SaaS — Smokeping as a Service Tech Talk

This is a tech talk — a deep dive into how a project came together and was delivered. I talk about Smokeping — we’ve converted a linux app…

This is a tech talk — a deep dive into how a project came together and was delivered. I talk about Smokeping — we’ve converted a Linux app into a fully CI/CD bootstrapped SaaS embedded in client networks.

Smokeping is basically a half-dozen open source technologies in a trench-coat, so automating and scaling it is a challenge of syncing tools. There’s some deep Linux coolness, Azure DevOps CI/CD coolness, and general strategy talk of why platforms, and our vision for the future.

I cover: 
• What is Smokeping? Why Smokeping vs other tools? 
• How does a Smokeping cluster work? 
• An un-automated cluster: How to update config
• Master node push/pull config update process
• Register a custom service in init.d
• Automation of testing and deployment using Azure DevOps
• FAQ

At the end there is a demo of updating a 6-node smokping cluster with a single pull request, including testing code for validity pre-merge and peer review.

I also published the code here, which includes:

• A baseline smokeping config to get you started

• Bash files for master to iterate through runners and restart services

• Master and runner init.d-driven services to execute smokeping services in correct order

• Azure DevOps Smokeping validate and deploy pipeline

• Copy-and-paste templates to build smokeping master and runner nodes

KyMidd/SmokepingClusterAutomation
Contribute to KyMidd/SmokepingClusterAutomation development by creating an account on GitHub.github.com

In the future, I’ll work to convert these copy-and-paste templates to an Ansible role.

Thanks all! Good luck out there.
kyler