Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Ever need to make a decision based on the version of something? The version_compare() function might be useful for you.1 Over time, software changes and features are added and removed. Sometimes, we need to make a decision based on versions. For example, the Include directive in ssh_config was introduced in OpenSSH 7.3.2 Let’s take a look at how we could possibly use it. This example illustrates the basic use of version_compare()

As businesses scale, managing infrastructure becomes increasingly complex and distributed, leading to challenges in consistency, performance, and security. Manual configurations and outdated practices can no longer meet the demands of today’s highly competitive businesses. To tackle these issues, adopting a phased approach; Day 0, Day 1, and Day 2; provides a practical roadmap for scaling infrastructure automation effectively.

Software deployment automation can simplify and speed up your delivery cycle. It can reduce risk, allow teams to easily test after changes are made, and help provide consistency for the overall development pipeline. If it sounds complicated, we’re here to break it down each step into a cheat sheet that provides tips and best practices for the software deployment automation process.

Every operating system has its quirks, and Linux security is no different. Whether you’re on Team Penguin or running mostly Windows boxes (or a bit of both), you’ll need to take different steps to manage security on different OSes. Like any OS, Linux security comes with its own peculiarities, pitfalls, and best practices.

Looking for a tool to help you format your CFEngine policy? Have you heard of cffmt? You might recall that we had a chat with the author, Miek Gieben in The agent is in - Episode 24.1 In case you missed it, cffmt is a command line tool for formatting CFEngine policy files, like gofmt for.cf files.2 Let’s take a look. Consistent formatting can really ease reading of policy, but sometimes editors are configured differently and you can end up with inconsistently formatted policy.

It's expensive when you don't comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) controls — take for example the €310 million fine (equivalent to $335 million dollars) that LinkedIn received from the GDPR. In this case, they shared users’ personal data for targeted advertising and behavioural analyses, without asking for user consent. Can you afford €310 million? It might be time to automate GDPR controls for 24/7 compliance.

Have you seen the new Groups feature in CFEngine Enterprise Mission Portal? It was first released in 3.23.0 and it’s part of the 3.24 LTS series released earlier this year, let’s check it out. Groups in Mission Portal can be based on any host reported data. They can be dynamic (hosts can come and go from a group) or they can be static and tied to specific hosts by hostname, mac address, IP or CFEngine’s public key.

In early 2025, Puppet will begin to ship any new binaries and packages developed by our team to a private, hardened, and controlled location. Our intention with this change is not to limit community access to Puppet source code, but to address the growing risk of vulnerabilities across all software applications today while continuing to provide the security, support, and stability our customers deserve.