Just asked our devops guy to create 2 environments for 2 repos (BE and FE). He said this would take around 10h. Is this normal? Nothing fancy just a NestJS API and a React FE. It’s in AWS.

That's insane, I can spin them up in 5 seconds. /s

I work with ops guys, the time it takes is the time it takes. Treat your ops people fairly and they will ALWAYS have your back when your shit goes berserk and your environment gets trashed.

If he says it will take 10 hours, give him 10 hours. Once time is up and he's still not done, ask how you can help. Who knows, you might learn something about your environment that will save your ass one day.

@sariel it felt excessive. I asked him nicely if he could have it earlier because of a demo with the client.

There's probably several forms that have to be raised in triplicate, approved by several people, at least one of whom is away for the entire month and didn't nominate a stand in, before anything can be done, at least if it's anything like the companies I've work in.

@HnDev if I were doing it I would need the following.

What region?
What VPC?
What subnets/security groups?
Will you need SSH?
What ports should be open(sg again)?
How many vcpus?
How much memory?
How much storage?
Is storage persistent?
What version of node do you need?
Will you be deploying with git or code pipeline?
Do you need it scalable?
Blue/green deployment strategy?
Is your DB hosted in the same SG/VPC?
Is your app supposed to be publicly available?
Do you need backups?
When can we do monthly patching?
Is your app supposed to be compliant?
Which compliance standard?

I digress, I could keep going but I hope you get the picture.

Deploying an environment isn't just, 'click a button'. There's so much that goes into it that you may not have ever thought of.

If you need an environment for a demo, ask sooner. If you can't ask sooner, don't write checks your ass can't pay. If your opportunity won't understand the demo ran into a delay, you don't want their business anyway.

@sariel I know it’s not just clicking a button or any simple action, but 10h definitely felt and still does feel excessive. He didn’t ask any of that. But he said he could have something a little earlier.

@HnDev sometimes there may be other things they have to do. Especially in smaller companies where people wear multiple hats...

@stettdev this is probably it. That’s why I just asked him nicely if it was possible to have it earlier.

I would have asked for a 20 hours. 5 hours of drinking coffee. 5 hours of thinking nothing. 5 hours of asking questions to you. And 2 hours of work and 3 hours of head banging on to the wall for why is it not working. If he asks for 10 give him 10. But expect it to be 20. 😇 Peace be upon you.