Danny Vandergriff on Empowering Developers - Episode 97

This week on the podcast, Jeffrey is joined by Danny Vandergriff! Danny is a Principal DevOps Architect at Clear Measure, designing DevOps solutions for clients in a variety of industries. He's also done a tremendous amount of work in the area of database administration for large and complex SQL Server databases.

In this episode, Danny discusses both the Dev and the Ops of DevOps! He gives advice to developers new and old to the industry; tips around designing and implementing SQL databases for business applications; his thoughts regarding disaster recovery, availability, and managing different regions in Azure SQL; recommendations for what processes .NET developers should be looking at when load testing their applications; and his thoughts on Kubernetes, TeamCity, and more!

Topics of Discussion:

[:38] Be sure to visit AzureDevOps.Show for past episodes and show notes.

[1:01] About the recent Microsoft Build Conference and The Azure DevOps Podcast.

[1:30] About today's episode with Danny Vandergriff!

[1:48] Jeffrey welcomes Danny to the show!

[1:57] Danny shares his career background as well as his motivation for getting into the software industry in the first place!

[2:56] Jeffrey and Danny do a synthesis of Dev and Ops.

[5:10] Danny shares what he has learned from designing and implementing SQL databases for business applications.

[6:38] If developers are starting new applications today, is it more common to put the database on a VM or to use the Azure SQL service?

[8:43] Danny gives a rundown of the concepts that you do not have to think about with Azure SQL.

[9:31] Danny explains the concept of DTU; database transaction unit.

[10:26] Is there any way to autoscale the DTUs like in App Service?

[10:52] Danny shares how he thinks about disaster recovery, availability, and managing different regions in Azure SQL.

[11:58] A word from Azure DevOps Podcast's sponsor: Clear Measure.

[12:22] Jeffrey shares some quick announcements.

[14:12] Danny's recommendations for what process .NET developers should be looking at for load testing their applications.

[15:44] Danny's go-to recommendations for developers getting started with load testing for the first time.

[17:24] Regarding new applications, until they have been formally load tested or used in a fully loaded production environment, it doesn't scale. Is this correct?

[18:28] Danny speaks about the landscape regarding build and deploy tools today and how he thinks about the different approaches.

[20:10] The current state of .NET applications and Kubernetes.

[21:48] Danny shares his thoughts about TeamCity.

[23:23] Danny speaks about the tools and methods people should be thinking about when monitoring and supporting the applications running in production.

[25:11] Danny's favorites when it comes to starting a new application.

[29:49] Danny provides his final pieces of advice for developers.

Mentioned in this Episode:

Azure DevOps

Clear Measure (Sponsor)

.NET DevOps for Azure: A Developer's Guide to DevOps Architecture the Right Way, by Jeffrey Palermo — Available on Amazon!

bit.ly/dotnetdevopsebook — Click here to download the .NET DevOps for Azure ebook!

Jeffrey Palermo's Youtube

Jeffrey Palermo's Twitter — Follow to stay informed about future events!

Jeffrey@Clear-Measure.com — Email Jeffrey for a free 30-point DevOps inspection (regularly priced at $5000!) — Spaces are limited!

The Azure DevOps Podcast's Twitter: @AzureDevOpsShow

BlazeMeter

JMeter

Kubernetes

TeamCity

New Relic

Datadog

Want to Learn More?

Visit AzureDevOps.Show for show notes and additional episodes.