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 advanced container scenarios pushing the limits of Cloud Native technology.

1. When running Go in containers, it’s important to set CPU limits. It’s also important to ensure that the Go runtime is aware of these limits by setting a sensible GOMAXPROCS value, or to use a library like automaxprocs. River Phillips explains in detail what happens when you don’t.

https://www.riverphillips.dev/blog/go-cfs/

2. Did you know that Gitea Actions are almost fully compatible with GitHub Actions? And that Gitea also offers an integrated OCI compliant container registry? Our CTO Tobias Brunner explains how to use Gitea Actions to build and store containers.

https://tobru.ch/gitea-actions-container-builds/

3. Are you using Ruby on Rails? In that case, you might have noticed that since version 7.1 the rails new command generates a Dockerfile for your project, ready for production use. This Dockerfile is not intended for development; use Docked Rails for that!

https://www.infoworld.com/article/3706871/ruby-on-rails-extends-docker-support.html

4. K2D is a Kubernetes to Docker translator, created to solve a very specific problem: to enable the use of Kubernetes primitives on resource-constrained compute devices used in industrial IoT use cases.

https://k2d.io/

5. The VSHN.timer tool of the week is Docker-Hub-frolvlad/docker-alpine-glibc, a container image based on Alpine but with glibc built-in instead of musl. Useful if you are not interested in using debian-slim or other similar lightweight images as a base.

https://github.com/Docker-Hub-frolvlad/docker-alpine-glibc

Are you more of a musl or a glibc kind of DevOps engineer? How do you optimize your containers for your chosen programming language? Would you like to share some container tips and tricks with our readers? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about containers: #12, #17, #40, #51, #54, #71, #81, #108, #124, #144, #151, #166, and #186.

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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 release of our preferred Kubernetes-based container platform: Red Hat OpenShift 4.14!

1. Based on Kubernetes 1.27 and CRI-O 1.27, Red Hat OpenShift 4.14 accelerates modern application development and delivery across the hybrid cloud while keeping security, flexibility and scalability remain at the forefront. Learn more about OpenShift 4.14 in this blog post and in the release notes.

https://cloud.redhat.com/blog/red-hat-openshift-4.14-is-now-available

2. Kepler (Kubernetes-based Efficient Power Level Exporter) is a metrics exporter that uses eBPF to collect and export energy-related system stats. This allows Kepler to provide granular power consumption data for Kubernetes Pods, Namespaces, and Nodes.

https://cloud.redhat.com/blog/introducing-developer-preview-of-kepler-power-monitoring-for-red-hat-openshift

3. Operational resilience is becoming more of a boardroom concern especially so for organizations operating in industries deemed as essential by governements for the functioning of society. Learn how OpenShift Platform Plus can help businesses reach operational resilience and protect themselves against failure.

https://cloud.redhat.com/blog/achieving-operational-resilience-with-openshift-platform-plus

4. In addition to 14-month extended support, Azure Red Hat OpenShift provides a multitude of support benefits. Jointly managed between Red Hat and Microsoft, it is backed by a global SRE team that proactively manages lifecycle, scaling, security, patching and incident responses.

https://cloud.redhat.com/blog/whats-new-with-azure-red-hat-openshift-4.12-is-released-and-more

5. The VSHN.timer project of the week supports automatically getting a certificate for OpenShift routes from any cert-manager Issuer, similar to annotating an Ingress or Gateway resource in vanilla Kubernetes!

https://github.com/cert-manager/openshift-routes

Are you going to update your clusters to OpenShift 4.14? Are you managing the consumption of your clusters with Kepler? Would you like to share some OpenShift tips and tricks with our readers? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about Red Hat OpenShift: #9, #28, #53, #95, #129, #157, #171, #183, and #185.

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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 Debian, Fedora, and the hardware required to run them all.

1. Celebrating the release of Fedora 39, we learned about Bluefin: a custom image of Fedora Silverblue, offering the best of both worlds: the reliability and ease of use of a Chromebook, with the power of a GNOME desktop.

https://projectbluefin.io/

2. The Fedora Slimbook is a sleek and powerful laptop ready for Linux enthusiasts, with a stylish design and Fedora’s cutting-edge software, creating a remarkable product.

https://wraltechwire.com/2023/10/13/linx-enthusiasts-rejoice-fedora-project-slimbook-offer-powerful-new-laptop/

3. Exciting news on the horizon! In February 2024, KDE Plasma 6 is set to make its grand debut. But the project needs our help to ensure a successful launch. Why? Because generosity is at the heart of KDE.

https://kde.org/fundraisers/plasma6member/

4. Debian is a complex operating system and a huge open-source project. This blog post is an attempt to explain its operational structure, without being a detailed history of the project.

https://blog.liw.fi/posts/2023/debian-reasons/

5. After years of constant updates and never-ending new features, modern desktop operating systems have evolved into a slow, complex mess. The Essence operating system tries to be different.

https://nakst.gitlab.io/essence

Have you tried other open source operating systems? Did you get a Slimbook yet? Would you like to share some Linux tips and tricks with our readers? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about Linux: #45, #55, #72, #96, #105, #125, #161, and #184.

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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 impact of LLMs and generative AI in the world of DevOps and software engineering.

1. Matt Rickard argues that AI will write Infrastructure as Code to help developers run their own code in the near future. It doesn’t sound too far-fetched.

https://matt-rickard.com/infrastructure-as-code-will-be-written-by-ai

2. A team of US and Chinese scientists created a software agency made of ChatGPT-powered bots, each assuming different roles (architect, programmer, reviewer, tester, designer…) and then published a scientific paper with astonishing results.

https://vulcanpost.com/843379/team-of-ai-bots-develops-software-in-7-minutes-instead-of-4-weeks/

3. A new regulation called the “AI Act” is fast approaching and will regulate how artificial intelligence is used in the EU. This blog post looks at what each organization should be doing to be prepared in time for this. Meanwhile, in the US, President Biden just released an executive order for “safe and trustworthy” AI, following an agreement among G7 countries on a set of guidelines for the industry.

https://data.solita.fi/ai-act-is-coming-is-your-organisation-ready/

4. Have you ever wondered who feds LLMs with fresh data? Countless invisible workers spread all over Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. They earn pennies, clutch at straws, and power the systems we use every day. Think about it the next time you use your favorite prompt.

https://www.wired.com/story/millions-of-workers-are-training-ai-models-for-pennies/

5. AI chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard consume an astronomical amount of electricity and water; or, more precisely, the massive data centers that power them do. And according to the latest estimates, those energy demands are rapidly ballooning to epic proportions.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-electricity-use-spiking-power-entire-country

Are you aware of the social and environmental impact of AI chatbots? Have you integrated generative AI in your work? Would you like to share your concerns with our readers? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about AI: #173, #176, and #182.

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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 mention some interesting hardware gossip we’ve heard about lately.

1. Last month, it was announced the launch of Raspberry Pi 5, priced at $60 for the 4GB variant, and $80 for its 8GB sibling. Virtually every aspect of the platform has been upgraded!

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/introducing-raspberry-pi-5/

2. The 11-year reign of the Apple Lightning cable is over and the USB-C era has begun. But is the Thunderbolt 4 cable really worth $129? Lumafield used an industrial X-ray scanner to uncover its true nature.

https://www.lumafield.com/article/usb-c-cable-charger-head-to-head-comparison-apple-thunderbolt-amazon-basics

3. The new Mercedes-Benz E-Class ships with up to five (!) cameras inside, including an optional selfie and video camera, to be used for conferences, for example. Zoom on the go, anyone?

https://mbpassion.de/2023/06/die-neue-e-klasse-hat-bis-zu-5-kameras-im-innenraum/

4. iFixit has revised the repairability score for the iPhone 14 from a “recommend” 7 out of 10, to a “do-not-recommend” 4. They found that iPhone repairs have gotten trickier, by design, with software now limiting many basic iPhone repairs.

https://www.ifixit.com/News/82493/we-are-retroactively-dropping-the-iphones-repairability-score-en

5. We recently learned that an electric steam locomotive is a special type of steam locomotive in which the boiler water is heated electrically. Say what?

https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elektrische_Dampflokomotive

Have you pre-ordered the new Raspberry 5 already? Are you going to take a selfie in the new Mercedes-Benz E-class? Would you like to share some hardware tips with our readers? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about hardware: #80, #113, #135, #149, and #177.

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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 DDoS attacks, security vulnerabilities, social engineering, and other virtues of the human spirit.

1. Last August, Google’s DDoS Response Team stopped the largest DDoS attack ever recorded: with a peak of… 398 million requests per second, it was larger than the previous record at “just” 46 million rps.

https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/identity-security/google-cloud-mitigated-largest-ddos-attack-peaking-above-398-million-rps

2. Daniel Stenberg disclosed last Wednesday a serious security issue in the curl project. The bug, named CVE-2023-38545, is the “worst security issue found in curl in a long time,” he said.

https://www.heise.de/news/cURL-Infos-zu-schlimmster-Sicherheitsluecke-seit-Langem-kommen-am-11-Oktober-9326134.html

3. Many organizations, including quite a few Fortune 500 firms, have exposed Zoom information that allows anyone to initiate a Zoom meeting impersonating a valid employee, leading to phishing and social engineering attacks.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2023/10/dont-let-zombie-zoom-links-drag-you-down/

4. This blog post presents a technique in which an attacker leads a user to visit a website that silently places a DLL in the browser’s cache, disguised as an image, and then makes the user run a benign looking PowerShell one-liner that executes the DLL. Oops.

https://blog.whiteflag.io/blog/browser-cache-smuggling/

5. Switzerland’s e-voting system is supposed to have safeguards to protect elections against malicious actors, but a computer scientist has found a major flaw. This article explains to Swiss voters what they can do to help protect their vote against such attacks.

https://andreaskuster.ch/blog/2023/CVD-EVoting-Swiss-Post/

Are your co-workers aware of social engineering risks? Do you have a DDoS prevention team in your organization? Would you like to share some security vulnerabilities with our readers? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about security: #8, #17, #22, #27, #32, #44, #54, #62, #76, #84, #93, #106, #117, #128, #142, #145, #164, #169, and #182.

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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 mind-bogglingly massive systems that are designed to twist our minds, no matter how we look at them.

1. Europe’s particle accelerator at CERN produces around a petabyte of data daily, which means monitoring the computing infrastructure that processes the data is crucial. A petabyte. Let that figure sink in, and then learn how they monitor it.

https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/18/lhc_infrastructure_monitoring/

2. Valentin Kuznetsov of Cornell University has prepared these presentation slides showing in detail how they use NATS in CERN to stream telemetry, monitor workflows, get exit code alerts, all in real time from a myriad of different systems.

https://indico.cern.ch/event/877333/contributions/3696707/attachments/1972189/3281133/CMS_mon_RD_for_opInt.pdf

3. Splunk, leader in observability and cybersecurity, and Cisco, the legendary tech company, have recently announced their merger, creating a major force in the cloud industry.

https://www.splunk.com/en_us/blog/leadership/splunk-and-cisco-unite-to-accelerate-digital-resilience-as-one-of-the-leading-global-software-companies.html

4. NFSserve is an incomplete but very functional implementation of an NFSv3 server in Rust. It’s a user-mode file-system mount, open-source and cross-platform. Because, what is a protocol that pretty much every OS supports? NFS.

https://about.xethub.com/blog/nfs-fuse-why-we-built-nfs-server-rust

5. cert-manager 1.13 brings support for DNS over HTTPS, support for loading options from a versioned
config file for the cert-manager controller, and more. It also includes the promotion of
the StableCertificateRequestName and SecretsFilteredCaching feature gates to Beta.

https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/releases/tag/v1.13.0

Do you manage petabytes of data? How do you do it? Would you like to share some big data tips and tricks with our readers? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about incidents and operations: #32, #41, #49, #66, #75, #89, #107, #121, and #148.

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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 monolithic architectures are doing a comeback in 2023.

1. This is by far one of the most shared articles of the month, and with reason. The trend towards microservices has seen its share of disasters. What can we do next? The creator of Friendly Fire, Andrei Taranchenko, analyzes the situation.

https://renegadeotter.com/2023/09/10/death-by-a-thousand-microservices.html

2. This post introduces three potential reference architectures based on existing Couchbase use cases to demonstrate how Red Hat OpenShift and Couchbase Capella can collaborate within your enterprise cloud environment.

https://cloud.redhat.com/blog/capella-reference-architectures-for-red-hat-openshift

3. Twitch.tv. Discord.gg. Github.io. Three memorable addresses for three major websites that all have something in common: iconic URLs from small territories. Here are 10 country code domains that have a life well beyond their own borders–and why they are in demand.

https://restofworld.org/2023/whats-in-a-domain-name/

4. The Domain Name System (DNS) root zone will soon be getting a new record type, called ZONEMD, to further ensure the security, stability, and resiliency of the global DNS in the face of emerging new approaches to DNS operation.

https://blog.verisign.com/security/root-zone-zonemd/

5. Microservices and JSON much? Then give fx a try; it’s a tool written in Go to visualize and explore JSON data interactively in the command line. Think jq with steroids.

https://fx.wtf/

What kind of architecture do you use in your systems? What are your favorite fancy TLDs? Would you like to share some JSON tips and tricks with our readers? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about architecture: #25, #34, #60, #79, and #143.

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Welcome to 🎉 🥳 🥁 🥇 the 200th edition of VSHN.timer! 📰 🏆 📯 🎆 Every Monday since August 2019, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all links shared on our chat, making us think, laugh, or simply work better.

Can you believe this? 200? We already couldn’t believe it on July 19th, 2021, when we reached the 100th mark, and look where we are now. 200 weeks of keeping the pace with this crazy industry of ours, with new frameworks, conferences, lots of Kubernetes, too many security breaches for our taste, more Kubernetes, plenty of hyperscalers competing, all kinds of programming languages, … and also lots of music references!

What could we possibly talk about this week? Well, we have so many short & sweet URLs on our chat that we decided to share some with you. Ordered from the shortest to the longest.

1. First one with the .dev TLD: Modern software assumes your systems have access to the Internet because reasons. This may work 99% of the time (hopefully), but certain systems need to work even when disconnected (shocking!). Zarf keeps your software running, no matter your connection status. Impressive.

https://zarf.dev/

2. Then one with the .land TLD: Curious exactly what happens when you run a program on your computer? Read this article to learn how multiprocessing works, what system calls really are, how computers manage memory with hardware interrupts, and how Linux loads executables. Fascinating.

https://cpu.land/

3. An important one with the .org TLD: on August 10th, 2023, with no notice or community input, HashiCorp switched the license for Terraform from the MPL to the Business Source License, a non-open source license. Enter the OpenTF Foundation to the rescue!

https://opentf.org/

4. This one with the .page TLD: Downfall attacks target a critical weakness found in billions of modern processors used in personal and cloud computers. This vulnerability, identified as CVE-2022-40982, enables a user to access and steal data from other users who share the same computer. Yikes.

https://downfall.page/

5. And finally, one with the .software TLD: Copyright and licensing is difficult, especially when reusing software from different projects that are released under different licenses. REUSE was started by the Free Software Foundation Europe to provide a set of recommendations to make licensing your Free Software projects easier. Thanks!

https://reuse.software/

The Full VSHN.timer Directory

Just like when we reached the 100th mark 2 years ago, here goes the complete directory of VSHN.timer entries since 2019, plus the three original entries published in 2017!

And just like 2 years ago, Kubernetes (with 24 entries) and Security (with 19) are still the two most common subjects we’ve covered in the series. Then come PeopleOps and Programming with 14 each, Containers with 13, and Business, Conferences, DevOps, and Git with 10 each. All of these are subjects are close to our VSHNeer hearts!

The Three Original Editions of 2017 (3):

#1, #2, #3

Architecture (5):

#25, #34, #60, #79, #143

AWS (5):

#61, #87, #132, #156, #195

Business (10):

#15, #26, #35, #41, #70, #112, #141, #159, #176, #181

Conferences (10):

#19, #20, #56, #57, #90, #91, #170, #179, #180, #183

Containers (13):

#12, #17, #40, #51, #54, #71, #81, #108, #124, #144, #151, #166, #186

Databases & Storage (6):

#111, #115, #138, #155, #158, #199

DevOps (10):

#5, #13, #29, #31, #42, #110, #133, #153, #165, #188

Education (7):

#21, #38, #67, #99, #120, #140, #172

Git, GitHub, GitLab, GitOps (10):

#10, #48, #68, #83, #98, #119, #139, #150, #173, #196

Hardware (5):

#80, #113, #135, #149, #177

Incidents and Operations (9):

#32, #41, #49, #66, #75, #89, #107, #121, #148

Kubernetes (24):

#4, #8, #11, #14, #16, #19, #23, #37, #46, #49, #59, #64, #74, #82, #97, #99, #102, #109, #118, #126, #142, #146, #163, #187

Kubernetes Operators (3):

#39, #58, #193

Linux (8):

#45, #55, #72, #96, #105, #125, #161, #184

Open Source (4):

#152, #170, #191, #194

Red Hat OpenShift (9):

#9, #28, #53, #95, #129, #157, #171, #183, #185

PeopleOps (14):

#7, #13, #15, #26, #35, #41, #52, #63, #85, #92, #116, #131, #154, #175

Products and Product Management (4):

#114, #134, #167, #192

Programming (14):

#18, #30, #33, #47, #50, #77, #88, #101, #103, #122, #137, #160, #174, #198

Prometheus and Grafana (2):

#78, #130

Quality Assurance, SLA & SRE (7):

#6, #43, #66, #104, #136, #162, #197

Random (13):

#24, #36, #69, #73, #86, #94, #100, #123, #147, #168, #178, #190, #200

Security (19):

#8, #17, #22, #27, #32, #44, #54, #62, #76, #84, #93, #106, #117, #128, #142, #145, #164, #169, #182

Terraform & Crossplane (4):

#65, #82, #127, #189

Quirky Music References in the Title or the Content 🙃 (8):

#39, #97, #136, #159, #167, #175, #189, #200

Do you like music references in the titles of VSHN.timer editions? What subject would you like us to talk about in the future? Would you like to share your preferred URLs and links with our readers? Are you even reading these questions at the end? Do you think we should offer a prize to those who read until the end? Don’t you think that reading until the end is a valuable yet underrated skill? How are you doing today? Thanks for reading! As usual, get in touch with us, let us know your opinion about VSHN.timer, and see you next week for the 201th edition (whaaaaaaaaaaat) of… VSHN.timer.

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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 various ways in which our favorite container orchestrator and our favorite relational database can work together.

By the way, did you know that VSHN AppCat makes PostgreSQL immediately available on your cluster or on APPUiO Cloud? Check it out now.

1. Running PostgreSQL on Kubernetes usually involves using an operator such as CrunchyData or StackGres, but have you tried CloudNative-PG yet? Sergio Rua has given it a spin and blogged about his experience.

https://blog.digitalis.io/cloudnative-pg-running-postgresql-in-k8s-c025f22fcb87

2. FerretDB is not just another NoSQL database, but rather a truly Open-Source MongoDB alternative, built entirely on top of PostgreSQL. It leverages the power of the MongoDB ecosystem, and even its query language!

https://www.ferretdb.io/

3. Have you seen the “The SQL Iceberg” meme created by the developers of CockroachDB? Aryan Ebrahimpour realized he didn’t know all the terms mentioned in it, so he started exploring it in depth in the context of PostgreSQL.

https://www.avestura.dev/blog/explaining-the-postgres-meme

4. etcd is the brain of every Kubernetes cluster, keeping track of all the objects in a cluster. In this article, Martin Heinz, DevOps engineer at IBM, explores how to replace etcd with PostgreSQL, and why and when it might make sense to do so.

https://martinheinz.dev/blog/100

5. The Language Server Protocol is an open protocol to provide code completion and syntax highlighting on code editors. The Postgres Language Server implements one for PostgreSQL, enhancing the developer experience within your favorite editor.

https://github.com/supabase/postgres_lsp

Have you replaced etcd by another database in your cluster? How familiar are you with the items in the SQL Iceberg meme? Would you like to share some PostgreSQL tips and tricks with the community? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about databases and storage: #111, #115, #138, #155, and #158.

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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 a few little utilities that can save your day when programming Cloud Native applications.

1. Here’s an alternative for Docker Desktop on the Mac: OrbStack is a fast, light, and easy way to run Docker containers and Linux virtual machines. Have you tried it?

https://orbstack.dev/

2. Forget about VSCode, Vim, Emacs, Neovim, nano, or even joe; here’s micro, a modern, intuitive, and cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD) terminal-based programming text editor written in Go. Hint: CTRL+Q to quit. Shocker!

https://micro-editor.github.io/

3. We’ve recently discovered PyInstaller to package Python apps as standalone executables for easy cross-platform distribution. It doesn’t make the process of packaging a Python application totally painless, but it goes a long way.

https://www.infoworld.com/article/3543792/how-to-use-pyinstaller-to-create-python-executables.html

4. Here’s script, a library for writing programs in Go taking care of those things shell scripts are good at: reading files, executing subprocesses, counting lines, matching strings, and so on.

https://github.com/bitfield/script

5. NAML is a Go library and command line tool that can be used as a framework to develop and deploy Kubernetes applications made by Kris Nóva, who sadly passed away a few weeks ago.

https://github.com/krisnova/naml

What’s your favorite text editor for code? Do you write small utilities in Go, or just use Bash scripts for everything? Would you like to share some Cloud Native programming tips and tricks with our readers? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about programming: #18, #30, #33, #47, #50, #60, #77, #88, #101, #103, #122, #137, #160, and #174.

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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 some systems have to dramatically scale to serve millions of users with an acceptable quality of service.

1. The Slack team has migrated the most critical user-facing services from a monolithic to a cell-based architecture over the last 1.5 years. But what is a “cell-based architecture”, and how does it work?

https://slack.engineering/slacks-migration-to-a-cellular-architecture/

2. The Red Hat team has run tests to find out the maximum number of pods per node that can be run on OpenShift 4.13 clusters with equal or better performance, and the answer is 2500.

https://cloud.redhat.com/blog/running-2500-pods-per-node-on-ocp-4.13

3. AWS S3 is the original object storage service with an HTTP REST API. It consists of a frontend with a REST API, a namespace service, a storage system full of hard disks, and many background operations. Andy Warfield, VP and distinguished engineer at S3, explains how AWS designed S3 for massive scalability.

https://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2023/07/building-and-operating-a-pretty-big-storage-system.html

4. Mainframe computers are often seen as ancient machines—practically dinosaurs. But mainframes, which are purpose-built to process enormous amounts of data, are still extremely relevant today. But how do they work, and who uses them? ArsTechnica reports.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/07/the-ibm-mainframe-how-it-runs-and-why-it-survives/

5. Red Planet Labs just built a Twitter-scale Mastodon instance from scratch in only 10k lines of code, which they will soon open source, and it offers unprecedented scalability. Check it out.

https://blog.redplanetlabs.com/2023/08/15/how-we-reduced-the-cost-of-building-twitter-at-twitter-scale-by-100x/

Are your systems designed for scalability? Have you ever programmed mainframe applications? Would you like to share some scalability tips and tricks with our readers? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about Quality Assurance, SLAs & SREs: #6, #34, #43, #66, #104, #136, and #162.

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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 our favorite GitOps platforms have been evolving in the past few months.

1. Gitea is slowly imposing itself as the “third option” after GitHub and GitLab, and we’ve mentioned in another issue of VSHN.timer how even Exoscale is now offering Gitea in their marketplace. The Gitea team has recently announced Gitea 1.20, with the largest number of changes ever shipped!

https://blog.gitea.com/release-of-1.20.0/

2. GitLab has recently announced version 16.2 with more than 100 new improvements, including a new rich text editor, a command palette, support for keyless signing with Cosign, new customization layers for the Value Streams Dashboard and more.

https://about.gitlab.com/releases/2023/07/22/gitlab-16-2-released/

3. GitHub recently announced the Stale Repos Action, a tool that helps your organization identify and report on repositories with no activity over a configurable period of time, marking inactive repositories within your organization, helping you decide to archive, revive, or reorganize them.

https://github.blog/2023-06-05-announcing-the-stale-repos-action/

4. Andrew Rowson was today years old when he got bitten by some minor assumptions on how git-lfs works, a neat little add-on to git that allows you to store things that aren’t necessarily text based in a git repo.

https://www.growse.com/2023/07/10/git-lfs-and-how-it-caught-me-out.html

5. The GitLab Operator for Red Hat OpenShift oversees the lifecycle of GitLab instances within Kubernetes or OpenShift container platforms. It simplifies installing and configuring GitLab instances, ensuring a seamless transition between different versions.

https://cloud.redhat.com/blog/install-the-gitlab-operator-on-openshift

Have you migrated your projects to Gitea? Have you installed the GitLab Operator for Red Hat OpenShift? Would you like to share some Git tips and tricks with our community? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about Git, GitOps, GitHub, GitLab, and Gitea: #10, #48, #68, #83, #98, #119, #139, #150, and #173.

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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.

In preparation of next week’s AWSome Day, this week we’re going to talk about the latest news around the biggest cloud provider of them all: AWS.

1. How does AWS’ EKS managed Kubernetes service compare to the competition? Elliot Graebert has compared the 8 top ones (EKS, AKS, GKE, etc…) and compiled the results in a fantastic summary. TL;DR: AWS EKS is not his top choice.

https://medium.com/@elliotgraebert/comparing-the-top-eight-managed-kubernetes-providers-2ae39662391b

2. In a rare price hike, AWS will start charging for IPv4 addresses. The change brings them in line with other cloud providers and encourages good internet hygiene. Corey Quinn reports.

https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/breaking-aws-begins-charging-for-public-ipv4-addresses/

3. We’ve mentioned Zenbleed on our blog lately, but AWS was also concerned about it. Their security bulletin about it is short and sweet: patches have been applied, and customers shouldn’t worry about it.

https://aws.amazon.com/security/security-bulletins/AWS-2023-004/

4. How’s the AWS Zürich Region doing? It launched with great fanfare last November, with 58 available services, and it has grown to an impressive 112! The region now offers EKS, CodeBuild, and 129 different EC2 instance types.

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/alps/h1-2023-news-about-aws-europe-zurich-region/

5. Mountpoint for Amazon S3 is an open-source file client that makes it easy for Linux applications to connect directly to AWS S3 buckets. It is now generally available and ready for production!

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/mountpoint-for-amazon-s3-generally-available-and-ready-for-production-workloads/

Are you impacted by AWS’ price increase for IPv4 addresses? Are you more of an EKS or AKS kind of person? Would you like to share your AWS tips and tricks with our readers? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about AWS: #61, #87, #132, and #156.

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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 share some links honoring the late Bram Moolenaar, creator of VSHN’s favorite text editor, Vim.

1. We are heartbroken to learn that Bram Moolenaar, the visionary creator of the venerable Vim text editor, has passed away at the age of 62 after battling a severe medical condition. He was also a longtime neighbor of the Swiss town of Adliswil near Zürich. The VSHN team would like to send their deepest condolences to his family and friends.

https://groups.google.com/g/vim_announce/c/tWahca9zkt4?pli=1

2. Do you know the history behind Bram Moolenaar and Vim? Back in 1991, he wanted to use the Unix vi editor on the Amiga, but the original code was property of AT&T, so he began porting another editor called “Stevie” from the Atari. By version 1.22 Bram rechristened his editor “Vi IMproved,” matching and surpassing features of the original.

https://begriffs.com/posts/2019-07-19-history-use-vim.html

3. At VSHN we’re happy and faithful Vim users, and we love to share new plugins and configurations with one another. But did you know that when you start Vim with the --clean option, it starts in “vanilla” mode, without plugins or configuration of any kind? You should try it.

https://opensource.com/article/21/12/vanilla-vim-config

4. To say that learning to use Vim properly is a tremendously useful skill for DevOps engineers is the understatement of the century. But how can you develop such good muscle memory? The best way is practicing over and over again. Besides the classic vimtutor command, you should also try the Learn vim website.

https://www.learnvim.com/

5. Do you write YAML manifests for Kubernetes in vim? Have you also spent countless time determining where in the spec a field belongs? You can easily link vim to the yaml-language-server to get completion, validation and more.

https://joshrosso.com/docs/2020/2020-01-06-vim-k8s-yaml-support/

For how long have you been using Vim? Do you have anecdotes in which Vim has saved your day? Would you like to share your favorite Vim plugins with our readers? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about Open Source: #152, #170, and #191.

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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 and most useful Kubernetes Operators that have recently appeared on our radar.

1. Red Hat and GitLab have partnered together to release an officially certified GitLab OpenShift Operator, and this article provides all the information you need to install it on your cluster.

https://cloud.redhat.com/blog/install-the-gitlab-operator-on-openshift

2. The Tailscale Kubernetes operator allows you to expose services in your Kubernetes cluster to your Tailscale network, and use an authentication proxy for secure connectivity to the Kubernetes control plane. We’re big fans of Tailscale at VSHN!

https://tailscale.com/kb/1236/kubernetes-operator/

3. Technology accounts for a staggering 1.6 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions! The kube-green operator helps reduce the CO₂ footprint of your Kubernetes and OpenShift clusters.

https://cloud.redhat.com/blog/keeping-the-cloud-green-with-the-kube-green-operator-on-openshift

4. This operator automates the extension of operator watch and service account permission scope to other namespaces in an OpenShift cluster.

https://github.com/IBM/ibm-namespace-scope-operator

5. The Oria Operator provides tooling that allows cluster admins and operator authors to control which namespaces an operator reconciles resource events in.

https://github.com/operator-framework/oria-operator

Are you controlling the CO₂ emissions of your Kubernetes and OpenShift clusters? Have you developed your own operators? Would you like to share some other smooth operators with our readers? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about Kubernetes Operators: #39 and #58.

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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 new products that have recently made a splash in the DevOps and Cloud Native market.

1. Exoscale has recently added two new products to their Marketplace: Gitea & GitLab, provided and managed by Glasskube. Both services take advantage of 100% GDPR-compliant data storage on the fantastic Exoscale infrastructure. Check them out! (oh, and by the way, did you know that Gitea 1.20 has been released last week?)

https://changelog.exoscale.com/en/marketplace-gitea-gitlab-as-a-service

2. The KubeVirt community has just released KubeVirt 1.0! Red Hat started this project with a question: can virtual machines run in containers and be deployed on Kubernetes? It proved to be not only possible, but also to be the future of VMs in the container age.

https://www.cncf.io/blog/2023/07/11/kubevirt-v1-0-has-landed/

3. Red Hat is celebrating the graduation of Istio at the CNCF! Istio is at the core of Red Hat OpenShift Service Mesh, an open source, fully supported, enterprise grade mesh solution that includes the Kiali console.

https://cloud.redhat.com/blog/red-hat-congratulates-istio-on-graduating-at-the-cncf

4. Speaking about graduations, the CNCF announced last week the graduation of the CRI-O project, a secure, performant, and stable Container Runtime Interface implementation to orchestrate containers in Kubernetes clusters.

https://www.cncf.io/announcements/2023/07/19/cloud-native-computing-foundation-announces-graduation-of-cri-o/

5. Slackware Linux is 30 years old! The oldest Linux distribution still in maintenance has announced a historic milestone, and here’s the original announcement from July 1993 by Patrick Volkerding.

http://www.slackware.com/announce/1.0.php

Are you using KubeVirt? Are you more a Gitea or a GitLab kind of person? Would you like to announce a new product release? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about products: #114, #134, and #167.

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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 that rough and bumpy relationship between money and source code.

1. Unless you’ve been hiking through the Kerguelen Islands for a whole month, you’re surely aware of the recent controversy around RHEL. Plenty of explanations, some vitriol, and even downright hypocrisy surfaced as well, and very little rigorous analysis, but at the end of the day, it’s once again the almost 50-year-old discussion we’ve had since Bill Gates’ letter to hobbyists of how to make money out of source code, and who gets paid for what.

https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/red-hats-commitment-open-source-response-gitcentosorg-changes

2. Do you know what’s the difference between “Free” and “Open-Source” Software? Very often both get confused, and even merged into a “FOSS” moniker-slash-acronym, but the truth is that there are substantial differences between both, particularly at the most fundamental level. And these differences, well, it turns out they matter a lot.

https://writefreesoftware.org/

3. How to generate income from open-source software? It turns out that donations and sponsorships don’t work very well, but commercial licenses are a much more reliable and proven mechanism. The important thing is to find ways to support the livelihoods of FOSS developers providing the packages that help us do our work faster and better.

https://vadimdemedes.com/posts/generating-income-from-open-source

4. Open-Source software has become a critical piece of the overall infrastructure puzzle for Big Tech. Take, for example, how Google is adopting the Rust programming language in their own products and services. We hope they’re also contributing to the project in return!

https://opensource.googleblog.com/2023/06/rust-fact-vs-fiction-5-insights-from-googles-rust-journey-2022.html

5. Speaking about awesome Open-Source software, many of us at VSHN are happily running Thunderbird 115 now, and we can safely say that it’s a fantastic release, with a very solid and reliable upgrade path, and a much-needed UI refresh. Have you donated to the project already? It is essential to support it.

https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/115.0/whatsnew/

Do you have commercial licenses for your open-source projects? How do you think companies should reward the teams working on them? Would you like to share some financial tips and tricks for FOSS teams? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about open source: #152 and #170.

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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 to different machines and see what they have to say.

1. Remember how Google used to index the web for you to find what you needed for the past 25 years? Well, as it happened in the past with many things made by Google, apparently this is no longer the case.

https://natehoffelder.com/blog/google-no-longer-automatically-indexes-websites-wtf/

2. Linus Torvalds is the new master of SEO, as the Google search “cold dark place filled with sadness and despair” points to… the Linux Kernel GitHub repository.

https://social.kernel.org/notice/AXWwXVY5yDb8roPXsm

3. Have you ever noticed those “.well-known” folders on the root of your website, in particular when requesting for SSL certificates? Ishan explains all you need to know about them.

https://ishan.page/blog/2023-07-02-well-known

4. A recent Reddit post showcased a series of artistic QR codes created with Stable Diffusion. But now the Stable Diffusion community has figured out how to make QR codes without custom models.

https://stable-diffusion-art.com/qr-code/

5. The most annoying-slash-funny thing to have appeared on the web lately is the obnoxious Password Game, and it has become more viral than, say, Grumpy Cat and Taylor Swift dancing “Say So” together on TikTok.

https://neal.fun/password-game/

How far have you been able to go in the Password Game? Are you still using Google? Would you like to share some ChatGPT prompts tips and tricks with our readers? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about random stuff: #24, #36, #69, #73, #86, #94, #100, #123, #147, #168, and #178.

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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 something I wouldn’t stop it if I could, when Crossplane takes over Terraform, yeah, you know you can’t deny.

1. Are you asking yourself what is Crossplane, where does it excel, where does it fall down, how does it compare to Terraform, and how can you use it today? It feels like you’ve waited so long for this. Read this Crossplane Case Study and you’ll have all the answers to your questions. Now you can breathe.

https://superorbital.io/blog/crossplane-2022/

2. People new to the Crossplane community are like, “can’t you see me here on overload?” about the responsibilities and purpose of the various architectural components. The New Stack published a helpful article showing a mental model to make sense of the functional areas of Crossplane.

https://thenewstack.io/crossplane-what-most-people-get-wrong-and-how-to-get-it-right/

3. Two EU banks (Deutsche Kreditbank AG and Millennium BCP in Portugal) favor Crossplane’s reconciliation approach over Terraform’s dependency graph, looking out for the former to hold their hands.

https://www.techtarget.com/searchitoperations/news/366543172/Banks-dump-Terraform-for-Crossplane-infrastructure-as-code

4. The Crossplane team recently started a new blog post series for FAQs about Crossplane, and the first one in the series answers a simple question: “Why is my composition not working? This time I blame you.”

https://blog.crossplane.io/faq-1-composition-not-working/

5. Crossplane compositions are a great way to build platform APIs. However they are also a great way to introduce bugs, and we could lose it all! crossplane-lint is the VSHN.timer tool of the week, and it helps to find those issues thanks to its knowledge about the internals of compositions & XRDs.

https://github.com/crossplane-contrib/crossplane-lint

Are you using Crossplane already? What features would make you switch from Terraform to Crossplane? Would you like to share some Crossplane tips and tricks with our readers? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

PS: check out our previous VSHN.timer editions about Terraform and Crossplane: #65, #82, and #127.

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