BoobBoo's Multi-threaded Hyperthoughts

What do Developers do well and what drives us nuts – written by a Basis Person

BoobBoo / February 27, 2013 / No comments

This is a post I have written and rewritten many times over the last few months, I still find it imperfect and will probably catch many flames for it – but what the hell, “If you’re not creating trouble, you’re not creating much” as Hugh MacLeod says. This blog will attempt to talk about certain developer practices, how it affects Basis/Technical people. I am writing this to start debate so we can explore a more common language and understanding that build a culture supporting philosophies like Lean and #DevOps. Also I fully expect, in fact I demand, that someone write a rebuttal to this post :-).

I have spent the last 9 months immersed in #DevOps stuff, trying to find ways to engage the SAP ecosystem with it and see how SAP, customers and consultants can learn the lessons of #DevOps the same way it learnt and adopted Agile. So as we have seen in previous blogs, #DevOps is built around a concept of

C – Culture

A- Automation

M- Measurement

S – Sharing

At first glance these are quite technical and operations oriented things, I was a lot more interested in the Developers and how I as a technical person can help/work with them to create something amazing. My first step was to start to learn to talk their language, something which is like a difference dialect of SAP. Then to make matters even more complex, I also had to learn the language of the Web world as well – something which was a lot harder and by no means complete, I reckon I am talking and reading WebDev stuff at a 5 year old level :-). I have been ably assisted in this journey by a lot of friends, DJ Adams, Ethan Jewett, Steve Rumsby, Matthias Steiner and others (you know who you are)

Many administrators I have come across have no idea about developer practices, they know the rudiments of how developers work in the ABAP stack, but very little about Java, ADS or WebDynpro. I am nearly sure that some administrators, especially those who are not co-located with their developers, think that there are sacrifices made at the full moon to create the code or the code is produced through Ouija boards. So as I have said above this a miss-mash of thoughts to try and kick start closer collaboration and also start to alter some practices to make life easier.

1. I need you to help me speak your language and I need you to learn mine. Especially non-ABAP developers – you know who you are, you have ignored us for long enough, we have let you get away with it and it stops now!

We all spend time working on projects, and our managers make us sit in different areas so we can be with our teams. Is it any wonder we have lost the language of the birds, now I am not talking about being fluent or fully understanding how things are done but as a minimum I think we should have a common understanding.

2. I need to be a part of your change process.

Between us we must be able to agree on how we get code into the Production system. There are people who set down rigid rules, there are people who use 3rd party tools to enforce a process. There are those who just fly by the seat of their pants. Bottom line – there HAS to be a process and we all have to abide by it, live with it. Stop trying to go around it in order to get your ‘little’ fix into production because someone did not test it right! Before the integration of many of the SAP products into CTS+, I wonder how many Basis people actually understood or could support moving changes through the landscape of NWDI, CE and Business Objects. I propose that between developers and Basis people, we begin to understand the following – and yes this is very simple stuff, but if we do not understand the basics, then we cannot build good lean processes.

What does a change look like in each type of system
How does that change get migrated through the system
How do those changes get applied
How do those changes get tested
How do we ensure the quality of the changes that enter the process

Someone recently asked me – why do Basis even do transports surely our time could be better spent on other things. Something else to ponder as you discuss the points above together.

3. An extract of the transport history IS NOT a transport build list.

Let me say it again, just in case I have not made myself clear – the next developer who tells me that I should use the Transport history of a system as the release build list, will be punished in the most severe way possible. You and your team are the developers, it is your development – do your job and track your changes, I will help you – I will even provide some tools or tricks which will make life easier. Do not treat me like your mother picking up after you – you are not a rock star and I do not work for you, I want to work with you.

4. Object Management and conflict resolution

If you are working in a BAU environment, please, please, please – release your tasks quickly and often, not your transports (although this would be nice). This ensures that the object locks get released and other people can use the objects. Of course this creates dependencies between transports with overtakes and undertakes. You know what, if we have worked together and have a solid process, we can mitigate that through both tools and processes. I have refereed enough bun fights between developers who need the same object but one has it locked – bored of doing that and I want to do sexy fun work.

5. Integrate your code quickly, the job is not done until the system works.

Often as a Basis guy, I am supporting the development work of multiple vendors – and everyone is doing their own development in their own environments. The nightmare starts when Integration testing starts, I will admit that we in SAP have a major deficiency in testing. We often do not use automated testing, and that is a travesty in it’s own right. So testing is a pain, when dealing with multiple code streams with multiple vendors, it has always appeared to me – that all developers keep their code streams as separate as possible and then at the last second merge them. This has 3 effects

Development have to scramble like mad to develop fixes, increasing the number of changes
Transport sequencing becomes ultra important, and someone decides to use the import history as the sequencing method
The flurry of change can derail the change process as priorities get escalated.

I have been thinking for a long time of two potential ways to improve this situation.

Everyone can have a development system, but there is a single QAS, Pre-Prod

A dual track landscape, one BAU and one Project. All code co-exists within the landscape

The bottom line is this – your development job is not done until the code works properly in my Production system. The sooner you get your code integrated with everything else, the sooner it can be tested and reduce the last minute panics. Of course that does assume that all the developers from all the parties play nicely with each other.

6. You are not always getting your own environment

This is an extension of the item above, I do not have limitless hardware or resources. I have to make a judgement call on what resources you get to run your project. This means that you may not get your own environment to work in. That does not mean I hate you, or do not value your project enough – often it means I actually can’t do it, or it means I am not going to stretch my team further in supporting another set of environments so you do not have to be nice to other developers (or so it looks to us)

Work with me, educate me on your requirements – do not try to pull the wool over my eyes and try to get more than you need. Let me help to support you with a brilliant service, rather than stretched to within an inch of my life and providing a crap service to everyone

7. Stop complaining to me that there is no test data in Development

This is an old one, but it is one of the most frustrating for both of us – I know you guys need good data to test with but it is not acceptable to do your unit testing in QAS. I want to help you get decent test data, I know that generating it is a nightmare and often belongs to the functional consultants as a task. Lets stop fighting with each other and gang up on the functional people to get them to actually do their job in supporting us for a change!

8. You manage to turn around code fixes in no time flat

I am always amazed by how developers know their systems and can turn around fixes to problems in no time. In fact if the truth be told, it makes me a little jealous sometimes.

9. You guys have bigger teams than we do

Often on projects or in BAU, developers outnumber the Basis guys – there are times, I am the only Basis guy assigned to a project. You have development colleagues you can bounce ideas off if you get stuck. I like the way you do stick together and support each other – a sweeping generalization I know but it is more often true than false.

From reading above, it looks like I find developers do more things wrong than right – nothing could be further from the truth, but the things above are mostly things that drive me nuts because we could be doing things much better.

I look forward to reading your comments whether they be positive or negative.

Category: Lifestream /

Are DevOps practitioners really Sysadmin or coding ninjas or just plain Grey?

BoobBoo / February 11, 2013 / 2 comments

Within my time working and researching DevOps, I started seeing a clear pattern that some very, very switched on people were doing a lot of really cool things and this was something that really inspired me to bring #DevOps to the SAP world. At the start of the journey, I looked at the practitioners of DevOps and saw this crack team of people who are able to move mountains with their exceptional skills and processes. Despite everything these people tell us, about it being about a complete organisational and conceptual change about the management of the IT landscape, you still see these exceptional people. Being a big fan of Babylon 5, the practitioners of DevOps initially started out in my head as being like the Rangers or the Anla-shok. The deeper down the rabbit hole you go though the more you realise that this is a complete and dangerous fallacy, because it is not about small band of special forces fighting from outside the system.

People traditionally identify with things more readily if they can relate them to their own experiences or to something that means something to them. Which is why when I discounted the Anla-shok equivalence I had wrongly applied, I couldn’t shake the Babylon 5 connotations. Upon reflection, through my knowledge of the B5 Universe, I came across something which started to make sense. The Grey Council of the Minbari, which seemed a much closer approximation for a number of reasons.

1. They have several castes, Worker, Religious and Warrior. IT also has many castes which can be defined, in fact probably 1000s of them, but an easy one for me is Development, Applications and Infrastructure.

2. The Council speaks as one to the outside world, despite internal disagreements. When IT departments speak externally, it should be with a unified voice – transparency is important and can be reflected without detracting from the decision being communicated.

3. Each caste has it’s own language, but in order to communicate effectively in everyday life, all 3 languages must be used. The same way in IT, each of the 3 areas of IT I listed above have their own languages, but to understand the full breadth, depth and scope of IT within a company, you must use and understand all 3 languages.

4. Technology is a tool to be used appropriately, it is not the end. The Minbari are the most technologically advanced of the ‘younger’ races, they live in harmony with their technology. They recognise that technology drives a great many things but also that there are times when technology is not appropriate. People should look to use the right technology to fit their purpose, for example, the Minbari use a fighting staff, the Denn’Bok, to great effect when other races use plasma or laser or projectile based weapons in close quarters. A similar example in IT is the use of administration scripts to quickly pull a snapshot view of things. Like the fighting staff, it is easier than manually finding the information (like fighting with fists) or using a complex monitoring system (like a laser cannon).

5. They do their presenting in the style of a Stand-up/Morning Prayers. Not a big one, but I like the parallel that information is presented, judged and decided upon as a standing exercise.

This is not a perfect analogy and there are places where it lets itself down, mostly because Babylon 5 is a fictional series and we live in the real world which is much more complex and rich in experiences, but I think it works pretty well as a basic illustration. The only problem is finding non-IT people who liked Babylon 5 to try this analogy out on :-)

Let me know what you think in the comments section – I am happy to be told I am completely wrong as long as you offer a counter argument :-)

Category: DevOps, Interesting, Lifestream / Tags: DevOps, SAP, SAP Mentors

#SAPAdmin or #DevOp – either or both

BoobBoo / May 21, 2012 / One comment

My last blog post explored my desire to increase my skill set to become more of a DevOp to help me to support current systems and also the new hybrid architectures which are entering our workplaces. I started a 2nd post to describe to people unfamiliar with DevOps what it is and what it is not – during the post I realised that I should really be describing in terms of #SAPAdmin, hence the title.

#SAPAdmin was 1st described, as far as I am aware, by Tom Cenens as a way of connecting the various Administrators within the SAP community – by reputation we are not the most social of bunches in the world :-). Although it is a great idea, I know that it has not seen as much traction as either Tom, Martin English and I would have liked. I think that part of the problem has been a lack of direction in terms of what it stands for, and I feel that using the core concepts of #DevOps – we can bring that direction and purpose into the #SAPAdmin ethos and provide a more coherent entity for admins to get behind.

So lets get stuck in with a quick breakdown of what #DevOps is and what it is not

1. DevOps is noun which describes a person and a philosophy/methodology of supporting an IT landscape.

As a person, it is an individual who understands both infrastructure and code to enable them to support their applications and also bridge the gaps created by support silos.

As a methodology, it aligns itself with Lean and Agile and so embeds with the smaller team and faster deployment model of projects as opposed to the traditional waterfall life cycle support model.

2. DevOps has a useful memonic – CAMS

Culture – this is critical to the whole thing, the culture of the participating teams must embrace openess
Automation – Why spend an hour on a daily task when you can spend two and have the results e-mailed to you every day
Measurements – how can you improve if you do not measure, everything!
Sharing – why write a script to check if your SAP system is up, go on the internet and find one. If one does not exist, then write it – but you MUST put it on the internet for others to find, pay it forward.

3. DevOps is not about just automation

Although automation plays a massive role in DevOps, through it’s emphasis on Event processing, KPI measurement etc… The real benefit in DevOps is for people to bridge the gaps in the Silos, something Basis admins/consultants traditionally do very well. This does however exact a price upon the practitioner, the requirement to keep learning and keep applying what they have learnt – it does not, will not and cannot stop.

4. DevOps is not a job title

DevOps is way of thinking and working, through sharing and collaboration you and the teams you work with create a culture that brings the best from yourselves and because you share as a team, it enriches the ecosystem in which you work.

5. It is not handing Developer keys to Basis admins, or giving Root access to developers

We each have a skill set with strengths and weaknesses, a DevOp is a person who is an all rounder with most technologies and is able/willing to work in the grey areas to get the work done. So Developers do not usually get Root access without a good reason or the proven ability to actually be trusted. Similarly a Basis admin does not get the right to deploy code to Production for the same reasons and the same validation requirements. DevOps work in the grey spaces between the silos

6. DevOps is not an end run around IT

DevOps is not a way for guerilla IT to enable people to bypass process, I would say that the use of measurement and automation enables IT departments to make better use of it’s information in Structured and Unstructured data sets to create things like Change controls and documentation. You know the things that are necessary to run a good solid service, that take forever to create and get approved and then never really get updated again. DevOps uses the principles of Lean and Agile applies them to process and documentation.

7. DevOps is not a reaction to a technology problem but a business problem

DevOps enable businesses and core IT to move faster in implementing and support technology/applications as quickly as Agile projects deliver them. This is absolutely vital in this age of outsourcing, a good solid DevOps team can run and support a service for a client ensuring that the contextual information that so often gets lost when working remotely is maintained.

We have all seen SAP embrace and encourage the principles of Lean and Agile, providing accelerators and advice to adopters. I believe that this is a great time to start to apply the lessons our organisations have learnt in terms of Agile and Lean projects to our staid and overly complicated silo’d support structures.

As DevOps we have a massive advantage over other software/systems administrators – we have 2 products that are open, extensible, stable and free to build a DevOps service around

Solution Manager 7.1 – the structured data component of the landscape providing all measures and KPIs and something which can be closely aligned to the business and it’s processes
SAP Streamworks – the collaboration tool which through Web Services can/should be able to be extended to work with Solution Manager

Let me know what you think of applying the concepts of DevOps to the SAPAdmin community

Reference Links

What is the DevOps thing anyway

What Devops means to me

DevOps and Agile Operations

What DevOps is not

Category: Cloud, DevOps, Interesting, Lifestream, SAP /

DevOp and why I want to be one

BoobBoo / May 19, 2012 / 6 comments

Over the last year I have had a number of adventures, some good and some bad – but all of them experiences. Last month I read about a term for the 1st time that really spoke to me, it encapsulated a concept which had been brewing in my head for a while – a DevOp, Developer Operator.

In November last year I was in Madrid attending SAP TechEd, and you could not move for people talking about various platforms and Developers being the new kingmakers – being an Basis guy specialising in infrastructure it may have been boring for many people, but for me the lightbulb was turning on. I was very interested in how to connect technologies together, not just how to build the infrastructure and let other people worry about that stuff.

These thoughts fermented a little more, I continued to experiment with Ruby, C# and my Microsoft Kinect – gaining some more skills as time would allow. At Teched I met the excellent James Governor and Tom Rafferty, two analysts from Redmonk who I have a great deal of time and admiration for. After following them on Twitter for a while, I found out about Monkigras, a developer conference in London. I glanced at the attendee list and booked my ticket, paying for it myself as I figured “why would my employer pay for me to go to something so far outside my day job”, took 2 days leave and arranged to stay at my friend’s house.

Despite knowing only 1 other attendee, Monkigras would turn out to be an amazing conference, I heard lots and lots of new words, understood perhaps about 20% of them and had to make copious notes of the others. The thing that I took away from it the most was the developers and APIs are the future, infrastructure is a commodity that just needs to exist – the real value is in the data and it’s manipulation. “It always has been” I hear you cry – well that is correct but instead of putting it into Excel and making stupid graphs or putting it into PowerPoint, lets use applications to perform transformations, link it to other data attributes from another data set through an API and turn it into something amazing – this link is from a speaker who used GitHub and LastFm to create a music map of developers

For me my true love is not code, I like the idea of it and messing with it, but if you tried to get me to write as a job, one of us would be dead in about a week – so I thought some more about what the perfect balance would be. My good friend Simon McCartney came to mind, an exceptional infrastructure administrator and someone who is comfortable working with code, he calls himself a digital carpenter, Hugh MacLeod would call him a digital crofter. The ability to continue to work as an infrastructure person along with the ability to work with scripts and code is a powerful combination which provides a great deal of value to your business and the team.

DevOps Manifesto

We are uncovering better ways of running
systems by doing it and helping others do it.
Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes over tools
Working systems over comprehensive documentation
Customer and developer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on
the right, we value the items on the left more

There are a number of reasons why I am drawn to the way of the DevOp, most of them are encapsulated above, and perhaps I will explore these personal areas in more detail in public and risk the wrath of various people, then again perhaps not. The one of the main attractions being that with shorter life cycles and products becoming easier to deploy, a multi-talented person who is a solid ‘all-rounder’ will be in greater demand than the 2 or 3 niche people you would have hired previously, as software lifecycles are shorter – living with your mistake is not as long as it used to be.

Another thing I like about development, it the ability to do really smart things with data like this visualisation of Facebook relationships – how totally cool is that picture which is derived from the most basis data which can be queried form the Facebook social graph

So for now I am going to continue down the road of becoming a DevOp, taking every opportunity to deploy a code or script solution to improve my effectiveness and provide increased value for my clients.

Ultimately I want to build things, real, virtual and data based. I want those things to mean something, to me and my clients – As Hugh MacLeod would say – I have the Hunger and I am damn well going to use it

Category: Interesting, Lifestream, SAP /

Yet again Amazon Web Services deliver on their promises

BoobBoo / January 11, 2012 / No comments

Today I found that a product I have been hearing whispers and rumours about and was trialled in the US last year is finally with us in the UK, network connectivity using private circuits into specific telecoms centres.

This is a great development as produces 3 main effects

1. Reduced network costs out of AWS, which is valuable for applications with high data requirements

2. More consistent performance for Internet based applications

3. Increases connectivity options for companies that have security policies which do nt allow VPN connections to Cloud services

For me as a consultant for a large SI, this additional connectivity option is a major plus when talking to customers, some of whom have security policies which forbid connections to the Cloud.

The service is not available through the AWS Management Console, an application must be made in a form to AWS – I have no idea how long this process with take, but as it involves actual people I know it will move at the normal speed of Cloud!

Personally I am looking forward to my next partner briefing and hopefully getting a demonstration of this product. In the interim, AWS need to be getting some good collateral out to customers and partners – traditionally AWS have not produced brilliant documentation 1st time out and a service like this needs good solid documentation as it will be used to convince the unconverted.

AWS – I am looking forward to seeing this product in action and implementing it, give us the tools and the documentation to convert the unconverted to use your services.

Category: Cloud, Lifestream, SAP /

Why I am learning to program (again)

BoobBoo / January 10, 2012 / No comments

Well it is the 2nd week in January and for some people the New Years resolutions are slipping, but for many of us there is 1 resolution I hope is not slipping and that is the massive challenge set by many organisations like CodeAcademy to learn a new computer language this year.

I made the decision upon my return from TechEd in November to learn 2 new languages - Ruby and C#. The turning point for me was I suppose threefold

1. I wanted greater flexibility in managing my Cloud environments – I knew VBScript and could use that, but I fancied a little bit more of a challenge. Ruby is a flexible, powerful and concise scripted language, it is also cross platform which helps!

2. I had an idea for a Kinect application for Solution Manager, the SDK for the Kinect uses either C++ or C# so I needed to use one of them

3. Being able to interact with the vast world of web services and APIs to do things in a more structured and less manual way

I would put Owen Pettiford great blog on why “Developers are the new king makers” – a great blog with a powerful message.

I picked 2 languages, Ruby and C# because they are both important in the wider world and because they are fundamentally different.

Ruby is a Scripting language, which means it is compiled at runtime, meaning that changes can be performed between executions without needing to be recompiled. It is a very lightweight and scalable language, which when used as Ruby on Rails is the basis of many web applications. So through knowing Ruby and some Rails, I would be able to interact programmatically with many web sites, web services and APIs. Importantly, Ruby is considered an Edge component of SAP PaaS platforms, so knowing Ruby would help me to take advantage of PaaS services.

C# is a compiled language, which means that it is compiled at design time and often runs faster as the compilation overhead is removed. C# is a Microsoft language which forms a key part of the .Net framework, as Microsoft is a major SAP partner and many external interfaces and user interactions are through Microsoft – eg Duet Enterprise, Sharepoint, BizTalk. Knowing C# would help me to adapt and understand many of the new technologies coming from SAP and Microsoft – like the Kinect. C# is also not that far removed from Java, so any delta training required should be a little easier.

I know I would struggle to learn two languages at the same time and do my day job, so I have concentrated on Ruby as it appears to have a faster pay off to effort ratio – which will keep me interested and also provide me with value which I can put back into my day job. It will also get me back into OO programming, something I have not looked at since my Computer Graphics days in University.

Hopefully many of you are also taking on the CodeAcademy challenge to get t grips with programming, and I hope you succeed at it because there is a world of data out there. Human beings are producing more data in 1 year than previously existed in all the combined previous years. So being able to work with it, manipulate it and use it to do amazing things is paramount to not being held hostage by others who can do it.

Category: Capgemini, Cloud, Lifestream, Project Stuff /

SAP in IaaS Cloud environments – why are they so difficult to manage

BoobBoo / October 30, 2011 / No comments

Having worked with SAP landscapes in various IaaS platforms, I have come to a disturbing conclusion – they are damn hard to keep control of and manage on a medium to long term basis. This has become something of an elephant in the room for many of us Cloud evangelists, but I feel that it is something that must be addressed in order to allow Cloud environments to progress from great finite lifespan systems to systems that are fully integrated into normal landscapes. discussed below are some of the major challenges that can effect Cloud projects/implementations.

Flexibility

It is one of the biggest selling points of IaaS environments is the level of flexibility that they provide. Through this flexibility, we have the ability to do things like

Cloning systems – creating clones of systems is as easy as a few mouse clicks, similarly creating instances from these clones is just as easy. This is a double edged sword as creating snapshots of instances requires additional storage, which needs monitored, managed and paid for. By creating a clone, we have doubled the amount of resources being used, if we then create an instance from that clone, we have now tripled the amount of resources being used. As you can see it is very easy to increase the amount of resources being charged for by the IaaS provider.

Allocate new infrastructure – creating/allocating new infrastructure is deceptively easy, this is because although it is easy to create an additional 100Gb volume – it requires discipline/processes to make sure it is labelled and catalogued properly to ease administration. The diagram below shows the nightmare that can be unleashed through a lack of discipline.

The graphs below show the growth month by month of the number of volumes against the number of servers of an implementation I managed recently. In July and August, the system was implemented and stable, in Sept it underwent some DR testing which increased the number of servers and the number of volumes. Despite this testing being complete in October, the number of volumes has not returned to the baseline, in fact it is not even close – even though the number of servers has dropped to baseline.

The graph below shows in more detail the spread between those volumes which are Available and those In-Use, this confirms that in October the number of volumes which were not attached to servers increased. This indicates that although the servers were terminated, people are not deleting the associated storage – because “you never know if you’ll reuse it”.

Create new snapshots – snapshots are the “get out of jail free” card of data backups, most IaaS platforms have native snapshot capability which can be used as a replacement for normal backup applications. Although these like backup media need to managed and aged properly to make sure that backup snapshots do not become en exponential mess. Like the diagram above, this ease of creation means that people performing any changes will snapshot a volume ‘just in case’ something goes wrong.

Security

Security has been and continues to be a worry for some on IaaS platforms, and in my opinion a little unfairly. Many service providers provide deep and granular controls of their services, for example Amazon has the IAM, which provides granular security. Within the AWS platform, each user gets a log on for the AWS console as well as an X509 certificate for signing web service calls. This X509 certificate can be used by any 3rd party application or service and maintains the permissions defined by the IAM. Often people focus on the platform security issues without talking about the security of the OS and application layers, it is easy to hypothesize why this might be the case and many articles have been written to compare IaaS security with on-premise security. Due to the self-service nature of IaaS providers, their desire to make security as easy as possible and the “Jack of all trades – Master of none” approach taken by many IaaS practitioners, it is understandable why companies and people are wary of it. In order to provide good assurances, IaaS platform security must provide auditing and inspection of configuration using existing deployed toolsets, otherwise the security which is not transparent will never be fully trusted.

Operations

In order to move IaaS landscapes from temporary/finite systems to systems that are properly integrated into landscapes, they need to be able to be managed in the same way. This includes tasks like –

Backups – although it is possible to use the native snapshot ability on data volumes, this is not a great solution. This is because ageing the snapshots is difficult but not impossible, take a look at a service called Skeddly.com, this allows you to age and delete snapshots on a scheduled basis. For many operations people, using a proper managed and integrated backup product is still the right way to go.

Startup/Shutdown – in order to achieve the savings quoted by many people, systems should be run only for the periods for which they are required. This means that instances need to be started and stopped according to a defined schedule, for example my own template systems run between 6am and 10pm. In order to achieve this something needs to run the start and stop scripts, two options exist

Run a single instance 24*7 to run command line tools to start and stop the other instances – this goes against the principle of what we want to achieve but it can be used for other purposes as well.

Use a web based service to start and stop the instances remotely, for me this is an attractive option and I have used a service called Skeddly.com to perform scheduled actions on my AWS EC2 landscape.

Management tools

The biggest bug bear I and anyone I have spoken to has, is the lack of a toolset which captures and enables system owners and maintainers to quickly and easily find out how every resource is connected and utilised. All the information is present in every management interface provided, but in every one of them I have used, all the infrastructure components are on different pages – see the diagram below.

As you can see from above, I can see the status of all my instances, but if I want to see all the volumes attached I need to go to a different page. This assumes that I have correctly populated the Meta-Data tags from the instances page so I can determine what each volume is attached to (see volume storage nightmare picture above)

Several people have suggested a number of applications like Chef or Puppet, which I have not had a chance to deploy as they are quite outside my core area of expertise – but I do know that Rightscale uses Chef to manage customers’ infrastructures.

Ultimately, Cloud environments will always walk the fine line between flexibility and uncontrollability. This is simply because if it was easy to provide a simple, flexible and controllable service all host providers and data centres would have them. In order to maximise the benefits of IaaS, there needs to be a clear consensus between the business and IT to define what they want from each system. This will enable IT to create a flexible wrapper round these systems to provide solid management without too much overhead. The really good IT departments will drive this work themselves and automate as much as possible so they can drive their own efficiencies whilst still serving the business. The explosion of IaaS services is partly because businesses got tired of IT departments telling them ‘No’ or it’ll take 4 weeks to create that 10Gb volume.

Category: Capgemini, Cloud, Lifestream /

Landscape and Virtualisation Manager concerns

BoobBoo / October 26, 2011 / No comments

Last week I received some disturbing news about the license model of the new Landscape and Virtualisation Manager (LVM) which is entering Ramp-Up in November, before I get to the news I received lets look at what the LVM is.

The LVM is a new product from SAP which is the replacement for the Adaptive Computing Controller (ACC), the new LVM has increased capabilities over and above the ACC – for example the LVM has the ability to script and execute system copies automatically, it has dashboards and lots of management capability of physical, virtual and (hopefully soon) Cloud environments.

The LVM is, for me, one of the most exciting SAP products coming out in the next year, it effectively ‘closes the circle’ of the SAP technical administration tools – Landscape Management Database, SMSY (System Landscape) and System Landscape Directory.

By ‘closing the circle’ in terms of Technical administration I mean, the ability to have multiple sources of information cross-feeding each other efficiently providing a single version of the truth for each of the administration applications

LMDB – Analogous to the SLD, it provides many of the same functions and synchronises directly with SMSY

SLD – Provides information on each registered system, providing software component and patch levels.

SMSY – This is the central hub of all information in Solution Manager, everything that is associated with a system gets it’s information from here

LVM – Provides dashboards, control capabilities for instances like start/stop or relocate

During Teched Bangalore, a colleague of mine was attending a Virtualisation session, during this session it was mentioned that the LVM will be a licensed product and will not be provided as part of the SAP license like Solution Manager. This to me was a vey strange statement as it was always my understanding that the LVM, like the ACC would be provided as part of the SAP License and would be available to all for download. For me, not providing it in this fashion would be a bad idea for the following reasons

1. No-one will use it.

The ACC has taken many years to get to where it is today, and it is a far more useable product in the last 2 versions that it ever was before. Still there has not been great uptake for it with customers, again for a number of reasons (integration with SolMan being one of them), but at least the ACC was free, this encouraged people to use it, even if was a skunk works project by the Basis team after seeing it demonstrated. If you make people pay for it, and get the price wrong then you alienate your market. Also how do you really quantify the ROI in saving the Basis team nearly an hour when doing a kernel upgrade across 15 servers. SAP have been promising for years to make administration easier to reduce TCO etc…, now that they have delivered tools like Solution Manager 7.1, the LMDB and the LVM, those statements have never looked so attractive or achievable.

2. It will not function within the partner ecosystem

One of the key selling points for LVM is both the extensibility of the product to link up with different infrastructures (see top diagram), it will not replace your Tivoli or HP equivalent, but work with them in a push/pull fashion. Partners will provide good resources if there is a demand from customers, they will just provide plain resources if it’s contractual. If no-one uses the product, then SAP can expect to see poor partner development of add-ons for the product which would make it a killer application.

3. Value proposition disappears

One of the many things that SAP have touted within the LVM is the ability to run system copies and refreshes, for this capability there was an expectation of paying for a license – which was reasonable. The main value proposition is that by using LVM, and with it’s tight integration into all the landscape management components mentioned above, the whole management of the pre, during and post tasks was infinitely simpler. If the whole LVM incurs a license fee, and the partner ecosystem falters, then the 3rd party tools, which handle more than just SAP start to look attractive again and SAP will have developed a smart application which no-one uses.

Today I have a call with SAP to get to the bottom of this and hopefully I will be happy, although probably under NDA so will not be able to write about it until ramp up. Regardless of what SAP are going to do with the product, I would strongly urge you to look at the product – it is a great piece of technology and does ‘close the circle’ on technical administration. If SAP treat it right and nurture both it’s partners and the ecosystem, then LVM can grow into a cornerstone product for SAP applications, if SAP treats it’s customers as a way to make a fast buck out of licenses then SAP will have wasted both money and brownie points with the #sapadmin community. SAP will have pods for the LVM at Madrid and also check out session TEC120 for more information.

Category: Capgemini, Cloud, Lifestream, SAP /

Identity or Identification

BoobBoo / September 18, 2011 / No comments

I was recently asked by a friend why my nickname was BoobBoo, I explained that it was a long story which would take a while to explain – she then remarked that perhaps it was time for a change, which I thought was a little unusual but let it simmer a while in my head. BoobBoo is a name I have been known as for about 15 years now, it started as a bit of a joke but as the years have gone on, it has become a very clear part of who I am – I have attached an identity to it.

This concept is very important when thinking about how people are identified in both their real life and their online life, something that has become very important with the whole Google+ real name fiasco. For me identity and identification are two different things both semantically and spiritually. Identity is a name or title that you place upon yourself, an identification is the name or title that someone associates with an object based upon it’s characteristics – they are not mutually exclusive. I have several identities in my life, if you look at my biography, I am husband, a son, a brother, an in-law, an uncle etc… within all of these identities I have two names, Chris and BoobBoo. Granted most people I know call me Chris when we are talking in person and BoobBoo when communicating online, but for me there is no difference as I am the same person within both realms of my life. Although for people like Google this is not the natural state of affairs for online identities, I have looked at the arguements for why they are pursuing this line of thinking, I think they are dead wrong and below are some reasons why I think they are.

1. Anonymity encourages people to act in ways they would not do if their identity was known – I assume that means people are emboldened by the fact that people do not know who they are and so can say or post things that will cause harm or offence to others which they would never have the stones to say if their actual name was attached to it. I actually see some logic in this, but ultimately a lot of people who have built an identity around their online life have basically been told that your name – your identity online is less important than your real-life one, which is surprising as people are spending so much time linking both of them!

2. You should have a centrally controlled identity which will identify you to online goods and services -this follows on from the 1st point, if Google, Apple and Amazon are going to get into the banking or money business then they need to be able to identify who you are. This is a vital part of any business transaction, the ability of both parties to be able to trust each other to honour a contract, if they cannot be trusted then there can be no contract. As a human being, knowing the identity of the other party is important as, for many, it forms the basis of trust. It is an interesting fact that I can have as many identities as I want, for example I can obtain a credit card in the name of Dr John Kernaghan. If I am not using the identity to defraud someone, then I call myself anything I want and obtain money, credit, good and services, it is up to the issuer if they want to trust me as that identity. I have traded with Amazon and E-bay for over 10 years as BoobBoo, and sent packages all over the world and paid with many different methods not always in my name but each transaction has been honoured by both parties – surely that counts for something.

Ultimately I am identified by government documentation, like my biometric passport or my driving license, which I cannot legally obtain in any other name. According to Google, my name, something I did not choose is to become my complete identity managed by a private company with whom I hold no real social contract, something that is going to become less equitable to users given Sony’s gambit to change it’s T&Cs so that people who opt-in will loose the ability to take legal action against them if Sony is hacked again and that precious identification data is lost to hackers, I suspect that soon other online service providers will change their T&Cs to match. I cannot blame them, these companies are always under attack by people to gain personal details of their users and like counter-terrorist organisations, they have to be lucky all the time – the hackers only need to be lucky once.

So where has all this left us, I am secure that I have many identities and have 2 names with which I live my life and I try to live my life equally and with the same rules independent of the medium. Companies like Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon are desperate to capture your social graph, which will eventually morph into your identity graph. They want data to ensure they can target you as accurately as a Tomahawk Cruise missile targets enemy infrastructure and in order to link that data to you they have to be able to identify you, and the easiest way to do that is to tie your characteristics to a single identity. It feels like analog thinking in a digital world, which I think might be generous – deep down I think it is small minded and petty for someone to think they can tell me to chose my identity especially when they want me to trust them with that identity without a social contract that has penalties for each participant.

Category: Interesting, Lifestream /

What can you do to keep up with TechEd Las Vegas when you cannot be there

BoobBoo / September 12, 2011 / No comments

Last week Thorsten Franz (@thorstenster) wrote about why he attends SAP TechEd at every opportunity, after reading it I thought 2 things,

1. I am jealous as hell that my SAP Mentor brothers and sisters are out in Vegas and I am not there,

2. No-one has talked about how those of us left behind can take part in SAP Teched – so here we are.

In recent years, SAP has embraced the social aspects of conferences using YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, which I love, it shows how much SAP has changed and wants to engage with it’s customers – getting them to listen is still a challenge but they’ll have the conversation. I remember last year when I went to Las Vegas and was contacted by Gunther Schmatzalf through the social connections provided by the TechEd website, it was a productive meeting and completely facilitated by social media.

In addition to all the social connection stuff, SAP also stream a great many sessions online, so for those of us left at home we can watch the sessions on-line (Virtual SAPTeched) – it remains to be seen as to whether people will be able to ask questions in the same way they were for the Virtualisation week in April, but I will be hoping.

For me I will be taking part in TechEd as much as possible, being in the UK the time zones play into my favour as many of the sessions will be at the backend of my business day so I can usually watch them in peace. Also I will be keeping up with my friends at TechEd using twitter and e-mail, during the week ASUG produced a great list of the best people to follow on Twitter for TechEd Insights (ASUG News.) As usual there will be a lot of hashtags to follow on Twitter, this link will show you the major hashtags, and there will be some unofficial hashtags used between friends which can yield some very good information too

Like all things, you will get as much out of it as you put into it, the information and session information is out there it is up to you to make the effort to string it all together and get the information from it. So good luck and happy engaging :-)

Category: SAP / Tags: SAP, SAP Mentors, TechED11

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