What’s it all mean?

APPLICATION ENGINEER

AXIOM

Applications are not just code

Containers and application servers play increasingly bigger roles

Increasing computational demands drive horizontal scaling. With great power comes great responsibility:

Monitoring (system health);

Infrastructure (hardware, network, OS setup);

Administration (automated deployment, rolling updates)

AXIOM CONT.

Increasing application complexity creates new challenges for IT staff:

Applicative monitoring (queue sizes, component statistics, complex behavioral rules)

System tuning (horizontal scaling + application performance improvements = huge gains)

System architecture (static server farms, load balancers, high availability, central storage…) Not just LAMP anymore!

AXIOM CONT.

As IT staff plays an increasingly significant role, responsibilities shift from R&D to IT

… but IT can’t deliver without being directly involved with R&D!

System architecture is tightly coupled with deployment, monitoring, tuning

System architecture may comprise shared responsibilities (e.g. a hybrid static/dynamic web farm)

Inevitable conclusion: A successful project requires close cooperation between R&D and IT

THE APPLICATION ENGINEER…

… is the IT liaison officer in R&D

Specifies operational requirements (e.g. monitoring, configuration, logging);

Active participant in design reviews;

Is the contact point for R&D requirements from IT (hardware, deployment, storage…)

THE APPLICATION ENGINEER…

… is the IT equivalent of a system architect

Specifies architecture (web farms, central/distributed storage, load balancing…)

Works closely with R&D to define the system architecture

Has significant theoretical knowledge of the application (… in order to correctly monitor and tune it)

THE APPLICATION ENGINEER…

… is directly responsible for the production environment

Monitoring (specification and implementation)

Reporting (provides feedback to R&D)

Ongoing tuning

Management contact point

IN PRACTICAL TERMS

Vís a vís R&D:

Sits in on design reviews

Generates requirements

Provides ongoing feedback to R&D Production errors

Performance bottlenecks

Collaborates with R&D to define the system architecture and deployment practices

IN PRACTICAL TERMS

Vís a vís management:

Provides the contact point for the production environment (“the site is down!”)

Responsibilities include:

Deployment

Production uptime

System performance

Support (?) and issue tracking

Infrastructure (web, high availability, central storage…)

ARE WE DONE YET?

Questions?

Comments?

Snarky remarks?

FINAL WORDS