Sarcastic approach to software engineers needs. Code review, release management, caching, logging, product managers, load balancer, bandwidth, archiving, deployment, testing, agile, scrum, kanban, git, team management, meetings..

1. WHATs & WHYs
What you need and why you need it!
Harun Yardımcı
Software Architect @ eBay
www.linkedin.com/in/harunyardimci/

2. Notes on Notes
• Slides are unordered
• There are always alternative tools. Concentrate on
the idea!
• Not talking about technology
HELP!!
Someone please make this presentation beautiful

3. Release Management
• Release Notes
You have to know exactly what is deployed and when it is
deployed.
There is no exception.
• Release Manager
You need this title to give the responsibility. So you can
blame someone.
Can’t hire a new guy, just hand it to smartest one.
• Project Manager
Usually they will tell you what needs to be deployed.

4. Code Review
• How do you know you write a good quality code?
Share your code with your colleagues, they will enjoy to
embarrass you
• Tell others that their code smells
So you have a chance to get your revenge
• Standards and best practices
There is always a better way and probably someone did it

5. Network Bandwidth
• Measure the network bandwidth on each machine.
You will need to know it just before pulling hairs out of
your head when your application is not responding.
o volker gropp
o Iptraf
There are many others. Choose one and go.

6. MHA for MySQL
• Master High Availability Manager and tools for
MySQL
Tools are faster than you! They don’t get tired and don’t
complains.
There is nothing to loose since it works
when your master DB is crashed

7. Load Balancer
• Hardware Balancer
o Citrix NetScaler
o F5
More features and better scalability. Costs you more.
• Software Balancer
o HAProxy
Software load balancers seems cheaper and they perform quite
well but you need a good hardware to run it!

8. Online Schema Change
Who wants to shutdown the site and alter a table for
an hour, then wait for the slaves to catch up?
No one! Not any more.
o pt-online-schema-change
o oak-online-alter-table
Openark and Percona has many more useful tools.
Use them! Tools are they to make your life easier.

9. Archiving
• Move old and expired data to archive
o Small dataset and index = $$ CASH $$
o Faster response, low latency = $$ CASH $$
o Maintainable database = $$ CASH $$
o Faster dumps and restores = $$ CASH $$
Don’t forget to write scripts to get it back when
needed!

10. No Database Dependency
• NO TRIGGERS
• NO STORED PROCEDURES
• NO VIEWS
o Nobody will know the business logic
o Impossible to learn how a piece of code is functioning
o Not easy to maintain
Forget immediately what your old-school database
teacher told you in the college.
Don’t use them.

11. CACHING
• Cache everything
• More importantly evict everything
if you can’t evict do not cache
• Web Developers Toolbox:
o Varnish, Squid, etc.
o Memcached, Redis, Couchbase, etc.
o Hazelcast, Terracotta, Coherence, EhCache, etc.
CPU cache, disk buffer, page cache, browser cache,
DNS cache, Proxy cache, HTTP Etag, Expire Headers, ….

12. Server Configuration
Management
• Declare once execute many times
Write a manifesto file as an configuration and define the
standards. Each servers configuration will be identical.
o Puppet
o Chef
Easy and fast to configure a new server
Very fast to change any settings
Identical configurations
Central Control
More holidays for system admins

13. LOGGING
• Don’t generate logs if you don’t read them.
At least you can save I/O on disks.
• Centralized logs enables you to search every action of a
component (user, product, sale, etc)
Writing a proper log in each application, makes you enable
to search for actions of userId:101.
o Logstash
o Graylog2
Your boss will love you as long as you can read the past!
Capped collection, Elastic Search, Gelfino, Grok, Kibana,
etc.

14. Auto Deployment
This is 21st Century! Manual deployment is
unacceptable.
Don’t wait anyone to ask you to do it.
Use Jenkins, Maven, Ant, Bash Script, Fabric,
Capistrano, Python, Perl or whatever you can.

15. Still reading this?
Don’t!
Go and write a script.
Now!

16. Test Environments
• Separated Test Environments
• Create Test Data
• Test more than once:
o Staging
Have more than one test environment
Testing affects to number of bugs dramatically.

17. Test Data
• Every application has to create its own test data.
o Your application, your test data. You know better and It is your
responsibility.
• Easy to test it on every environment
• Reduces dependencies
• No need to database syncs to test DBs

18. Data Sanitizing
• Some users have same passwords for Facebook, Gmail and so
• Users emails, bank accounts, what they bought, what they like
are valuable data
Can be sold to third parties or can be used to threaten
someone
• Users data is personal and it should be protected
Some employees are very curious about others, specially about
their friends.
Block DB Access, Authentication, Auditing, Data Encryption
There is no “Freedom of Information Law” on your users data

19. Development Environments
• Own Machines (Leads to “but it works on my machine”
problem)
• Virtual Machines
• Dedicated Servers
Give them options and let them choose one they feel
comfortable.
Should be Simple and Fast!

20. Agile Methodology
Developers loves it!
• Basic Idea:
o Small, well defined tasks
o Solve problems and unclear points immediately
o Be a communication bridge
o Remove disturbance
o Plan ahead
o Measure performance
o Learn the limits
Scrum, Kanban, Scrumban, XP, Kaizen, Six Sigma, etc..

21. Monitoring
• Monitor everything
load, disk, network, memory, db response, cache response, data
size, counts, 404s, 500s, every little tiny bit can be important.
• Define milestones
• Watch after deployments
• Write Health Check services, checking the port not
enough
• Analyze Trends
Forecast the load on next Christmas, campaign, holiday

22. Source Control
• Use GIT
If you think that you don’t need it, then most probably
you are doing something wrong.
GitHub, Gitolite, Gitosis, Gitstash, Gitlist, Gitweb, etc..
Define Branching Model
Authenticate and Authorize the Access

23. Project Managers
• You need someone who can move some excel
boxes from one to another cell
• Sometimes some cells needs to be merged
together
Those excel cells are project plan, execution plan,
priority of tasks, risk analysis, etc.
They typically have extensive
background in development
I wish so!

24. Asynchronize
• Don’t keep users waiting
• Add some actions to a queue
• Reduce Race-Conditions
Everything will be okay!
In time

25. Enable / Disable
• Flexibility
• Partially Maintenance
• Less Downtime
• Decoupled features
Enable / Disable messages for a time
while payment is working
or any feature..

26. Budget For Teams
• Go for lunch, take them to cinema, do some team
building activities
They will never forget
Loyalty will increase
Know each other better
Increase communication between members
• Have a half day off once a month to:
Do something fun together
Get relaxed
Listen their problems
They need to talk each other and
to do something together!

27. Legacy Codes and Systems
• Laugh at them
• Make fun of them
• Delete them
• Remove them
• Burn them
Be courage about designing and creating them from
scratch.
They are not so big things as you think!

28. Meetings
• Don’t have meetings
• If you really need it
o Stand-up meetings (Less time)
o Invite very few people
o Have someone to take notes
o Define time box (30 min. max)
• Need more? Break it into small pieces
o Share outcome and result of the meeting

29. Other Headaches
• Cross Functional Teams Good!
• Outsourcing Generally Bad!
• Centralization / Decentralization
Varies case by case. Just think about it before you
start.
• Details and early optimizations blocks you to start
something
• People need uninterrupted time to finish their tasks
• Context Over Consistency
What makes sense here may not makes sense there*
• Spend some time with other departments
* Rework

30. Thanks!
• Have a question?
Harun.yardimci@gmail.com
hyardimci@ebay.com
• Liked it?
o Use it, share it, show it to your boss
• Didn’t like it?
o Pretend that you liked it and help me to make it better