DevOps trends and tips from our resident pros

TechBeacon recently released the DevOps Top 100 list, recognizing members the DevOps community, who are exceptional writers, speakers, and thought leaders in the space. We caught up with a few of the Microsoft pros on the list to get their quick insights on topics ranging from their favorite DevOps technologies to what they can’t live without while coding.

DONOVAN BROWN

@DonovanBrown #RubDevOpsOnIt | donovanbrown.com

Latest DevOps technology/innovation you’re excited about?

The concept of the Unbreakable DevOps Pipeline. Working with Dynatrace, Abel from my team (The League), implemented the concept using Monitoring as Code. Monitoring as Code enables a team to describe their desired monitoring and thresholds as code that is checked into your repository. That information is then used to monitor the code as it progresses through your pipeline. If any of the monitoring thresholds are hit, the pipeline can automatically take corrective action.

Next big DevOps problem for a technology to solve?

DevOps for AI/ML. As new technologies emerge, we must find ways to rub a little DevOps on them and make it better. AI/ML is an area I feel needs some help.

Next conference you’ll be at and why?

I will be keynoting DevOps Days Chicago at the end of the month. Because they invited me! ?

Latest sticker you put on your laptop?

The DevOps Lab show sticker. It’s a great DevOps-focused show on Ch9.

Thing you can’t live without when you’re coding?

Candy! I have a horrible sweet tooth and, as I wait for tests to run or projects to compile, it is a great time for something sweet. The new mint M&Ms are my candy of choice at the moment.

Best thing about your favorite season?

The cool weather of the fall and winter. I live in Houston, TX and it is always hot here, so I enjoy the break from the heat.

BRIDGET KROMHOUT

@bridgetkromhout | bridgetkromhout.com

Latest DevOps technology/innovation you’re excited about?

Abstraction keeps moving up the stack, and the tooling with it. I’m excited to see Helm, the package manager for Kubernetes, become a CNCF project, because as we continue to wrangle YAML, we need all the help we can get!

Next big DevOps problem for a technology to solve?

Technology doesn’t solve problems; people do. I see a lot of talk about multi-cloud, and I’m interested to see where that goes (since data gravity is real, and perfect feature parity isn’t). The fascinating bit is around how people make choices to navigate the tradeoffs. HashiCorp is creating interesting open source tooling in this space.

Next conference you’ll be at and why?

I’ll be at GopherCon in Denver at the end of August! I’m attending to help with hands-on code activities at our booth and live tweet keynotes and sessions. (It’s rare that I’m at a conference where I’m not speaking, but in this case I’m there to help our teammates who run the event!)

Latest sticker you put on your laptop?

I had a classic stickers-upon-stickers laptop, and since it died, I haven’t been struck by sticker inspiration! I did grab some delightful GitHub plus Microsoft stickers recently, so I’ll make some local meetup attendees smile with them in a few weeks.

Thing you can’t live without when you’re coding?

Honestly, I live in vi. And yes, I’ve been using it since before vim existed, so I still call it vi. 🙂

Best thing about your favorite season?

I live in Minnesota, so as I tell the Bay Area recruiters who email me in February, snow is a feature, not a bug.

JEFFREY SNOVER

@jsnover | jsnover.com

Latest DevOps technology/innovation you’re excited about?

I’m obviously biased but I’m honest when I say that I’m most excited about OSS PowerShell running on Linux, MacOS, and Windows and the partnership between Microsoft, AWS, Google, and VMWare. This is breaking down management silos with a single tool for teams to be able to manage from any client, managing any server, on any cloud or any hypervisor/networking/storage stack.

Next big DevOps problem for a technology to solve?

The next frontier is the provisioning and management of the intelligent cloud/intelligent edge. This encompasses both fleet and application management with potentially multiple owners and CI/CD pipelines.

Next conference you’ll be at and why?

My next conference is Ignite in Orlando where I’ll be giving talks about PowerShell, Azure Stack and the Intelligent Edge, State of the Storage Union, and Software Development in an Age of Social Responsibility. I’ve also got quite a few customer and community events. I’ll be earning my salary that week!

Latest sticker you put on your laptop?

PowerShell Hero – she is awesome!

Thing you can’t live without when you’re coding?

A keyboard ?.

Best thing about your favorite season?

The foliage of a New England fall moves my soul in profound ineffable ways. I’m not sure but I think it has something to do with the combination of incredible beauty and impending death. There’s a cheery thought for you!

Questions for Bridget, Jeffrey, or Donovan? Let us know in the comments.

You can find the complete TechBeacon DevOps 100 here.

Ken Thompson

Focused on Open Source Software, Azure Resource Manager and DevOps on Azure, I'm responsible for helping customers succeed with DevOps on the Azure cloud, using the tools and practices they know and love. I work with communities and partners to better integrate solutions on Azure that involve third-party DevOps tools such as (but not limited to) Ansible, Chef, Docker, Eclipse, Gitlab, Jenkins, Packer, Spinnaker, and Terraform.

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