New Model with Reasoning — ChatGPT o1

I have used ChatGPT’s new model for last few days. So far, with limited usage, I have not experienced whole lot of difference in provided answers. Maybe that is because of my use cases where I was mostly asking it for help in setting up some technology stack. I am pretty sure it is capable of far more compared to pervious model(s) with it’s new reasoning capabilities. But what has really impressed me so far is when it displays what it was thinking while working out the answer. It gives step by step process it was following. This is very helpful in learning/understanding something than just getting the answer.

To test, I asked it a question whose answer I already knew. I knew even previous versions gave correct answer. I wanted to see the process.

I asked: Can NGINX HA be implemented using open source/free version of NGINX?

Before giving very detailed steps with answer, it provided following thought process:

Assessing feasibility

I’m gathering info on whether Nginx High Availability can be achieved using its open source version.

Assessing high availability

I’m thinking through NGINX Open Source and NGINX Plus. NGINX Open Source can achieve high availability with extra tools like keepalived and VRRP.

Implementing NGINX HA

OK, let me see. I’m exploring NGINX High Availability using its open-source version. It’s interesting to combine it with tools like Keepalived for failover and VRRP to keep things running smoothly despite issues.

Setting up Keepalived

I’m installing Keepalived on both servers and configuring a shared virtual IP with specific settings for each, ensuring high availability.

Aligning configurations

I’m considering methods to align NGINX configurations and content across two servers, including rsync, scp, cron jobs, Unison, or GlusterFS.

Setting up load balancer

I’m mapping out how to distribute load and provide failover using NGINX or HAProxy as a load balancer, along with Keepalived for redundancy.

Ensuring NGINX performance

I’m focusing on monitoring NGINX servers and validating failover by stopping services on the primary server to verify VIP transfer to the backup server.

This was before providing actual steps with detailed instructions and code.

I asked it few more questions where solution was to be bit more involved. I was very impressed with the thought process it was providing to arrive at the solution. This can be very useful in learning something. In one case, it repeated the process and considered security and performance implications of solutions it was considering. So far, I was using it to ask scenarios where I already knew the solutions based on my experience to validate. I am looking forward to using it in use cases where I actually need help to explore/learn something new, which is almost every day.

Any tool can be used or abused. In tech world, I can just ask it questions and use answers without understanding much. Or I can use it to explore/brain storm ideas and make good use of provided thought process and solutions, while still remembering that ultimately I am responsible for my deliverables.

Thanks!