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Blue Matador

Azure Kubernetes Service: How to create a cluster

Azure Kubernetes Service, Microsoft's managed Kubernetes solution, allows you to quickly create a Kubernetes cluster in Microsoft Azure and provides features to help you manage and maintain your Kubernetes cluster in Azure. In this blog post we will go over some of the features of AKS and then walk through creating an AKS cluster.

What is AWS Amplify?

Amazon Web Services is the world’s biggest cloud platform, and businesses of all shapes and sizes use it every day to run their businesses. You may find this surprising, but AWS accounts for more than half of Amazon's operating income. Thus, Amazon has a vested interest in getting as many people to use AWS as possible, so it offers a whole bunch of tools to make it easy to use. AWS Amplify is one of these.

Guide: Upgrading EKS with Terraform

New Kubernetes versions are released multiple times per year, and you must upgrade your EKS cluster periodically to stay up to date. In this blog post we will go over the steps required to safely upgrade your production EKS cluster managed by Terraform. At Blue Matador, we use Terraform to manage most of our AWS infrastructure, and our EKS cluster is no exception. We use the eks module, which provides a lot of functionality for managing your EKS cluster and worker nodes.

How to Monitor Your Kubernetes Cluster: Prometheus vs Datadog

So you’ve got a shiny new Kubernetes cluster up and it’s a dream. Deploying code is easy, scaling is a breeze, and you’ve never felt so efficient. However, despite claims that Kubernetes is self-healing, there’s still a nagging feeling in the back of your mind that wants to make sure your cluster is running smoothly. Just like any other tool, you need a monitoring solution to give you insight into Kubernetes.

My first Kubernetes cluster: Amazon EKS review + tutorial

During my career, I’ve taken part in many on-call rotations and post-mortems. The longest on-call rotation I’ve ever had — no breaks, vacations, or holidays — lasted for a whopping 2.5 years at Lucid Software. I’m jaded. I strongly prefer stability to tinkering with shiny new toys. Very few software engineers start this way, but enough of them make the transition after having been bit enough times by a bad release.

How to apply for AWS Activate

AWS Activate is a program that provides startups with free AWS credits. There are specific requirements startups must meet in order to qualify, and not all startups that qualify end up receiving the free AWS credits. Still, for any startup planning on running their app in AWS, it’s probably worth a try. AWS Activate has two packages: the Founders package and the Portfolio package.