Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

March 2019

An Introduction to Big Data Concepts

Gigantic amounts of data are being generated at high speeds by a variety of sources such as mobile devices, social media, machine logs, and multiple sensors surrounding us. All around the world, we produce vast amount of data and the volume of generated data is growing exponentially at a unprecedented rate. The pace of data generation is even being accelerated by the growth of new technologies and paradigms such as Internet of Things (IoT).

What you need to know to successfully run databases in production on Kubernetes

The Kubernetes community has made significant progress when it comes to easily deploying stateful services like databases. But what happens on Day 2? Day 2 operations are all about managing an application when things go wrong: nodes fail, networks are partitioned, a CVE comes out requiring a new version of Kubernetes to be deployed and all running apps upgraded.

Comparing Kubernetes CNI Providers: Flannel, Calico, Canal, and Weave

Network architecture is one of the more complicated aspects of many Kubernetes installations. The Kubernetes networking model itself demands certain network features but allows for some flexibility regarding the implementation. As a result, various projects have been released to address specific environments and requirements.

Online Meetup: Introducing Submariner -- Multi-Cluster Networking for Kubernetes

As more organizations benefit from the increased availability and security offered by multi-cluster Kubernetes, the release of Submariner now enables containers in different clusters to establish a direct network connection with each other.

k3s -- The Lightweight Kubernetes Distribution Built for the Edge

Kubernetes is pushing out of the data center into stores, networks and factories. DevOps teams are excited about Kubernetes because it provides predictable operations and a cloud-like provisioning experience on just about any infrastructure. For the last year Rancher Labs has been working with organizations to create a lightweight implementation of Kubernetes that is easy to operate and can run on x86 and ARM infrastructure without using more than 512 MB of memory.

Announcing Submariner, Multi-Cluster Network Connectivity for Kubernetes

Today we are proud to announce Submariner, a new open-source project enabling network connectivity between Kubernetes clusters. We launched the project to provide network connectivity for microservices deployed in multiple Kubernetes clusters that need to communicate with each other.

How to Build Cloud Native CI/CD Pipelines on Kubernetes and Release Software Faster

Kubernetes is a powerful, open source, container orchestration/cluster management tool that helps you manage and deploy your containerized application and services on a cluster of machines. Operationalizing Kubernetes involves many different pieces, but a very important aspect is management of the containers and using Helm to build charts for your Kubernetes deployments.

Kubernetes Master Class: Migrating Existing Applications to Kubernetes

Containers help teams develop, package, and deploy software in environments ranging from personal laptops to data centers. They can help improve release velocity, reduce resource consumption, and encourage modular, flexible application design. However, migrating existing applications to containers is not without logistical challenges.

Considerations When Designing Distributed Systems

Today’s applications are marvels of distributed systems development. Each function or service that makes up an application may be executing on a different system, based upon a different system architecture, that is housed in a different geographical location, and written in a different computer language.

Introducing Submariner: Multi-Cluster Networking for Kubernetes

As more organizations benefit from the increased availability and security offered by multi-cluster Kubernetes, the release of Submariner, a new open-source project sponsored by Rancher, now enables containers in different clusters to establish a direct network connection with each other.

A Comparison of VMware and Docker

Servers are expensive. And in single-application installations, most servers spend the majority of their time waiting. Making the most of these expensive assets led to virtualization, and making the most of virtualization has led to multiple options for virtualizing applications. VMware and Docker offer competing methods for virtualizing applications. Both technologies work to make the most of limited hardware resources, but they do so in significantly different ways.

How the kubernetes community responded to the k3s launch

What an amazing first week! I’ve been marketing open source technologies for over 15 years. During that time, I’ve been involved in many new product releases. Nothing comes close to the response we’ve had from k3s – http://k3s.io. Judging by the incredible feedback (including over 4,500 GitHub stars in one week), the release of k3s appears to have landed at exactly the right time.

Microservices vs. Monolithic Architectures

Enterprises are increasingly pressured by competitors and their own customers to get applications working and online quicker while also minimizing development costs. These divergent goals have forced enterprise IT organization to evolve rapidly. After undergoing one forced evolution after another since the 1960s, many are prepared to take the step away from monolithic application architectures to embrace the microservices approach.