Skip to main content

Who's the boss?

I recently sent an email at work, that talked a lot about some of the more academic sides of "infrastructure". Particularly the notion of where infrastructure gets it's direction and workload from. So I thought I'd share a few of those thoughts here.

Infrastructure is a bit of a weird beast. It's a foundational piece of any technology deployment, but in most cases it isn't the "focus" of the deployment. Infrastructure is both independent-yet-dependent. It stands at a crossroads between two distinct worlds.

First, infrastructure is independent, in the sense that it is agnostic. It can be built in a similar fashion if you're deploying a bookstore, financial application, music player, or blog. There are general concepts, principles and tactics (see The HiSSS of Infrastructure series...) that are universal to whatever application you are building and deploying. So by that standard, infrastructure is a thing unto itself.

But yet, infrastructure is nothing by itself. It's the foundation upon which cool things are built. Without an application or service being deployed upon it, it's pointless. So therefore infrastructure is dependent upon being "used" by something greater than itself. It's purpose is fulfilled by being used.

So there are three main areas in which infrastructure takes it's direction.

  1. Internal - There are things that infrastructure needs to do, to maintain itself and keep functioning. Things like security updates, hardware maintenance and general design updates, all come from initiatives internal to itself. There is a cadre of work that is built on these internal pressures. 
  2. Future-forward - The second area usually comes from a development team, and revolves around planning for the future. Investing in new technologies and their foundational pieces is a key part of infrastructure's work. People always have a million good ideas, and they need a solid foundation to make them reality.
  3. Reactive/Preventative - This stream of work comes from the discovery of issues that need to be addressed in the infrastructure. Service issues, capacity management, and general problem resolution are the third key workstream for a strong base.
These three areas make up the scope of work that an infrastructure team works on, and understanding and working within a fully agreed understanding of the importance of foundation, and building a house on solid ground, always benefits an entire initiative. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The beat goes on

Yesterday Apple revealed their long awaited entry into the streaming music field. They were able to do this quickly because of the acquisition of Beats last year, and the systems and intellectual property that came with that purchase. Considering that the music reveal was pretty much the only big news out of a pretty benign developer keynote, I'll take a few moments to talk about what I think about it. Apple was perhaps the defining company in the music revolution of the past 20 years. With the introduction of the iPod that revolutionized portable music, to the creation of the iTunes store and the eventual death of DRM, Apple has been at the forefront of digital music. This leadership comes with high expectations to continue to lead, and so many people have long questioned Apple not getting into the streaming music business quicker. For the past few years new companies have come forth to lead the change in the streaming music evolution. From Pandora and its ability to create un

Microsoft Surface Pro 3

So I've been a horrible blog author and have neglected this site for far to long. It's not that I haven't had anything to say, I've just neglected to say it. So with an attempt to get back on the wagon, here's some thoughts on Microsoft's announcement yesterday for it's Surface Pro 3. Despite being a minor Apple fanboy, the most interesting company to watch, in the personal computing space right now, is Microsoft. With the departure of Steve Ballmer, and the rise of Satya Nadella, it has been an interesting 9 months for one of the founding pioneers of personal technology. Many agree that Windows 8 has not lived up to what Microsoft would like it to be. They made a bold attempt to redefine how users interact with their computers, and merge the tablet and desktop experience. However, that experiment, by most accounts, has failed. This is a common pattern for Microsoft however, alternating between a mediocre OS release, and then a stellar one. Therefore, it&#

The Great Experiment

Recently, a tech journalist that I've followed for many years, and who is an Apple fanboy, posted a series talking about why he switched from an iPhone to an Android phone . It's a good read, and worth the time to see why he made the decision he did. Since I have a Verizon Galaxy Nexus sitting on my desk as a Wi-Fi device, I thought, "What the heck, let's give this a go for a week." So for the past week I've shelved my trusty iPhone 5 and have delved deep into the world of stock Android 4.1. So in the spirit of "copying is the sincerest form of flattery" here's my write-up of my experiences with Google's mobile OS. First, I need to make one caveat. After using the Nexus for a week I have to say that I do NOT like this device. It constantly loses 4G signal, and the battery life almost makes it unusable. I could barely make it to lunch before I was at 20-30% battery. So in the spirit of fairness, if I truly wanted to switch full time to Andro