This year I could not attend Velocity so I decided to catch up via http://velocityconference.blip.tv. Here are a few notes on the sessions I have been able to see so far.
John Allspaw (Ops) & Paul Hammond (Dev): 10+ Deploys per day: Dev/Ops coöperation at Flickr
This is a topic dear to my heart: changing the culture shared (or not) by dev and ops.
Contrary to popular wisdom, ops' real mission is not to keep the service stable per se, but to enable the business.
Business requires change
Build the tools and the culture that allow repeated change with minimal uncertainty.
Automate your infrastructure
Use one shared source control, between devs and ops so that everyone on the team knows where to look
Reduce all manual steps down to one, that of deciding to build and deploy
Small frequent changes better than fewer large changes
Use "feature flags", i.e., use code to enable features, rather than branches
Ship TRUNK so that everyone knows what gets released
Feature flags allow for private betas, reduces uncertainty
Dark launches: enable the feature to exercise the data path but don't present the results to the end-user
Metrics, metrics, metrics
Add context to it, such as the last time something was deployed
We use IRC and IM bots to bring system updates into the conversation between dev and ops in real time, then push the logs into a search engine
Develop respect and trust between devs and ops
Have a healthy attitude toward failure (don't blame, fix the problem first)
