Voice of the DBA

Tag: book reviews

The Developer’s Guide to Azure–A Good Overview

Someone sent me a link a few weeks back about a free book from Microsoft. It’s the Developer’s Guide to Azure, and you can download it in Kindle or other formats. I actually got it for the Kindle on my phone and went through it in my spare time during the last couple weeks.

The book is a typical overview e-book, similar to what I’ve found in other areas from Microsoft. It’s very high level, with some examples and code, but very limited in scope and coverage.

What I did like about the book is that it really describes all of the different services that Azure offers at this time, with some examples of how you might think about them. There were a few services I hadn’t heard of, so this gave me a tiny bit of insight into what they are and why they might be useful for me.

If you haven’t spent a lot of time looking at Azure and keeping up with the advancements, you might pick up this book as a good general guide that will help you think about which areas you need to focus more attention, read about, or even build a PoC.

I was especially interested in the security section, as I haven’t done much myself with Azure Active Directory and I wasn’t aware of all the services that exist.

The book ends with a nice walkthrough of setting up some different services and configuring them. I haven’t completed these, but I might go through some and even work these into presentations, as I think Azure has a lot to offer that I could use in an environment I can access from anywhere.

October 3, 2018
Good DevOps Books to Read
I was interviewed recently at DevOps.com talking about the database as a part of DevOps. As part of the interview, Alan Shimel asked me for a book recommendation. After that, I decided I should recommend a few books that I’ve read and think have helped me to understand DevOps.

Tl;Dr: The Phoenix Project, The DevOps Handbook, Continuous Delivery.

The Phoenix Project

I actually read The Goal first, which applies the principles of DevOps, grown out of the lean movement, to manufacturing. The Phoenix Project is based on the Goal, but looks at Information Technology.

The book is a good, light read. It felt like a repeat of The Goal, but it cemented some ideas, and I enjoyed it. The guru character is a little overdone, but certainly the “Brent”, jack of all trades, the one everyone depends on rings a bell. I’ve been Brent in a few places, where I had to be involved in everything. While flattering, it’s tiring and annoying.

This is a good, semi-satirical look at IT projects that helps you to realize the somewhat silly ways we build and deploy software sometimes. A nice overview for DevOps.

The DevOps Handbook

I read The DevOps Handbook the most recently of these three. After looking for more information on how DevOps is evolving, and following the research of Gene Kim in talks and articles, I decided to give this a try.

The book is long, though if you read on the Kindle, you’re at the end around 70%. The rest of more details and additional material. It was interesting, using case studies and information from a variety of companies to explain the three ways that Gene Kim has postulated as the principles of DevOps. They are:
- Systems Thinking
- Amplify Feedback Loops
- A Culture of Experimentation and Learning
Those are discussed in chapters with examples of how companies implement these, along with the shift left and shift right concepts. I’d definitely recommend this one.

Continuous Delivery

I actually read this book first. Continuous Delivery was recommended to me when Redgate got serious about DevOps and DLM (Database Lifecycle Management). I was reading this as I attended FlowCon and had the chance to meet Jez Humble. That was a great conference, and I’d like to go back to another (or similar) one.

This book talks mostly about how CI, automated testing, CD, automated deployments, and other specific parts of good software development and deployment practices that come under the umbrella of DevOps. When you look for specific things to implement as you adopt DevOps, this is a good book to give you ideas.

Remember, DevOps isn’t a tool. It isn’t a think you buy or a specific way you do something. DevOps is an idea, a set of principles, by which you get better. If you have a way of doing that, no matter what you call it, others might call this DevOps.

Conversely, if you aren’t getting better, if you struggle to get software changes to customer, have quality issues, or stressed staff that don’t collaborate, it’s not DevOps, no matter how much “stuff” you do.
April 3, 2017
Drive

I saw a short talk from Dan Pink a few months back from this year’s TED conference. It’s very cool, and worth watching. After watching the video, I bought the book, Drive.

This book goes through some the reasons why we are motivated to do things. It looks back at some of the older notions of motivation, mostly the carrot/stick techniques most of us have been exposed to. It talks about the ways that we have tried to reward people and get more work, or better work, from them.

It does this with a mix of stories and research that Mr. Pink has done, with economists and psychologists, with interesting results. The talk summarizes it, but the book then backs it up with great examples. There’s a look at Google’s 20% time, Fed Ex days from Atlassian, and Best Buy’s ROWE work structure.

The main thrust that I’ve seen from this is that people want three things in their lives: Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose. We want to direct ourselves, we want to get better, and we want to make a difference. In my life, I had thought that better rewards motivated me, but as I grow older, I’m not sure that’s the case. I think that autonomy and mastery were key drivers, and purpose is becoming more important.

It’s a great read. If you liked Outliers, or want to try to grow yourself and become happier in your career, or even manage people better, I think this is worth the read.

August 18, 2010