Today the organizers of PuppetConf released an “almost complete” list of speakers and talks for this year’s PuppetConf in San Francisco, guess who’s on it?

Through some twist of fate, both of my proposed talks were accepted. Originally I had submitted two sessions to improve the chances that I would be able to speak on at least one of the many ideas I had swirling around in my head. I didn’t quite expect to have both talks accepted, but here we are.

I’ve included the titles and abstracts for both my talks below, be sure to register soon so you can also take one of Puppet Labs’ beta certification exams while you’re in town.

Red, green, re-provision: Test-driving Operations

The developers you work with have a new service they’re building, and it is your job to add the appropriate Puppet modules to provision it. Where do you start? A base image, Vagrant and some tinkering? Editing files in “/etc/puppet” on a staging Puppet host? What is the most maintainable work-flow which won’t saddle you with technical debt in the future?

In this talk, I will take you from the “outside” inward, writing tests along the way with Cucumber and RSpec. This approach encourages you to think more about where the lines are drawn between the various services and resources you’re configuring. While the work-flow is a departure from the “traditional sysadmin” role, the resulting modules can be more easily re-used and re-factored.

We’ll do it live: Operations Anti-Patterns

I have done unspeakable things.

The best indicator of industry experience in Ops is an engineer with regrets. An engineer who has designed near-perfect systems but due to outside constraints has had to cut corners. Let’s be honest with ourselves and air some dirty laundry.

In this talk, I’ll take a jovial romp through some of the most heinous offenders of what could be considered “Ops Anti-Patterns.” I’ll share maddening stories from companies that I have worked at as well as stories from colleagues, who wish to remain nameless.

Names may be changed to protect the innocent, or guilty, or whatever.