Why Orca Archives - OrcaConfig

Jun 02

0

Modernizing Your DevOps Tool Chain

By Scott Turner | Risk / ROI, Why Orca | No Comments

Build a DevOps tool chain that works today and tomorrow Doing Less with More? Or More with Less? Summary: Choose your DevOps tool chain carefully. Select tools that work with the IT you want and with the IT you have for cross-platform application release and configuration management. The IT climate of “doing more with less” has evolved into an IT reality of “doing less with more”. Who...

May 24

0

Agile for Ops

By Scott Turner | Why Orca | No Comments

IT Operations Teams are Pushed to Keep Up with Dev Can DevOps tools help achieve Agile for Ops? Until now Agile has mostly been applied to Development practices. But where does that leave Ops? Operations teams are naturally being pushed to keep up with Dev's pace. Ops is struggling though. It’s not from a lack of talent. It’s not from a lack of trying. Ops teams...

May 08

18

Unified Application Release and Configuration Automation

By Scott Turner | Annoucements, Automation, Why Orca | No Comments

Announcing Unified Application Release and Configuration Automation Orca announces an industry first – a unified application release and configuration automation solution. Previously IT Operations teams required multiple point solutions, homegrown tools and error-prone scripting to release their application from Test to Pre-Production to Production environments - and once that is done to continually manage and orchestrate these environments including related applications, middleware, databases and configurations. Many users...

Mar 28

0

IT Migration from Today to Someday

By Scott Turner | Risk / ROI, Uncategorized, Why Orca | No Comments

“Here is a blank check. Spend whatever you need to modernize our entire IT environment right away”, said no one ever. IT Migration: Bridging Your Today IT to Your 'Someday' IT There are simply too many new game-changing technologies and platforms to adopt all at once. Until ‘someday’ arrives you have to prioritize where and how you spend your limited IT budget. What IT considers ‘legacy’...

Mar 24

0

Configuration Automation Myths vs Reality

By Scott Turner | Automation, Why Orca | No Comments

Myths vs Reality: Configuration Automation & Scripting Scripting is safe, fast and secure...Or is it? Configuration Management is unnecessary once you migrate to the cloud...Or is it? IT is tough enough without buying into misinformation. We outline some important Configuration Automation Myths vs Realities in this chart. Unlike a mythical (someday) environment, Orca is built for the real world complexities that developers, IT Ops, application owners...

Feb 08

0

Enforce (don’t just report) configuration compliance and policy

By Scott Turner | Control, Why Orca | No Comments

Monitoring is a good start. But it is not enough. Monitoring the applications, OS, and servers that make up your environment is a no-brainer. How many times have you had a customer be the first to inform you there was a problem? Those early alerts about performance problems, outages and security breaches are essential to running a tight IT ship. But they are not enough. Imagine going to a dentist and being...

Jan 23

0

Automating Configurations in Windows Environments without Scripting

By Scott Turner | Automation, Why Orca | No Comments

Configuration Automation for Windows without Scripting Automating configuration compliance or bulk-deployment in a Windows (or mixed Windows & Linux) environments has never been easy. Windows Server, IIS, MS SQL Server, MS MQ and SharePoint by their very nature are more complex than many of their non-Windows counterparts. Managing them is hard, so the desire to automate is strong. But frankly most new automation solutions cater...

Jan 08

0

Less than Free: Puppet, Chef & other Open Source

By Scott Turner | Risk / ROI, Why Orca | No Comments

Free isn't Free It is easy to understand the appeal of Open Source tools. After all, immediate gratification, community and a “free” price are certainly attention-getting for many developers. But IT Ops teams and their managers need to be careful to consider all of the costs when choosing free software such as open source versions of Puppet or Chef (especially if they are operating in...

Dec 30

0

Wishing You a Boring New Year. Drama-Free IT

By Scott Turner | Why Orca | No Comments

Wishing you a Boring New Year We wish you a boring new year! We really do. At least at the office. After all there is nothing too exciting about Stability, Support and Security – but we want that for you. The Goal: Drama-Free IT You probably prefer excitement in your favorite sporting and entertainment events and drama at the movies. And if you are like most...

Dec 20

0

It’s Enterprise “Cold and Flu” Season. Treat the DevOps Disease, Not the Symptoms.

By Scott Turner | Control, Why Orca | No Comments

Treat the DevOps Disease, Not Just the Symptoms. The Symptoms You recognize the symptoms a mile away. The early stages of a sore throat. That cough that seems to have come from nowhere. Darn. Why didn’t I get a flu shot this year!? Is the health of your business critical applications really all that different? Here the symptoms are web application performance glitches, security vulnerabilities and even...

Dec 16

0

Rugged DevOps: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

By Scott Turner | Visibility, Why Orca | No Comments

(Note: an earlier version of this article was first published on DevOps.com http://devops.com/2015/12/22/rugged-devops-good-bad-ugly/) The Good: DevOps has been a success for Dev. With higher expectations, better processes, more management focus and new tools like advanced PaaS and containers, developers are churning out more and more software faster than ever. Success! Or is it? The Bad: DevOps has been a success…for Dev. For Dev teams, this may...

Dec 04

0

Dev wants Open Source. Ops needs Scale, Stability, Support, Security & Speed. Now What?

By Scott Turner | Risk / ROI, Why Orca | No Comments

Note: this article was originally published on DevOps.com http://devops.com/2015/12/09/dev-loves-open-source-ops-needs-scale-now/ Dev Loves Open Source Like so many other areas of enterprise software, when it comes to configuration and release management, many developers naturally gravitate to open source options. It’s no wonder that 90% of code in modern applications is open source - after all, open source provides developers with... Immediate gratification Just Google it! Community Don’t reinvent!...

Nov 27

0

Application Configuration Management vs Application Release Automation

By Scott Turner | How Orca Works, Why Orca | No Comments

MenuNEW! Announcing Unified Application Release AND Configuration Management In today’s world of "“automate all the things"” we hear a lot of questions about the difference between application configuration management and application release automation solutions. We understand the confusion between these related but different concepts and at Orca, we love to simplify things. So here goes... Most Application Release Automation is limited in scope Whether you call it application...

Nov 18

0

Announcing Orca 2.1 – New Coverage for Schema, NGINX, NGINX Plus and YAML

By Scott Turner | Annoucements, Why Orca | No Comments

See this announcement on DevOps.com http://devops.com/2015/11/20/orcaconfig-announces-new-support-nginx-schema-yaml/ With Orca’s version 2.1, enterprise IT Teams that operate in complex, heterogeneous environments now have even more coverage and support to automatically control their application environments. Users of NGINX and NGINX Plus, MS SQL Server and YAML files can now model their application ecosystem, enforce compliance and control of their application configurations, intelligently automate their workflows, and deliver audit-ready...

Oct 27

0

Using Orca with Puppet or Chef for Full Stack Configuration Management and Automation

By Scott Turner | Automation, Why Orca | No Comments

Already using Puppet or Chef? Now add Orca for full stack configuration management and automation Players like Puppet, Chef and Ansible have gained market acceptance by catering to SysAdmins and their need to configure servers and operating systems. The good news is that the Configuration Management market is maturing as each of these tools add new features for their core SysAdmin customers. The better news is that new DevOps 2.0 solutions...