Cooler than Cucumber – EMC Hybrid Cloud is Foundational for App Dev

Bart Driscoll

Most app dev teams will respond to the EMC Enterprise Hybrid Cloud release with a comment like, “’bout time” assuming it even makes a blip on their radar.  This isn’t or shouldn’t be surprising given the widening gulf between Development and Operations that results from conflicting goals to introduce change faster (AppDev) and to improve stability and reduce cost (Ops).  Foundational to overcoming this divide, the EMC Hybrid Cloud establishes base automation and self-service capabilities that address both App Dev’s need to go faster and Infrastructure and Operations’ requirement to ensure stability and reduce cost.

Let’s look at a typical IT behavior-driven development use case to see this in action:

Feature: Automatically provisions VMs for 
Order Processing App

  In order to prevent developers and testers 
  from sitting idle Development Managers want
  VMs to be provisioned on-demand in less
  than a day to support development and test
  efforts

  In order to prevent VM sprawl and config-
  uration drift, Infrastructure and Ops 
  Managers want policy based, automation to 
  deliver standardized and stable VMs to the
  developer community

  Scenario: Provision a QA environment for
  Order Processing App

    GIVEN You have EMC EHC running!

    And VM profiles are pre-defined for small,
    medium, and large instances   #Stability

    And network, compute, and storage is 
    managed by platform           #Stability 
    & Cost Reduction

    And provisioning is governed & orche-
    strated through policy-based workflows
                              #Cost Reduction

    And the EHC has the following platform 
    options:

    |systemtype          |size      |
    |Linux – RHEL        |Small     |
    |Linux - RHEL        |Large     |
    |Microsoft           |Small     |
    |Microsoft           |Large     |
    |Linux – Ubuntu      |Medium    |

    When a <Role> opens vCAC portal

    |role        |
    |Developer   |
    |Tester      |

    And I select the <systemtype> needed 
    to run the Order Processing App

    And I select the correct <size>

    And I accept the costing implications
    displayed onscreen

    And I click create system

    And I have the correct permissions and
    authority to request a system

    Then A VM of the correct <size> is 
    automatically provisioning for me     
                        #Speed & Agility

    Then A VM is properly placed in network
    for QA testing

    Then A VM is properly configured with 
    correct     <systemtype>     #Stability

    Then I am notified that system is 
    available

Through EHC, IT (Dev and Ops) are able to take the first steps towards building out an automated devops tool chain that supports consistent and rapid application deployments within the Enterprise.  By building advanced orchestration and automation on top the EHC foundation, IT can recognize the promise of EHC all the way up the application stack including run-time configuration, app deployment, and data bootstrapping.  Together, EHC and these advanced services enable the often elusive continuous delivery capability required by agile development and motivated by market demand.

In closing, I say to my app dev peeps, “PING!”  This cool stuff isn’t just for Ops.  Check it out.

PS: For those unfamiliar with Behavior Driven Development and test modeling and automation tools and languages like Cucumber/Gherkin, I suggest the following reading for more info:

• http://cukes.info/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavior-driven_development
• The Cucumber Book: Behaviour-Driven Development for Testers and Developers (Pragmatic Programmers) on Amazon

Cooler than Cucumber – EMC Hybrid Cloud is Foundational for App Dev
Bart Driscoll