In the past, I’ve been skeptical about how much things like PowerShell, Devops and Docker are relevant to me personally. It makes sense if you are writing application code. It makes sense if you are managing hundreds of servers.
But I do Business Intelligence. How do you write unit tests for a report? Why do I need PowerShell when I can just hit Publish on Power BI Desktop? Do I really need Powershell if I manage 3 SQL Servers?
This year, however, there have been a number of events that have been slowly changing my mind:
- Learning more about SQL Server Big Data Clusters, which depends on Kubernetes
- Reading The Phoenix Project and it deeply impacting my work style
- Having to manually update my home lab from CTP 2.0 to 2.4 for a presentation
- Trying out Cody Konior’s AMAZING OftenOn project, a one command homelab.
- Reading Aaron Nelson’s post on SQL Server containers
- Reading Aaron Nelson’s post on automatically installing BI tools
- Watching Anthony Nocentino present on Kubernetes and Steph Locke present on DataOps.
- Drew Furgiuele is doing something with a cluster of Raspberry Pi’s
I don’t know what I’m doing
I’ve talked before about how automation is a relative term. But I’d like to do some true automation, I’d like to make a script like Cody’s where I can spin up a multi-server homelab with SQL Server, Sample databases and client tools all installed.
And right now I have no idea what I’m Doing and I’m fumbling in the dark. I’ve made a github project and I’ve gotten Lability to create the virtual machines. I know I need to learn Desired State Configuration, and I can’t quite get it to work with Lability yet.
And beyond that, I have no idea what I’m doing. And that’s okay. I suspect that this is a pain a lot of people run into with devops and why they put it off. The reason I write this is to remind people is that it’s okay to suck at something.
I’ll keep y’all updated as I slowly make progress, fumbling in the dark.
