Dev-Ops is a methodology aimed to speed-up application development and release aimed at promoting

fast development methodologies – Development teams
fast quality assurance methodologies – QA teams
fast deployment methodologies – System Operators teams
iteration and continuous feedback – Project Management teams

The aim is to achieve a faster time to market.

DevOps inherits Agile methods such as SCRUM Project Management, but it is more focused on the tools necessary to achieve the goal. It is also possible to involve the Security delegating some rights to the other teams: this approach is called DevSecOps.

These tools Devops brings with it were previously confined into the development field only, such as Source Code Management tools like GIT, branching models such as GitFlow, Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery tools such as Jenkins or Drone, schedulers such ad dKron, scanners for code quality and compliance such as SonarQube.

This means that professional of every fields, even system engineers and administrators, should have an understanding of these tools and models.

Ansible playbooks, ansible-galaxy, roles and collections

Posted on May 16, 2024 by Marco Antonio Carcano

Ansible is a powerful datacenter automation tool that enables nearly declarative automations - "Ansible playbooks, ansible-galaxy, roles and collections" is a primer with Ansible, gradually introducing concepts that we better elaborate in other posts following this one: as we already said, Ansible is a powerful tool, and as many powerful tool can make more pain than benefits if improperly managed - the aim of this post is providing a good baseline that enable quickly enable operating Ansible running ad hoc statements, playbooks and operating using Ansible Galaxy with shelf roles and collections .

This post begins where we left with the "Ansible Tutorial – Ansible Container How-To" post, writing a playbook for preparing hosts for being managed by Ansible, learning how to use Ansible Galaxy for downloading and installing shelf Ansible roles and collections. The outcome will be a running PostgreSQL instance we will use as the DB engine in the next post of the series..

Ansible Tutorial – Ansible Container Howto

Posted on May 15, 2024May 16, 2024 by Marco Antonio Carcano

Ansible is a powerful datacenter automation tool that enables nearly declarative automations - "Ansible Tutorial - Ansible Container Howto" is the first of a series of posts dedicated to Ansible, paying particularly attention at "doing all-right": Ansible is a powerful tool, and as many powerful tool can make more pain than benefits if improperly managed.

In this post we see how to quickly set up a containerised Ansible on a workstation, configuring the environment so that it can be run from the shell without explicitly invoking podman, providing a very friendly user experience the same way, enabling it to run statements as it was really installed on the system.

OpenSSL CA tutorial – A full-featured openssl PKI

Posted on June 1, 2023February 24, 2024 by Marco Antonio Carcano

OpenSSL is a full featured tool capable not only to generate keys and certificates, but also to provide every facility a PKI must have, such as indirect CRL and OCSP responders: these features, along with certificate's best practices such as the Certification Practice Statement (CPS), publishing CRL Distribution Points URL, OCSP Responders URL, CA Issuers URL, are the topics of the OpenSSL CA tutorial - A full-featured openssl PKI.

LVM Tutorial – A Thorough Howto On The Logical Volume Manager

Posted on November 9, 2022November 10, 2022 by Marco Antonio Carcano

It is almost impossible not having heard about or not having used LVM: it is one of the pillars of every Linux distribution from decades ago. Almost everyone using Linux has used it to create or modify the basic storage structures of its Linux system. The trouble is that very often people are focused on the specific task they are onto, and neglect the time to investigate its amazing features. The goal of LVM Tutorial - A thorough howto on the Logical Volume Manager is to provide an easy yet comprehensive explanation on the most interesting features of LVM that it is very likely you will need to use sooner or later.

GIT Tutorial – A thorough Git Howto About Using Remotes

Posted on September 19, 2022October 6, 2022 by Marco Antonio Carcano

Git is certainly the most popular Source Code Management (SCM) software: it is broadly used in almost every recent open source project, and even a lot of emblazoned legacy projects switched to it over the years.

In the previous post we thoroughly learned how to use it to version control sources, working only on personal - so local - repositories.

GIT Tutorial - A thorough Git Howto About Using Remotes completes our trip on learning how to professionally use Git, showing you how to link the personal local repository to shared remote bare repositories.
Knowing how to deal with this topic is of course a mandatory skill, since this is the only way you have to cooperate and work with other developers.

GIT Tutorial – A thorough Version Control with Git Howto

Posted on September 5, 2022October 6, 2022 by Marco Antonio Carcano

DevOps (and of course DevSecOps) are getting more and more adopted by companies: these methodologies rely on several frameworks and software skills, and working with a modern Source Code Management (SCM) such any kind of software implementing Git is certainly a must for every DevOps professional. This post is the first of a set of posts dedicated to Git and is aimed at providing a GIT Tutorial - A thorough Version Control with Git Howto on personal repositories, giving guidelines to proficient operating with it.
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