Slides from my Velocity NY 2014 talk, "Infrastructure as Code in Government" http://velocityconf.com/velocityny2014/public/schedule/detail/35839

1. Infrastructure as
Code
in Government

2. Anna Shipman
Senior Developer
GOV.UK Infrastructure Team
@annashipman

3. The UK’s Government
Digital Service (GDS)
@annashipman GDS

4. @annashipman GDS

5. Our job is to
transform government
@annashipman GDS

6. GOV.UK was
first
@annashipman GDS6

7. We want to make government
services so good that people
prefer to use them
@annashipman GDS

8. @annashipman GDS

9. Individual electoral
registration
47 million users migrated
1.5 million new applications
Change to democracy in the UK
@annashipman GDS

10. @annashipman GDS

11. Carer’s allowance
240,000 claims per year
Changed questions asked
89% user satisfaction
@annashipman GDS

12. 25 of government’s
biggest services
redesigned to meet
the needs of users
@annashipman GDS

13. Minimum Viable Services for
UK Taxpayers
3.30pm
@annashipman GDS

14. We work in open, agile,
multi-disciplinary teams
@annashipman GDS

15. Focused on
user needs
@annashipman GDS

16. @annashipman GDS

17. @annashipman GDS

18. Infrastructure as code
@annashipman GDS

19. We have a mandate to
change things
@annashipman GDS

20. @annashipman GDS

21. But government is high-profile,
security-conscious, risk-averse
@annashipman GDS

22. Government procurement
is hard…
@annashipman GDS

23. @annashipman GDS

24. http://www.vmwarearena.com/2013/08/vcloud-director-series-part-7-basic.html
@annashipman GDS

25. @annashipman GDS

26. @annashipman GDS

27. @annashipman GDS

28. @annashipman GDS

29. @annashipman GDS

30. @annashipman GDS

31. @annashipman GDS

32. @annashipman GDS

33. @annashipman GDS

34. @annashipman GDS

35. We hacked our AWS scripts to
work with vCloud
@annashipman GDS

36. The strategy is delivery
@annashipman GDS

37. There were a lot of issues with
the existing tool
@annashipman GDS

38. So we decided to do it right
this time
@annashipman GDS

39. vCloud API
The Ruby cloud services library
@annashipman GDS

40. @annashipman GDS

41. @annashipman GDS

42. 150 machines
14 networks
dozens of firewall rules, nat rules and
load balancers
@annashipman GDS

43. @annashipman GDS

44. @annashipman GDS

45. Maintainable
Unit tests 84-99% coverage
Integration tests
Open Source Software
@annashipman GDS

46. Three things I learned
@annashipman GDS

47. You need web operations skills
and development skills to do
infrastructure as code
@annashipman GDS

48. The existing project was very
tightly coupled
@annashipman GDS

49. @annashipman GDS

50. Git filter-branch
@annashipman GDS

51. @annashipman GDS

52. But it would have been easier to
have done that from the
beginning
@annashipman GDS

53. You need developers
and web ops
@annashipman GDS

54. Multi-disciplinary teams
@annashipman GDS

55. #DevOps
@annashipman GDS

56. Make sure you understand the
context
@annashipman GDS

57. Adding mocks to fog was
too hard
@annashipman GDS

58. But it wasn't that hard after all
@annashipman GDS

59. Do your homework
@annashipman GDS

60. We have now contributed
back to fog
@annashipman GDS

61. Make things open: it makes
them better
@annashipman GDS

62. Coding in the open
@annashipman GDS

63. @annashipman GDS

64. Supported Open Source
Software
@annashipman GDS

65. @annashipman GDS

66. Coding in the open forces you to
do things the right way from
the beginning
@annashipman GDS

67. Shame is a big motivator!
@annashipman GDS

68. Open source software gets very
early users
@annashipman GDS

69. @annashipman GDS

70. @annashipman GDS

71. Added support for IP pools
@annashipman GDS

72. I have a lot to say on the
challenges of early users and
supporting OSS...
@annashipman GDS

73. If you can make things open
source, do
@annashipman GDS

74. A call to action!
@annashipman GDS

75. Get involved
@annashipman GDS

76. Contribute to vCloud Tools
@annashipman GDS

77. @annashipman GDS

78. Contribute to fog, or Terraform
@annashipman GDS

79. Go and work for government
@annashipman GDS

80. Make things better
@annashipman GDS

81. Anna Shipman
Senior Developer
GOV.UK Infrastructure Team
@annashipman

82. Useful links
GOV.UK https://www.gov.uk/
vCloud Tools https://github.com/gds-operations/vcloud-tools
vCloud Tools website http://gds-operations.github.io/vcloud-tools/
Other GDS operations open source website http://gds-operations.github.io/
GDS Design Principles https://www.gov.uk/design-principles
US Digital Services Playbook https://playbook.cio.gov/
fog http://fog.io/
vCloud API documentation
http://pubs.vmware.com/vcd-51/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.vmware.vcloud.api.doc_51%2FGUID-F4BF9D5D-EF66-
4D36-A6EB-2086703F6E37.html
@annashipman GDS

83. Blog posts
Building tools to provision our machines
https://gdstechnology.blog.gov.uk/2014/05/07/building-tools-to-provision-our-machines/
How we used vCloud Tools to provision a new platform
https://gdstechnology.blog.gov.uk/2014/05/21/using-vcloud-tools-to-provision-a-new-platform/
Coding in the open https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2012/10/12/coding-in-the-open/
Using Git to refactor vCloud Tools into separate gems
https://gdstechnology.blog.gov.uk/2014/06/04/using-git-to-refactor-vcloud-tools-into-separate-gems/
Carer's allowance – What we mean when we say “service transformation”
https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2014/07/03/what-we-mean-when-we-say-service-transformation/
Individual Electoral Registration
https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2014/06/20/i-fought-the-law-and-the-users-won-delivering-online-voter-registration/
@annashipman GDS