Pinterest to startups: DevOps mode is critical to business

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Pinterest, an American visual social networking site known as the "personal version of Cool hunting Tools", was founded in 2011 and is now catching up with Facebook, five years ago, after Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and a world-focused site. According to a recent study by Experian, a marketing services firm, the number of Pinterest in the United States was 28.95 million a week in July, compared with 1.27 million visits a year last year, and the total number of visits has increased by 5,124%. From the data alone, Pinterest company for how to achieve rapid growth of business is quite a experience.

What is the real reason behind the explosive growth rate of Pinterest? Ryan Park, the company's operating engineer, opened the puzzle for us. In his view, the DevOps model played a very important role in the Pinterest explosive growth process.

So what does Ryan Park refer to as DevOps? In the traditional workflow, there are many communication dislocation between development and operation Dimension, which result in the problem of deployment, thus, the devops idea came into being. DevOps is a combination of "development" and "operations", a group of processes, methodologies, and systems that facilitate communication, collaboration, and integration between development (application/software engineering), technology operations, and quality Assurance (QA) departments. It comes about because the software industry is becoming increasingly aware that development and operations must work closely together in order to deliver software products and services on time.

The biggest benefit of DevOps mode is the ability to deliver the required software more quickly and efficiently. Update the software faster and make the necessary changes to improve the end-user experience. Although the DevOps model is very powerful, it is not easy to really do it. Mr. Park says it's a tough process to master configuration tools such as the Puppet Lab's puppet and Opscode chef, but because this new business model is efficient, there are still a lot of companies willing to try them.

So how do you minimize the pain of transformation and create a durable and reliable business process as the company transitions into the DevOps model? Let's listen to the experience Ryan Park has summed up for us:

1. Using Automation

Ryan Park says you need to carefully contrast existing automation tools and then choose a suitable one for your use. Pinterest uses the puppet Configuration Management tool, which automates the process of starting a new server and, most importantly, automatically configures the correct parameters.

"In the past, it was necessary to manually configure the parameters of many integration services," Park said. parameter tracking, checking what each server does, adding new user data, all require manual action. Manual operation not only makes the staff miserable, but also the reliability is not strong, the general 100 servers only 91 server can run normally, and the automatic tool can solve this problem very well. ”

2. Create a single trusted source

While it's not easy to do this, by using puppet or chef's control Panel, we can clearly see which systems are running on local servers and which are running on cloud services in Amazon's EC2.

"Getting into the habit of building a trusted source is very important, the system needs to know the names of all the servers, and know which servers are distributing buffers and which are running other services," says Park. However, to get all the important information together, you have to enter the necessary data.

3. Avoid cultural conflicts as far as possible.

The way in which developers and operators think and work is very different, mainly because the work goals they are trying to achieve often collide. On the one hand, developers want to deploy the coolest products as soon as possible, while operators need to make sure that the running system is running properly. If you can hire a software engineer who knows how to operate or a professional operator who knows how to develop, it will be very helpful to the company's business. Of course, the premise is that two teams need to align with the company's business objectives.

4. Prepare in advance.

For companies that already have large development teams and operations teams, there are always problems in how to better collaborate with each other. And start-up companies at the beginning of the establishment, because the scale is less, there is no such trouble, but with the size of the expansion, how to make reasonable work flow, choose the right technology is particularly important. Mr. Park said the transition would be smoother if adequate preparations were made in advance.

5. Integration into the Community

In all kinds of community, there are many professional devops, so make full use of this resource. By subscribing to the appropriate mailing lists, attending parties and vendor meetings, you can expand your social circle and build a large number of professionals, such as the upcoming puppet conference at the end of this month.

Via Gigaom