Technology Short Take 111
Published on 1 Mar 2019 · Filed in Information · 654 words (estimated 4 minutes to read)Welcome to Technology Short Take #111! I’m a couple weeks late on this one; wanted to publish it earlier but work has been keeping me busy (lots and lots of interest in Kubernetes and cloud-native technologies out there!). In any event, here you are—I hope you find something useful for you!
Networking
- Daniel Dib has a great article on how network engineers need to evolve. The network isn’t going away, it’s just changing.
- I referenced part 1 of Ajay Chenampara’s series on the Ansible
network-enginecommand parser back in Technology Short Take 102 (July of last year). I’m not sure how I missed that part 2 was published only 2 days later, so I’m rectifying that now. Go check out part 2. - Paul Fitzgerald shows how to use Hyper-V and Docker to build a VyOS 1.2.0 ISO image. (VyOS is an open source Linux-based network operating system.)
- Matt Cowger shares how to use MetalLB with the Unifi USG to take advantage of Kubernetes LoadBalancer functionality in your home lab. Nifty.
Servers/Hardware
- James Hamilton is back with a more in-depth look at the components of the AWS Nitro System.
- I must say that my conclusions regarding the ThinkPad X1 Carbon mirror those found in this post.
Security
- Etiene Dalcol of Gruntwork has a three part series on automating HashiCorp Vault. Part 1 covers auto-unsealing Vault; part 2 covers authenticating to Vault using instance metadata; and part 3 discusses authenticating to Vault using an IAM user or role.
Cloud Computing/Cloud Management
- Stefan Büringer writes about how you can implement “advanced” RBAC functionality in Kubernetes using Open Policy Agent (OPA).
- Cormac Hogan is back to playing around with PKS, and he explains how to review PKS logs and status.
- Kamesh Sampath talks about configuring Knative auto-scaling (mostly focusing on scale-to-zero).
- I’m not sure I would refer to using
kubeadmto bootstrap a Kubernetes cluster as “the hard way,” but if you’re looking for a fairly detailed tutorial on usingkubeadmto bootstrap a Kubernetes cluster, this post by Yair Etziony has quite a bit of information on the process. - Forrest Brazeal hits the nail on the head with the assertion that IAM is the real cloud lock-in.
Operating Systems/Applications
- Oriol Tauleria has a write-up on how to layout Terraform code to accommodate a project as it scales. I like some of the ideas Tauleria presents and hope to be able to implement some of them soon in my own project(s).
- David Holder explores some thoughts around efficiency gains from small(er) containers.
- Maish Saidel-Keesing lays out his thoughts on the death of Docker. In the past, I might have felt the same way. However, Docker’s recent (seeming) pivot to focus on a paid desktop product might change things a pretty fair amount. Let’s face it, Docker’s hold wasn’t on the back-end systems—it was on the developers who valued the workflow. Focusing on a paid desktop solution caters to that audience. Given that containerd seems to be winning on the back-end, this allows Docker to remain influential in the container space, in my opinion.
- Folks running Fedora who have work/corporate VPNs that muck up their DNS settings might be interested in this article on the DNSMasq plugin for Network Manager.
Storage
Nothing this time around, but I’ll stay alert for items to add next time.
Virtualization
- William Lam talks about the ESXi native driver for USB NIC, a Fling that will enable ESXi support for three of the most popular USB NIC chipsets (see the article for the specific chipsets).
Career/Soft Skills
- You may have heard of Wardley mapping, a way of understanding context and situational awareness. If you’re looking for a reasonably gentle introduction to the concept, check out this article.
- Readers may find this list of recommended books from Jessie Frazelle of interest.
OK, that’s all for now. Hit me up on Twitter if you have any comments, questions, suggestions, or corrections—I’d love to hear from you!