Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Kubernetes has fundamentally changed the way we manage our production environments. The ability to quickly bring up infrastructure on demand is a beautiful thing, but along with it brings some complexity, especially when it comes to logging. Logging is always an important part of maintaining a solid running infrastructure, but even more so with Kubernetes. Because Kubernetes clusters are constantly being spun up, spun down, always in flux, making sure logging functions correctly is critical.

As a student, developing your software engineering skills is about continuous learning and practice. When building software in the real-world, developers are expected to be proficient with a variety of tools and stacks. Internships, class and personal projects provide great opportunities for students to gain the experience needed to become more effective.

Single sign-on (SSO) is an authentication model designed to let users access different applications, services, and resources using a single set of credentials. Instead of having multiple user accounts for different applications, users are assigned a single centralized account that is used to authenticate with each application. This makes it more convenient for users to authenticate, while also making it easier for IT administrators to manage multiple accounts.

Logspout is an open source log router designed specifically for Docker container logs. If you’ve ever looked into log management for Docker, chances are you’ve heard of it. Logspout is a container that collects logs from all other containers running on the same host, then forwards them to a destination of your choice. This lets you send logs to an HTTP/S server, syslog server, or other endpoint without having to monitor files or modify your host systems.

When you start a company – or a third company as is the case for Lee and me – you start with a problem statement, a product you believe in, and a lot of hope. This means when growth goes as planned or exceeds expectations, you shouldn’t be surprised. This is what is supposed to happen. Great Product + Market Opportunity + Great Team = Successful Business. Intellectually, I know all this, but it is still exciting to see it come to fruition.

Continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) has enabled teams to build and deploy software at a much faster pace. DevOps teams can build, test, and deploy changes to production in a matter of minutes, allowing for extremely rapid release cycles. However, a CI/CD pipeline has a lot of moving parts and steps where problems to occur. In order to ensure a successful deployment, it’s important to monitor each step in this process.

The next major version of the LogDNA agent is right around the corner, and we’re introducing some significant improvements. Most notably, we’ve completely rewritten the agent using Rust instead of Node.js. As we gear up for the release, we wanted to explain why we chose Rust for the LogDNA agent, the benefits that it offers over other languages, and how it can help you log faster. Rust is a systems programming language that aims to offer both performance and safety.

The use cases and requirements of a logging platform in an organization varies between teams and job functions. The problem isn’t in collecting log data (we are a logging company after all), but in deciding how to manage these logs for each team. For example, our backend developers need detailed, short-lived logs in order to build and test new features; while our infrastructure team needs lengthy retention periods for auditing and compliance.

Kubernetes is a powerful platform that has shifted the way modern software operates and scales over the past five years. It’s got a strong open source community and benefits from innovation from the collective. Also, some of its current shortcomings are: difficulties in installation, complexity, and customization. In many ways, Kubernetes is like the Linux kernel: it provides a framework for running software, but none of the tools. This is where Kubernetes distributions (or distros) come in.

Logging your Kubernetes clusters to LogDNA is already a breeze, and now the LogDNA Kubernetes agent Helm chart makes it even easier. Helm is the official package manager for Kubernetes. With Helm, deploying and managing Kubernetes applications is as simple as typing a single command. This makes deploying the LogDNA agent across your cluster absolutely effortless.