Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better.

This week we’re going to answer the question every DevOps team is asking themselves in 2021: „should we use Kubernetes or not?“

1. Let’s start with the positive answer. The Stack Overflow blog argues that you should consider it if you’re starting a new project these days. They share their own experiences of migrating their massively popular application (written in C#) to containers, and then to Kubernetes. A massive undertaking and an excellent case study.

https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/07/21/why-you-should-build-on-kubernetes-from-day-one/

2. But of course, there are also lots of teams that are perfectly happy, productive, and 100% DevOps-y without Kubernetes. Take for example the Ably messaging platform team. They built and manage their own infrastructure on AWS, and they are extremely happy with it. They are able to scale at will, they use infrastructure as code, and have no plans to move to Kubernetes anytime soon.

https://ably.com/blog/no-we-dont-use-kubernetes

3. A common strategy to reduce the risks related to Kubernetes consists in hiring us 🙂 or maybe just using a fully managed platform, for example one with a level of service comparable to that of Amazon EKS. It is true that the EKS ecosystem is simply awesome! Check this ever-growing list of tools to use, social media accounts to follow, and resources to learn from.

https://realvz.github.io/awesome-eks/

4. Speaking about managed Kubernetes services, we’re very glad to learn from our friends at Exoscale that their new Scalable Kubernetes Service (SKS) has been officially certified by the CNCF! We use Exoscale a lot in VSHN, in particular for OpenShift 4 clusters, which is one of our products.

https://www.exoscale.com/syslog/sks-continuous-development-of-our-kubernetes-service/

5. If you choose to use Kubernetes, one of the best things in the ecosystem is, without any doubt, K3s; a lightweight, fast, compliant Kubernetes distribution made by our friends at Rancher, ready for Edge and IoT deployments. And it’s also a great alternative to Minikube for local development. And now, somebody even figured out how to use it inside a GitHub action, which means you can now kubectl apply in your CI/CD workflows.

https://github.com/debianmaster/actions-k3s

Do you use Kubernetes? How do you use it? In production, for testing, or during development? Do you have any tips and tricks for teams new to Kubernetes? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: would you like to receive VSHN.timer every Monday in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly VSHN.timer newsletter.

PS²: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about Kubernetes: #4, #8, #11, #14, #16, #19, #23, #37, #46, #49, #59, #64, #74, #82, #97, and #99.

Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better.

This week we’re going to talk about various recent articles about programming and software engineering that caught our attention.

1. What is the best way to welcome a new member in your software development team? Everybody has their own approach, but it pays to listen to practitioners to learn what worked (and what didn’t) for them. Case in point, Nicole Kow wrote an incredibly extensive, excellent article covering all must haves in any technical onboarding process. The must-read guide of the week without any doubt.

https://codesubmit.io/blog/guide-to-onboarding-developers/

2. This is one of the most talked-about articles this month; in the Oil shell blog, it is argued that Kubernetes is our generation’s Multics. And what is Multics, you ask? The ancestor of Unix. An interesting analogy, lots of stuff to think about in terms of architecture, and more than a few references to the father of all software blogs, Joel on Software.

https://www.oilshell.org/blog/2021/07/blog-backlog-2.html#kubernetes-is-our-generations-multics

3. Software developers love challenges; take for example Avinash trying all possible combinations of PRAGMA statements to be able to insert one billion rows in a SQLite table in less than a minute. At the time of this writing they’re able to get 100M rows in 33 seconds, which is quite impressive indeed. Let’s keep an eye on this and see if they manage to pull this off.

https://avi.im/blag/2021/fast-sqlite-inserts/

4. Are you a Visual Studio Code user? (The question is rather, who isn’t?) Well in that case you’re most probably using GitLens; even though the market of Git-related VSCode extensions is much, much, much bigger than that. Here’s a complete review of the most interesting ones. We love Git Graph a lot at VSHN.

https://dev.to/jamieswift90/the-best-vs-code-extensions-to-supercharge-git-yes-there-s-more-than-gitlens-4588

5. The VSHN.timer project of the week is the catalog of programming languages for enthusiasts by Prathyush Pramod. Ever heard of Mascarpone, Beef, Soufflé, or Caramel? We know, it sounds more like a restaurant menu; but seriously, check them all out anyway, some are quite incredible. Even so, we’re surprised Teuton didn’t make it in the list.

https://github.com/prathyvsh/pl-catalog

Have you ever inserted a billion rows in a database in a decent amount of time? Do you have any Visual Studio Code extensions to recommend? How do you onboard new colleagues in your teams? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: would you like to receive VSHN.timer every Monday in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly VSHN.timer newsletter.

PS²: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about programming: #18, #30, #33, #47, #50, #60, #77, and #88.

Welcome to the 100th edition of VSHN.timer! 🥳 🥇🎆 🏆 Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better.

All of us VSHNeers would like to say a big thank you to our friends, our partners, to all of you, for reading and sharing this publication every week, sending us links, suggestions, ideas, and emojis! VSHN.timer is the ticking clock of the Cloud Native industry, marking the pace of technology changing every week.

For the curious among you, here’s a bit of trivia: VSHN.timer started in 2017 with three short editions and a different style. This idea didn’t catch internally, so we decided to restart it again in August 2019 with a new format… and here we are!

This is a very special edition with five crazy links that are going to make you laugh, plus a bonus: the complete categorized index of all VSHN.timer entries!

1. Kubernetes clusters are Turing machines built on top of more Turing machines. Case in point, here’s an Intel 8080 CPU emulated in a Kubernetes cluster, with individual microservices… representing each opcode on the original chip. Each opcode is built with a different programming language, and all together emulate the execution of the Space Invaders game. We’re not kidding when we tell you that some people have way too much time in their hands.

https://blog.davetcode.co.uk/post/21st-century-emulator/

2. DevOps engineers don’t usually earn recognition for their cooking skills, and some even wonder what’s there to eat beyond pizza. But that ends immediately thanks to the Cloud Native Community Cookbook. A beautiful book with recipes for you to try at home while you apply those security patches to your cluster. Don’t have a stove at home? No worries. Run your favorite Electron app on your laptop, and after a few minutes you’ll be able to cook a whole meal on top of it. You’re welcome.

https://github.com/cncf/cloud-native-community-cookbook

3. Ever wondered what it’s like to be a software developer? Of course, some of you are software developers, but admit it: your family members repeatedly ask themselves what is that you do for a living sitting in front of a computer all day. Mine does at least. Anyway. If you ever need to explain it, Graham King has you covered. Of course this is a joke, but not as far fetched as you might think.

https://www.darkcoding.net/software/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-professional-software-engineer/

4. Online shopping exploded since last year because of the pandemic, but you know what did also explode? Our heads when we opened the developer tools in our browsers and realized how fake our online experience could be. Keep this in mind the next time you follow recommendations from your favorite online shop.

https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/od3sis/just_a_normal_day_at_an_online_store/

5. Noticed how lots of websites these days don’t provide RSS feeds anymore? I know, first world problems. Actually… VSHN.timer used to have its own RSS feed, but we broke it in our last website migration 🙁 and yes, we’re working to bring it back. In the meantime say hi to the new CSS feeds. Long gone are the days when you just used CSS to set fonts and colors.

https://feed-me-up-scotty.vincenttunru.com/

The VSHN.timer Directory

To celebrate our 100th edition, here’s the complete VSHN.timer directory of entries, categorized per subject, for your browsing pleasure. Two years of links, fun, opinion, and Cloud Native goodies, all just one click away!

By far, the subject that got most of our attention was (duh!) Kubernetes, of course! All in all, 16 editions were entirely dedicated to the subject of our preferred container platform. Follow in decreasing number of editions: Security (11 editions, a really hot topic), PeopleOps (10), Programming (8), Containers (7), and then Incidents and Operations, Conferences, and „Random“ (our regular funny edition) with 6 each.

So, without further due, here’s the complete catalog of VSHN.timer entries:

• The Three Original Editions (2017): #1, #2, #3
• Architecture: #25, #79
• AWS: #61, #87
• Business: #15, #26, #35, #41, #70
• Conferences: #19, #20, #56, #57, #90, #91
• Containers: #12, #17, #40, #51, #54, #71, #81
• DevOps: #5, #13, #29, #31, #42
• Education: #21, #38, #67, #99
• Git, GitOps, GitHub, and GitLab: #10, #48, #68, #83, #98
• Hardware: #80
• Incidents and Operations: #32, #41, #49, #66, #75, #89
• Kubernetes: #4, #8, #11, #14, #16, #19, #23, #37, #46, #49, #59, #64, #74, #82, #97, #99
• Kubernetes Operators: #39, #58
• Linux: #45, #55, #72, #96
• OpenShift: #9, #28, #53, #95
• PeopleOps: #7, #13, #15, #26, #35, #41, #52, #63, #85, #92
• Programming: #18, #30, #33, #47, #50, #60, #77, #88
• Prometheus and Grafana: #78
• Quality Assurance: #6, #34, #43, #66
• Random: #24, #36, #69, #73, #86, #94
• Security: #8, #17, #22, #27, #32, #44, #54, #62, #76, #84, #93
• Terraform: #65, #82

Do you enjoy reading VSHN.timer every week? Have you shared it with your colleagues? Is there any memorable edition that you remember fondly? Do you have any suggestions for the future of this publication? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for the 101th (whoa, can you believe it?) edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: would you like to receive VSHN.timer every Monday conveniently in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly VSHN.timer newsletter.

Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better.

This week we’re going to talk about useful online resources to learn all you need to know about Kubernetes.

1. Years have passed since Kelsey Hightower published his epic „Kubernetes the Hard Way“ tutorial, and many alternatives have appeared ever since. One of the latest is Kubernetes by Example, with separate pages explaining each Kubernetes concept (pods, services, etc) as well as full learning paths to prepare you for certification.

https://www.kubernetesbyexample.com/

2. LearnK8s.io remains one of the best resources for Kubernetes-related content out there. One of its latest gems is this explanation about how to select the best autoscaling strategy: horizontal? Vertical? Cluster? And what if they fail?

https://learnk8s.io/kubernetes-autoscaling-strategies

3. How do you deploy your apps? With manifests? Helm charts? Kustomize? Ketch? Kapp? Flux? Argo CD? Keptn? If you are as confused as us, you might want to check the Podtato Head project, and see by yourself all and each one of these options in action.

https://github.com/cncf/podtato-head

4. Do you actually need Kubernetes? The answer will not surprise you. (And as one VSHNeer remarked internally, the question is rather, do people actually spend money domains for this kind of websites?)

https://doineedkubernetes.com/

5. Remember The Illustrated Children’s Guide to Kubernetes? In the same spirit, here’s „Gently Down the Stream“, an illustrated gentle introduction to Kafka. We need more of these; they bring a sense of humanity to all of this bit pushing thing we do day after day.

https://www.gentlydownthe.stream/

My 2-year-old daughter's favorite stuffed animal, "Meow-Meow," is a critical service in my house, so I run a highly available three-node Meow-Meow cluster.

Here's how it works:

1. Three observer processes monitor the current Meow-Meow leader (wife, oldest daughter, and me) pic.twitter.com/lAFr57V2du

— Andrew Brookins (@abrookins) June 17, 2021

How do you keep up with the latest news around Kubernetes? Do you usually sprinkle Kubernetes-related words in your daily life? Would you like to share some tips and tricks with the community? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for… the 100th edition of VSHN.timer!

PS: would you like to receive VSHN.timer every Monday in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly VSHN.timer newsletter.

PS²: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about education: #21, #38, and #67.

Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better.

This week we’re going to learn about new and innovative ways to browse, peek, and clone Git projects, wherever they are.

1. Visual Studio Code is the text editor of the moment. Microsoft is investing lots of effort in its development, and it’s becoming hard to beat with its huge ecosystem of extensions. One of the latest is Remote Repositories, which allows developers to browse, edit, and commit to GitHub repositories directly from the editor. No more git clone!

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=github.remotehub

2. But why even open your editor in the first place, when your editor runs in your web browser? This is the realization made by the github1s team: browse to any GitHub project (like our beloved Project Syn Commodore), append the 1s in between github and .com and boom, you’re editing the code in a snap.

https://github1s.com/

3. Following the lead of github1s, the team of github.surf forked the project and added a few goodies: a Google Chrome extension, a command line tool, and even GitLab support.

4. Speaking about CLI tools, are you more the terminal type? Then try git-peek. This cross-platform tool allows you to git peek any GitHub repository, and open it on your favorite EDITOR.

https://github.com/jarred-sumner/git-peek

5. But none of the git clone replacements we’ve seen so far would be useful without at least a little bit of knowledge of how Git works. LJ Miranda has published this month an outstanding explanation of the Git branching model based on the… MCU franchise. Developers, Assemble!

https://ljvmiranda921.github.io/notebook/2021/06/05/avengers-git/

What is your preferred way to browse Git projects? Do you use Visual Studio Code or do you prefer other editors? Would you like to share some tips and tricks with the community? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: would you like to receive VSHN.timer every Monday in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly VSHN.timer newsletter.

PS²: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about Git, GitHub, GitOps and GitLab: #10, #48, #68, and #83.

Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better.

This week we’re going to talk about useful tools to keep an eye on those thousands of pods running wild and free inside your clusters.

1. Outdated images are one of the most important sources of security issues in Kubernetes clusters. How can you make sure you’re always using the latest versions? Outdated is a kubectl plugin that performs precisely this check for you.

https://outdated.sh/

2. Another common source for trouble in Kubernetes clusters comes from configuration errors. Popeye is a read-only scanner for running clusters, ensuring that you are applying all known best practices, and even reporting on resource under- and overuse.

https://popeyecli.io/

Defense in depth against configuration errors is just as important as defense in depth from attacks.

— Phil Venables (@philvenables) June 13, 2021

3. Let us not stop at checking for outdated images or configuration errors; suspicious-pods also prints a list of pods in your Kubernetes cluster that might not be working correctly, together with the possible reason.

https://github.com/edrevo/suspicious-pods

4. Today’s Infrastructure as Code demands more static checks against configuration errors, to increase security, and make sure we’re using the best practices available. KICS does exactly that for Terraform, Kubernetes, Docker, Ansible, and many other systems.

https://kics.io/

5. To ensure high availability, load balancers inside clusters distribute requests among pods. But k8gb load balances traffic across geographically dispersed Kubernetes clusters, providing unprecedented reliability.

https://www.k8gb.io/

How many Kubernetes clusters do you manage? How do you make sure that you are always running with the latest security patches? Would you like to share some DevOps expert secrets with the community? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: would you like to receive VSHN.timer every Monday in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly VSHN.timer newsletter.

PS²: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about Kubernetes: #4, #8, #11, #14, #16, #19, #23, #37, #46, #49, #59, #64, #74, and #82.

Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better.

This week we’re going to talk about those fancy terminal applications that make the lives of DevOps engineers easier every day.

1. DevOps engineers are avid terminal users. And GitOps engineers are avid git push users. At the intersection of both groups we discover GitUI, a re-imagined version of the venerable tig, this time written in Rust.

https://github.com/extrawurst/gitui

2. Command-line and in particular Text-based user interfaces are making a huge comeback nowadays. For example, if you have many GPG keys to manage, here’s gpg-tui to help. Also written in Rust, which seems to be the new language of choice for this kind of tools.

https://orhun.dev/blog/introducing-gpg-tui/

3. But DevOps engineers must manage more than just Git repos and GPG keys; they have Kubernetes clusters to take care of, and since everything is being rewritten in Rust, here’s KDash; a direct competitor to the ubiquitous K9S (written in Go) which is already part of our toolkit. Which one will prevail?

https://github.com/kdash-rs/kdash

4. Configuration files in JSON are not exactly easy to grep on the terminal; no worries, here’s the Golang-based gron project to help. In our humble opinion, a perfect complement to the de facto standard JSON CLI tool, jq.

https://github.com/tomnomnom/gron

5. Have you ever built a useful small CLI tool in Python, and wished you could share it with a non-technical co-worker? Well, in that case, add the @Gooey decorator over your functions and let Gooey take care of the rest!

https://github.com/chriskiehl/Gooey

Do you have other CLI or TUI favorite tools? Have you built your own? Would you like to share your code and ideas with the DevOps community? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: would you like to receive VSHN.timer every Monday in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly VSHN.timer newsletter.

PS²: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about Linux: #45, #55, and #72.

Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better.

This week we’re going to talk about the latest news of OpenShift, the enterprise container platform by Red Hat and IBM.

1. OpenShift is at the center of IBM’s cloud strategy; to the point that IBM CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently announced that all upcoming IBM products will be built specifically for OpenShift. They will join classic IBM products such as DB2 and WebSphere, already available on the platform.

https://www.protocol.com/newsletters/protocol-enterprise/ibm-red-hat-openshift

2. OpenShift keeps gaining ground. Two months ago it became available on AWS as a managed service, ready to serve enterprise customers in the biggest IaaS provider on the planet.

https://www.openshift.com/blog/red-hat-openshift-service-on-aws-is-now-generally-available

3. Microsoft Azure is quickly becoming a popular IaaS choice for enterprises. Understandably, the Azure team is currently working on a managed OpenShift offering, and you can follow the project in real time at GitHub.

https://github.com/Azure/OpenShift/projects/1

4. OpenShift is evolving continuously, keeping up with the latest trends; among those, GitOps, which is quickly becoming a global standard among DevOps teams. OpenShift’s own GitOps implementation is, of course, based on Argo CD.

https://www.openshift.com/blog/announcing-openshift-gitops

5. During the last KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2021 conference there was an OpenShift Commons Gathering, and the videos of those sessions are now available for your watching pleasure.

https://www.openshift.com/blog/recap-openshift-commons-gathering-at-kubecon-eu-with-videos

What kind of applications are you running in your OpenShift clusters? Are you using GitOps in your workflows? Would you like to share tips and tricks with the community? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: would you like to receive VSHN.timer every Monday in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly VSHN.timer newsletter.

PS²: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about OpenShift: #9, #28, and #53.

Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better.

This week we’re going to list the top five lists of useful stuff for DevOps engineers, in a meta-clickbait fashion.

1. Let’s admit it. We all love and hate these „top 5“ articles on the web. We just can’t help clicking on them. So since most of us are still working from home, let us start with The 10 Best Practices for Remote Software Engineering.

https://cacm.acm.org/opinion/articles/252174-the-10-best-practices-for-remote-software-engineering/fulltext

2. In the age of DevOps, how about learning the Five DevOps AntiPatterns and How to Avoid Them? You won’t believe which one is number 3.

https://medium.com/geekculture/five-devops-antipattern-and-how-to-avoid-them-c5b3dfcabe20

3. If you are reading this blog, chances are you’re working with Kubernetes. Don’t miss the 12 Critical Kubernetes Health Conditions You Need to Monitor and Why and don’t forget to feel guilty if you aren’t monitoring them all yet.

https://www.circonus.com/2020/12/12-critical-kubernetes-health-conditions-you-need-to-monitor-and-why/

4. Speaking about Kubernetes, check the Open Policy Agent: The Top 5 Kubernetes Admission Control Policies by Styra. Because you can never have enough security.

https://blog.styra.com/blog/open-policy-agent-the-top-5-kubernetes-admission-control-policies

5. And for those of you riding the Serverless train, how about learning which are the Best Supported Serverless Languages? Because it’s time to rewrite your Cloud Native app in Rust.

https://dylananthony.com/posts/best-supported-serverless-languages

Have you ever published a clickbait article in your blog? Do you find them useful or do you just hate them? Would you like to enumerate useful items to the community? Get vaccinated against COVID-19, stay in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: would you like to receive VSHN.timer every Monday in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly VSHN.timer newsletter.

PS²: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about random stuff: #24, #36, #69, #73, and #86.

Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better.

This week we’re going to talk about noteworthy attacks, and how DevOps teams can proactively prevent them.

1. After a decade of NDA silence, we can finally learn all about one of the most important cyberattacks in modern history. It happened in 2011, when Chinese spies stole the RSA secret seeds used for their SecurID devices. An equally fascinating and disturbing story, and a lesson for all of us in the industry.

https://www.wired.com/story/the-full-story-of-the-stunning-rsa-hack-can-finally-be-told/

2. We learnt recently of the ransomware attack on swiss cloud, a painful reminder to all of us that even our dear neutral Switzerland is exposed to the same threats as everyone else.

https://therecord.media/swiss-cloud-becomes-the-latest-web-hosting-provider-to-suffer-a-ransomware-attack/

3. Containers are the basic building block of modern Cloud Native apps; yet unaware (DevOops) engineers might inadvertently add a COPY statement too much in their Dockerfile, leading to leaking secrets to the outer world. Ouch.

https://pythonspeed.com/articles/leaking-secrets-docker/

4. Want to feel safer online? Get yourself a Cyrillic keyboard layout. No, you don’t need to buy a new keyboard; just add that keyboard layout to your personal computer setup, even if you’re not really using it. Weird? Oh, totally.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/05/try-this-one-weird-trick-russian-hackers-hate/

5. The tool of the week is Kubesploit, helping DevSecOps teams to simulate real-world attacks on their own Cloud Native apps and infrastructure.

https://www.cyberark.com/resources/threat-research-blog/kubesploit-a-new-offensive-tool-for-testing-containerized-environments

Are you actively testing your systems for intrusions and attacks? What strategies do your teams apply for hardening your infrastructure? Would you like to share some tips and tricks with the community? Secure your network, get vaccinated against COVID-19, stay in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: would you like to receive VSHN.timer every Monday in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly VSHN.timer newsletter.

PS²: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about Security: #8, #17, #22, #27, #32, #44, #54, #62, #76, and #84.

Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better.

This week we’re going to talk about online services we used to meet and greet each other during these times of home office, for example after online conferences, meetups, or workshops.

1. Being able to work from home is certainly a privilege, but after a year of home office we all VSHNeers certainly miss hanging out with one another. One of the ways we tried to spend some time together online is Gather, which provides a 2D, „retro videogame“-like experience to meet and greet many people at once.

https://gather.town/

2. Mibo and Confer-O-Matic provide a more immersive experience for online gatherings, with a full 3D simulation, spatial sound, and funny visual features. We’ve tried Mibo after the last Cloud Native Day Warm-Up and it was great fun! Jumping to the virtual stage and speaking to everyone through the virtual mic is a blast.

https://getmibo.com/

3. If you prefer a more abstract approach, you should try Wonder; move in and out of the circles to meet people „near“ you. We haven’t tried it yet but it looks very interesting!

4. A mix between a 3D-like experience with simulated „closeness“, SpatialChat also provides the possibility for attendees to interact with groups of people, watch speakers presenting keynotes, exchange opinions, and collaborate with one another.

https://spatial.chat/

5. The final link this week is not really a place to hang out, but rather to remember the noise and ambience of a nice pub with friends. Adjust the noise level, listen to the humming crowd, grab a pint of Guinness, and close your eyes. Amboss Rampe, we will be back soon!

http://imissmybar.com/

Have you used any of these platforms? What do you think about them? Are you looking forward to attend meetups and conferences in person? Get vaccinated, get in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: would you like to receive VSHN.timer every Monday in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly VSHN.timer newsletter.

PS²: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about PeopleOps: #7, #13, #15, #26, #35, #41, #52, #63, and #85.

Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better.

This week we’re going to talk about the most important news announced during last week’s KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2021 event. Couldn’t attend? No worries, we got you covered.

1. The Cloud Native community is focusing not only on technology, but also on the intersection of technology and society. For that reason, the main focus of the conference this year was diversity, security, and contributions.

https://siliconangle.com/2021/05/04/diversity-security-end-user-contributions-focal-points-kubecon-2021-kubecon/

2. Cloud Native technologies are shaping businesses in all areas. This year, an unprecedented 27 new members have joined the CNCF, among them Orange, Raytheon, Seagate, and even Citibank. Oh, and New Relic joined the governing board as a platinum member!

https://www.cncf.io/announcements/2021/05/05/27-new-members-join-the-cloud-native-computing-foundation/

3. Red Hat made the headlines last week when it offered developers free OpenShift instances through their new Developer Sandbox offering. Check it out!

https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/red-hat-breaks-down-barriers-building-applications-kubernetes-environments-developer-sandbox-red-hat-openshift

4. Kubernetes is moving past the datacenter towards new frontiers; recognizing this move, the Linux Foundation and the CNCF jointly launched a new free Kubernetes on Edge training course on edX.

https://training.linuxfoundation.org/announcements/linux-foundation-cncf-launch-free-kubernetes-on-edge-training/

5. Did you know that Spotify is not only the world’s most popular music streaming service, but that they have also contributed many projects to the Cloud Native community? The CNCF granted Spotify the Top End User Award this year for its various contributions.

https://www.cncf.io/announcements/2021/05/05/cloud-native-computing-foundation-grants-spotify-the-top-end-user-award/

How was KubeCon this year? Which sessions did you like most? Would you like to share your comments with the community? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: would you like to receive VSHN.timer every Monday in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly VSHN.timer newsletter.

PS²: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about KubeCon: #19, #20, #56, #57, and #90.

Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better.

This week we’re going to talk about Europe’s greatest event in the Cloud Native world, happening this week from Monday to Friday.

1. KubeCon + CloudNativeCon targets cloud native developers of all skills and experiences. If you are new to the field, here’s a great beginner-level session for you: „First Principles of Cloud Native Technology“ by Ronald Petty on Tuesday 13:00 CEST.

https://sched.co/iE5T

2. Another useful session for beginners (and not-so-beginners) to learn about Prometheus, its current state, possibilities, and future:  „Prometheus – What it is, What is New, and What is Coming“ on Friday 12:40 CEST.

https://sched.co/iE6p

3. Many users are puzzled to learn that unlike OpenShift or Rancher, bare-bones Kubernetes does not offer advanced user management features off-the-box. The session „What Do You Mean K8s Doesn’t Have Users? How Do I Manage User Access Then?“ by Jussi Nummelin will help clarify things on Thursday 11:35 CEST.

https://sched.co/iE4h

4. One big new feature added to Kubernetes in the past year was support of Windows containers. Check out „Windows Containers in Kubernetes and a Deep Dive into Windows Networking“ by presenters from Microsoft and VMware on Wednesday 13:10 CEST.

https://sched.co/iE60

5. But KubeCon is not only about Kubernetes; there are satellite events around WebAssembly, Magma, Fluentd, and even Rust! The last one sounds particularly interesting, and we’ll be checking „Why the future of the cloud will be built on Rust“ by Oliver Gould on Monday 11:15 CEST.

https://sched.co/iLkH

Which sessions are you going to attend this year? Are you presenting at one of the events? Have you prepared your popcorn yet? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: would you like to receive VSHN.timer every Monday in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly VSHN.timer newsletter.

PS²: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about KubeCon 2019 and 2020: #19, #20, #56, and #57.

Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better.

This week we’re going to talk about how to handle operations and post-mortems in a humane fashion.

1. We all know that whatever can go wrong, inevitably will go wrong. Mature IT teams get into the habit of documenting system failures in „post-mortems“… even though they are seldom read afterwards. Why is that so? Matías E. Fernández provides some insight about creating post-mortems and why they require a certain culture to survive and thrive.

https://matiasfrndz.ch/2021/03/Redefining-Blameless-Post-Mortem-Terminology

2. In this Brave New World of Kubernetes, teams need to keep an eye on their clusters at all times. But, of all the metrics available in Prometheus, which ones to choose? Charlie Fiskeaux II enumerates the 12 most important metrics to monitor, and why.

https://www.circonus.com/2020/12/12-critical-kubernetes-health-conditions-you-need-to-monitor-and-why/

3. Speaking about Kubernetes and Prometheus, and particularly useful for all of you microservice fans out there, here’s a guide to setting Service Level Objectives with Prometheus and Linkerd in the Cloud Native Computing Foundation blog.

https://www.cncf.io/blog/2020/11/13/a-guide-to-setting-up-kubernetes-service-level-objectives-slos-with-prometheus-and-linkerd/

4. Even though we’re deep in the age of the Single-Page Application, heavy of JavaScript and consuming those REST APIs in your cluster, some argue server-side rendering is making a comeback. What do you think?

https://css-tricks.com/servers-cool-once-again/

5. The tool of the week is driftctl, a new open-source project to help you monitor Infrastructure as Code changes without having to execute terraform plan in crontabs and expecting a zero return code at every run.

https://driftctl.com/announcing-driftctl/

Which Prometheus metrics do you pay attention the most in your monitoring? How do you manage and control drift in your infrastructure? Would you like to share some post-mortem tips and tricks with the community? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: would you like to receive VSHN.timer every Monday in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly VSHN.timer newsletter.

PS²: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about incidents and operations: #32, #41, #49, #66, and #75.

Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better.

This week we’re going to talk about how teams can collaborate better while writing those cloud native apps.

1. Code reviews are arguably one of the best ways to ship high-quality code. But what’s the best way to review code? Michael Lynch provides here 13 fantastic tips to increase the success of those review sessions in your team.

https://mtlynch.io/code-review-love/

2. Growing up means, to a large degree, changing your mind in many different topics. Becoming a senior software engineer is no different. Even if you didn’t have the chance of pairing with a senior engineer in your career, your opinions will change, and Chris Kiehl tells us how his own thoughts on technology evolved so far.

https://chriskiehl.com/article/thoughts-after-6-years

3. There’s a funny joke going around in programmer circles you’ve probably heard of, the one about self-documenting code. There’s another one, but not as popular, about self-documenting architectures. Aleksey Kladov argues that having an ARCHITECTURE file in your project is as important as having a README. And we agree.

https://matklad.github.io//2021/02/06/ARCHITECTURE.md.html

4. We don’t know who needs to hear this, but thanks to the addition of the LAMBDA function, Microsoft Excel is now Turing-complete. We will leave this here without any further comments.

https://thenewstack.io/microsoft-excel-becomes-a-programming-language/

5. The tool of the week is grep.app, a search engine indexing code stored in GitHub. How much code you say? Like half a million git repos worth of code. Older readers might probably remember Koders, which used to do exactly the same thing back in the Web 2.0 days.

https://grep.app/

Do your teams perform code reviews? Do senior engineers mentor younger ones in your organization? Would you like to share some Excel programming tips with the community? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: would you like to receive VSHN.timer every Monday in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly VSHN.timer newsletter.

PS²: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about programming: #18, #30, #33, #47, #50, #60, and #77.

Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better.

This week we’re going to talk about the latest news around Amazon Web Services and S3, its popular cloud storage.

1. Last week we mentioned the 15th anniversary of S3, the first AWS service to be released. But do you know how it all started? Dan Rose wrote a fantastic thread on Twitter telling the story of its beginnings, in the midst of the Web 2.0 craze, right after the dot-com boom of 2000.

https://twitter.com/danrose999/status/1347677573900242944

2. AWS keeps growing and adding services. Not only it can now run EC2 Mac instances, but S3 now delivers strong read-after-write consistency, automatically for all applications. Something that was awaited by developers for, quite literally, a decade and a half.

https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2020/12/amazon-s3-now-delivers-strong-read-after-write-consistency-automatically-for-all-applications/

3. It is safe to say that the S3 API has become the de facto standard for cloud storage. Linode, who also provides S3-compatible storage, has recently published a free ebook titled „S3-Compatible Object Storage Use Cases“ which will certainly be useful to all of us.

https://www.linode.com/content/s3-compatible-object-storage-ebook/

4. Managing costs is still one of the most scary and complicated things to do in AWS. Thankfully CloudZero has compiled a useful list of 17 tools to help businesses avoid runaway costs.

https://www.cloudzero.com/blog/aws-cost-optimization-tools

5. Speaking about money, do you know how much do AWS certifications cost? Sitting the exam is one thing, but what about training, books, videos, and other resources to get you prepared? Lou Bichard has put together a useful guide with all the details to get you certified as soon as possible.

https://www.thedevcoach.co.uk/aws-certifications-cost/

Have you properly secured your S3 buckets? How do you keep track of your AWS usage costs? Would you like to share any tips and tricks with the community? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: would you like to receive VSHN.timer every Monday in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly VSHN.timer newsletter.

PS²: check out our previous VSHN.timer edition about AWS: #61.

Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better.

This week we’re going to talk about famous technologies celebrating their anniversary in 2021.

1. Linux is 30 years old in 2021! We’re still waiting for the year of Linux on the desktop (although, ironically enough, Microsoft is doing quite a bit of work in that area!), but we sure have it on our datacenters, on our smartphones, and even on Mars! To celebrate the milestone, download the official stickers and add them to your website, or use them as a fancy wallpaper for your smartphone.

https://linuxfoundation.org/linux30th/

2. A Linux TCP bug is 24 years old in 2021! Eric S. Raymond famously said that „given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow“… in that case, this one beats all shallowness records.

https://engineering.skroutz.gr/blog/uncovering-a-24-year-old-bug-in-the-linux-kernel/

3. IntelliJ IDEA is 20 years old in 2021! This was the app that first showed the world that Java was a suitable technology for desktop apps, and which eventually powered many other successful IDEs. Check out the fantastic timeline with screenshots of those old versions of yesteryear, as we raise our glasses to a fantastic tool.

https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/intellijidea-20-anniversary/

4. Amazon S3 is 15 years old in 2021! The first building block of the AWS building, paving the way for the biggest cloud provider in the planet. The S3 API has since become synonym with cloud storage and a de facto standard for the industry, adopted by MinIO, cloudscale.ch, Wasabi, DigitalOcean, and many others.

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-s3s-15th-birthday-it-is-still-day-1-after-5475-days-100-trillion-objects/

5. Delphi is 26 years old in 2021! Oh, I see… never mind, in that case read this article for a fair bit of nostalgia.

https://blogs.embarcadero.com/26-years-of-delphi/

Have you ever written an application with Delphi? Did you use S3 when it was first released? Would you like to share your memories with the community? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: would you like to receive VSHN.timer every Monday in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly VSHN.timer newsletter.

PS²: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about random topics: #24, #36, #69, and #73.

Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better.

This week we’re going to talk about the most important part of any DevOps initiative: people.

1. In this pandemic, the nature and scale of work are undergoing major changes. Sahil Lavingia, the founder of Gumroad, explains how to run a multi-million business without meetings, without deadlines, and without full-time employees… and still growing 85% per year.

https://sahillavingia.com/work

2. Now that the real remote working revolution is beginning, just when Tim O’Reilly predicts the end of Silicon Valley, maybe we can distill the best parts of its PeopleOps strategies; what does it do better than other places? Can we replicate its success elsewhere in the world?

https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/what-silicon-valley-gets-right-on-software-engineers/

3. Worker unions in the software field are something that should have happened long ago, and finally we are getting there. Google workers are starting to unite worldwide and demand their voices be heard, demanding more ethical behavior and more social engagement.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90597474/google-workers-across-the-world-just-formed-a-global-union-to-keep-alphabet-in-check

4. Why do we suffer from „Zoom fatigue“ (which, by the way, applies to all online collaboration tools, not only to Zoom)? The Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab has identified four main causes and proposes effective mechanisms to prevent it.

https://news.stanford.edu/2021/02/23/four-causes-zoom-fatigue-solutions/

5. The tool of the week is Nullboard; the most minimalist Kanban board you’ll ever come across, web-based, and actually serverless (because really, there’s no server behind it!) If you like Nullboard, you should also consider /dev/null as a Service for your document disposal needs.

https://nullboard.io/preview

How do you take care of your team in these times? Have you joined already, or would you join a worker union? Would you like to share your experience with the community? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: would you like to receive VSHN.timer every Monday in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly VSHN.timer newsletter.

PS²: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about PeopleOps: #7, #13, #15, #26, #35, #41, #52, and #63.

Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better.

This week we’re going to talk about security vulnerabilities that have recently shaken up the software landscape.

1. We’re only three months into 2021 and it feels like all systems were breached already: 0-days, SolarWinds, Microsoft Exchange… And thanks to the „sudo“ flaw (aka CVE-2021-3156), pretty much every Unix-like operating system was compromised. We hope you have secured your RHEL servers, your OpenShift clusters, and even your macOS.

https://www.openshift.com/blog/what-red-hat-openshift-dedicated-and-azure-red-hat-openshift-customers-should-know-about-the-january-2021-sudo-flaw

2. Did you know that Stack Overflow suffered a week-long breach in 2019? This article contains the full story, including the whole trace of activities of the attacker, and all the mitigation measures required to solve the issue. TL;DR: great advice at the end of the article.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/stack-overflow-heres-what-happened-when-we-were-hacked-back-in-2019/

3. Unsurprisingly, Kubernetes deployments aren’t excepted from being targets of attacks. Besides using audit logs to detect threats, it is a good idea to learn how to use seccomp properly to secure Docker and Kubernetes to the maximum.

https://martinheinz.dev/blog/41

4. Software distribution platforms are preferred targets for attack; a few weeks ago, somebody stole the perl.com domain from their rightful owners, pointing to an IP address long known for delivering malware. Yikes.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/perlcom-domain-stolen-now-using-ip-address-tied-to-malware/

5. Two-Factor Authentication (aka 2FA) is one of the main base lines of defense for users of online services. But are we using it properly? Do we really understand what it means, and how to avoid common traps? Maybe not.

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01/thats-not-how-2fa-works/

Have you set up 2FA in your online accounts? Which password manager do you use? Would you like to share some security best practices with the community? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: would you like to receive VSHN.timer every Monday in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly VSHN.timer newsletter.

PS²: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about security: #8, #17, #22, #27, #32, #44, #54, #62, and #76.

Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better.

This week we’re going to talk about how to sharpen our Git skills.

1. DevOps engineers store everything in Git, to the point that we end up calling it our „single source of truth“. But do you know how to recover deleted commits? Do you know how to reflog or rebase? Can you use submodules properly? (Yeah, me neither.) If any of these things aren’t your strongest Git skill, Tobias Günther is here to help.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2021/02/getting-the-most-out-of-git/

2. Want to know more about Git? For example, how to make your git log easier to read? How to merge properly? Or how to extend it with extra commands? Check what Martin Heinz has to say about that and more.

https://martinheinz.dev/blog/43

3. Git is a great foundation for teamwork; but what about freelance and solo developers? Git shines for all projects, and with a bit of practice it can make you a better engineer, even if you’re the only one contributing to your repo. Mikkel Paulson has plenty of tricks to share about that.

https://mikkel.ca/blog/git-is-my-buddy-effective-solo-developer/

4. How do you apply literate programming to Git commits? I know, the question sounds really weird; if you open your mind, Jonas Lundberg will be happy to tell you all about it.

https://www.iamjonas.me/2021/01/literate-atomic-commits.html

5. We recently discovered the Git and Git-Flow cheat sheet by Bilal Arslan, and we decided it was worth learning it by heart. It’s even translated to many languages, like Spanish, Turkish, Arabic, and Chinese. Muchas gracias, Bilal!

https://github.com/arslanbilal/git-cheat-sheet

6. Bonus item! Would you like to know more about GitOps? bespinian and VSHN are organizing the GitOps Webinar Trilogy™®© starting on Thursday, March 25th. Sign up and join us for more Git!

https://share.hsforms.com/1s72aNrNZQeilSsa0ugUVlQ48awa

Do you use Git for your personal projects? Do you git bisect sometimes? Would you like to share Git tips and tricks with our readers? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: would you like to receive VSHN.timer every Monday in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly VSHN.timer newsletter.

PS²: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about Git: #10, #48, and #68.