Julien Stroheker’s Blog

TalkDevOps Interview : SharePoint Development with DevOps Practices

Julien.Stroheker — Thu, 21 Apr 2016 13:41:20 GMT

I met Vincent Biret few weeks ago to talk about his experience on the SharePoint Development. Vincent, work at Negotium where he is a Technical Lead. He implemented DevOps Practices around SharePoint on his product : Oceanik. His team PLAN / CODE / BUILD and RELEASE with Visual Studio Team Services. Vincent show us with 100% transparency his VSTS Configuration and told his DevOps journey and the benefits of his release pipeline. Hope you will enjoy this video : Thanks

TalkDevOps Interview : How Negotium Technologies is delivering value to their customers...

Julien.Stroheker — Wed, 06 Apr 2016 00:15:55 GMT

Last month I met some old friends at our Montreal's office : Eric Beaudry and Sébastien Levert. I asked them for news about their company and they told me this interesting story on how they are shifting Negotium from a services company to a solution company. Oceanik being one of their solution. After few minutes talking, I asked them if we could record our discussion. I think it could be interesting if you are searching some assets and feedback on different topics like :

How do you manage this transition ?
Business aspects versus Technical aspects
Tools
...

Sébastien and Éric share their philosophy about the concept of "Fail Fast, Learn Fast" combined with the Minimum Valuable Product (MVP) development. We also talked about : Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Deployment (CD), Feedback loop, Release pipeline, and more...

Hope you will enjoy this video.

Thanks

TalkDevOps Interview : DevOps Yes !!! But what about ALM and Agile ???

Julien.Stroheker — Tue, 08 Mar 2016 09:36:50 GMT

I met Etienne Tremblay during the MVP Days in Montréal and we talked together about DevOps, but also Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) and Agile ! I asked Etienne how he define DevOps with ALM ? Is it something different or the same thing ? We also talked about, how Etienne explain DevOps and apply it with a methodology like Agile and Scrum. Finally we conclude the video with some best practices on how we can start to think about DevOps and Automation. Let me know your feedbacks and your experience with DevOps on Twiiter : @Ju_Stroh Thanks

TalkDevOps Interview : IaC at Orckestra with Stéphane Lapointe

Julien.Stroheker — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 22:49:45 GMT

Last month I met Stéphane Lapointe (@s_lapointe) at Orckestra's office in Montréal to talk about DevOps and his experience. Here the recording, split in two parts, we talk about Infrastructure as Code with Azure Resource Manager (ARM) Template and Configuration Management with Desired State Configuration (DSC) and how Orckestra leverage this two DevOps practices to improve their lead time ! In the second part, we are focus more on best practices and experiences with Stéphane on how you can easly start to do IaC with ARM in term of tools and resources...

Part 1

How Orckestra is using Azure Resource Manager (ARM) and Desired State Configuration (DSC) to implement Infrastructure as Code and Configuration Management as DevOps practices :

Part 2

How can I start with ARM in term of learning, tools and best practices :

Many thanks to Orckestra : https://www.orckestra.com/ and Stéphane for their time ! If you are interested to #TalkDevOps with me, let me know in the comment section !! Thanks you Julien

DevOps: Where do I start ? Cheat Sheet

Julien.Stroheker — Sun, 14 Feb 2016 20:47:49 GMT

[UPDATED 10/04/2016] UPDATE : We just updated the HOL on Parts Unlimited and Parts Unlimited MRP check this out :

Your boss has asked you to do DevOps ? No surprise as the term DevOps has become a trendy word. DevOps however is more than just Devs and Ops working together. It is not something you can buy with your credit card. The efficiencies the process provides on behalf of a supported organization can yield increased productivity between IT Professionals, Developers and Business Decision Makers. Yes… But where I'm supposed to start ??? What will be my learning path ? That's why I'm offering to you all my links from where I learned, learn and still learning every day.

Introduction to DevOps

Videos / Courses / Shows :

Channel 9 : DevOps Fundamentals

A MUST TO START !! This series takes you through the fundamentals of DevOps, starting with an introduction to the concepts and then drills into DevOps practices. It will cover the basics of the most commonly implemented practices and talk you through technical demos for each.

Channel 9 : DevOps Gamification | What Is ? Serie :

Channel 9 : Breakpoint Show :

MVA : Integrate, Deliver, and Deploy Continuously with Cloud DevOps by Donovan Brown

Examine the Microsoft application lifecycle management (ALM) offerings that enable your development teams to be more productive and to embrace a DevOps culture.

MVA : Enabling DevOps Practices with Visual Studio Online by David Tesar and Donovan Brown

Want to improve the quality of your code and get it into customers' hands faster, with fewer delays and a better view of the end-to-end deployment pipeline? Watch this online technical training to learn how IT and Developer practitioners can use Visual Studio Online to accelerate their DevOps journey, thanks to flexible, cross-platform capabilities and built-in tasks that integrate with and preserve existing investments.

Overview of VSTS - Build Fundamentals and CI - Build Agents - Automated Testing - Continuous Deployment

Channel 9 : Microsoft DevOps Hackathon Live

This video splited on five parts will show you one of our Hackathon experience, It will cover a lot of practices with demos.

Channel 9 | Build | DevOps as a strategy for Business Agility

Discover how your development team can collaborate more easily with operations teams and embrace a DevOps culture to enable continuous delivery.

Links / Blog Post :

Microsoft DevOps Assessment - DevOps Self-Assessment

This assessment is the first step in gauging your readiness in the 7 key DevOps practice areas. Completing this assessment will provide you with a framework to better understand your current DevOps practices and where to focus next.

Blog Post : DevOps for n00bs (ie. Windows people like me)

After few research I found this awesome blog post from Ashley McGlone

Books :

The Phoenix Project

I think this book is a best seller in term of DevOps, specially for folks who just started to learn.

Next Gen DevOps

This book is a good one to have a global vision of DevOps. I liked how the author explain the evolution of IT from the beginning until nowadays

Kanban : Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business

This one i an excellent book to explain the real goal of using Agile board... Indeed is not just about stick notes on every wall and said : We're Agile !

Improve your skills

Videos / Courses / Shows :

Channel 9 : DevOps Dimension

Join DevOps experts David Tesar, Thiago Almeida, Oguz Pastirmaci, the engineers building DevOps solutions, and partners to find out the latest news and information on DevOps practices, inside and outside Microsoft.

Channel 9 : The Ops Team

Weekly show where 4 Technical Evangelists specializing in IT Operations get together to give you the deets on their 4 areas of expertise: Microsoft Azure/Cloud, On Premises technologies, Enterprise Mobility / Windows and DevOps.

MVA : Deep Dive into Azure Resource Manager Scenarios and Patterns

Find out how you can use Azure Resource Manager (ARM) as a tool help you manage those Resource Groups. Explore ARM with an international team of experts, who show you scripts and tools that make it easy to spin up or spin down elements of your application infrastructure in dev, test, or production.

Links / Blog Post :

Blog Post : VorlonJS - A Journey to DevOps

Awesome serie by Julien Corioland of post on Vorlon, interesting to see how VSTS can be used with non Microsoft technology !!

Books :

Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation

Value stream mapping--an essential but underused methodology--is a proven approach to help you visualize and resolve disconnects, redundancies, and gaps in your value delivery system. More than merely a tool to eliminate operational waste, value stream mapping is a highly effective means to transform leadership thinking, define strategy and priorities, and create customer-centric work flow.

Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation

Jez Humble and David Farley begin by presenting the foundations of a rapid, reliable, low-risk delivery process. Next, they introduce the “deployment pipeline,” an automated process for managing all changes, from check-in to release. Finally, they discuss the “ecosystem” needed to support continuous delivery, from infrastructure, data and configuration management to governance.

Evidence / Customer Success

Channel 9 : kCura: DevOps customer story with Chef and Azure

Sameer Doshi from kCura tells us how their company has achieved some business great results across development and operations while utilizing Microsoft Azure and Chef to implement the DevOps practice of Infrastructure as code amongst other things.

White Paper : Rakuten : https://aka.ms/devops_rakuten

Tokyo-based Rakuten is one of the largest electronic commerce and Internet companies in Japan. Rakuten’s Ichiba ecommerce platform is among the world’s largest by sales. Discover how this company is using DevOps Practices.

Hands on lab (HOL) / Practices

DevOps Factory : https://thedevopsfactory.com/gameboard

Learn how the DevOps Factory can help you deliver better apps faster, while making the most efficient use of all IT resources.

How to enable DevOps Practices with PartsUnlimited Apps by David Tesar

Parts Unlimited is an example eCommerce website site based for training purposes on the website described in chapters 31-35 of The Phoenix Project

Parts Unlimited GitHub Repo : https://github.com/Microsoft/PartsUnlimited

The website, built on ASP.NET 5 MVC 6 includes product listings by category, product details, shopping cart, order history, product recommendations, search, and more using Microsoft Technology.

You can start with this HOL to learn some DevOps Concepts with Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) and Azure :

Parts Unlimited using DotNet Core :

Parts Unlimited MRP GitHub Repo : https://github.com/Microsoft/PartsUnlimitedMRP

The application uses entirely open source software including Linux, Java, Apache, and MongoDB which creates a web front end, an order service, and an integration service.

You can start with this HOL to learn some DevOps Concepts with Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS), Open Source Technology and Azure :

Love Java ? So do we !! : https://java.visualstudio.com/

Are you developing in Java? Do you need a good set of agile tools to maximize your team's productivity ? This lab will show you how using Visual Studio Team Services and running your build, automated testing, deployment, using Git and more...

Create a Git repo, Build a Web App and Deploy : https://java.visualstudio.com/Docs/gettingstarted/intro
Agile Git Workflows, Create a backlog, Plan Work, Implement Changes, Verify and Merge : https://java.visualstudio.com/Docs/agilegitworkflows/intro
Tools, integration with Eclipse or IntelliJ : https://java.visualstudio.com/Docs/tools/intro

Introductory Hands-on Training for Open Source DevOps Workflow

Check this awesome HOL on Node.js + MongoDB + Jenkins + Dokku and more !!!

Module 0 : Preparation (Git / Node.js / NPM / VS Code) : https://ritazh.github.io/devopsfun/installing-node/
Module 1 : Developing App (Building Node.js application, Installing and configuring MongoDB : https://ritazh.github.io/devopsfun/node-app/
Module 2 : Provisioning Platform for Development and Testing (Provisioning a Dokku environment on Azure) : https://ritazh.github.io/devopsfun/provisioning-platform/
Module 3 : Deploying App : (Git, MongoDB) https://ritazh.github.io/devopsfun/deploying-app/
Module 4 : Provisioning Continuous Integration Server (Jenkins) : https://ritazh.github.io/devopsfun/continuous-integrate/
Module 5 : Continuously Integrating and Deploying an App (Jenkins with Dokku) : https://ritazh.github.io/devopsfun/continuous-deploy-app/
Module 6 : Managing App (Scaling) : https://ritazh.github.io/devopsfun/managing-app/

DevOps practices with VSTS + secure Azure Service Fabric : https://github.com/djzeka/VSTS-AzureServiceFabric

Creating secure Azure Service Fabric Cluster
- Create Self-Signed Certificate using PowerShell
- Create Azure Key Vault & Import certificate to Azure Key Vault
- Create new secure Azure Service Fabric (ARM template or Azure portal)
Connecting VSTS & Azure Service Fabric
- Create new project at Visual Studio Team Services & import source code/example app
- Create a Service Link from Visual Studio Team Services to an Azure Service Fabric
Application Delivery & DevOps practices with Azure Service Fabric
- Create Contentious Integration definition with Visual Studio Team Service
- Create new Release definition with Visual Studio Team Service
- Deploy/update the app & enjoy DevOps with Azure Service Fabric

Miscellaneous

Try and use Visual Studio for free : https://www.visualstudio.com/products/free-developer-offers-vs.aspx
Try Microsoft Azure for free : https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/free-trial/
Check our DevOps Hackathon Canadian Tour : https://julien.work/HackDateCad

Conclusion

This article is just a beginning, with few resources that help me to understand and improve my skills in term of DevOps. I will add and update my links very often, so don't hesitate to ping me on twitter or leave a comment if you have ideas or you're thinking some links missing or that could be interesting ! Thanks

Hackathon - Recorded Session

Julien.Stroheker — Mon, 25 Jan 2016 18:01:06 GMT

hack I’m very happy to share with you our most recent Hackathon experience! This session, delivered by Microsoft Technical Evangelist Jef King (@jefkingabc), was recorded at SFU Segal Graduate Building in Vancouver, BC on December 10th, 2015. The recording is divided into sessions, so be sure to check out all 5!

Part 1 - Introduction

Part 2 - Plan, Continuous Integration and Release Management

Part 3 - Infrastructure as Code

Part 4 - Load Testing and Scale Settings

Part 5 - Monitoring, Automated Recovery, Configuration Management, Automated Environment De-Provisioning and Testing in Production

Hope you’ve enjoyed these videos. Want to attend a Hackathon? Check out our list of upcoming events here : https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/juliens/2016/01/12/want-to-learn-more-about-devops-with-microsoft-talkdevops/ Thanks

Want to learn more about DevOps with Microsoft? #TalkDevOps

Julien.Stroheker — Tue, 12 Jan 2016 22:14:14 GMT

Are you ready to embrace a DevOps mindset? Want to evolve your traditional application lifecycle management (ALM) approach and help your business deliver higher value in less time? Want to understand how Dev and Ops people can work together in the best ways?

We're coming to a city near you!

2016 will be a great year to #TalkDevOps Save the date to learn more!

Toronto: February 18^th & 19^th: CLOSED
Montreal: March 17^th & 18^th & 19^th: CLOSED
Ottawa: March 31^th & April 1^st: CLOSED
Calgary: April 28^th & 29^th: CLOSED
Edmonton: May 12^nd & 13^rd: CLOSED

This unique 2-day training event will give you the opportunity to apply DevOps practices during an in-person, intensive learning environment:

Work hands-on with both Microsoft and open source technologies
Share knowledge with IT industry peers
Learn how to implement Infrastructure as Code
Learn about continuous delivery and testing in production
Gain practical DevOps experience through real-world challenges

Be prepared

At the event, you will receive an Azure pass. The $100 pass will give you access to Azure (valid for 30 days). To redeem the pass, a Microsoft account is necessary. If you don’t have one yet, please create one at www.microsoft.com/account. You will also need a Visual Studio Team Services subscription. Don't worry it's free, just click here to create a new one. To prepare for the DevOps Hackathon, please use the following resources. These videos will help you to get the most out of the DevOps hackathon: DevOps Fundamentals Here are some great pictures from our first round of Hackathons in Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto.