2024-03-19 13:59:45 +00:00
---
2024-03-19 15:53:59 +00:00
title: Beyond Platform Thinking at Ritchie Brothers - Build Things No One Expects, in a Place No One Expect
2024-03-19 13:59:45 +00:00
weight: 3
2024-03-25 12:45:10 +00:00
tags:
- platform
- scaling
- operators
- warstory
2024-03-19 13:59:45 +00:00
---
The story of how Thoughtworks buit YY at Ritchie Bros (RB).
Presented by the implementers at Thoughtworks (TW).
## Backgroud
* RB is a auctioneer in the field of heavy machinery
* Problem: They are old(ish) and own a bunch of other companies -> Duplicate Solutions
* Goals
* Get rid of duplicates
* Scale without the need of more personel
### Platform creation principles
* Platform is a product
* Building is a exercise in software eng. not operations
* Reduce dev friction
## Platform overview
* Platform provides selfservices
* Teams manage everything inside their namespace themselfes
* Multiple global locations that can be opted-in and -out
## Principles and Solutions
### Compliance at source of change
> Developers own their pipelines
* Dev teams are responsible for scanning, etc
* Platform verifies thath the compliance scans have been done (through admission control)
* Examples:
* OPA + Gatekeeper for admission -> Teams use snyk for scanning and admission checks the scan results
* ira as admission hook for approval -> PO approves in Jira, admission only acceps if webhook is approved
### Platform Operators
* Implemented: S3 Operator, IAM Operator, DynamoDB Operatopr
* Reasons:
* Devs should not need access to AWS/GCP directly
* Teams have full control while not needing to submit tickets or write terraform
* Goals
* Abstract specific details away
* Make the results cloud-portable (AWS, GCP, Azure)
* Still retain developer transparency
* Example: DynamoDB Database
1. User: creates dynamo CR and ServiceRole CR
1. K8S: Create Pods, Secrets, Configs and Serviceaccount (related to a IAM Role)
1. User: Creates S3 Bucket CR and assignes ServiceRole
1. K8s: Injects secrets and configs where needed
### Observability
* Tool: Honeycomb
2024-03-26 13:39:44 +00:00
* Metrics: OpenTelemetry
2024-03-19 15:53:59 +00:00
* Operator reconcile steps are exposed as traces
## Q&A
2024-03-26 13:39:44 +00:00
* Your teams are pretty autonomous -> What to do with more classic teams: Over a multi-year journey every team settles on the ownership and self-service approach
* How teams get access to stages: They just get themselves a stage namespace, attach to ingress and have fun (admission handles the rest)
