DevOps Days MTL 2019- Yannick Brosseau
summary
Firmware is treated as first‑class software: Facebook packages vendor blobs into a single zip format, stores per‑asset versions in a database, and runs lab validation plus shadow‑traffic and staged rollouts (start at 5%, then 10%, then 50%) before fleetwide deploys. Tooling centers on coreboot, OpenBMC and flashrom plus an open validation suite; testing finds issues like microcode downgrades that slow memory buses or SSD firmware stalls that block I/O. The system enforces capacity planning, remote BMC reboots, and staged rollback when upgrades fail.
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chapters (10)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:02Why firmware matters in DevOps
- 3:30Firmware components in modern hardware
- 9:58Security risks of outdated firmware
- 13:33Performance benefits of firmware updates
- 13:54Facebook’s firmware management
- 21:07Open source firmware initiatives
- 24:42Key takeaways and call for open source contributions
- 28:56Testing firmware updates
- 31:48Firmware impact examples
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