Sep 29 2015 22 mins 1
Operating Systems. Where did they come from? Did your customer ask for one? Why do you bother with them at all?
Operating systems have traditionally played an enormous part in software development and operations. Most of us would find it difficult to imagine computing without one. They are certainly a source of religious contention.
Operating systems represent a maintenance and security burden; they have long been viewed by many as a necessary evil. They often bring more bulk and complexity than the systems we are producing; particularly in the case of microservices. They complicate security, greatly increasing the attack surface, and they require a significant expense and effort to maintain. But generally, operating systems are assumed to be required and we seldom consider a service environment without them. How well do you really even know what you're deploying when an OS is involved?
Operating systems introduce variation into a development workflow that can be difficult to manage. On a dev team, each individual's computing environment tends to stray apart. This divergence is a primary cause of Works-on-my-box syndrome. Things such as VM, libraries and general configuration are a source of drift.
Unless your product is, itself, an operating system, your customer is not generally concerned about your OS. A great deal of effort and expense goes to the operating system, without any direct ROI.
We will take a look at the ways emerging technologies will help you to reduce the liability of operating systems. We will consider how the minimization, or even elimination, of the operating system impacts development workflow; for better or worse. What would a CD pipeline look like? In particular, we would like to consider ways in which containers and unikernels or anykernels complement and can be used in combination.
