Jira & Ansible: Streamlining Jira Server Administration for the Enterprise
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In 2017, Yelp had over 40 Jira administrators. Their environment had hundreds of orphaned workflows, screens, and schemes with very little oversight into who was doing what with their Jira Server instance. Their team turned to Ansible to empower Yelp's engineers to create and archive projects, update categories, project leads, keys, and archive projects without having access to administrative rights and sensitive functions. Learn how they secured and simplified their environment, reduced turnaround time for Jira requests, and made their lives as admins much easier (and how you can, too!)
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Jira & Ansible: Streamlining Jira Server Administration for the Enterprise
- 1. JOSE MARTIN DE VIDALES BIURRUN | APPLICATION ENGINEER | YELP | @JMA Jira & Ansible Streamlining Jira Server Administration for the Enterprise TAYLOR BARRETT-WILSDON | APPLICATION ENGINEER | YELP | @TBARRETT
- 2. Let your imagination wander! If there’s an API endpoint, Ansible can automate it. YOU CAN DO ANYTHING
- 3. (Without laying anyone off!) YELP REDUCED JIRA GLOBAL ADMINS BY 65% ANSIBLE
- 4. Workflows, Schemes, Screens, Fields & More WE REMOVED OVER 400 OBJECTS ANSIBLE
- 5. Jira & Ansible Our Story
- 6. Who We Are Jose & Taylor Jose Martin de Vidales Biurrun Taylor Barrett-Wilsdon • First member of the Application Engineering team • Building & scaling Yelp’s enterprise systems since 2015 • Joined Yelp in 2014 • Atlassian Certified Professional • Jira Deployments, Upgrades, Migrations & More jira-summit@yelp.com
- 7. Who We Are Our Team Corporate Engineering Wide Scope Corporate Engineering teams own networks, phone systems, client platform management, cloud services, software development and more. Application Engineering Handles ownership of systems and application administration for Atlassian suite. Unique Directive Because the primary owners of Jira are engineers and developers, we look towards in-house solutions and utilize the API heavily.
- 8. Who We Are Yelp Users have contributed over 150 million reviews like this:
- 9. Who We Are Growth Growth • 2015: 130 Jira Projects & 500 Users • At least 5 different teams had some stake in Jira • 2017: Application Engineering takes over Jira • 2019: 350+ projects & 1,800 Jira Users + 1,500 Service Desk Agents
- 12. MEET JON • Jira Administrator • Based in Dublin • Wants to remove a custom field from his project
- 13. MEET JON • Deletes custom field • Field is gone from project • It’s night time in Dublin
- 14. MEET JON • Field wasn’t removed from screen, it was completely deleted • Lost thousands of values from dozens of projects
- 15. MEET JON • We don’t even realize it is gone until automations start failing • Only way to recover field is to restore our entire instance from a backup
- 16. TAKEAWAY We need to be smarter about this.
- 17. The Problem Too many Cooks We could not effectively train or manage 40+ admins
- 18. The Problem Too many Cooks We could not effectively train or manage 40+ admins Balancing the Load Needed to balance user requirements with our own
- 19. The Problem Too many Cooks We could not effectively train or manage 40+ admins Balancing the Load Needed to balance user requirements with our own Automation Could alleviate some of our administrative burden!
- 20. Admin Problems High Admin Overhead Lots of small, repetitive tasks coming in Dominating our workload with simple asks
- 21. Admin Problems High Admin Overhead Too Many Admins Lots of small, repetitive tasks coming in Dominating our workload with simple asks Admin rights had been granted to too many users in an effort to spread the workload
- 22. Admin Problems High Admin Overhead Too Many Admins Users Not Happy Lots of small, repetitive tasks coming in Dominating our workload with simple asks Admin rights had been granted to too many users in an effort to spread the workload Slow request turnaround times and inconsistent experiences between admins
- 23. System Problems Project Structure Variance Admins would create projects to their tastes and habits
- 24. System Problems Project Structure Variance Old Projects Lie Dormant Admins would create projects to their tastes and habits Archival process was not well known or documented so old projects piled up
- 25. System Problems Project Structure Variance Old Projects Lie Dormant Performance Issues Admins would create projects to their tastes and habits Archival process was not well known or documented so old projects piled up Extremely high number of fields, screens, workflows and more causing system load
- 26. Security Problems Lots of Exposure More admins means more potential risk of compromise through credentials
- 27. Security Problems Lots of Exposure Insufficient Logging More admins means more potential risk of compromise through credentials We had little to inform us about potentially dangerous actions occurring
- 28. Security Problems Lots of Exposure Insufficient Logging Results Not Intended More admins means more potential risk of compromise through credentials We had little to inform us about potentially dangerous actions occurring Admins were accidentally deleting fields, issues, even projects without the rest knowing
- 30. Atlassian to the Rescue! Jira 7.3 introduced the ability for project admins to manage workflows, statuses and transitions for their project!
- 31. Automated Solutions Jira API The Project from Template API endpoint was key
- 32. Automated Solutions Jira API The Project from Template API endpoint was key Removing Humans Automated remaining admin tasks via Ansible
- 33. Automated Solutions Jira API The Project from Template API endpoint was key Removing Humans Automated remaining admin tasks via Ansible Scripted Maintenance Created job to automatically set project admins and leads
- 35. Yelp Lab Ansible met our needs - open source & well documented WE CAN BUILD IT
- 37. MEET JULIA Julia wants a new Jira project: • Summit • Only accessible to Engineering teams • Kanban board configuration
- 38. Project Creation Clone Git repository Clone the Git repository that contains all Yelp Jira projects
- 39. Project Creation Use self-service script Custom Python script that asks some basic questions and generates a YAML file
- 40. Project Creation Push YAML file That contains all Jira project configuration
- 41. YAML FILE New Project --- SUMMIT: board_configuration: kanban key: SUMMIT lead: Julia name: Summit Project description: My super cool project
- 42. Validate YAML Jenkins + Ansible – Project Creation
- 43. YAML FILE --- SUMMIT: board_configuration: kanban key: SUMMIT lead: Julia name: Summit Project description:
- 44. Validate YAML Stages Jenkins + Ansible – Project Creation
- 45. Validate YAML Stages Deploy Jenkins + Ansible – Project Creation
- 46. YAML FILE Project created --- SUMMIT: board_configuration: kanban key: SUMMIT lead: Julia name: Summit Project description: My super cool project project_created: True
- 48. Success!
- 49. Done! Project archival Extremely simple! Julia is ready to archive her project (And it’s even easier!)
- 50. YAML FILE Just need to add a new tag --- SUMMIT: board_configuration: kanban key: SUMMIT lead: Julia name: Summit Project description: My super cool project archive: True
- 51. Project Archival No open tickets Ansible will verify that there are no open tickets.
- 52. Project Archival Project name, category, and schemes updated Name, category, and schemes updated to clearly mark as archived.
- 53. Project Archival Email Notification An email notification will get sent to the requestor
- 56. Tools • Configuration management • Provisioning • Deployment • Service orchestration A complex infrastructure isn’t needed Easy to understand Ansible SIMPLE YAML FILES AGENTLESS POWERFUL & SIMPLE AUTOMATION ENGINE
- 57. Tools We can easily identify changes: • Who • What • When • Where Git is designed specifically to maintain the integrity of source code Quickly and Safely revert changes if needed Git SEAMLESS ROLLBACKS SECURITY POWERFUL REVISION HISTORY
- 58. Tools • Widely used continuous integration platform at Yelp • Many other CI options work, too! • Atlassian Bamboo Provides support for Ansible Deployment Helps us validate the project configuration that our Yelp engineers push to the repository Jenkins LEVERAGING PIPELINES CI PLATFORM
- 59. Tools We can leverage Jenkins pipelines by creating individual steps to validate code, test it, and deploy it There are a lot of already implemented tests to validate your code Pre-commit TONS OF PRE-BUILT HOOKS VALIDATE YAML FILES
- 60. Projects Endpoint Used to set project parameters and retrieve existing project data Jira’s REST API
- 61. Projects Endpoint Used to set project parameters and retrieve existing project data Project-templates Endpoint Used to create perfectly standardized projects Jira’s REST API
- 62. Security Rich Logging Using Git to know who, what, when & where
- 63. Security Rich Logging Using Git to know who, what, when & where Splunk Alerts and dashboards
- 64. Security Rich Logging Using Git to know who, what, when & where Splunk Alerts and dashboards Single Account Minimizing the risk of exposure
- 68. Benefit & Value Performance Tighter standards and fewer objects = better performance!
- 69. Benefit & Value Performance Tighter standards and fewer objects = better performance! Less Administrators Better security, quick turnarounds & happy users!
- 70. Benefit & Value Performance Tighter standards and fewer objects = better performance! Less Administrators Better security, quick turnarounds & happy users! Ownership Project creators feel sense of ownership & empowerment
- 71. 65%Reduction of Jira Administrators
- 72. Before Users request a project by creating a ticket, ready in 3-5 days and come to our admins for any changes needed.
- 73. Before Users request a project by creating a ticket, ready in 3-5 days and come to our admins for any changes needed. After Projects created instantly, user has admin rights and documentation to make their own changes in real time!
- 74. 400+Unnecessary objects removed in cleanup after standardization!
- 75. 400+100+ Screens & Screen Schemes 150+ Workflows 30 Statuses & Priorities 30 Issue Type Schemes 35 Custom Fields
- 81. You have the power! By leveraging Jira’s API and open source tools, you can automate manual tasks and let users self- serve safely!
- 83. Thank you!