The Ship Show

In episode 21, the panel discusses the delicate topic of when "enough is enough": whether it's organizational dysfunction, discovering that the role isn't right for you and your skills or passions, abusive management, or unethical requests, we look at the nagging yellow flags that pile up and can ignite into red flags that seriously starts your mind down the road of: Going, Going... Gone.

For episode 20, we tackle the topic of tooling proficiency on your release engineering, ops, and development teams, specifically through the lens of version control tools. Version control is becoming a ubiquitous part of the "DevOps movement," and we talk through what level of understanding should be expected, what level of training should be provided, and whether those are different for different teams or different tools. Plus, we poke a lil' fun at git, as we try to answer: Does Your Entire Team Have to Git It?

It's that time of year again where chefs (and sous-chefs!) come together to talk all-things Chef! This year's ChefConf took place last week in San Francisco, and the crew of the Ship Show attended to experience it all first hand. We took in the sights and sounds of the workshops and presentations, as well as the all-important hallway track! We join forces with the cast of Chef community's premier podcast, the Food Fight Show--"Where chefs do battle!"--for a ChefConf 2013 Revue!

This episode, we delve into the always-squishy "DevOps culture" and take a closer look at the process of both asking and answering questions. If DevOps really is the incarnation of developers and operations groups working together, the ability to efficiently and accurately transfer information between those two groups is a critical skill to have and of paramount importance to organizations trying to promote their own DevOps culture. We discuss tips and talk through our experiences to look at questions as they are: Asked & Answered

Imagine waking up to find your site and service hacked. Everyone is running around, trying to find out what went wrong; you're tasked with repairing the damage. But unfortunately, that automation project you've been promising yourself you’d get done has always taken a backburner to more pressing matters and features. With everyone breathing down your neck, wonder where to start. We talk with a panel of engineers who found themselves in exactly this nightmare scenario and follow them as they automate everything in 48 hours or your pizza is free!

As more and more services move into the cloud, organizations are trying to find ways to realize the tenets of "DevOps culture" by making it easier for developers interface directly with their infrastructure. But managing this can be a big task; for episode 16, we sit down with Brandon Burton, aka @solarce, to discuss Platform-as-a-Service. We look at the technical and organizational challenges of PaaS, discuss what specific problems it tries to solve–and those it doesn't–and try to answer: PaaS: Play or Passé?

For Episode 15, we sit down for a chat with the host of The DevOps Cafe, Damon Edwards to talk through the finer points of DevOps. We ask some pointed questions in an attempt to get a good, concrete definition of "DevOps," but without the hype that often comes prepackaged with the discussion. Watch Paul put Damon through the "curmudgeon gauntlet" as we attempt: Demystifying DevOps: A Chat with Damon Edwards.

Episode 14 gives some love to an often-discussed, yet seemingly under-appreciated topic: versioning! We discuss versioning and build numbers, whether these things are different "in the cloud" and for web-based services, and tackle the "customers don’t care about version numbers"-mantra. Stop by the bikeshed for a look at: What’s in a Version?

For the first episode of the new year, the panel looks back at the trends and events of the past year that were part of DevOps daily life and notable in build/release engineering. We also take a look forward at 2013 and make some predictions about what the year will hold and put us on the hook for revisiting our predictions next year. Join us for our pro-/retrospective: Out with The 2012, In with The 2013.

Firmly in the holiday season, the Crew discusses the duties this time of year for RelEng and DevOps teams: what kind of activities are these teams taking care of this time of year, should releases be going out the door, and does it make sense to keep these teams "spun up" this time of year? Join us as we discuss what it's like to be stuck: In the NOC for Holidays.

To get into the holiday spirit, the Crew looks at the various programming languages used in the release engineering and DevOps space: is there a language that "binds it all together?" If so, what language holds that title, and why? Is that language shifting? And if so, what's the driving force behind the shift?

A look at build infrastructure architecture: what are some of the differences between continuous integration tools and orchestration tools, and what's the criteria for establishing the delineations between the two? We touch on ways to mesh the two together in a sustainable way.

We sit down with Perforce Software's Director of Product Technology, James Creasy, to discuss the issues faced by enterprises attempting to deploy git and the general challenges of using git in environments where its trackrecord isn't as established.

Whether it's your own tool, your own Jenkins or Maven plugin, your own whatever, we take a closer look at some of the costs associated with doing so and some of the aspects to think about when trying to decide whether to hack on (and join) the open source community around a particular tool, or buck up and write it yourself.

Can the configuration management and automation tools we all know and love be used to get setup developer workstations and get your new-hires writing, building, and shipping code more quickly? And is that even something DevOps and release engineers should be responsible for? In episode 7, we examine bootstrapping developer environments.