I’ve switched nameservers for all my domains yesterday. During the past many years I’ve been free-riding on GratisDNS and enjoying their free DNS service (and luckily never needed support in their forums).

Yesterday I switched to Cloudflare and I’m using them for DNS for this (and other domains). I don’t have any particular requirements, and the switch was mostly easy and automated to the extent possible. Two domains went smooth, but the last my mahler.io domain went a stray a few hours during the switch.

It’s been quiet here for a while, but be things have been happening behind the scenes. In case your wondering the site (and surroundings) have been seeing a number of updates which eventually may make it into separate posts.

• I’m running on a Digital Ocean droplet. It was provisioned as an Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, which is dead by now (as in no more updates including security updates). The server has now been roll up to an Ubuntu 16.04 LTS in place.
• As I was messing around with the server, I’ve added IPv6 support.
• The DNS has been updated to have full support for DNSSEC.
• My Let’s Encrypt Certificates now has automated certificate renewals and I’ve upgraded to CAA support.
• The Webserver has been switched from Apache to NGINX.
• The PHP has been switched from PHP 5.6 series to a modern 7.0.
• I’m adopting full Git-backed backup of all server setup and configuration using BitBucket.org. It’s not complete but most config files have been added and managed using GitHub.

These was the majority of changes on the site and server the past few months. With these updates in place, I might get back to producing content for the site.

DevOps seems to be sweeping through IT departments these years and for most developers it seems to be sen as a way of getting those pesky gatekeepers from Operations away and ship code whenever any developers feels like it.

The problem is however, that in the eagerness to be a modern DevOps operation, the focus is often solely on the benefits of faster releases (on the short term) the “DevOps” provide over “Dev to Ops”, and many developers do seem to forget the virtues Operations (should) bring to the party.

No, your servers should (probably) not have a facebook profile, nor should your servicebus have a twitter profile, but as the work tools change and evolve, you should probably consider updating the stream of status mails to more modern “social media” used at work.

When you’re in DevOps you probably get a steady stream of emails from various systems checking in. It may be alert emails, health checks or backup completed emails. It’s been more “fun” getting these mails with the rise of unlimited mail storage and powerful email-search tools should you ever need to find something in the endless stream of server-generated mails.

Remember the good old days, when IT got a new server. It was a special event - and naturally the naming game. Finding that special name for the server, which neatly fitted into the naming scheme adopted (be it Indian cities, Nordic mythology or cartoon characters).

This ought to be then, but the ceremony still happens regularly in many IT departments, where servers are treated with the same affection as with pets - and with all the bad side effects it may bring along.