This document discusses the role of database administrators (DBAs) in DevOps environments. It begins with an introduction to DevOps, emphasizing collaboration between developers and IT professionals. It then explores how DBAs are impacted, noting both opportunities for DBAs to influence decisions and embrace automation, as well as risks of being seen as roadblocks. The document provides overviews of various DevOps practices and tools that DBAs can learn, such as configuration management, continuous delivery, and GitHub. It argues that DBAs should update their skills while automating some traditional tasks, and embrace techniques like data virtualization, snapshots, and DataOps to remove databases as roadblocks to DevOps goals.

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Kellyn Pot’Vin-Gorman | Technical Intelligence Manager| August, 2017
DevOps and the Agile
DBA

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Kellyn Pot’Vin-Gorman
Technical Intelligence Manager, Delphix
• Multi-platform DBA, (Oracle, MSSQL, MySQL,
Sybase, Postgres…..)
• Oracle ACE Director, (Alumni)
• Oak Table Network
• APEX Women in Technology Award, CTA 2014
• STEM education with Raspberry Pi and Python
• President, Rocky Mtn Oracle User Group
• Liaison, Denver SQL Server User Group
• DevOps author, instructor and presenter.
• Author, blogger, (http://dbakevlar.com)

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• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DevOps
The Source
DevOps is a short for DEVelopment and IT OPerationS. The term is used to
refer to a set of practices that emphasize the collaboration and communication
of both software developers and information technology (IT) professionals while
automating the process of software delivery and infrastructure changes. It aims
at establishing a culture and environment where building, testing, and releasing
software can happen rapidly, frequently, and more reliably

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History of DevOps
• First called “Agile Infrastructure” in 2008
• 2009, the first time DevOps was coined in Belgium
• Has taken over most of the fellow terms of WinOps and in some cases, Agile.
• Introduced at relational database events in 2010, but rarely was given much credit until
the last five years in the DBA community.
https://www.versionone.com/devops-101/what-is-devops/

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DevOps Relationship to Agile

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Don’t Confuse the Two…
• Agile’s success pushed the need for DevOps
• Agile and DevOps have similarities, but Agile focuses more on
culture and DevOps focuses on organizational changes to create
success.
• DevOps uses the success of release implementation as a scoring
method.

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How the DBA is Impacted by DevOps
• Database Administrators heavily influence decisions.
• Adverse to bleeding edge, high risk.
• Introduction of the cloud, especially and SaaS, (Software as a
Service).
• Demand for decreased development cycles introduce risk, DBAs
are seen as a roadblock to this.
Still, DBA skills are in high demand towards DevOps initiatives…

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Common Terms, (Alphabetically)
• Agile
• Build Automation
• Configuration Management
• Continuous Delivery/Rapid Deploy
• Functional Testing/Unit Testing/Test Driven Development
• Lean/Scrum
• Monitoring/Alerting
• Packages/Containers/Virtualization
• Release Coordination/Orchestration
https://xebialabs.com/glossary/

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Build Automation
DBAs are a natural fit, due to their history with scripting and automation
experience for backups, monitoring and alerting.

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Configuration Management
Concept & Development Testing & Verification
Operations & Support Deployment to Production

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Continuous Delivery
DBAs are much slower to embrace continuous delivery. The risk is
high, with it’s “fail first, fail fast” approach.
https://continuousdelivery.com/

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Rapid Deploy
Software Content
Enablement Service
Need or
Focus Area
All Tiers of Specific
Environment

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Release Coordination/Orchestration
A demand for release tools and orchestration was at times a direct result to
DBAs hesitation to risk production with a release. This helped automate and
bypass the DBA to get code and features into production.

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Source/Version Control, but Data?
We all know about version control with
code, but how are we, as DBAs doing
version control with data? This is a
concept that hasn’t been discussed
much and DataOps is the new way of
bridging some of this challenge.

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The Goals of Each are the Same
• Shorter Delivery Cycles
• Higher Success Rate on Releases
• Shorten Time to Address Issues
• Continued Improvement in Communication
• Increased Revenue

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Let’s Talk Data Gravity and It’s Impact
• Data is HEAVY.
• Relational databases are heavily weighted and can be very
impacting to DevOps implementations.

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Oh DBA, to Embrace Virtualization…
A technical approach in which users and applications do not use physical
machines, but simulated systems running on actual, “real” hardware.
Virtualization can be used to eliminate resource usage and enable savings
for databases, network, file and application management, along with server
infrastructure.

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▶▶▶
Virtualize and Deployed▶ ▶ ▶
600GB
Many Types of Virtualization
Storage Pool for Delphix
QA
DEV PATCH TEST
PRODUCTION
Database/App Tier
1 TB
1 TB
Read From Production
Each Virtual Database takes up around 5-10Gb upon creation, (dependent
upon parameters)
TEST
Read AND Write

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Why Database Virtualization is Different
• DBA is “only as good as their last backup”.
• Many database tools take considerable time to recover.
• DevOps is often about automation- automate an “undo” for
development and testing that includes data rewind.
• Include a self-service tool that will allow for rewind without DBA
intervention.
• Allows for data version control and DataOps, the next step in DevOps

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Timeline in a Project
Waterfall- 5 Releases
January February March April
Agile with Virtualization- 12 Releases
January February March April
Database Refresh
Development Production Release
Testing Cycle
The Goal of
Agile
Data Holdup to Development
Cycle

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Further- Data Pods/Containers
Containers offer the ability to isolate application code and/or the whole
infrastructure stack into a package able entity to ease deployment, even
from the same kernel. This is a powerful tool for DevOps to ease
deployment for complex tiers, applications and multiple data stores. Data
Pods is the next step, where a pod is created from virtualized environments.

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Data Pods
Database
Unstructured
Data
Application

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Data Pods for Ease of Delivery
Create “Container”
Rsync (UNIX/Linux)
Robocopy (Windows)
Reporting
NFS
iSCSI
Development
NFS
iSCSI
Testing
NFS
iSCSI
Delphix Virtualization Engine
Same Storage Size as Production
Deployed using Jenkins

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Branching and Bookmarking
• The ability to mark each iteration of development with a
bookmark
• Simplify to lock and deliver while testing a consistent
image via a virtual database, (VDB)
• If a something goes wrong, the ability to “bookmark”,
(and subsequent snapshot) to deliver to development to
address.

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Using Jetstream
Release 1.2 Release 1.3 Branch 1.3
Branch 1.1

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DevOps and Source Control

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Maturity

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Collaboration Practices/Tools
• Methods- Scrum, KanBan, Extreme Programming, Continuous Delivery
• Hybrid approaches combine, such as Scrumban and KanPlan
• Collaboration- Jira, SlackStorm, Pivotal Tracker, HipChat, Rally, (now Agile
Central)
• Deployment- RapidDeploy, ElasticBox, JuJu, Otto
• Automation- Jenkins, Chef, Ansible
• Build Tools- Maven, Gradle, Make, Packer, MSBuild

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Agile Methodologies
Scrum- A lightweight PM framework. Benefits include a flexible set of
management and project protocols and strong collaboration focus.
Lean/Kanban- Strong focus on team and deliverables. Efficiency and
ability to see the “whole”.
Extreme Programming, (XP)- Now the most popular, with continuous
delivery key.
Crystal- A lightweight agile framework. A removal of hurdles, including
bureaucracy, obstacles and other impediments to the development cycle.
Feature Driven Development, (FDD)- client and architecture centric
software development, focused on the feature deliverable.

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What is Scrum?
An Agile Framework
Scrum Framework consists of:
• A Product owner creating a wish list and the “sprint” begins
• Sprint planning and backlog is created.
• Team sets up schedule and beings to have daily scrum standups,
(commonly 5 minutes)
• Scrum master keeps team focused and collaborating, keeps track of status
• Product is released
• Sprint ends with feedback and lessons learned
• Next sprint begins

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Example of a Scrum Sprint
https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2014/april/devops-and-agile

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Lean/Kanban
Considered a very “visual” development process, based off of
grocery store shelf stocking.
• Uses standardized cues and refined processes
• Goal to reduce waste and maximize value
• Most often uses sticky notes and whiteboard to create a picture of
the work to complete, what’s in process and what’s done.
1. Visualize Work
2. Limit Work in Process
3. Focus on Flow
4. Continuous Improvement

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Picture is Worth a 1000 Words

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Extreme Programming

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This Extreme Programming, (XP)
• Code may come first in XP, but testing must
already exist to know what the successful outcome
will be.
• Code is written by pairs of programmers, allowing
for better collaboration.
• Believes in the power of doing, vs. extensive
planning. Failure is expected.
• Always build foundations that can be built on later.
• Rarely specialize- everyone develops, tests,
designs, etc.

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XP at a Glance

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Crystal
Alistair Cockburn said, “Crystal is a family of human-
powered, adaptive, ultra light, ‘stretch-to-fit’ software
development methodologies.”
• People are the most important aspect of Crystal.
• Development is self-sufficient and self-organizing,
(very different from Scrum)
• Very lightweight
• Very little documentation, overhead management or
reporting.

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Feature Driven Development

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DevOps Tools for the DBA

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The Periodic Table of DevOps Tools
https://xebialabs.com/periodic-table-of-devops-tools/

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Ansible
• Learn about Playbooks
• Powerful collection of steps, (aka plays)
• Plays consist of a list of tasks
• Handlers allow for remote operations
• YAML Syntax
• Security configurations based on hosts and users
• Ability to run as secondary users, (privilege escalation)
• Huge support community and best practices are mature

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Example of an Ansible Call
- name: Transfer and execute a script.
hosts: server
remote_user: test_user
sudo: yes
tasks:
- name: Transfer the script
copy: src=test.sh dest=/home/test_user mode=0777
- name: Execute the script
command: sh /home/test_user/test.sh

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Jenkins
Jenkins is an open source automation server-
• Easiest executed via a jetty servlet
• Has an easy to access URL, (commonly host:8080)
• Automation is done via individual projects.
• Has numerous plugins to support environments
• Supports multiple scripting languages, including shell, batch commands
and Ant scripts.
• Supports robust revision control and compatible with version control
systems like CVS and Subversion.
• Supports notifications like qmail and sendmail.

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Jenkins Groovy Script Example
// prepare variables for subscript execution:
String subscript = "cdmserver-monitor-instance-
status.groovy";
println "executing subscript ${subscript}"
// variables to be passed to the subscript
status = (action == "start" ? "started" : "stopped")
def s =
ScriptlerConfiguration.getConfiguration().getScriptById(su
bscript)
File scriptSrc = new
File(ScriptlerManagment.getScriptDirectory(),
s.getScriptPath());

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Jenkins Plugin for Delphix
https://github.com/delphix/delphix-jenkins-plugin

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Puppet
• Review, automate, deploy and invest in all your software.
• Control and enforce consistency across environments and platforms.
• Share, test and enforce changes on-premise and in the cloud.
Similar to Puppet
• Chef
• Jenkins

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Docker
• Virtualization is important, this is OS level
• Resource level isolation at the kernel level
• Technology such as OverlayFS, allows for containers, which removes
overhead of other virtualization technologies.
Docker Alternatives:
• Open Container Initiative, (OCI)
• Kubernetes, (Google)
• CoreOS and rkt
• Apache Mesos
• Canonical and LXD

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GitHub
Git is an open-source version control system that was started by Linus
Trovalds
• If you aren’t using it now, start. Yes, as a DBA…
• Great option to highlight your scripting work
GitHub Alternatives
• Subversion
• CVS
• Mercurial

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Creating a GitHub Repository Project

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Github Repository Example

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So, Know Your Tools
Incredible variation of tools and knowing tool classifications
doesn’t mean that the tools are alike. Many groups are often
comparing one feature of a given tool.

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Where Does this Leave the DBA?
• We’re left to updating our skills, (scripting, release builds,
security, advanced optimization.
• We’re going to leave behind tasks that are better automated or
are being phased out due to platform automation, (monitoring,
backups, maintenance jobs, etc.)
• Learn to escape data gravity through features such as advanced
optimization, virtualization and snapshots and new technology.
• Embrace more advance techniques of DataOps, removing the
database as the roadblock and containerizing the environment.

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DevOps and the DBA
DevOps include the following focus areas for Database
Administrators:
• Automating repeatable and complex processes
• Ensuring the databases and data stores aren’t the bottleneck to
the development cycle and critical data is protected.
• Locating heterogeneous tools/scripting languages that can
support multiple tiers of technology.
• Understanding that automation does not lessen your value.
• Read- The Phoenix Project and the DevOps Handbook!

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Review- DBA Focus Areas
• Update skills, (scripting, monitoring, automating) to remove
bottlenecks
• Enhance monitoring utilities that take infrastructure and
development into overall view
• Recognize a need to become more skilled in scripting and
become knowledgeable of DevOps tools.
• Data is EVERYWHERE! Recognize the integral part
Database Administrators play in DevOps and learn more
about the next generation- DataOps!
Don’t fear the future, embrace it.
DBA
DevOpsSkills

55. © 2017 Delphix. All Rights Reserved. Private and Confidential.© 2017 Delphix. All Rights Reserved. Private and Confidential.
Kellyn Pot’Vin-Gorman
Technical Intelligence Manager
kellyn@delphix.com
http://dbakevlar.com