The document discusses StackStorm, an event-driven automation platform for DevOps that enables cross-domain integrations and auto-remediation. It highlights various automation use cases across different IT domains like security checks, application deployment, networking, and service remediation. It emphasizes the advantages of StackStorm over traditional scripting and runbook automation by providing transparency, reliability, and a community-driven approach to infrastructure as code.

1. If-This-Then-That
for DevOps Automation
@Stack_Storm
http://github.com/StackStorm/st2
Dmitri Zimine
@dzimine

2. Game Plan: Show and Tell
2
Demo
Where it applies
What is StackStorm

4. BS BINGO
DevOps Automation
Cross-Domain
Integration
Event
Driven
Orchestration ChatOps Serverless
Auto
Remediation

5. StackStorm is like …
5
for DevOps

6. artefacts are code
IFTTT,
for DevOps
6
cat /opt/stackstorm/packs/st2-demos/rules/demo.yaml
---
name: "sensu_crit_to_slack"
pack: "st2-demos"
description: "Post all critical alerts to the demo
enabled: true
trigger:
type: "sensu.event_handler"
criteria:
trigger.check.status:
pattern: 2
type: "equals"
trigger.check.name:
pattern: "demo_.*"
type: "matchregex"
action:
ref: "slack.post_message"
parameters:
message: >
[ALERT]{{trigger.client.name}}
{{trigger.check.output}}
channel: "#demos"

7. 7

8. 8
Trigger Action
Rule

9. Ingredients
9
IT Domains
Config mgmtStorageNetworking ContainersCloud InfraMonitoring
ActionsSensors
WorkflowsRules
Ops Support
Trigger Call

10. Automation Example
10
Automation
EngineerService
Monitoring Incident
Management
Event: “low disk
on web301”
Web301 is
“low disk”
Resolve known
cases, fast. Is it
/var/log?
Clean up!
Unknown
problem, need
a human
Wake up, buddy.
Something real
is going on…

11. DEMO
11

12. What can be automated?
12

13. 13
Got StackStorm !
Every automation looks like a nail

14. What is being automated with StackStorm
• Security checks
– On malware detection in a VM, isolate
network port on a switch
• App blue-green deployment
– On Jenkins tests passed, bring new vm
claster, deploy and configure app, set
loadbalancer to send % of traffic to new
app, monitor, roll forward, or back out
• Networking
– On BGP peer goes down: collect
troubleshooting data, post on slack &
create JIRA ticket
– On Link aggregation member error,
check load, if capacity of rest of LAG
bundle enough, disable link with error
• OpenStack
– orphan VM clean-up: On orphans
detected, shut down, email owner, keep for
few days, delete
– VM evacuation on HW failures: On host
RAID failure, get list of impacted VMs,
email VM owners, evacuate VMs, create
JIRA ticket for hardware replacement.
• Service remediation:
– Cassandra “node down” recovery: On ring
node dying, deploy new node, configure,
add to the ring.
– Remediating RabbitMQ, Galera cluster,
MySQL, and more…
14

15. What SHOULD be automated?
From: Practice of Cloud System Administration, by Thomas Limoncelli

16. 16
Auto-Remediation
FB auto-remediates 98% alarms,
can you?

17. Auto Remediation
17
FBAR (saving 13,680 hours/day)
Naoru
Nurse
Winston (powered by StackStorm)
Azure Automation
Mistral workflow service
StackStorm automation platform
ACT
OBSERVE
ORIENT
DECIDE

18. “Auto-Remediation & Automation at Facebook” @ Auto-Remediation Meetup SF
https://www.meetup.com/Auto-Remediation-and-Event-Driven-Automation/events/236704012/
43 % Problem Fixed
51 % False positives
94 % Automated

19. “Sleep Better at Night: OpenStack Cloud Auto-Healing” @ OpenStack Summit Barcelona
Mirantis: Auto-remediating 2,000 node OpenStack cluster at Symantec with StackStorm

20. Engineer
Wakes up
Logs in
and ACK
Checks
runbook
Studies
the alert
Fixes the
problem
Runs
diagnostics
PagerDuty
Alert
2:02 AM 2:07 AM 2:15 AM2:10 AM 2:30 AM2:20 AM2:00 AM
On-call, Without Automation
Source: “Winston: Helping Netflix Engineers Sleep at Night” @ Qcon ‘16 SF
https://goo.gl/lHzq4r

21. False
Positive
Winston
2:00 AM
2:05 AM
2:05 AM
2:15
AM
Assisted
Diagnostics
Fixed the
problem
On-call With Winston
Source: “Winston: Helping Netflix Engineers Sleep at Night” @ Qcon ‘16 SF
https://goo.gl/lHzq4r

22. 22
Including legacy, business apps …
Integration

23. “Innovation at Dimension Data: Optimizing Operations with Event Driven Automation”
https://stackstorm.com/2016/12/15/dimension-data-devops-beyond-deployment/

24. © 2016 BROCADE COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS, INC. 24
StackStorm
Enterprise
eval
license
automation
• 5 cloud services
• Integrated with
on-prem systems

26. 26
IoT
Fun stuff

28. 28

29. 29
Serverless
Grab StackStorm & DIY

30. StackStorm is like …
30
AWS Lambda AWS Step Functions
OpenSource, for DIY Serverless

31. StackStorm is like …
31
ActionsSensors
WorkflowsRules
IT Domains
Config mgmtStorageNetworking ContainersCloud InfraMonitoring Ops Support
Step Functions
AWS Lambda

32. Serverless with Swarm
for Genomic Annotation Computing
Dmitri Zimine
http://github.com/dzimine/serverless-swarm
@dzimine
Image by Miki Yoshihito, Creative Commons license

36. Why Not …
36

37. Why not Scripts?
37

38. Why not Scripts?
38
• Simple to define, reason, visualize
• Transparent
– state is clear, execution is trackable: running, complete, failed steps
• Reliable
– Workflows are long-running
– Crash tolerance
– “Restart from point of failure”

39. 39

40. Workflows Better in Operations
• Simple to define, reason, visualize
• Transparent
– state is clear, execution is trackable: running, complete, failed steps
• Reliable
– Workflows are long-running
– Crash tolerance
– “Restart from point of failure”
© 2016 BROCADE COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS, INC. 40

41. Why not Legacy RunBook Automation?
41
DevOps!

42. Infrastructure As Code
Leverage social coding and collaboration
OpenSource
Designed for Devops

43. Infrastructure As Code
Leverage social coding and collaboration
OpenSource
Designed for Devops

44. 44
Infrastructure as code
Case Study
• Service Catalog backed up by workflow
• Automate provisioning on VMW/OpenStack, 4 Data centers
• Before: CPO, operator updates via GUI, click and pray, x4
• After: StackStorm, dev -> code review -> staging -> QA-> prod

45. Infrastructure as code
45
The top predictor of IT performance?
Version control used by Ops, for Ops artifacts!

46. Ops Pattersns:
46
capture and share
- as code!

50. Infrastructure As Code
Leverage social coding and collaboration
OpenSource
Designed for Devops

52. StackStorm Exchange
© 2016 BROCADE COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS, INC. 52

53. StackStorm Exchange
© 2016 BROCADE COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS, INC. 53

54. 54

55. Take away:
55

56. • Use StackStorm.
Try it, find automation, nail POC. Let us know, good & bad.
curl -sSL https://stackstorm.com/packages/install.sh | bash -s
docs.stackstorm.com/install
• Commit code. Become a “community maintainer”
It is not hard (weekend hack?). We help & support.
• Spread the word
Blog. Tweet. Talk. Mention. Bug. Github Star!
56
Contribute! Everything counts

57. Discussion
@Stack_Storm
http://github.com/StackStorm/st2 Star 1,835
Dmitri Zimine
@dzimine

58. Discussion
58