Chapter 3
Our Starting Point

We installed the host tools for our technical ‘classroom’ in Chapter 2, now we consider the environment in which our organisation works in a broader, softer sense.

To give ourselves something concrete to work on we are going to develop ‘The Devops Guild’, a complex of services (some using existing systems that we will integrate and customise, some we will develop from scratch) that will form a website supporting DevOps professionals.

Like all initial ideas we’re not entirely sure how to create this service but we know that we will need to be able to create and tear-down experimental systems. We’re also pretty sure we want to use cloud services to host our system because this allows us to scale efficiently.

We are keen open source advocates, so not only will we use open source solutions where possible we will also contribute back to the open source community. That said, we’re a pragmatist first, so we won’t rabidly pursue an open source solution if a cost effective non-open source solution presents itself.

To keep initial costs down further we want to use our existing computers where possible.

Initially we will be working from a home office, but recognise that we will need more computing power than we own. Access to 24 × 7 up-time and good network availability will be important as we progress. We currently have a laptop and an internet connection, and that’s pretty much it.