I had intended to turn this list in to some kind of monster article or split it in to several. I suck at getting around to writing things so rather than let this fester unpublished I’m going to publish it as is.
This experience comes from 2 and a bit years evaluating and using docker for actual work. Some of it is probably rubbish. The largest deployment of nodes I’ve managed is 50 so not uber scale. Some things will be different beyond that scale but I’m pretty sure most of it applies below that.
Type “devops” into any job search site today and the overwhelming majority of results will be for some variation of “DevOps Engineer”. The skills required will centre on tools like Puppet/Chef/Ansible, AWS/Azure, scripting in Python/Perl/Bash/PowerShell etc. Essentially, they’ve taken a deployment automation engineer role, crossed out “deployment automation” and written “DevOps” in its place.
There’s nothing wrong with hiring deployment automation (or, if you must, DevOps) engineers if you don’t have enough people with the right skills to deliver the deployment automation part of your DevOps strategy. The real problem is when hiring DevOps engineers is your DevOps strategy.
Deployment automation is an ancient art compared to DevOps. How ancient? Here’s an abbreviated history (feel free to skip to the tl;dr if you’re not a history buff):
In our previous article, we had a good overview of SDN as a technology, why it’s needed, and how IT industry is adopting it. Now, let’s get a layer deeper, and understand SDN’s architecture and the role of the Openflow protocol in the implementation of the technology.
SDN broadly consists of three layers:
Application layer
Control layer
Infrastructure layer
Let us try and understand these layers in bottom-to-up approach.
Infrastructure layer is composed of various networking equipment which forms underlying network to forward network traffic. It could be a set of network switches and routers in the data centre. This layer would be the physical one over which network virtualization would be laid down through the control layer (where SDN controllers would sit and manage underlying physical network).
This week in open source, blockchain technology, like that of Hyperledger, is being adopted by the insurance market, Cloud Foundry continues its steady incline of adoption, and more!
1) Blockchain tech like Hyperledger “is making inroads into the insurance sector.”
The Linux platform can do quite a lot of things; it can be just about anything need it to be and function in nearly any form. One of the many areas in which Linux excels is that of storage. With the help of a few constituent pieces, you can have a powerful NAS or cloud storage solution up and running.
But, what if you don’t want to take the time to piece these together for yourself? Or, what if you’d rather have a user-friendly, web-based GUI to make this process a bit easier. For that, there are a few distributions available to meet your needs. Once such platform is Rockstor. Rockstor is a Network Attached Storage (NAS) and cloud solution that can serve either your personal or small business needs with ease.
Rockstor got its start in 2014 and has quickly become a solid tool in the storage space. I was able to quickly get Rockstor up and running (after overcoming only one minor hurdle) and had SMB shares and users/groups created with just a few quick clicks. And, with the inclusion of add-ons (called Rockons), you can extend the feature set of your Rockstor to include new apps, servers, and services.
Let me walk you through that process (as well as how I solved one tiny hiccup), so you can decide if Rockstor is the solution for you.
A word on requirements
I managed to easily get Rockstor running as a VirtualBox VM. Whether you’re installing as a VM or on dedicated hardware, the minimal installation requirements are:
64-bit Intel or AMD processor
2GB RAM or more (recommended)
8GB hard disk space for the OS
One or more additional hard drives for data (recommended)
Ethernet interface (with Internet access – for updates)
Media drive or USB port (for installation on dedicated hardware)
Installation
Based on the Anaconda Installer, the installation of Rockstor is incredibly simple. In fact, once you start the installation process, the only thing you have to do is configure a root user password; there is no package selection, no set up of systems or servers. Once the installation completes, reboot, and you’re ready to go.
When the reboot completes, you will discover the biggest (and really only) caveat to Rockstor—the handling of the IP address. After logging into the Rockstor terminal window (the only GUI is the web interface), you will find it does not give you any indication what IP address to use. And, since you weren’t able to configure the networking interface during installation, what do you do?
The first thing would be to issue the command ip address. This will report to you the DHCP-assigned IP address of your server (Figure 1).
Figure 1: The IP address to access the Rockstor web interface.
Point your browser to the IP address (using secure HTTPS, so https://SERVER_IP) listed. NOTE: You will have to okay the exception for the self-signed certificate, used by your Rockstor instance, in your browser.
On the first page, you will be required to accept the license as well as create a hostname and admin user for your Rockstor instance (Figure 2). Figure 2: The final installation step.
Upon successful creation of the hostname/admin user, you will be greeted by the Rockstor Dashboard (and a popup asking if you want to update to the latest release). Do note that the update popup will take you to a page where you can sign up for either the stable or the testing releases. The Stable updates will cost you $40.00 for a three-year subscription and the Testing updates do not have an associated cost. If you do enable the Testing updates, make sure you read through each offered changelog before okaying the update.
Addressing the IP address caveat
You don’t want to have to work with a DHCP-assigned IP address for your storage server. Once you’ve taken care of the final installation/update bits, you can then configure the network device for a manual (static) address through the Rockstor GUI. One method for setting up a static IP address is through the Rockstor web interface. To do this, log onto Rockstor as your admin user and then click on SYSTEM > Network (Figure 3).
Figure 3: Navigating to the Network configuration from the Rockstor Dashboard.
In the resulting window (Figure 4), configure the network interface as a manual connection and fill out the necessary information.
Figure 4: Configuring your networking interface for a static address.
With that taken care of, you’re ready to start setting up your Rockstor storage server.
If the above method fails you (which it did me in one instance), I have found the best solution to be the old-fashioned method…configuring the network manually. For this, you need to log into the Rockstor server as root and then edit the networking file associated with your network adapter. As I was working with VirtualBox, the file was /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-enp0s3. Open that file for editing and make sure the following options are configured properly:
where all options in bold are specific to your network. There will be other options preconfigured in the file (e.g., NAME and DEVICE), leave them as-is. Once you’ve made these changes, save and close the file, and then issue the command:
systemctl restart network
Now, if you go back to SYSTEM > Network (on your Rockstor Dashboard), you should see the network configuration for your interface is set to Manual, with all of your necessary options.
You are now ready to go back to your Rockstor Dashboard, click STORAGE and set up whatever storage type you need (Figure 5). Figure 5: Storage options found in Rockstor.
Quick Samba Share
Before you create your first share, you’ll want to head over to SYSTEM > Groups and SYSTEM > Users and make sure you have the necessary users/groups created, in order to make creating shares easier.
To set up your first Samba Share, click on STORAGE > Samba. In the resulting window (Figure 6), make sure that Samba Service is set to ON.
Figure 6: With the Samba Service ON, you’re ready to go.
With the Samba Service running, go back to the Dashboard and click STORAGE > Shares. In this new window, click the Create Share button and fill out the necessary information (Figure 7).
Figure 7: Creating a new Samba share.
Click Submit and your share has been created. After the share has been saved, click on the new share from the listings and then click on the Access Control tab, where you can change the associated group for the share as well as the share permissions (Figure 8).
Figure 8: Editing the group and permissions for a share.
And that’s it to creating a Samba share with Rockstor.
A solid solution for SOHO and SMB
If you’re looking for a solid storage solution for your home office or small business, you’d certainly be remiss for skipping over the open source Rockstor solution. With one of the best storage GUIs I’ve used, Rockstor makes creating a powerful storage solution an experience nearly anyone can handle.
Learn more about Linux through the free “Introduction to Linux” course from The Linux Foundation and edX.
One of the biggest open source events in the world is right around the corner, and the full schedule has now been announced. The Open Source Summit — Sept. 11-14 in Los Angeles, CA — features more than 200 sessions, with additional breakout sessions throughout the day covering technical, leadership, and professional open source tracks.
Some of the session highlights include:
The Open Road to Autonomous Driving – Dan Cauchy, Automotive Grade Linux
Code Detective: How to Investigate Linux Performance Issues – Gabriel Krisman Bertazi, Collabora
Aim to Be an Open Source Zero – Guy Martin, Autodesk
How to Fail Fast and Rise Again: A Case Study on Transforming to Cloud Native – Ken Owens, Cisco DevNet
First 90 Days: Building an OSS Practice – Nithya Ruff, Comcast
Raspberry Pi Hacks – Ruth Suehle, Red Hat
From Zero to Serverless in 60 Seconds, Anywhere – Alex Ellis, AD
Choose Your Own Adventure: Finding the Right Path to Containerization – Erica von Buelow, CoreOS
Data Science: A Containerized, Cloud-Native Approach – Daniel Whitenack, Pachyderm
On day one, the keynotes start at 9 a.m. and, as usual, Jim Zemlin, Executive Director, The Linux Foundation will give kick off the event with an overview of Linux and open source. Another highlight of the day will be a keynote discussion between Zemlin and Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux and Git. You can read about other keynote highlights and more reasons to attend the Summit in this article.
Pro tip:If you are planning to attend the day’s first keynote, you should arrive to the venue early in the morning to collect your badge and bag (or do this the day before) to beat the rush. Because this year’s event is a new combination of several events, attendees can expect a bigger crowd
Co-hosted events
The OS Summit brings together leading maintainers, developers, and project leads from around the world, who gather to share updates, best practices, and expertise to further the Linux ecosystem. Additionally, the co-located events mean you will have the opportunity to collaborate, contribute, and learn across a wide variety of topics.
ContainerCon:This event brings together leading experts in both the development and operations community to share ideas and best practices for how containers are shaping computing today and in the future with a focus on DevOps culture, automation, portability and efficiency.
CloudOpen: This conference gathers top professionals to discuss cloud platforms, automation and management tools, DevOps, virtualization, containers, software-defined networking, storage & filesystems, big data tools and platforms, open source best practices and much more.
Open Community Conference: This event provides presentations, tutorials, panel discussions, and networking opportunities that bring together some of the leading practitioners to share their expertise in how you can build powerful communities.
Diversity Empowerment Summit: This event promotes and facilitates an increase in diversity, inclusion, empowerment and social innovation in the open source community, and provides a platform for discussion and collaboration.
And, if you have children, consider bringing them to the Open Source Summit for the full-day kids’ workshop on September 10. The workshop is designed for school-aged children interested in learning more about computer programming. And, you don’t have to worry about babysitting the kids during the rest of the conference; the Open Source Summit offers free childcare for participants.
Register now at the discounted rate of $800 through June 24. Academic and hobbyist rates are also available. Applications are also being accepted for diversity and needs-based scholarships.
As consumers adopt and demand things more quickly, it is essential to have a fluid and quick software development process that will allow businesses to give customers new and different digital experiences. According to a recent Forrester report, Digital Transformation Using Node.js: This Swiss Army Knife is More Than Just an Application Platform and the key topic in our upcoming webinar on July 12 at 11am PT — register here, Node.js is becoming the application platform for building out these digital experiences, by giving developers the ability to:
Build APIs that support both application and experience demands.
Rapid experimentation with new and existing corporate data
Accelerate application modernization
Create digital experiences across multiple platforms (not just mobile and web)
Innovate on the future connected device experience.
And it’s not just digital startups out of the Silicon Valley that are using Node.js, enterprises around the globe are looking to Node.js to aid in their digital transformation:
Slack built its desktop client using Electron, a framework built on Node.js for creating native Mac, Windows, and Linux applications using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Electron has allowed Slack to use the underlying operating system capabilities while leveraging web platform development skills.
Netflix containerized their edge service layer (which allows the Netflix team to access data with all the hundred of back-end microservices that exist within Netflix) with Docker and Node.js to scale horizontally.
The Node.js Foundation will be talking more about why companies are turning to Node.js for digital transformation and Node.js best practices during the above mentioned free webinar on July 12 at 11am PT with Rick Adams, Senior IT Manager with Lowe’s Digital. The conversation will highlight other key findings from the Forrester report.
There’s no doubt, in the IT world, microservices are sexy. But just because you find something cool and attractive doesn’t mean it’s good for you. And it doesn’t mean you know how to use it properly.
In fact, microservices, in particular, aren’t easy. Yes, microservices allow for different team members to work on different parts of the code at different speeds. But this wonderful autonomy often finds folks even more siloed, not knowing what the other is doing before throwing it over the wall to the testing and documentation teams, according to Red Hat’s Principle Middleware Architect Christian Posta.
In order to gain true microservices independence, Posta says that we need to shed our dependencies, such as the assumption that microservices mean each service controls its own database.
Selecting the best Linux distro is a matter of personal choice, based on your daily work flow. Two Linux experts list their personal picks for best distro and discuss each distro’s merits and challenges.
Bruce Byfield’s Picks
The best Linux distro is always subjective. My own list of the best Linux distros depend on my current interests. One or two are always on my list, but the others are usually ones that have boast something different. Since I am regularly watching for new distros and developing new interests, this year’s list has only some overlaps with last year’s list.
To be honest, I follow Linux desktops more closely than Linux distributions. To me, desktop environments are where the innovation occurs. In fact, I would argue that when a distribution calls attention to itself, something is probably wrong.
All the same, I have my favorite Linux distros. They are not necessarily the most popular – that would be bland – but they are distributions that, one way or the other, are influential or fill a niche extremely well.
Kubernetes continues to experience explosive growth and software developers that are able to understand and contribute to the Kubernetes code base are in high demand. Learning the Kubernetes code base is not easy. Kubernetes is written Go which is a fairly new programming language and it has a large amount of source code. In this multi-part series of articles I will dig in and explain key portions of the Kubernetes code base and also explain the techniques I have used to help me understand the code. My goal is to provide a set of articles that will enable software developers new to Kubernetes to more quickly learn the Kubernetes source code. In this first article, I will cover the flow through the code from running a simple kubectl command to sending a REST call to the API Server. Before using this article to dig into the Kubernetes code, I recommend you read an outstanding high level overview of the Kubernetes architecture by Julia Evans.
