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DevOps and PaaS, yes, but now No-Ops?
Jay Lyman, April 13, 2011 @ 5:24 pm ETWe continue to closely watch the devops trend, with some new offerings and new nomenclature, but also validation of our contentions this would begin washing over more mainstream enterprise IT.
Some of the most recent discussion of devops is coming in context of VMware’s Cloud Foundry announcement and offering, an open source PaaS that gives developers another option for building, testing and deploying cloud applications and services. While I do believe Cloud Foundry and VMware’s decision to opt for an open path in PaaS is further evidence that cloud computing may be opening up.
Based on some of the initial Twitterverse reaction to Cloud Foundry, it is also further evidence that devops is contending with another term that has emerged in the discussion of deploying applications in and among today’s cloud computing resources and environments: ‘no-ops.’ The idea is that infrastructure – servers, storage and network — as well as its configuration and maintenance are so automated, there is really no need for the ‘ops’ or system administration part of devops. However, in the larger picture and in the long run, particularly at greater scale, there is undoubtedly need for system administrators. One of the bottom line findings of my research on devops is that the trend is very much about a dramatically changed purpose and role for system administrators, who are typically freed up of mundane OS maintenance and other tasks, but who must also embrace openness and transparency in their operations and scripts, which can be very foreign. While no-ops may be one way to respond to developers cries of ‘give us root,’ I believe that devops with the ops is required for a successful approach. That ops part may indeed be handed off to someone else, and the options and ability to do so have never been greater — again thanks mostly to readily-available cloud resources and infrastructure. Another perspective on devops is that it is bringing some of the agile and automated practices and procedures of software development into the datacenter and operations team, which have previously been focused on their own scripts and stability above all else.
So when I’m asked does devops mean devs doing more ops? Is it ops doing more dev? I say this: devops is the confluence of roles and duties among both software developers and IT operations professionals — many of whom are increasingly working in both jobs at various points or together in their careers. No-ops may emerge as a preferred option as organizations use and grow confidence in various PaaS offerings, as well as more openness in the clouds in general, perhaps. Still, I think that the ops folks still have a tremendous role to play, and I wonder about the PaaS innovation that will be possible when we see the same style of collaboration and communication in operations that we have had on the development side, in large part because of open source, an example being Facebook’s recent move to open up on its datacenters.
Comments (11) Categories: Software
Jay,
I think people are using the term noops with two different meanings. 1) Noops as automate your infrastructure as much as possible to limit human intervention and 2) No “operations” required. The former is desired and the latter is silly. As you pointed out, devops is about changed roles for devs and sysadmins. Noops is a silo of Devops that is typically created, developed and maintained by sysadmins/ops (as in Ops is the secret sause). IMHO, the point of cloudfoundry.org is to give an organization the opportunity to optimize their own PaaS delivery model (Operations required).
John Willis
DTO Solutions
dtosolutions.com
Thanks, as always, for posting, John. I agree with your assessment of the term, and the idea of ‘no operations required’ being silly. I think a positive definition of no-ops would be, as you said, abstracting the ops, but we agree that there is no eliminating the ops.
JL
Perhaps the way of clarifying these points is to coin a better replacement term”
“Auto-Ops”
I like that. Thanks for posting.
JL
[...] Group’s Jay Lyman shares a similar view in his research on devops, concluding: However, in the larger picture and in the long run, particularly at greater scale, there is [...]
[...] DevOps and PaaS, yes, but now No-Ops? So when I’m asked does devops mean devs doing more ops? Is it ops doing more dev? I say this: devops is the confluence of roles and duties among both software developers and IT operations professionals — many of whom are increasingly working in both jobs at various points or together in their careers. No-ops may emerge as a preferred option as organizations use and grow confidence in various PaaS offerings, as well as more openness in the clouds in general, perhaps. [...]
[...] 451 Group’s Jay Lyman shares a similar view in his research on devops: However, in the larger picture and in the long run, particularly at greater scale, there is [...]
[...] 451 Group's Jay Lyman shares a similar view in his research on devops: However, in the larger picture and in the long run, particularly at greater scale, there is [...]
[...] 451 Group’s Jay Lyman shares a similar view in his research on devops: However, in the larger picture and in the long run, particularly at greater scale, there is [...]
[...] centers on efficient use of cloud computing resources by both providers and users. Even when we consider ‘no-ops’ or more accurately ‘auto-ops,’ — whereby systems and [...]
[...] operations, rather than implications of cutting or avoiding IT staffs, a term that emerged on the CAOS Theory blog. The term and idea of auto-ops seemed to resonate with the vendors and users with whom I was [...]