Go for the bananas

Terraform Use

Tom Pansino and Gunnar Holwerda discuss the intricacies of using Terraform for AWS infrastructure management. Tom explains their approach to quality assurance, which involves running Terraform plans through GitHub actions to ensure changes are predictable and safe. This process includes a staging environment to catch potential issues before they reach production 1. Gunnar emphasizes the importance of optimizing deployment workflows by questioning traditional practices and encouraging experimentation 2.

We try and look at, then we look for the patterns in that and say, okay, we are pretty confident this is going to apply correctly.

--- Tom Pansino

Their strategy aims to streamline deployments while maintaining robust checks and balances.

   

Networking

The team at OpenSesame employs sophisticated cloud networking strategies to simplify AWS operations. Tom Pansino describes their use of VPCs as modular packages, which include subnets and gateways for secure and efficient networking 3. This approach minimizes the complexity for developers, allowing them to focus on building rather than managing infrastructure. Autumn Nash and Justin Garrison4.

You have a server that's in the cloud that's running great, bring it to our VPC, plug it in with these subnets in the Amazon UI, and you're off and running.

--- Tom Pansino

This modular approach ensures that networking remains robust and adaptable across various team needs.

   

Deployment Resilience

Resilient deployment practices are crucial for ensuring system reliability at OpenSesame. Tom Pansino shares insights on handling discrepancies between staging and production environments, emphasizing the importance of maintaining parity to avoid failures 5. Gunnar Holwerda discusses the flexibility of their deployment workflows, which are tailored to each team's needs while ensuring a consistent dev-stage-prod flow 6.

In my experience, when the staging deploy passes but the production doesn't is usually a sign of something that's a stage prod parity issue.

--- Tom Pansino

These practices help mitigate risks and ensure smooth transitions from development to production.