Go for Sysadmins

Kelsey Hightower, Go for Sysadmins, GopherCon 2014. Using packages found in the standard library and Go's unique language features, I'll show you how to solve common Sysadmin problems in new ways, and set the stage for tackling a whole new set of problems that our current tools have made way too complicated. youtube

When I went to go look at the documentation for go it was really amazing how simple things were represented.

one thing that I do to test out a new new platform to see how easy it for me to grab user information and turn into JSON that tells me pretty quick I might have to go find a bunch of third party libraries for the things I actually want to do so in this case it actually turned out to be really really really simple and in this case using just a standard library it was able to write this and one thing that was awesome that it actually ran on my Mac and on Linux and I was thought that was actually beautiful

and then I moved on to solving real problems

He goes on to demonstrate how simple an iPXE server can be built using just go standard library. He goes on to bootstrapping one CoreOS VM with another CoreOS VM using that statically compiled iPXE server.

A few things catch our attention.

Hightower also recommends systemd and coreos.

Appeal of operational simplicity and clarity.

Build with the standard library. Compile into a single static binary. Deploy with just scp. Configure using environment variables. iPXE uses http file server.

We admire all these small details which simplify operations.