: Our topic !

6 Yuichiro Saito, “hb-acns - サーバ監視・メトリック取得設定の自動化システムのご紹介 - インフラエンジニアway”, 2015, http://heartbeats.jp/hbblog/2015/06/hb-acns.html (blog)

5 Yuichiro Saito, “hb-agent - 構築・監視項目検出自動化ツール hb-agentのご紹介 - インフラエンジニアway”, 2015, http://heartbeats.jp/hbblog/2015/05/hb-agent.html (blog)



http://heartbeats.jp/hbblog/2015/06/hb-acns.html







http://heartbeats.jp/hbblog/2015/05/hb-agent.html









What's hb-acns ?

• Automatic register to monitoring system (Nagios, Cacti).

• Free ALL engineers from the pains of manual configuration.

• Preconfigureed rules can be converted into scripts.



Why ?

• Impossible to manually set up monitoring settings for all IaaS instances.



Two targets

• Small terms with many projects.

• Highest need for efficiency.

• Big terms with few projects.

• Easy standardization.



Why don't use OSS ?

• We have:

• Multiple datacenters.

• Many customers with varying needs.

• An established operation workflow to meet these need.

• The existing OSS was unsuitable.



Opportunity

• We ware about to start a new project.

• The CTO and I decided that this would be a pilot project.



Plan of pilot project

1. Plan: Specifications, Preparation

2. Try: Develop, Test to use, Find Problem

3. Feedback: Interview, Questionnaire

4. Spread: Propagate, Improve



Tips of pilot project

1. Get CTO support.

2. Introduce merit.

3. Troubleshoot immediately.



Get CTO support

• Initiative by CTO.

• Endorsement from CTO.

• Emphasize exective leadership.



Introduce merit.

• Everyone is busy => Resistant to change

• Introduce merit, repeat and repeat.

• What is improve task ?

• Which of my jobs wolud be improved ?

• Let people know that it can be done !



Troubleshoot immediately

• There will always be unexpected trouble.

• If the response is slow, people will stop trying.



Propagate

• Documentation

• Can use him/her self DIY solutions.

• Hands-on demonstrations7

• Solve the fears of weakness DIY solutions.

• Spread to nearly all of staff (over 40) :-)

7 Yuichiro Saito, “ツール普及のために社内ハンズオンに取り組んでみた - インフラエンジニアway”, 2014, http://heartbeats.jp/hbblog/2014/11/handson.html (blog)



http://heartbeats.jp/hbblog/2014/11/handson.html





(hb-acns chat ops)

• That is executed every day.




• Plan -> Try -> Feedback -> Spread

• Get CTO support

• Hands-on workshops lower entry barriers.



3: Evaluating performance and beyond



3 weeks• Period of development.



3 months• The beggining of the pilot project to the

hands-on workshops.



1/10 times• Lead time of monitoring setup.



Workload time reduced >>Time invested in development



Cost performance

• Increase profitability

• Reduce monitoring setup and update time.

• Increase profit

• We can get more customer by saving time !



Side effects

• People understood that ...

• Programming will increase efficiency.

• They can write code, too !8

8 Ryota Yoshikawa (@rrreeeyyy), “Infrastructure as Code の始め方 // Speaker Deck”, Open Source Conference 2014 Tokyo/Fall, 2014, https://speakerdeck.com/rrreeeyyy/osc-20141018-infra-as-code (Slide)


https://twitter.com/rrreeeyyy

https://speakerdeck.com/rrreeeyyy/osc-20141018-infra-as-code




Future goals

• Increase operation efficiency through programming

• More in-depth study of programming.

• Solve problems by programming.

• Basis formed by operating skills (Tuning, Middleware, Clarify the problem, etc ...)




• Succeeded in improving operation productivity.

• People recognized the need of programming to improve operations.

• Programming improves operations efficient.



Conclusion



Don't be afraid to change !

• People will accept growing pains if it will make their lives easier.

• Hands-on workshops are great for reducing barriers and anxiety.

• Programming improves operations efficient.



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