Systems automation and orchestration
Get expert guidance and practitioner-written tutorials to improve your organization's automation and orchestration processes, offering advice for beginners and pros alike.
Top Stories
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Tip
16 May 2025
How DEX metrics help build a better digital workplace
Learn how IT teams can use digital employee experience metrics to uncover hidden friction, prioritize fixes and better align tech deployments with evolving user needs. Continue Reading
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Feature
12 May 2025
How digital employee experience strategy drives productivity
Digital employee experience is an often-overlooked driver of productivity and retention. Learn why DEX matters and how to make it a strategic advantage. Continue Reading
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News
21 Jan 2021
Flush with funds, rising DevSecOps vendor reveals roadmap
Lacework has a fresh $525 million to help develop its machine learning-driven DevSecOps product, which integrates into CI/CD pipelines. CEO Dan Hubbard reveals his expansion plans. Continue Reading
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Tip
19 Jan 2021
Evaluate Spinnaker vs. Jenkins for CI/CD
Jenkins is one of the most popular CI/CD tools available, but Spinnaker enables IT teams to manage complex pipelines. Is one better than the other, or should 'vs.' be swapped with 'and'? Continue Reading
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Tip
12 Jan 2021
Explore Bottlerocket's benefits and limitations
Everything has pros and cons, but the question is whether the good outweighs the bad. Evaluate what Bottlerocket has to offer, and how it compares to Alpine Linux as a container OS. Continue Reading
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News
06 Jan 2021
GrubHub's infrastructure-as-code feeds pandemic resiliency
GrubHub SREs fostered more consistent deployment patterns for resources such as DNS and AWS load balancers with a move to self-service infrastructure-as-code tools for DevOps teams last year. Continue Reading
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Tip
22 Dec 2020
How AI in the help desk transforms IT support
For IT help desk staff, it should no longer be a question of whether AI will transform their jobs -- but when. Prepare for changes around ticket workflows, troubleshooting and more. Continue Reading
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Feature
18 Dec 2020
ITSM and DevOps don't have to be at odds
Is it possible for ITSM and DevOps to coexist within the same organization? It is, but it raises plenty of questions about how and whether they are a good fit. Continue Reading
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News
17 Dec 2020
DevSecOps pros struggle with tech changes, top-down mandates
Upper management's rising interest in DevSecOps raises the stakes for IT pros as they contend with rapidly evolving cloud-native apps. Continue Reading
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News
16 Dec 2020
SolarWinds attack stumps SecOps experts
An attack on U.S. government agencies via vendor software updates illuminates a SecOps frontier where users must figure out how to reliably evaluate third-party dependencies. Continue Reading
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Tip
15 Dec 2020
An overview of Apache Airflow for workflow management
This introductory look at Apache Airflow walks through some of the basics of the workflow management tool -- from installation steps to its various GUI options. Continue Reading
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Tip
03 Dec 2020
How and why to create an SRE error budget
No IT service is completely immune to disruption. A realistic error budget is a powerful way to set up a service for success. Continue Reading
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Tip
25 Nov 2020
Notable benefits of private cloud for IT ops staff
Deploying a private cloud could provide more benefits than drawbacks -- although it certainly carries both. Know the specific implications of private cloud on IT ops staff. Continue Reading
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Tip
24 Nov 2020
Infrastructure as code principles: How IaC works and how to use it
What are the most important things to know about infrastructure as code if you're going to implement it? Follow these guidelines to build a solid IaC foundation. Continue Reading
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News
24 Nov 2020
IT governance must catch up with DevSecOps, experts say
Government and financial services organizations that practice DevSecOps say IT governance must evolve to keep up through faster, automated control pipelines. Continue Reading
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Tip
23 Nov 2020
How to apologize for server outages and keep users happy
Nobody panic: The servers are down. How IT communicates an issue often means more to users than resolution speed. An admission of struggle is more forgivable than silence. Continue Reading
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Feature
20 Nov 2020
The evolution and history of software configuration management
IT and software configuration management challenge tech professionals. It's been that way for decades, and best practices continue to evolve. Continue Reading
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News
20 Nov 2020
GitOps pros grapple with Kubernetes configuration management
Configuration management challenges GitOps early adopters, especially at large enterprises with millions of lines of Kubernetes YAML to manage. Continue Reading
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Tip
20 Nov 2020
These IT automation scripts take little effort and save a lot of work
Doing some IT tasks by hand is doing them wrong. Whether to provision components, research an issue or report on performance, IT automation scripts are powerful and easy to write. Continue Reading
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Tip
18 Nov 2020
A production deployment checklist for enterprise apps
The more complex an app gets, the more complex production deployment becomes. Split the process into these nine areas to streamline team communication and tasks. Continue Reading
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News
17 Nov 2020
Puppet sets sights on unified IT automation platform, IPO
An integrated Puppet IT automation platform that runs on Kubernetes will accompany an IPO for Puppet Labs in 2021, as the company aims to update its image for the cloud-native era. Continue Reading
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News
10 Nov 2020
Atlassian ITSM challenges ServiceNow with DevOps focus
Cloud customers of Atlassian's Jira Service Management will get some Opsgenie incident management features included at no cost, as the vendor plans its ITSM expansion. Continue Reading
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Tip
10 Nov 2020
Automate these DevOps tasks for maximum productivity
DevOps is hard work, but only upfront. The goal -- once teams build a pipeline and set up automation -- is to stand aside and watch the builds flow through. Continue Reading
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Feature
09 Nov 2020
Infrastructure as code benefits and DevOps use cases
Code flexibility, automation and security top the list of reasons to use IaC for DevOps use cases. But without careful management, they can quickly present problems. Continue Reading
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Tip
04 Nov 2020
Write a software deployment plan under these guidelines
A successful and comprehensive software deployment plan includes many moving pieces. But don't panic -- here are the key aspects to consider. Continue Reading
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News
27 Oct 2020
HashiCorp Nomad 1.0 expands monitoring polish, autoscaling
HashiCorp Nomad has been used in production before its 1.0 release, but its rapid development this year makes it applicable to a wider variety of uses. Continue Reading
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News
23 Oct 2020
HashiCorp Consul Terraform Sync creates coveted connection
HashiCorp Consul and Terraform can now sync for network infrastructure automation, a sought-after connection some users had previously tried to cobble together themselves. Continue Reading
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News
20 Oct 2020
Atlassian cloud shift quickens with Data Center price hikes
Atlassian's on-premises customer base has expressed alarm at the company's plans to discontinue Server licenses and make major Data Center price increases. Continue Reading
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Tip
20 Oct 2020
Infrastructure as code examples for DevOps, cloud deployments
Administrators can use infrastructure as code to consistently manage a distributed set of resources. Follow these four examples to get started, and explore common IaC tool choices. Continue Reading
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News
15 Oct 2020
HashiCorp wades into continuous delivery with Waypoint
HashiCorp launched another new open source project this week, this time a continuous delivery utility called Waypoint, which IT pros hope will simplify DevOps deployments. Continue Reading
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Tip
06 Oct 2020
How to start DevOps: A step-by-step guide
DevOps can be a grand departure from an IT organization's status quo. Follow these seven basic steps for a phased transition that staff will champion. Continue Reading
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News
30 Sep 2020
VMware Tanzu Kubernetes strategy hits integration milestone
VMware follows competitors in shipping a fully integrated Kubernetes infrastructure package, but vSphere tie-ins and a strong AWS partnership will bolster its enterprise appeal. Continue Reading
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News
29 Sep 2020
VMware buys SaltStack for security, configuration management
The acquisition of SaltStack will help VMware build event-driven security automation and configuration management into vRealize Automation, as open source Salt gains VMware's backing. Continue Reading
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News
24 Sep 2020
Jenkins CI/CD roadmap plots a path toward GitOps
Open source Jenkins now has a public roadmap, which shows plans to address user experience issues, at a time when enterprise IT pros favor 'everything as code' to foster GitOps. Continue Reading
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Feature
24 Sep 2020
3 key ways DevOps benefits a business
DevOps adoption can strain an organization. Is it worth the effort? Here's what a business should expect to gain when implementing DevOps and continuous delivery. Continue Reading
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News
22 Sep 2020
CloudBees revises software delivery management plan, pricing
CloudBees has pledged to roll out software delivery management modules by the end of the year and answered calls to adjust CloudBees CD pricing. Continue Reading
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Tip
15 Sep 2020
How to manage technical debt in IT organizations
"Debt" is a scary word even without "technical" before it. We can't help you with dollars and cents, but we can share what IT technical debt is and how to create a debt reduction plan. Continue Reading
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News
08 Sep 2020
Progress Software battles legacy rep amid Chef Software buy
Progress Software, a 40-year-old tech company, will mix Chef products into its portfolio of acquisitions, as both seek to keep up with rapid changes in IT automation. Continue Reading
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Video
31 Aug 2020
Try out an Ansible dry run in under 5 minutes
Learn how the dry run tests Ansible configurations without making any accidental changes to the IT environment. This tutorial covers the steps in less time than it takes to make coffee. Continue Reading
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Feature
24 Aug 2020
Overcome these 5 DevOps challenges
DevOps adoption isn't easy, but the results are worth it. Learn how to collaborate, cooperate and coordinate with better organization and DevOps tooling. Continue Reading
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News
19 Aug 2020
GitOps gains momentum among Kubernetes deployment tools
The growing popularity of Kubernetes GitOps tools reflects increasing cloud-native maturity and complexity among enterprise shops such as American Express. Continue Reading
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Tutorial
19 Aug 2020
Use Pulumi and Azure DevOps to deploy infrastructure as code
Follow this tutorial for an overview of Pulumi, an IaC tool, within the Azure DevOps toolchain, and how to use them together to define, build, test and deploy infrastructure. Continue Reading
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News
14 Aug 2020
Slack integrations to form alternate UI for Atlassian tools
Atlassian plans to make Slack a full alternative interface for its software development and incident response tools, including single sign-on features. Continue Reading
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News
12 Aug 2020
Terraform Cloud adds enterprise support, usage-based pricing
Terraform Cloud's new Business tier is a sign of what's to come for both Terraform Enterprise and IT ops teams overwhelmed with tools to manage, industry analysts say. Continue Reading
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News
07 Aug 2020
Value stream management tames DevOps chaos at Eli Lilly
The pharma firm straightened out disorganized DevOps processes, which now include data management for COVID-19 clinical trials, with a Plutora value stream management tool. Continue Reading
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Tip
06 Aug 2020
How Kubernetes enhances DevOps practices
Kubernetes isn't necessary for DevOps, and you don't need a DevOps team to adopt Kubernetes container management. But, here are all the ways that these two are better together. Continue Reading
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News
05 Aug 2020
DevOps pipeline consolidation continues among CI/CD tools
Bespoke DevOps pipelines are becoming a thing of the past as specialist vendors such as Harness and Drone.io merge to compete with large platform vendors. Continue Reading
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News
29 Jul 2020
Styra policy builder eases access to IT compliance as code
Styra's Rego Policy Builder guides novice users through the process of rendering OPA policies, part of the vendor's push to broaden the audience for its commercial software. Continue Reading
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Tip
27 Jul 2020
How to use PowerShell in CI/CD pipelines
PowerShell has many uses in CI/CD pipelines. Before DevOps teams dive in, they need to grasp the automation tool's scope, from cloud management to infrastructure testing. Continue Reading
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Answer
22 Jul 2020
When to use canary vs. blue/green vs. rolling deployment
App deployment strategies such as rolling updates and blue/green environments help IT organizations manage change with minimal risk. See which strategy fits your application. Continue Reading
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Tip
08 Jul 2020
Choose the best programming language for DevOps workflows
DevOps is a rapidly evolving set of technologies and practices; choosing the right programming language -- or languages -- makes a big difference in terms of functionality, efficiency and speed. Continue Reading
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News
25 Jun 2020
Puppet unveils event-driven IT automation plans
Puppet's IT automation system Relay, now in beta, offers an event-driven take on IT workflows, but the vendor must clearly establish the product's value over competing DevOps systems. Continue Reading
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News
24 Jun 2020
HashiCorp Terraform beta brings long-awaited features
Terraform 0.13, recently released to public beta, includes support for complex infrastructure deployments that users have eagerly awaited. Continue Reading
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News
22 Jun 2020
HashiCorp shops hope new Consul service comes at lower cost
Multi-cloud hosted services planned for HashiCorp products, including Consul, Vault and Nomad, would reduce IT ops overhead, users say, but prices must be affordable. Continue Reading
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News
11 Jun 2020
DevOps pros rethink cloud cost with continuous delivery tool
Cloud cost management is a new task for developers under DevOps, and a continuous delivery add-on presents a new way to show them infrastructure inefficiencies. Continue Reading
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News
02 Jun 2020
Atlassian takes on DevOps pipeline tools integration
Pre-built hooks between Atlassian DevOps tools are in demand among IT teams that must manage an overwhelming number of cross-functional projects and vendor products. Continue Reading
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News
02 Jun 2020
Chef software broadens scope amid IT automation disruption
Chef seeks a new niche as IT automation shifts toward Kubernetes and cloud-native tools, but IT pros have many options, with some more appealing than Chef in high-scale scenarios. Continue Reading
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Video
26 May 2020
Implement compliance-as-code with this Chef InSpec tutorial
Rather than rely on manual compliance checks, IT admins can use Chef InSpec to automate the process. Watch this brief video to learn essential InSpec commands and run some practice scans. Continue Reading
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Photo Story
22 May 2020
5 IT automation examples that ops teams should implement today
IT automation use cases are plentiful and highly variegated -- but organizations should emphasize these five examples in their roadmaps. Continue Reading
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News
13 May 2020
VMware Tanzu seeks IT attention with Kubernetes security buy
VMware buys Octarine for security cred in a crowded Kubernetes management market, but some VMware shops will shift to SaaS apps rather than deal with container infrastructure. Continue Reading
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Tutorial
13 May 2020
A Terraform Registry tutorial to build and share modules
Before IT teams share Terraform modules through the tool's public registry, they must familiarize themselves with these prerequisites and technical steps. Continue Reading
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Tutorial
11 May 2020
A Kubernetes namespaces tutorial to manage cluster resources
Namespaces in Kubernetes serve several purposes -- from allowing teams to share a single cluster to enforcing resource quotas. Use this tutorial to get started with this important Kubernetes feature. Continue Reading
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News
08 May 2020
Puppet Labs CTO eyes IT automation amid COVID-19
An entirely new executive leadership team is the latest of several upheavals at Puppet Labs over the last four years, but CTO Abby Kearns says there's a clearer path ahead in 2020. Continue Reading
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Tutorial
08 May 2020
Create an AKS cluster with this Ansible and Kubernetes tutorial
IT admins familiar with Ansible can use the configuration management tool, alongside Azure Cloud Shell, to spin up a Kubernetes cluster in AKS. Continue Reading
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Opinion
05 May 2020
Remote work technologies to account for in 2020 IT budgets
In light of a crisis like COVID-19, IT organizations must amend their budgets to invest in technologies that can support remote access and foster employee collaboration. Continue Reading
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Tip
30 Apr 2020
Reduce IT burdens, costs with on-premises storage as a service
Most organizations automatically associate storage as a service with the cloud -- but emerging, on-premises STaaS offerings can benefit IT ops and the business just as much, if not more. Continue Reading
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Feature
29 Apr 2020
Lean on these core Ansible features for IT automation success
These six articles break down Ansible playbooks, roles and other key concepts for IT pros who are new to the tool -- or could benefit from a refresher. Continue Reading
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News
23 Apr 2020
Infrastructure-as-code competitor challenges Terraform
Pulumi 2.0 ratchets up the heat on HashiCorp's rival Terraform IaC tool, adding policy as code, test automation and secrets management features to its mainstream language support. Continue Reading
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Tip
17 Apr 2020
Anticipate the unexpected with application capacity planning
Disasters and crises that disrupt daily routines are inevitable. Follow these app capacity guidelines to prepare IT teams for such events and maintain business capabilities. Continue Reading
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Tip
08 Apr 2020
4 components of a disaster recovery plan to prepare for a crisis
IT teams must take a proactive approach to crisis management and disaster recovery. Use these four guidelines around communication, monitoring and more to build a plan that works. Continue Reading
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News
03 Apr 2020
As Atlassian cloud push ramps up, users assess migration
Atlassian's cloud products offer sought-after enterprise features and extend integrations, but some organizations will still struggle to transition from its on-premises tools. Continue Reading
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News
03 Apr 2020
SysAid announces launch of new workflow tool, Workflow Designer
Workflow Designer uses a drag-and-drop process to make workflows easier to create with less training and can be crucial with the rise of employees working from home. Continue Reading
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News
02 Apr 2020
IT service desks rush to support remote work amid pandemic
IT service desks bore the brunt of the sudden transition from centralized business locations to remote work for most white-collar employees, as COVID-19 forced social distancing. Continue Reading
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Tip
30 Mar 2020
What to expect as AI for DevOps advances in the enterprise
While still an emerging practice, the use of artificial intelligence in DevOps shops will have major implications on monitoring, cost optimization and more. Continue Reading
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Feature
27 Mar 2020
Walk through 5 common PowerShell uses for IT ops teams
PowerShell use cases have expanded past Microsoft's original design -- but IT automation is still at the tool's core, whether it's to support an AIOps strategy or monitor server performance. Continue Reading
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News
25 Mar 2020
HashiCorp Nomad vs. Kubernetes matchup intensifies with 0.11
HashiCorp Nomad may not overtake Kubernetes but could capture broader enterprise attention with container-like orchestration features for legacy apps in VMs. Continue Reading
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News
20 Mar 2020
Las Vegas shores up SecOps with multi-factor authentication
AI-driven SecOps tools spared Las Vegas from a major data breach in January. The city now bets that two-factor authentication can stop future attempts. Continue Reading
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News
18 Mar 2020
IBM officially supports Red Hat Ansible for mainframe DevOps
IBM will support mainframe DevOps through mainstream distributed systems tools such as Red Hat Ansible and Jenkins, even when it has equivalent mainframe-specific products. Continue Reading
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Tip
13 Mar 2020
3 ways IT teams can use PowerShell in AI initiatives
As they embark on AIOps strategies, IT admins -- particularly those in Windows shops -- can lean on a familiar tool for data gathering and issue remediation: PowerShell. Continue Reading
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News
11 Mar 2020
Continuous delivery pipeline transforms hotel chain's IT ops
As Choice Hotels moved away from homegrown scripting tools for continuous delivery, it fundamentally shifted the daily duties of its IT ops teams. Continue Reading
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Video
11 Mar 2020
Follow this Ansible Vault example for encryption best practices
IT admins can choose between two types of encryption methods when they use Ansible Vault: file-level and variable-level. Walk through each model with this brief video. Continue Reading
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News
06 Mar 2020
Istio service mesh revamp may ease use, or sow confusion
Istio 1.5 reworks a microservices-based control plane into a monolith as the service mesh project seeks to simplify management and improve performance. Continue Reading
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Tip
03 Mar 2020
Build a SaaS disaster recovery plan for IT automation tools
While cloud-based IT automation software offers speed and flexibility, it poses the same potential risk of other hosted tools: a loss of availability during an outage. Continue Reading
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Tip
26 Feb 2020
Why to use staging environments for IT infrastructure testing
A well-built and efficient staging environment pays off in a more stable production deployment. For this reason, IT ops teams should perform isolated infrastructure tests in staging. Continue Reading
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News
26 Feb 2020
JFrog touts DevSecOps edge in CI/CD tools
JFrog hops aboard a crowded CI/CD bandwagon, but its expertise in artifact and package management could appeal to security-conscious DevOps shops. Continue Reading
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Feature
25 Feb 2020
Put these Terraform best practices into action
Terraform enables IT teams to complete a range of tasks, from deployment to multi-cloud management. Apply this collection of best practices to get started with, or optimize your use of, the IaC tool. Continue Reading
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Tip
24 Feb 2020
IT tool selection criteria to guide emerging tech navigation
The IT industry is almost always in flux. For organizations to keep up, they must invest in the right tools, which takes asking the right questions. Continue Reading
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News
21 Feb 2020
Massive DoD DevSecOps standards push may aid enterprise IT
The CNCF, defense contractors and IT vendors have joined forces with the Department of Defense to establish NIST security standards and best practices for DevSecOps. Continue Reading
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News
21 Feb 2020
GKE Application Manager does GitOps for Kubernetes config
GKE Application Manager, rolled out in beta this week, bakes in an open source Kubernetes configuration management tool to simplify application deployments to GKE. Continue Reading
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News
14 Feb 2020
Chef IT automation invigorates legacy apps amid cloud surge
Chef Software's Habitat tool carved out a niche as it matured, among enterprise IT pros tasked with modernizing legacy data center apps. Continue Reading
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Tutorial
07 Feb 2020
Visual Studio Code vs. the native console for PowerShell debugging
Unsure whether to debug a PowerShell script in Visual Studio Code or the PowerShell console? Follow this tutorial to make the decision a little easier. Continue Reading
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News
06 Feb 2020
Enterprise service management blurs business, IT operations
IT-style automated workflows are expanding to non-IT departments, even as business initiatives fuse with software projects. IT ops will support both, often with the same toolset. Continue Reading
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Tip
29 Jan 2020
3 ways to react to an IT system failure avalanche
In complex IT infrastructures, a system or resource failure can spur follow-up issues. Compare three approaches to prevent these dreaded domino effects and reach the root of the problem. Continue Reading
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News
21 Jan 2020
PE firm merges XebiaLabs, CollabNet for new DevOps toolchain
XebiaLabs will join with CollabNet VersionOne to form a new DevOps platform vendor that will compete with Atlassian, GitHub, GitLab and CloudBees. Continue Reading
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News
17 Jan 2020
AIOps exec bets on incident response market shakeup
Resolve Systems, under a newly appointed CEO, will soon roll out a new product based on its FixStream acquisition that combines AIOps and IT automation. Continue Reading
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Tutorial
17 Jan 2020
Walk through common use cases for built-in Terraform functions
Follow along with this Terraform tutorial to learn and apply various types of built-in functions -- including Numeric, String, and Date and Time -- within the IaC tool. Continue Reading
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News
16 Jan 2020
SaltStack infrastructure-as-code tools seek cloud-native niche
SaltStack, like other infrastructure-as-code tools, must reinvent itself as cloud-native IT automation approaches such as containers, serverless and Kubernetes Operators grow. Continue Reading
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Tip
16 Jan 2020
PowerShell 7 features set to address some, not all, functionality gaps
While PowerShell 7 is set to unify the cross-platform and traditional Windows versions of the tool, it might not check all the boxes in terms of features IT admins want to see. Continue Reading
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Tip
08 Jan 2020
Evaluate if serverless cost benefits are worth the upfront price
Before an IT shop adopts serverless, it must fully grasp how the technology operates, and prepare for the upfront -- and potentially costly -- app refactoring efforts it requires. Continue Reading
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Tip
07 Jan 2020
How and why to set up an automation CoE for DevOps
As DevOps automation efforts spread across IT and the business, use a center of excellence to establish standards, secure executive sponsorship and organize staff trainings. Continue Reading
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Opinion
02 Jan 2020
AIOps meaning to expand throughout DevOps chain
AIOps means artificial intelligence to aid in IT operations. But it could mean much more than that, bringing in development, business, security and other application stakeholders. Continue Reading
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Tip
19 Dec 2019
Enable automated failover with a highly available CMDB
A resilient CMDB helps drive automated failover processes. Explore several approaches to prepare your configuration management database for DR scenarios. Continue Reading