A Slightly Noobish SRE

To preface, this post will be divided into two parts one of which will focus on a "theory" aspect of Site Reliability Engineering and the other will focus on creating a PowerShell module, adding existing scripts to it, and interacting with the module via the shell. So, without further adieu, let's get into this. The Debate In recent months, now that I've started to get acclimated with my new role, I've started to focus on learning more about the concepts behind SRE. The fact is that SRE covers a fairly broad spectrum of potential responsibilities in a role. Some are geared towards web, some systems, some network only, some the entire spectrum. With that in mind, there is a reoccurring topic that I've been running into in regards to the world of SRE. SREs with a background in Systems (SysAdmin, Desktop Support, etc) make the best SREs. Out of curiosity, I did a little research on the areas most SREs come from. It boils down to two of areas of IT,  Systems a

OK.... I have a confession to make. Despite my intentions, it appears that I have not been entirely truthful with you. I know that I had planned to discuss and demonstrate Github usage for this post but I just can't do it. I think it's time that I take this blog and "change course" and start diving into some real topics and concepts. When I say "real", I'm referring to the core reason and motivation behind me even starting this blog, being an SRE. Also, let's be honest, if you want to learn how to use github, go to github.com . In addition to their site having plenty of documentation, said documentation is very thorough and easy to follow. Also, there's a high percentage chance that github is a more reliable source then myself. Having said that, I think it's time to dive into a more relevant and far more exciting topic, Site Reliability Engineering . However, in order to achieve enlightenment, one cannot simply decide to become an SRE. I

Hello again! To start off today, I'd first like to apologize to any actual followers I might have for the delay since my last post. In addition to still getting used to blogging, as we all, the world can get pretty chaotic and busy. Luckily,  things have finally settled down and now I can get back into this thing. I've been looking forward to this post for some time now. With having the chance to break in my new Dev Environment during my last post, I'm excited to put it to good use. My plan for this approach is to start with pipeline Basics (Overview, basic usae) followed by some more advanced concepts and concluding with a script related to the commands used in the examples. Pipeline Basics Anyone who uses Powershell is likely aware of piping and/or using the pipeline. For those unfamiliar, Powershell functionality allows a user to pipe objects between or after commands enabling them to be interacted with. For example, let's say you want to run a command to check th

Mistakes were made.........again Hello again! In case you haven't already figured it out, I really took a rather foolish approach to blogging, the correct motives and objectives are there but the execution was shit. Because of this, I've made some changes to ensure that I'm taking a professional approach to my blog. The keyword here is professional . One thing that I've constantly been struggling with has been distancing my job related work from my blog topics and content. The whole point of this blog is not for discussing the projects I'm working on at work but rather the concepts that I'm learning while doing so. As a result, I've basically been writing a variation of a given script or function that I was working on all from memory. The reason for this is because the only way that I can test my newly learned concepts is at work. I think now is as good of a time as any to change that. Construction in progress To mitigate this problem, the solution was

Edit: I was lucky enough to have a fellow redditor point out that I had made a mistake after my initial post. (Thanks /u/Lee_Dailey!). There were two primary mistakes I made with the first version of this script. 1. Can't query a database without first building a connection object. (Yeah that might be helpful!) 2. My syntax used for building my query string was incorrect. That said, here's an updated post :). Before I begin, I recently realized that I need to start being more organized at work and with my posts. The reason is because I'm finding that it is becoming increasingly difficult to choose a topic for a post and that I am very  disorganized. To address this, I've created an "itinerary" for my next three posts. Once I've made it through these three posts, I'm going to re-evaluate and see if any tweaks are needed. Additionally, I'm going to be categorizing my posts so any potential readers can tell whether or not it's relevant be

Hello Again folks! I'm really excited for this post as it is my first time sharing a script via a blog. To preface, I'm clueless about the preferred method of sharing a script via a blog post nor do I really even how to format it for that matter. Additionally, being that this wonderful blog host doesn't allow much with formatting, I decided to use screenshots of the actual code and included a link for the script on pastebin at the bottom. I know, that's what I get for being cheap and choosing the free version. As always, I'm open to any suggestions or feedback. That in mind, lets get into this! As I prefaced in my last post, this is the first script that I published to our module (Yes, the one that I broke). Actually, funny story, I've broke it close to half of a dozen times now doing the same type of thing but I'm happy to say that I've finally committed the process to memory. Anyways, I've named this beast Invoke-MachineDump.ps1 because I co