{"id":1906,"date":"2014-08-25T19:53:10","date_gmt":"2014-08-26T00:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/redmonk.com\/dberkholz\/?p=1906"},"modified":"2014-08-25T19:53:10","modified_gmt":"2014-08-26T00:53:10","slug":"reference-architectures-belong-in-code-not-pointless-pdfs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/dberkholz\/2014\/08\/25\/reference-architectures-belong-in-code-not-pointless-pdfs\/","title":{"rendered":"Reference architectures belong in code, not pointless PDFs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Every couple of weeks, I get emails about a new reference architecture for something or other, from any one of an endless list of vendors. I inevitably click through to see what they&#8217;re talking about, and it&#8217;s almost always something hidden behind a registration wall. Every once in a while I&#8217;m sufficiently curious to fill out the form, and almost universally I end up getting force-fed a PDF whitepaper.<\/p>\n<p><strong>This is completely the wrong model.<\/strong> We&#8217;ve been talking about the importance of the <a href=\"http:\/\/redmonk.com\/dberkholz\/2012\/07\/23\/what-is-packaging-its-all-about-the-barrier-to-entry\/\">barrier to entry<\/a> for many years, and a PDF writeup and illustration of a reference architecture is a perfect example of that.<\/p>\n<p>The problem is that the distribution model hasn&#8217;t changed with the times. As I sit here at VMworld, I&#8217;m hearing about\u00a0how <strong>we\u00a0now have ubiquitous virtual machines and containers, and we have infrastructure as code a la Puppet and Chef.<\/strong> Yet this stuff is still shipped in the same way it&#8217;s been shipped for decades, in a form meant to be laboriously translated from illustration into infrastructure, replicated across every single consumer of the architecture.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Why aren&#8217;t we shipping reference architectures\u00a0as code samples?<\/strong> Even dead-tree programming books have been doing this for years. We now have the technology to ship even multi-server descriptions of IT infrastructure, so let&#8217;s do it.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: rgb(153, 153, 153);\"><em><strong>Disclosure<\/strong>: Chef is a client. Puppet Labs has been a client. Docker and Google are not clients.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"acc_license\"><a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i.creativecommons.org\/l\/by-sa\/3.0\/88x31.png\" alt=\"by-sa\" \/><\/a><\/div><!--<rdf:RDF xmlns=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/ns#\" xmlns:dc=\"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/elements\/1.1\/\" xmlns:rdf=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/1999\/02\/22-rdf-syntax-ns#\"><Work rdf:about=\"\"><license rdf:resource=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0\/\" \/><\/Work><License rdf:about=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0\/\"><requires rdf:resource=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/ns#Attribution\" \/><permits rdf:resource=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/ns#Reproduction\" \/><permits rdf:resource=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/ns#Distribution\" \/><permits rdf:resource=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/ns#DerivativeWorks\" \/><requires rdf:resource=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/ns#ShareAlike\" \/><requires rdf:resource=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/ns#Notice\" \/><\/License><\/rdf:RDF>-->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every couple of weeks, I get emails about a new reference architecture for something or other, from any one of an endless list of vendors. I inevitably click through to see what they&#8217;re talking about, and it&#8217;s almost always something hidden behind a registration wall. Every once in a while I&#8217;m sufficiently curious to fill<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[8,24,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-devops","category-packaging","category-virtualization"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p23Tsn-uK","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/dberkholz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/dberkholz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/dberkholz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/dberkholz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/dberkholz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/dberkholz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1906\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/dberkholz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/dberkholz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/dberkholz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}