What is the difference: Dev vs Ops

funkysi1701@gmail.com (funkysi1701) — Sat, 27 Sep 2014 20:00:45 +0000

I want to learn Development and eventually move into a development role. But what is the difference between development and what I already do?

Put simply Development or programming is the creation of new programs, websites or databases.

IT Operations or System Administration is the administration of existing servers, websites or databases.

I have been doing System Administration since I started my job back in 2006. What you do as part of this role can be very simple like setting up new users or computers to something very complex like upgrading the version of Exchange that the company uses for its emails.

As part of my role I have done a lot of tasks that could be described as development. I have created databases and built new database structures like tables, views and stored procedures. I have also assisted the development department with testing, setting up visual studio, building websites and databases from code.

Can I describe myself as a developer? I would say yes, I have done plenty of work that is development work.

Can I get a job as a developer? Possibly but it would depend on the role. I have many of the skills that developers use, but I have limited knowledge in many areas. What I need to do is concentrate my efforts onto the development work I do and delegate as much administration work as I can so my knowledge can increase.

A Buzz word in IT at the moment is DevOps. I have lost count of the number of times .NetRocks or RunAsRadio have mentioned it.

DevOps is the integration of IT Development and Operations, it emphasises the need for the two departments to work closely together to achieve common goals. In big companies the two departments can pull against each other if you are not careful, but in my case as I do both roles, it would be very difficult for the development side of myself to blame the operations side of myself for a problem.

This I think puts me in a good position, I just need to learn more development and I will make a valuable addition to someone’s development team.

I love Nagios

funkysi1701@gmail.com (funkysi1701) — Wed, 24 Sep 2014 20:00:45 +0000

You may not have heard of Nagios but it has saved my bacon quite a few times.

Nagios is an open source server monitoring application that runs on many linux flavours.

I can’t remember exactly when I first installed nagios but I am guessing it was sometime in 2007/8. My boss gave me a book about it (which I never read) and told me to create a system to monitor the companies servers.

Nagios is not simple to set up. It relies on setting up various Hosts and services. Hosts are usually physical servers that you want to monitor and services are all the services you want to monitor. As this is a linux program all these can be configured by editing the right config file

Nagios is very flexible and can be expanded easily with the use of plugins, if you want to monitor something there is usually a plugin available. If you have a dell server running openmanage software there is even a plugin that allows the temperature of your server to be monitored.

If you want to monitor windows servers the use of nsclient++ is a real advantage. This is a simple client that runs as a service on your windows server. This allows nagios to track memory, cpu, disk space, performance and services, in fact almost everything that you would want to monitor.

Over the years I have kept a close eye on Nagios and added extra checks as new services were added or problems encountered. A few years ago I dabbled with sending alerts out via SMS message and once I got a smart phone found an app to keep track of Nagios 24/7.

But recently I have started wondering if Nagios is the best way to monitor modern servers like 2012 or remote services like Azure. I want something that is easy to expand as your IT infrastructure expands. Something that relies on running on a linux OS requires your IT staff have a knowledge of linux and you keep that server maintained and updated.

My question is: Is Nagios still the best way to monitor my servers?

2014-09 on Funky Si's Test

What is the difference: Dev vs Ops

I love Nagios