The risks and merits of automation


Today morning a customer decided to deploy a new /etc/ntp.conf configuration file, using his own automation software. His approach was somewhat more aggressive than desired, so he broke NTP on 30+ servers, leading to an alert flood. Using an Ansible role, I was able to re-install the correct ntp.conf and restore this important service within minutes.

Yesterday, Ubiquiti decided to upgrade its Unifi controller from 5.x to 6.0.20. As consequence, my wireless network broke down, as it was the case for many customers given their community site content (Edit : the multiple complaints about broken 6.0.20 have been removed and 6.0.22 published). I’m running Unifi on a Proxmox VM, so a quick VM-destroy, followed by a restore command gave me back a working VM and unifi. It feels comfortable to have a modern platform and backup system that restores a VM within 5 minutes using this single command :

qmrestore vzdump-qemu-101-2020_09_15-06_25_02.vma.lzo 101

Spend less time with ssh+vim, and get more time for your important projects. Contact us for your automation needs, I’m quite certain it will help at some point.