Getting Started with Volume Snapshots in OpenShift 4 and OpenShift Container Storage

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Overview

Volume snapshots are the ability to create snapshots of persistent volumes in kubernetes using the container storage interface (csi) driver. The csi driver allows storage solutions to integrate into kubernetes and expose their technologies. Snapshots of course, have been and are a key technology when discussing data workloads because they enable backup/restore seamlessly, on-demand and in a split second. Even though volume snapshots are in the alpha stage, several storage providers already have integrations, including one that is very interesting, Ceph RDB.

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Automated Infrastructure in the On-Premise Datacenter – OpenShift 4.2 on OpenStack 15 (Stein)

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Overview

In this article we start a new journey, automated infrastructure in the on-premise datacenter. We will deploy OpenShift 4.2 on OpenStack. As I am sure you are aware, OpenShift is Red Hat’s enterprise kubernetes platform. Kubernetes is of course the brains but by itself is not a platform. OpenShift brings with kubernetes, monitoring, aggregate logging, container registry, security, automated deployment/upgrade, developer experience, huge middleware tooling built around JBoss, serverless frameworks, ISTIO (service mesh), CI/CD integration and the key word “ENTERPRISE“.

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OpenStack 15 (Stein) Lab Installation and Configuration Guide for Hetzner Root Servers

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Overview

In this article we will focus on installing and configuring OpenStack Stein using RDO and the packstack installer. RDO is a community platform around Red Hat’s Enterprise OpenStack Distribution. It allows you to test the latest OpenStack capabilities on a stable platform such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or CentOS. This guide will take you through setting up Hetzner root server, preparing environment for OpenStack, installing the OpenStack Stein release, adding a floating ip subnet through OVS, configuring networking, security groups, flavors, images and are other OpenStack related services. The outcome is a working OpenStack environment based on the Stein release that you can use as a baseline for testing your applications using OpenStack capabilities. The installation will create an all-in-one deployment however you can use this guide to create a multi-node deployment as well.

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How to Create a RHEL 8 Image for Hetzner Root Servers

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Overview

In this article I will explain how to create your own custom RHEL 8 image for hetzner root servers. Hetzner offers new and used physical servers on a per/month basis (https://www.hetzner.de/sb). They offer extremely competitive pricing. These servers are perfect for demo or lab environments where you are operating your own platform and want it running 24/7!

Hetzner unfortunately does not offer RHEL images however, does provide a means for bringing your own image. A colleague of mine, Ingo Boernig, already shared a blog on how to do this for RHEL 7.5. This article with cover RHEL 8.0.

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CI/CD with Ansible Tower and GitHub

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Overview

Over the last few years CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment) thanks to new technologies has become a lot easier. It should no longer be a major thorn in the side of developers. Many are moving to cloud platforms which has CI/CD built-in (Azure DevOps for example), others are using Kubernetes which clearly reduces a lot of the complexity around CI/CD. Still at many organizations I see Jenkins or other complex and often homegrown tooling. I certainly recognize this tooling was needed but in 2019 there are better, more streamlined options. Now I get it, our butler Jenkins has served us well, for many years, he has become part of our family. But just like the famous Butler, Alfred from Batman, he has gotten old and likely it is time to look into retirement.

In this article we will discuss and demonstrate how to use Ansible Tower and GitHub for CI/CD.

A video presentation and demonstration is available at following URL: https://youtu.be/lyk-CRVXs8I

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Powerful but Simple CI/CD with Azure DevOps and Go

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Overview

Microsoft has wasted little time getting value out of their GitHub acquisition. They have now fully integrated GitHub and authentication into an already powerful DevOps platform called “Azure DevOps”. I have until this moment had zero enjoyment, setting up and maintaining CI/CD tooling usually involving some form of our dear butler, Jenkins. Nothing wrong with our old Jenkins but let’s face it, he is just overhead at this point, better to just put him to rest, he has earned it.

Azure DevOps has the following value:

  • It’s in the cloud, consumed as-a-service
  • Completely Integrated with GitHub
  • It is free
  • Authentication using GitHub user
  • Don’t need to use it with Azure
  • Supports basically every language, I am doing CI/CD with Go
  • Simple yaml to configure no Groovy/DML Jenkins horror
  • Yaml pipeline files auto-generated for your language (just needs minor tweaks)
  • Your code is built, unit tests are run, you can do acceptance tests and it is setup in a few minutes

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The Coffee is Getting Cold, It’s Time to GO – Getting Started Building Microservices

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Overview

Java has been around a really, really long time. Certainly it continues to evolve and has evolved. Java has always been a “can do anything” programming language. It has more frameworks and middleware than there are stars in the sky. It is portable anywhere and of course probably 8 out of 10 developers today know Java to some degree. Given all of this though is Java the path forward?

Looking forward I think the clear trend is microservices and beyond. Therefore the question is a lot simpler, is Java the best path forward for microservices?

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