With Halloween approaching, it's time to share your DevOops horror stories! 👻 🎃 The best 5 stories win a GoLand license and a copy of "Fundamentals of DevOps and Software Delivery." Here's one of my stories: I took down TripAdvisor. In my 1st week on the job. 😅

I made some changes to the "Fundamentals of DevOps and Software Delivery" website: - Updated the text in the intro section - Added a "how this book is different" section - Minor tweaks to other sections Thoughts? Is the site clear? What could I improve? www.fundamentals-of-devops.com

I've come across many companies where: 🔥 They're constantly putting out fires 🚨 Nothing is reproducible or documented ⚠️ Even minor changes feel risky 😰 The predominant emotions are fear & stress This is "DevOps Bankruptcy." We wrote a guide on how to get yourself out of it:

Here's a list of the best resources related to Chapter 9, "How to Store Data" of "Fundamentals of DevOps and Software Delivery." Learn about relational DBs, NoSQL, NewSQL, queues, streams, object stores, CDNs, backup, recovery, and more:

I just completed a fun project: I put all my reviews & notes from the books I've read on my blog! I read ~100 books / year, and I've been tracking my reading for more than a decade, so this represents my ratings and notes for over 1,000 books. Links are in the following tweets:

Book review: The Fundamentals of DevOps and Software Delivery by Yevgeniy Brikman (2025). "FDSD is an excellent book. It is a book that is suitable to a broad audience for sysadmins, DevOps and developers, of all ranges of experience." 😊 camilomatajira.wordpress.com/2025/09/01/b...

Here's a list of the best resources related to Chapter 8, "How to Secure Communication and Storage" of "Fundamentals of DevOps and Software Delivery." Learn about cryptography, encryption in transit and at rest, hashing, secrets management, TLS certificates, AES, and more:

CI/CD servers can be a huge security risk: 1. They have powerful credentials 2. Every dev in your company has access 3. They are used to run arbitrary code That's a terrifying combination from a security perspective 😳😱 Here are 8 steps for secure CI/CD:

Here's a list of the best resources related to Chapter 7, "How to set up Networking" of "Fundamentals of DevOps and Software Delivery." Learn about DNS, VPCs, VPN, SSH, service discovery, and service meshes:

Many tutorials focus on how to deploy an app the first time. But how you deploy changes is even more important, as you'll likely update your app hundreds or thousands of times over its lifetime. Let's talk about 4 core strategies you can use for rolling out updates:

We’re exploring a new add-on for Terragrunt that adds enterprise features, but before building it, we'd love your feedback. See the features: postimg.cc/5jL74Nqt Share your feedback: forms.gle/Vy8vi16WPtTC... 10 randomly selected participants will get a $20 gift card.

Here's a list of the best resources related to Chapter 6, "How to Work with Multiple Teams and Environments" of "Fundamentals of DevOps and Software Delivery." Learn about setting up environments, splitting your codebase into libraries, and monoliths vs microservices.

The eulogy I gave for my mom today. www.ybrikman.com/blog/2025/07...

Here's a list of the best resources related to Chapter 5, "How to set up CI and CD" of "Fundamentals of DevOps and Software Delivery." Learn about GitOps, trunk-based development, feature flags, zero-downtime deployments, and more:

Every drug becomes toxic at a high enough dose, so you always use the "minimum effective dose": just enough to get the benefits, and no more. The same is true with DevOps: every tool & technique has a cost, so you should use the "minimum effective dose of DevOps," too.

Here's a list of the best resources related to Chapter 4, "How to Version, Build, and Test Your Code" of "Fundamentals of DevOps and Software Delivery." Learn version control (Git, GitHub), build systems (Gradle, Bazel), & automated tests (unit & integration tests):

There's been recent pushback against the cloud, with some companies opting to run their infrastructure on prem (e.g., Basecamp). Unfortunately, amidst the controversy of these stories, nuance is lost. The reality: it's a trade-off. Let's look at 8 reasons to use the cloud:

Respond with a caption for this image. I’ll start: I’m excited to introduce my new book, “Fundamentals of CatOps and SoftFur Delivery.”

Here's a list of the best resources for learning about application orchestration (VMs, containers, K8S, serverless, etc.) that I came across while working on Chapter 3 of "Fundamentals of DevOps and Software Delivery":

Here's a list of the best resources for learning Infrastructure as Code (IaC) that I came across while working on Chapter 2 of "Fundamentals of DevOps and Software Delivery":

When writing "Hello, Startup," I interviewed early employees from Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, GitHub, Stripe, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. It turns out the architecture & software delivery processes at most companies evolve along similar lines. Here's how it works, broken down into 9 steps:

DevOps is weird. We use this one word to describe dozens of unrelated concepts. What do TLS certs, K8S clusters, deployment pipelines, and database backups have in common? Not much. And yet, your typical DevOps Engineer / SRE has to deal with all of these, and much else.

"Fundamentals of DevOps and Software Delivery" has been published! I think this is the best thing I've written—and perhaps the most important—and it would mean the world to me if you would share it with your network. Here's why:

It's here! Just got my copies of "Fundamentals of DevOps and Software Delivery." It's the 3rd book I've published with @oreilly.bsky.social, and I think it's the best one so far—the ultimate hands-on guide to running and maintaining software in production. www.fundamentals-of-devops.com

Today is exactly 1 year since I got shoulder surgery to repair a rotator cuff tear. I'm more or less back to normal now, but it took 6 months of rehab, 2.5 months of sleeping in a recliner, and dealing with a lot of pain to get there. Take care of your tendons!

Wow, the print edition of "Fundamentals of DevOps and Software Delivery" isn't even available yet, but the Kindle version is already the #1 new release in Cloud Computing! amzn.to/4dIXFE8

Well this is an unexpected surprise: "Terraform: Up & Running" is now available as an audiobook on Audible, Apple Books, Storytel, etc! Links in the next post. Happy listening! CC @oreilly.bsky.social

How are you using infrastructure as code? What tools and technologies do you rely on? Which ones do you love and which do you hate? I'd love to hear your thoughts: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... Takes < 5 min. 10 randomly selected respondents will get $20 gift cards.

Just heard from my editor that "Fundamentals of DevOps and Software Delivery" has completed production! The ebook is already available and the print books will be available in several weeks. Let's go! 🚀 🎉 www.fundamentals-of-devops.com

I got a sample pre-print of "Fundamentals of DevOps and Software Delivery." It's looking pretty good! The book should go to the printers this month. www.fundamentals-of-devops.com

Terragrunt Stacks is now feature complete. This gives you a clean, maintainable way to work with multiple Terragrunt units (terragrunt.hcl files)—e.g., to spin up a new environment, service, or customer. Try it out and let us know how it works for you! www.gruntwork.io/blog/the-roa...

Friends, I need help. My mom has been battling colon cancer. The diagnosis is uncertain, and the treatment doesn't seem to be working. How can I find experts on her condition? Or clinical trials that would fit? How do I navigate this space given my lack of expertise?

Superb video from Andrej Karpathy that completely changed how I use LLMs (e.g., ChatGPT). No marketing BS, just concrete examples of how to use LLMs for questions, recommendations, research, coding, entertainment, and much more. www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWvN...

To launch an EC2 instance programmatically, you have to specify the ID of the AMI to run, which is weirdly hard to find. I often just want the latest version of Amazon-managed AMIs, such as Amazon Linux or Ubuntu, and I can never remember the magical incantations to find these.

I solved this with a hacky script, using various APIs (e.g. OpenLibrary) and scraping to find images & descriptions for ~800 resources (books, blog posts, tools) across 11 chapters. Worked 80% of the time; the rest I did by hand. Example chapter: www.fundamentals-of-devops.com/chapters/cha... WDYT?

For each chapter of my upcoming book, I have a page that lists related books & tools. What's the easiest way to get an image (logo or cover image) and brief blurb for each book/tool? There are hundreds, so doing it manually is too slow. Example page: www.fundamentals-of-devops.com/chapters/cha...

Back in 2016, I published an article on Y Combinator's blog called "A Minimum Viable Product Is Not a Product, It's a Process." Looks like they took it down, so I've reposted it on my personal blog: www.ybrikman.com/blog/2025/02.... Still a good read on how to build MVPs!

I wrote a guide on how to manage state and environments with OpenTofu that is more secure (thanks to client-side encryption) and more maintainable (less code duplication due to early variable evaluation) than what you can do with Terraform. www.fundamentals-of-devops.com/resources/20...

I wrote a guide on how to configure IAM Identity Center and use it to authenticate to AWS on the web & CLI. It's a rare combination that is both more secure (no more permanent credentials) and more convenient (simple web UI for all auth, even CLI). www.fundamentals-of-devops.com/resources/20...

OpenTofu is now more secure (state encryption), maintainable (early variable evaluation), & powerful (provider iteration) than Terraform. That's the advantage of being truly open source, foundation-managed, & community-driven. Now is a good time to make the switch! blog.gruntwork.io/make-the-swi...

Here are the 151 books I read in 2024: goodreads.com/user_challen... Of these, the four I enjoyed the most: 1. Mystery: The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. It's a classic whodunnit, but with a completely new, unique, brilliant central plot mechanic. goodreads.com/review/show/...

Wordle gets all the buzz, but I think Connections is even better. Today’s was especially good. Connections Puzzle #550 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟨🟦🟪🟦 🟨🟪🟨🟨 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟦🟦🟦🟦 🟪🟪🟪🟪

This May, I tore two tendons in my rotator cuff, and had to get surgery, followed by a 6+ month recovery process. Much of this process caught me by surprise. I wrote a blog post about my experience so those going through this in the future know what to expect: www.ybrikman.com/blog/2024/11...

We are all very pleased with the new welcome mat.

Games by the fire 😊❤️

Part 11 of the Fundamentals of DevOps and Software Delivery series is now available! It's my take on the future of this industry: 1️⃣ Infrastructureless 2️⃣ Generative AI 3️⃣ Secure by default 4️⃣ Platform engineering 5️⃣ The future of infrastructure as code www.gruntwork.io/books/fundam...

Four tips that I use to read 100-150 books per year: 1. Read in bed, just before sleep. It's my favorite time of the day: warm in bed with my girlfriend, cats, and a good book. 20-30 min of reading per night gets you through a lot of books, and it's a great wind down routine that helps with sleep.

Too much of social media is focused on content that provokes outrage. I'm not interested in that. I'm primarily here to (a) learn, (b) laugh, (c) be amazed, (d) chat with interesting people, (e) see cute cat pictures. How can I optimize my feed to minimize "outrage" and maximize everything else?

This is me post thanksgiving dinner. Passed out on the couch. Love this holiday.

Happy thanksgiving everyone! What are you grateful for today?