My first experience at Microsoft Virtual OpenHack DevOps

" Once you stop learning, you start dying. " A. Einstein

I had opportunity to attend “Virtual - Switzerland DevOps OpenHack” on 17-19 June.

Microsoft OpenHack is a developer-focused engagement where a wide variety of participants (Open) learn through hands-on experimentation (Hack) using challenges based on real-world customer scenarios designed to mimic the developer journey. OpenHack provides a unique and fun upskilling experience for Microsoft employees, customers and partners. Attendees work together in teams to complete challenges that increase in complexity and are actively engaged, requiring deep collaboration, as they learn together (Source : https://openhack.microsoft.com/)

I am one of the Hacker in “Team 5” in this OpenHack. After concept introduction, Team 5 coach explained first challenge and success criteria to move another challenge.

Team 5 :

Charitha Basani, Irina Kostina, Tibi Covaci, Florian Georg and Harun Can

There were eight challenges and each challenge depends on previous challenges. 

Challenge 1: Establish your plan

Challenge 2: Implement Continuous Integration (CI)

Challenge 3: Implement Unit Testing

Challenge 4: Implement Continuous Deployment - CD

Challenge 5: Implement a basic Blue/Green deployment strategy

Challenge 6: Implement a monitoring solution for your MyDriving APIs

Challenge 7: Implement Integration testing, code coverage and Load testing

Challenge 8: Implement phased rollout with rollback

• The first step is very vital to establish ongoing steps successfully. We analyzed current background, situation, needs, technical requirements, and potential issues. According to our analysis, we prepared concept solution before starting. We have decided to Github for managing source code during this OpenHack and Team roles. (You may use or choose Azure DevOps).

If you would like to learn comparison between Azure DevOps vs GitHub, these are good sources.

1- Azure Devops vs GitHub

2- Azure Devops vs GitHub

Due to NDA rule I can not explain all details and solutiona of Devops Openhack but I can share some MS hands-on links to complete these challenges.

Enabling Continuous Integration with Azure Pipelines : https://azuredevopslabs.com/labs/azuredevops/continuousintegration/

Test Planning and Management with Azure Test Plans

https://azuredevopslabs.com/labs/azuredevops/testmanagement/

Embracing Continuous Delivery with Azure Pipelines

https://azuredevopslabs.com/labs/azuredevops/continuousdeployment/

Deploying a Docker based web application to Azure App Service

https://azuredevopslabs.com/labs/vstsextend/docker/

GitHub integration with Azure Pipelines

https://azuredevopslabs.com/labs/vstsextend/github-azurepipelines/

Things I have learned….

1.    Creating a new organization from scratch on GitHub, Track and prioritize your work using project boards, Transfer open issues to other repositories, Branch protection settings and Closing Issues via Pull Requests

2.    DevOps is not a tool, automation or combining teams but it is a culture. In our solution, our team chose GitHub but some of the other teams selected Azure Devops.

3.    There are many ways to deploy Docker containers from GitHub Actions, Azure Devops, AZ CLI or Azure portal.

4.    Workflow syntax for GitHub Actions, Events that trigger workflows and Run a workflow on any GitHub event

5.     MS Teams is going to vital tool for Devops collaboration channels.

6.    I highly recommend you to attend, learn new skills and finding best practices on coming MS OpenHack with hands on practices. OpenHack learning concept is more useful and contains hands-on practice then other training concepts.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my teammates : Charitha Basani, Irina Kostina, Tibi Covaci, Florian Georg for producing wonderful collaborating virtual environment during this event time. I also would like to thank Victor Pareja for managing the learning process, providing insight, leading and coaching during hacking time. I want to thank Tugce Coskun and Vedran Vučetić for your organization , inspiration and explanation of other solution methods.

I would extend my special thanks to Daniel McPherson, Cocky De Bruijn and my Rapid Circle(Run Team) for supporting and encouragement in getting high-skill on my Azure journey.