
Creating software for sysops - theotown
https://plumbr.eu/blog/creating-software-for-operations-make-sure-you-do-not-suck
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nailer
Damn straight. Having been on the other side of the fence - having a budget
and a few thousand servers - a vendor that wants a hundred grand and can't
even be bothered making an rpm has a lot to do to make up for it.

Your agent isn't any more special than the hundred other pieces of software on
the same box.

~~~
FooBarWidget
And what if your boss wants you to deal with them not providing any RPMs,
because the stuff has already been paid for?

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nailer
Good question. If I wasn't in the position of having a budget, I'd:

a) first approach the company asking me to send a link to their packages,
making sure their support staff know the company expects packaged software.

b) I'd package it myself, letting my boss know my time was spent doing work
the vendor should have.

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FooBarWidget
Sure, but I can turn that argument around too. If the software has to support
20 platforms, then your one platform that happens to use RPM is not any more
special than the other 19. If they make RPMs they can charge your boss extra.
Maybe your boss has a tight budget and chose to push the integration step to
his/her own people.

~~~
nailer
\- Windows MSI

\- RHEL/CentOS rpm

\- Ubuntu/Debian dpkg

The practical amount of BSD, SmartOS and Arch users in medium and large
businesses is close to 0%.

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gaius
This is a refreshing change - contrast with the MongoDB guys who sell it as
"you don't need DBAs" then the devs chuck it over the fence into production
and wonder why everyone now hates them.

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skywhopper
Fantastic list of things sysops wants, no, needs, no, _requires_ out of "good"
software. Kudos to Plumbr for understanding and working towards that goal.

~~~
zemanel
although not exactly for the Java world (but not necessarily so), even since i
attended PyData recently, i've been capturing requirements/ideas for a "Python
[c]Profile data visualizer web application spec":

[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tPhW2FLjHG47rS6xJGzP6R30...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tPhW2FLjHG47rS6xJGzP6R30FNDhxaHL1o8zRu5W2Gc/edit?usp=sharing)

and this article was a good read.

