This is Infra Weekly Newsletter, a newsletter about infrastructure, cloud, DevOps, automation, servers, Linux and related subjects.
Please subscribe now.
This week I will start with some links talking about what GitOps really is. It seems that Weaveworks coined it to define the practices they were and are using. There is a marketing strategy behind it too. GitOps is not bad; it is a pattern already existing that can be very useful but not to every company and environment. Then you can find some definitions and resources on SRE and observability.
GitOps is a placebo
Steve Smith, who works for Equal Experts, a quite famous consulting company (I am part of their professional network), is quite critical of GitOps, saying that it already existed, but I was coined by Weaveworks to sell their product. He does not say that is wrong, but it cannot be used everywhere, every company has different needs and every company is different to another.
https://www.stevesmith.tech/blog/gitops-is-a-placebo/
GitOps demystified
Vic Iglesias writes a blog post after Steve’s one, comments on Steve’s post and adds more opinions.
https://testingclouds.wordpress.com/author/viglesiasce/
What is GitOps?
Another blog post about GitOps, this time from Gitlab. They. give their own interpretation.
https://about.gitlab.com/topics/gitops/
Jez Humble's book on continuous delivery
The book “Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases Through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation”, according to Steve Smith (I totally agree), was the first to describe the practices defined by GitOps.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8686650-continuous-delivery
It is Time to Fulfill the Promise of Continuous Delivery: Charity Majors
Charity Majors was working for Facebook mainly on monitoring then she started a startup on osservability. This is a recent talk she did on continuos delivery.
What you should and (probably) shouldn’t try from SRE
A two-year-old blog post but very important regarding the adoption of SRE by businesses, what they should adopt and what they should consider of adopting (costs and viability).
https://www.equalexperts.com/blog/our-thinking/what-you-should-and-probably-shouldnt-try-from-sre/
Beyond DevOps: The value of Operability
Another buzzword: operability. The article has a lot of reasoning and experience for real-world projects with government and private businesses.
https://www.equalexperts.com/blog/our-thinking/value-operability/
What SRE could be
A recent post for Neil Murphy about SRE, with some ideas on how to extend it and improved it.
https://blog.relyabilit.ie/what-sre-could-be/
SRE Books
Just in case you did not know, Google’s SRE books are freely available.
Learn About Observability
An introduction to observability from honecomb.io (Charity Majors start-up).
https://docs.honeycomb.io/getting-started/learning-about-observability/
What Is Observability?
Splunk article on observability. It seems that observability is mainly about performance, but I don’t agree. However, they describe very good points on what to observe in a system.
https://www.splunk.com/en_us/data-insider/what-is-observability.html
Handling JSON data in Fluvio SmartModules
How to load JSON data on Fluvio, a Kafka replacement written in Rust. If you are starting with data streaming in your company, you should evaluate Fluvio before jumping to Kafka.
https://www.infinyon.com/blog/2022/06/smartmodule-json/
Databend: a datawarehouse alternative written in Rust
Another software that is written in Rust. Databend is an open-source Elastic and Workload-Aware Modern Cloud Data Warehouse.
Databend uses the latest techniques in vectorized query processing to allow you to do blazing-fast data analytics on object storage(S3, Azure Blob or MinIO).
https://github.com/datafuselabs/databend
Check the performance to query S3 data: https://databend.rs/doc/performance/ec2-s3-performance
Wails: go electron-like framework
If you need a control panel for your automation project (or infra project) and you are using golang, have a look at Wails.
Adventures in AWS Lambda Land
Adventures in AWS Lambda Land – a Migration Gone Well.
https://spacelift.io/blog/aws-lambda-migration
No, AWS, Aurora Serverless v2 Is Not Serverless
Don’t think that you can use Aurora like you can use Lambda, there are a few pitfalls.
https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/no-aws-aurora-serverless-v2-is-not-serverless/
Embrace the Benefits of Serverless Development With MongoDB Atlas
Atlas serverless instances now generally available.
https://www.mongodb.com/blog/post/embrace-benefits-serverless-development-atlas
MIT research discovers a flaw in Apple M1 chips that can’t be patched
I am happy I waited a bit before buying the new M1.
https://www.siliconrepublic.com/enterprise/apple-m1-cybersecurity-hardware-flaw-pacman-mit-research
Known Unknowns —Webb Struck by Meteoroid!
After an example of an incident hitting the James Webb space telescope, Robert Barron talks about designing for reliability.
https://flyingbarron.medium.com/known-unknowns-webb-struck-by-meteoroid-fde752dec87a
Diagrams as Code 2.0 - Simon Brown - GOTO 2021
A talk on diagramming software architecture in code. Writing the diagram source as text allows for easy integration into software development practices and toolchains, plus the automatic layout facilities allow authors to focus on content.
Robusta
Robusta streamlines everything that happens after you deploy your application. It is somewhat like Zapier/IFTTT for DevOps, with an emphasis on prebuilt useful automation and not just "build your own".
https://github.com/robusta-dev/robusta
Talos
Talos Linux is Linux designed for Kubernetes – secure, immutable, and minimal.
Supports cloud platforms, bare metal, and virtualization platforms
All system management is done via an API. No SSH, shell or console
Production-ready: supports some of the largest Kubernetes clusters in the world
Open-source project from the team at Sidero Labs
Bottlerocket
A similar solution to Talos, from AWS, Bottlerocket. I think Talos has been around for more time than Bottlerocket.
https://aws.amazon.com/bottlerocket/
Kubernetes 1.24: Maximum Unavailable Replicas for StatefulSet
Version 1.24 has MaxUnavailableStatefulSet directive and using stateful sets.
https://kubernetes.io/blog/2022/05/27/maxunavailable-for-statefulset/
Contextual Logging in Kubernetes 1.24
The Structured Logging Working Group has added new capabilities to the logging infrastructure in Kubernetes 1.24. This blog post explains how developers can take advantage of those to make log output more useful and how they can get involved with improving Kubernetes.
https://kubernetes.io/blog/2022/05/25/contextual-logging/
Kubernetes 1.24: Volume Expansion Now A Stable Feature
Volume expansion was introduced as an alpha feature in Kubernetes 1.8 and it went beta in 1.11 and with Kubernetes 1.24 is GA (general availability).
https://kubernetes.io/blog/2022/05/05/volume-expansion-ga/
The Floppotron 3.0 - Computer Hardware Orchestra
For fun, a funny geeky ‘musical computer’ :-)
Thank you for reading, please ask your friends and colleagues to subscribe.