https://dev.ahill.net/category/virtual-andy/Recent content in Virtual-Andy on Virtual AndyHugo -- 0.148.2enWed, 17 Jul 2024 13:22:16 +0000https://dev.ahill.net/2024/07/17/gitops-drawbacks/Wed, 17 Jul 2024 13:22:16 +0000https://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=1592A look at GitOps tradeoffs that can make operational work harder when the model is applied too broadly.https://dev.ahill.net/2024/02/16/software-engineering-and-ai-my-experience-so-far/Fri, 16 Feb 2024 19:15:11 +0000https://virtualandy.wordpress.com/2024/02/16/software-engineering-and-ai-my-experience-so-far/My practical experience using AI in software engineering work, where it helps, and where the workflow still needs judgment.https://dev.ahill.net/2024/01/03/new-direction-2024/Wed, 03 Jan 2024 08:00:00 +0000https://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=1395A 15-year site update and a note on where I want the blog to go next.https://dev.ahill.net/2023/12/15/book-review-tidy-first/Fri, 15 Dec 2023 16:54:00 +0000https://virtualandy.wordpress.com/2023/12/15/book-review-tidy-first/My notes on Tidy First?, a small and practical book about making codebases easier to change one cleanup at a time.https://dev.ahill.net/2023/11/03/report-a-case-study-in-community-driven-software-adoption/Fri, 03 Nov 2023 17:40:07 +0000https://virtualandy.wordpress.com/2023/11/03/report-a-case-study-in-community-driven-software-adoption/My notes on Google’s community-driven software adoption case study and what it says about internal platform change.https://dev.ahill.net/2022/10/22/book-review-the-staff-engineers-path/Sat, 22 Oct 2022 18:47:22 +0000https://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=1634My review of The Staff Engineer’s Path and why it is useful for people trying to operate well in Staff+ roles.https://dev.ahill.net/2021/11/17/book-review-api-by-design/Wed, 17 Nov 2021 10:00:00 +0000https://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=1581My review of API by Design, a useful REST API complexity book that left me wanting more concrete examples.https://dev.ahill.net/2021/11/10/book-review-accelerate-the-science-of-lean-software-and-devops-building-and-scaling-high-performing-technology-organizations/Wed, 10 Nov 2021 10:00:00 +0000https://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=1575My review of Accelerate: useful research-backed vocabulary and confirmation, with more methodology detail than I wanted from the book.https://dev.ahill.net/2021/11/03/book-review-software-engineering-at-google-lessons-learned-from-programming-over-time/Wed, 03 Nov 2021 21:46:17 +0000https://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=1566My review of Software Engineering at Google: valuable engineering lessons, with the usual large-company navel gazing mixed in.https://dev.ahill.net/2021/10/26/on-call-run-books-theres-a-better-way/Tue, 26 Oct 2021 16:14:09 +0000https://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=1554Why on-call runbooks have limits, and where teams can invest instead to make incidents easier to handle.https://dev.ahill.net/2021/10/12/on-the-big-rewrite/Tue, 12 Oct 2021 15:34:15 +0000https://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=1537A mirror of John Rauser’s thread about big rewrites and why they are usually more complicated than they look.https://dev.ahill.net/2020/02/11/tls-redirect-security/Tue, 11 Feb 2020 14:00:00 +0000https://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=1458A note on HTTP-to-HTTPS redirects, what they help with, and where they fall short as a TLS migration strategy.https://dev.ahill.net/2020/01/21/home-office-january-2020/Tue, 21 Jan 2020 14:00:40 +0000https://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=1434A tour of my home office setup in January 2020, including the desk, audio, video, and daily-use gear.https://dev.ahill.net/2020/01/10/office-ergonomics-review/Fri, 10 Jan 2020 14:00:00 +0000https://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=1426Notes on the home office ergonomics gear that worked for me after spending real time with it.https://dev.ahill.net/2019/09/04/a-fix-for-operationalerror-psycopg2-operationalerror-ssl-error-decryption-failed-or-bad-record-mac/Wed, 04 Sep 2019 14:00:00 +0000https://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=1409The fix for a confusing psycopg2 SSL error caused by sharing database connections across uWSGI forked workers.https://dev.ahill.net/2019/02/11/csv-imports-into-google-cloud-bigquery/Mon, 11 Feb 2019 14:00:55 +0000https://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=1377A simple Postgres-to-BigQuery workflow using CSV exports and Google Cloud Storage for OLAP-style reporting.https://dev.ahill.net/2018/11/30/python-dateutil-gotcha/Fri, 30 Nov 2018 14:00:58 +0000https://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=1387A small python-dateutil parsing gotcha that is easy to miss when working with dates.https://dev.ahill.net/2018/09/04/on-lifelong-learning/Tue, 04 Sep 2018 12:00:59 +0000https://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=1375A short reflection on keeping learning systems current as technology and career needs change.https://dev.ahill.net/2018/08/21/book-review-designing-data-intensive-applications/Tue, 21 Aug 2018 12:00:30 +0000https://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=1382My review of Designing Data-Intensive Applications as a practical survey of what changed, and what still matters, in data systems.https://dev.ahill.net/2018/07/12/labels-on-cloud-dataflow-instances-for-cloud-bigtable-exports/Thu, 12 Jul 2018 13:00:22 +0000https://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=1380A useful Cloud Dataflow option for applying labels to Bigtable export jobs so costs are easier to track.https://dev.ahill.net/2018/03/26/looking-at-postgis-intersects-queries/Mon, 26 Mar 2018 12:00:37 +0000https://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=1378A closer look at how PostGIS represents geometries and handles intersects queries for area-of-interest searches.https://dev.ahill.net/2017/11/06/gpg-suite-and-gpg-agent-forwarding/Mon, 06 Nov 2017 17:00:36 +0000https://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=1315The GPG Suite and gpg-agent forwarding setup that finally worked for me between macOS and Ubuntu.https://dev.ahill.net/2016/05/31/book-review-mastering-ansible/Tue, 31 May 2016 16:00:53 +0000https://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=1254A review of Mastering Ansible, kicked off by a real debugging problem around variable precedence and Ansible behavior.https://dev.ahill.net/2016/03/31/f5-rolling-deployments-with-ansible/Thu, 31 Mar 2016 18:00:05 +0000https://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=1148How I adapted Ansible rolling deployment patterns to work with F5 BIG-IP load balancers.https://dev.ahill.net/2015/12/14/giving-flowbat-a-try/Mon, 14 Dec 2015 19:00:22 +0000https://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=1059First notes on trying FlowBAT and SiLK for flow collection, plus the Ansible roles I published while getting started.https://dev.ahill.net/2015/10/19/remediation-as-a-service/Mon, 19 Oct 2015 14:00:32 +0000https://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=1048A proposal for treating operational remediation as a service backed by automation, APIs, and clear ownership.https://dev.ahill.net/2015/04/07/troubleshooting-lldp/Tue, 07 Apr 2015 16:00:00 +0000https://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=1017A practical LLDP troubleshooting note for checking what hosts and switches are really advertising.https://dev.ahill.net/2015/01/05/sdn-development-environment/Mon, 05 Jan 2015 16:00:00 +0000http://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=994The pieces I used to build a small SDN development environment for OpenStack, Open vSwitch, Mininet, and Ryu.https://dev.ahill.net/2014/12/08/graphite-events-with-a-timestamp/Mon, 08 Dec 2014 18:49:12 +0000http://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=990A small Graphite Events tip for sending explicit timestamps with deployment and operational events.https://dev.ahill.net/2014/11/05/my-openstack-paris-summit-sessions/Wed, 05 Nov 2014 10:08:06 +0000http://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=983Links to my OpenStack Paris Summit sessions, slides, and videos.https://dev.ahill.net/2014/10/07/nsxchecker-verify-the-health-of-your-nsx-network/Tue, 07 Oct 2014 15:00:46 +0000http://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=939Introducing nsxchecker, a Python tool for quickly checking the operational health of NSX logical networks.https://dev.ahill.net/2014/09/02/operating-openstack-monitoring-rabbitmq/Tue, 02 Sep 2014 19:30:00 +0000http://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=940OpenStack RabbitMQ monitoring scenarios and checks that help operators catch message broker problems before they spread.https://dev.ahill.net/2014/07/28/monitoring-edge-node-network-configuration/Mon, 28 Jul 2014 16:00:12 +0000http://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=888A checklist of Open vSwitch and XenServer networking details I wanted monitored on hypervisors and edge nodes.https://dev.ahill.net/2014/05/09/on-failure/Fri, 09 May 2014 14:00:19 +0000http://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=869A few notes on failure papers I found through The Datacenter as a Computer.https://dev.ahill.net/2014/04/29/on-working-remote/Tue, 29 Apr 2014 14:00:11 +0000http://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=877My early lessons from going remote, including what worked across IRC, tmux, voice, and video calls.https://dev.ahill.net/2014/04/03/required-reading-the-datacenter-as-a-computer/Thu, 03 Apr 2014 14:28:21 +0000http://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=863Why The Datacenter as a Computer is still useful reading for understanding large-scale infrastructure design.https://dev.ahill.net/2014/02/13/statsd-and-multiple-metrics/Thu, 13 Feb 2014 20:21:22 +0000http://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=780A quick StatsD note on sending multiple metrics efficiently from operational tooling.https://dev.ahill.net/2014/01/22/managing-nagios-configurations/Wed, 22 Jan 2014 11:00:30 +0000http://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=715How we managed Nagios configuration changes across OpenStack environments with shared repositories and automation.https://dev.ahill.net/2013/12/08/personal-backups-with-duply/Sun, 08 Dec 2013 21:02:30 +0000http://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=680How I used Duply and Duplicity for personal backups with encryption and remote storage.https://dev.ahill.net/2013/05/29/measuring-virtual-networking-overhead/Wed, 29 May 2013 16:00:10 +0000http://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=594Introducing netweaver, a small tool for measuring virtual networking overhead with paired packet captures.https://dev.ahill.net/2013/04/29/deep-dive-htb-rate-limiting-qos-on-with-open-vswitch-and-xenserver/Mon, 29 Apr 2013 16:00:27 +0000http://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=561A scratchpad-style deep dive into how Open vSwitch and Linux HTB expose rate limits for XenServer virtual interfaces.https://dev.ahill.net/2013/03/31/using-swift-and-logrotate/Sun, 31 Mar 2013 22:28:48 +0000http://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=550A simple pattern for rotating logs and moving them into OpenStack Swift for longer-term storage.https://dev.ahill.net/2012/12/27/the-grep-is-a-lie/Fri, 28 Dec 2012 02:55:30 +0000http://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=519A short note on why grep can mislead you when code search needs more context than a simple text match.https://dev.ahill.net/2012/12/01/another-quick-post-on-ack/Sat, 01 Dec 2012 15:19:03 +0000http://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=507A small ack configuration tip for paging noisy search results through less.https://dev.ahill.net/2012/11/02/code-diving-ack-better-than-grep/Fri, 02 Nov 2012 22:26:32 +0000http://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=449Why I liked ack for digging through big codebases, especially while writing those old OpenStack Nova deep dives.https://dev.ahill.net/2012/09/20/the-sdn-craze/Fri, 21 Sep 2012 02:05:02 +0000http://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=421Early thoughts on the SDN hype cycle, what felt useful, and what still needed operational grounding.https://dev.ahill.net/2012/09/13/cloud-and-virtual-infrastructure/Thu, 13 Sep 2012 16:07:47 +0000http://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=386A few observations on the gap between cloud applications and applications that just happen to run on virtual infrastructure.https://dev.ahill.net/2012/04/24/next-generation-knowledge-resources/Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:09:45 +0000http://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=332A follow-up knowledge resource list for getting oriented in cloud computing, DevOps, configuration management, and social coding.https://dev.ahill.net/2011/11/20/new-direction/Mon, 21 Nov 2011 01:31:41 +0000http://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=317A reset for Virtual Andy toward cloud computing, automation, and the tools that help sysadmins do more with less.https://dev.ahill.net/2010/07/24/gem-in-the-vmware-vcenter-converter-4-2-for-vcenter-server-release-notes/Sat, 24 Jul 2010 21:30:54 +0000http://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=222A small but useful vCenter Converter 4.2 release note for fixing Linux P2V imports without hand-editing the initrd.https://dev.ahill.net/2009/08/27/virtual-andy-update/Thu, 27 Aug 2009 20:10:45 +0000http://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=161A brief site update after several ESX and infrastructure posts, with a pointer to what was next.https://dev.ahill.net/2009/01/03/system-deployment/Sat, 03 Jan 2009 23:01:24 +0000http://virtualandy.wordpress.com/2009/01/03/system-deployment/A before-and-after look at how VMware Infrastructure 3 improved system deployment, redundancy, and operational value.https://dev.ahill.net/2008/09/08/vmware-consolidated-backup-explained/Mon, 08 Sep 2008 22:46:17 +0000http://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=20A short pointer to VMware Consolidated Backup and why it mattered for virtual machine backup planning.https://dev.ahill.net/2008/06/16/find-total-disk-usage-of-snapshots-on-a-given-lun/Mon, 16 Jun 2008 22:44:28 +0000http://virtualandy.wordpress.com/?p=18A quick VMware ESX note on checking snapshot disk usage on a LUN before deleting a bunch of snapshots.