DevOps | Regardless of how they work together, config data matters
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The document discusses the importance of configuration data management within DevOps practices, emphasizing the need for robust platforms to manage, validate, and secure configuration data effectively. It outlines the evolution and challenges of integrating development and operations teams, asserting that successful collaboration hinges on governance and access controls for configuration data. A well-structured configuration management platform fosters automation, reduces manual errors, and ensures that all teams can function cohesively across various application environments.
![A White Paper by Sweagle
A DevOps culture
DevOps is all about the culture of bringing Dev and Ops together, so that
processes run more smoothly at higher velocity, resulting in more
deliverables and fewer errors. So that's the theory and it sounds great, but
what does it mean in reality?
Achieving DevOps nirvana does not happen overnight. Many organizations
are in the transition towards the ideal DevOps set up, and that journey can
take some time. For every milestone reached in the transformation
process there are benefits... but also new challenges.
Let’s look at the specific needs and challenges for every stage of the
DevOps transformation in a bit more detail. We'll start with the ideal
DevOps organization, where a single team owns the process from Dev to
Ops.
[Dev] & [Ops][Dev] <-> [Ops] [DevOps]
- RBAC
- Diff compare
- Root cause
- Validation policies
- Consolidated model
- Pipeline visibility
- Dynamic organization
- Cross team
collaboration
- Evidence repository
Independent
teams
Embedded
(nirvana)
Working in
tandem](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/sweagleconfigdatamatterswhitepaper-200113122822/85/DevOps-Regardless-of-how-they-work-together-config-data-matters-2-320.jpg)
DevOps | Regardless of how they work together, config data matters
- 1. Regardlessofhow Dev&Opswork together,config datamatters White Paper by Sweagle www.sweagle.com © 2019 Author Benny Van de Sompele Co-Founder & CTO, Sweagle
- 2. A White Paper by Sweagle A DevOps culture DevOps is all about the culture of bringing Dev and Ops together, so that processes run more smoothly at higher velocity, resulting in more deliverables and fewer errors. So that's the theory and it sounds great, but what does it mean in reality? Achieving DevOps nirvana does not happen overnight. Many organizations are in the transition towards the ideal DevOps set up, and that journey can take some time. For every milestone reached in the transformation process there are benefits... but also new challenges. Let’s look at the specific needs and challenges for every stage of the DevOps transformation in a bit more detail. We'll start with the ideal DevOps organization, where a single team owns the process from Dev to Ops. [Dev] & [Ops][Dev] <-> [Ops] [DevOps] - RBAC - Diff compare - Root cause - Validation policies - Consolidated model - Pipeline visibility - Dynamic organization - Cross team collaboration - Evidence repository Independent teams Embedded (nirvana) Working in tandem
- 3. Dev & Ops embedded In its most pure and ideal form, a DevOps team is fully self-running, self- organizing and taking ownership from Dev to Ops. This is the nirvana. “You build it, you run it” is their credo, and every DevOps team has the right talent onboard to cover the horizontal track from development to running and managing applications in production. From a config data perspective, it means the whole team has (or should have) access to all the config data... with one big limitation. ONLY for the applications that are in scope for the DevOps team. Being part of a DevOps team doesn’t mean you can access ANY production config data, anywhere, for any of the components in the company. There's governance required around this. A White Paper by Sweagle
- 4. Why config data matters... when Dev & Ops are embedded Having a robust config data management platform matters when your Dev & Ops teams are embedded, because you need a way to scale up or down, collaborate more openly and combine all CDIs into a central audit trail. Cope with a dynamic DevOps organization As teams scale up and down, and take on more applications or transition ownership from one team to another, it should be a requirement that some kind of governance, control and structure is in place to facilitate these changes. Security and governance need to be applied horizontally from Dev to Ops but limited to the subset of applications within their scope - at any point in time. A common config data repository with fine granular access permissions, roles and policies will help. Collaboration between DevOps teams Because modern application architectures have no technical dependencies at all between their components, DevOps teams can deliver innovations and changes in parallel at their own frequency. But new patterns like feature activations, functional dependencies and canary deployments do require a cross-functional DevOps team with coordination and control. A comprehensive config data management platform will enable this cross-functionality, collaboration and automation. And it will make sure all required components (or versions) are available in any environment before activating certain functionalities. Collection of all config data Can you access settings and changes at any point within the pipeline, past or present? Agile DevOps doesn’t mean uncontrolled and ungoverned changes. A config data management platform will provide an unalterable audit trail and evidence repository tracking so you'll know exactly which component was running where, for how long, and with which settings - for any point in time. A Sweagle White Paper
- 5. Dev & Ops working in tandem But perhaps it's not possible to have every DevOps team equipped with team members who are experts in the full stack of technologies as well as having a handle on all the complexities and particulars of different environments. DevOps can also mean that Development and Operations work closely together in the cadence of an agile development and delivery cycle. It involves tight collaboration with Ops having clear visibility of what's coming through the CI/CD pipeline. And a way for Dev to not only push and promote code, but also the required settings and changes. It involves a proactive approach to take the input from Development as early as possible and prepare the upstream environments proactively to be ready to host the changes and deliverables as soon as they reach their go-live status. A Sweagle White Paper
- 6. Why config matters... when Dev & Ops are working in tandem Having a robust config data management platform matters when your teams work in tandem, because you need a way to check that upcoming changes are fully release-ready, validated and within a common data model. Preparation & validation You want to ensure that all suggested changes and settings for deliverables coming through the pipeline are correctly prepared and validated prior to deployment. This requires checking that no mandatory settings are missing, that no configurations contain unidentified tokens and that no parameters have conflicting values. A comprehensive config data management platform will provide automated validations which proactively check that any upcoming change is fully ready. This reduces manual workload and prevents errors. Common config data model You want your teams to collaborate around a common configuration data model, adapted to the technical specifications of Development and that the specific configurations for the environments are present and correct. After all, the settings for a new application component in a lower test environment will (or should) be different from the production environment. A config data management platform will automate the merging of config data changes for new releases with the specific settings for the target environment. Environment policies When your teams are working in tandem, you need to control and validate all suggested config data changes and settings to ensure they are in line with the policies and validations for every environment. Functional, technical and compliancy validation checks will be automated through your config data management platform before the changes are applied. A Sweagle White Paper
- 7. Dev & Ops are independent teams But perhaps parts of your organization and teams are still structured in separate verticals or silos with handover processes between them. And this isn't limited to a separation of Dev from Ops. Even within Dev you might have silos such as the database DEV team, middleware team or JAVA team. In the same way your Ops might have an infra silo, network silo or PRD versus non-PRD silo. Or perhaps part of the operations work is outsourced... which can have its own challenges and complications. A Sweagle White Paper
- 8. Why config matters... when Dev & Ops are indepent teams Having a robust config data management platform matters when your teams are independent, because you need a way to control and diff compare the config data between those teams, especially when sensitive data is involved. Role based access control If you want to enforce RBAC on config data between teams. then security and governance need to be applied vertically by silo. You will need a way to make sure only the right team gets access to the config data they are allowed to see or edit. A config data management platform will do this for you. Sensitive data To enable the encryption and security of sensitive data, you'll need more segregation of roles and duties. This, in turn, comes with the need for a higher level of auto-encryption and securing of sensitive data. A configuration data management platform that collects and consolidates config data from various sources will automatically pinpoint any of the config data sources that contain unencrypted sensitive data. That instantly leads to a higher vulnerability for unauthorized access and data leaks. Diff compare How often have you seen multiple team members spending countless hours trying to understand changes from what they currently see (e.g. an issue with application X in Production) and how it looked a week ago (when there was no apparent problem)? A configdata management platform will allow you to easily get a handle on the changes from the infra, environment and application point of view. A Sweagle White Paper
- 9. Accelerate root cause analysis With many changes happening at infra, environment and application point of view by different teams and stakeholders at various moments in time, it is critical to have access to all config data for reporting and analytics. An intelligent management platform offers an agnostic data model in which all config data is not only stored but also made actionable. Machine Learning algorithms can also assist in automatically discovering the root cause for any issues at hand, and prevent the same bad config from happening ever again. Why config matters... when Dev & Ops are independent teams A Sweagle White Paper
- 10. Final thought "Actionable evidence repository" Configuration data matters so much - regardless of where your organization is on the DevOps journey. A configuration data management platform will reduce manual workload, will continuously validate config data and provide an actionable evidence repository for every component in every environment. It's also designed especially for highly automated CI/CD. Sweagle, the global SaaS platform, manages, validates and secures configuration data. Our customers range from mature agile DevOps organizations to traditional silo based enterprises. We also work with cloud native, legacy and hybrid application architectures. A Sweagle White Paper Author Benny Van de Sompele Co-Founder & CTO, Sweagle
- 11. The end But it's really only the beginning... Find out what benefits Sweagle could bring to your CI/CD pipeline. Contact us to secure your config data success. A White Paper by Sweagle www.sweagle.com 2019