Technology Short Take 103
Published on 17 Aug 2018 · Filed in Information · 724 words (estimated 4 minutes to read)Welcome to Technology Short Take 103, where I’m back yet again with a collection of links and articles from around the World Wide Web (Ha! Bet you haven’t seen that term used in a while!) on various technology areas. Here’s hoping I’ve managed to include something useful to you!
Networking
- Gerald Dykeman shares some information on using Ansible to automate Cisco Meraki.
- If you’re not familiar with VPCs and associated AWS constructs, you should read this article. It’s really good.
- I can’t say that I’ve ever thought about writing a CNI plugin in Bash, but apparently it can be done.
Servers/Hardware
Nothing this time around, sorry!
Security
- Scott McCarty explains sVirt and how it’s used to isolate Linux containers. You may also find this related article (linked within Scott’s post) to be helpful.
- Andrew Martin has a write-up with security recommendations for your Kubernetes clusters.
Cloud Computing/Cloud Management
- Fellow Heptonian Chuck Ha walks through some Kubernetes logs to show how to use them to better understand the relationships between the various components.
- Gabe Monroy introduces Dev Spaces for AKS, a developer productivity-focused feature that aims to make it easier for developers to build and troubleshoot microservices in a Kubernetes environment.
- Written in a somewhat entertaining format (gotta give them kudos for that), Gravitational has a post on the intricacies of upgrading etcd beneath Kubernetes.
- Alex Komljen provides an overview of using Cluster Autoscaler with a Kubernetes cluster on AWS.
- And in the event you’re not really familiar with the various autoscaling aspects of Kubernetes (of which cluster autoscaling is just one), this article by Mohamed Ahmed provides a 101-level overview.
- The CNCF has a 4-part series taking a deeper look at some of the feature changes in Kubernetes 1.11. Check out these articles talking about IPVS-based in-cluster load balancing, CoreDNS, dynamic kubelet configuration, and resizing persistent volumes in Kubernetes.
- Nathaniel Avery shares a tip on saving some money by using the right servers on Azure.
- Here’s how to let Traefik run on worker nodes in a Docker Swarm cluster.
- These users did not have a good experience with AKS.
Operating Systems/Applications
- Kushal Das (briefly) talks about using Podman for containers. Looks like Podman is still evolving pretty rapidly, but it may be worth giving a try.
- Nick Janetakis decides he wants to benchmark Debian versus Alpine as a base Docker image and shares what he found. (The reasons behind his decision are in the article.)
- YACIS (Yet Another Container Isolation Scheme) has arrived: Nabla containers. Like Google GVisor, I suspect this will see limited uptake (at least initially) since it requires a specific base image in order to work.
- I got bitten by this issue recently when doing some testing using Ansible and Jinja2; fortunately, using
-e ansible_python_interpreter=/usr/bin/pythonon the Ansible command line fixed it for me. - Prometheus is the second project to “graduate” within the CNCF; more details are here.
Storage
- This is from July 2017, but still applicable I think: Detectify has a deep dive on access controls for Amazon’s S3 object storage service, which increasingly has been a source of data breaches.
Virtualization
Sorry, I didn’t find anything to include this time. I’m sure there’s a ton of great content out there, but none of it passed across my “desk.” (If you were needing a sign of a shift in my focus, this should be it!)
Career/Soft Skills
- I’ll put this here since it kind of applies to lots of different technology areas, even though it is sort of networking-focused: Ben Cotton recently shared 6 RFCs you should read. This is helpful information for folks new to IT, for developers or systems-oriented folks who need a better understanding of some networking fundamentals.
- In recounting his journey to the cloud, Stephen Manley shares a tidbit that I think it useful for folks in a similar situation: regardless of how technology changes, there’s a piece of your experience that remains valuable, and you can build on that piece to create a bridge into a new area. For Stephen, it was data management. For you, it may be something else. (I love his closing statement!)
- Finally, I found this article from Scott Young on increasing your focus to be helpful. As an “information worker,” our focus is most definitely one of our most valuable resources.
That’s all for now, folks! Have a great weekend!