A new (delayed) issue of the CatOps Digest is here!

https://newsletter.catops.dev/p/catops-digest-2024-03-24

Better late than never, right?

#digest #newsletter

Hey!

Let's close that Starlink fundraiser by Dzyga's Paw. There's less than $1k left, so I'm pretty sure we can make it today :D

#donations #Ukraine

Some time ago, I predicted that there is going to be more Kubernetes distributions. Then it didn’t happen, so I thought I was wrong.

Yet, now Canonical has introduced their Kubernetes distribution.

It’s based on the upstream Kubernetes 1.30, has some built-in add-ons, and yes, you can install it with snap.

#kubernetes

A neat comparison between Argo and Flux.

I like the fact that the article mostly focuses on UX and use cases. Yet, I would disagree with this statement here:

 would deploy one Argo CD per tenant, where each tenant is an independent developer team with their applications, but it can work with multiple clusters, for example, dev/stage/prod, etc.

I mean sure. If you have enough resources, go for it! However, I witnessed how getting down from “Argo per team” to “just one Argo” reduced resource consumption in a cluster by 90%.

#cicd #gitops

People often say that Observability is a Data problem. Although, it sounds correct intuitively, I cannot say that I fully understood how Data engineering approaches could be applied to the Observability systems.

This article about Wide Events clarified things for me a bit. Indeed, if any event that happened in the system is just an object with some value and useful metadata, things like metrics, logs, and traces become less relevant - it's all events now!

Apparently, this is how Observability is done in Meta, according to the author, and apparently people in Meta like it. I never worked for Meta, I don't know what they really use there and if it's better than the tools available to us mere mortals.

However, this is an interesting concept, and it would be wonderful to see similar projects that are not internal to the Big Tech companies.

#observability

Kondense is a Kubernetes tool that allows you resize contianers in a pod based on the memory pressure.

It’s installed as a sidecar and uses real-time memory pressure to determine the optimal memory for each containers in a pod.

You can read the justification behind this tool in this Reddit post

#kubernetes

RedHat reported a 10/10 vulnerability in the xz compression library.

The vulnerability provides remote backdoor access and present in xz 5.6.0 and 5.6.1.

There’s also an interesting discussion of this vulnerability on HackerNews:

 annoying - the apparent author of the backdoor was in communication with me over several weeks trying to get xz 5.6.x added to Fedora 40 & 41 because of its "great new features".

#security

For those who also had holidays.

Everything you need to know about the recent xz vulnerability in one place.

#security

A nice step-by-step guide of how to test a Python AWS Lambda function locally with LocalStack.

This guide doesn't cover fixtures in LocalStack, though. In my experience, adding fixtures into LocalStack is PITA, but I have a very specific scenario where I need to create a couple of thousands of S3 objects relatively fast.

#aws #serverless #python

I almost forgot to post it here.

Today I'm speaking at the GeekOpsUA Virtual Meetup (in Ukrainian) at 19:00 Kyiv time (18:00 CET).

There's no specific topic, it's going be just a fireside chat.

Here's the link you can join today

- GeekOpsUA on Telegram
- GeekOpsUA on LinkedIn
- GeekOpsUA on YouTube

See you there!

#event

Friday is a great day to listen to our CatOps voice chat (in Ukrainian)! Especially, since the topic of this episode is mental health and management.

We kinda slipped into discussing management at some point.

You can find the episode on:

- YouTube
- Substack
- Spotify
- Apple Podcasts
- RSS Feed

Enjoy!

#voice_chat

A new issue of the CatOps Newsletter is here:

https://newsletter.catops.dev/p/catops-digest-2024-04-07

#newsletter #digest

For today's Donations Monday we need to support a member of our community - Oleksa Baida, who's going to join the Armed Forces of Ukraine soon.

He managed to cover most of the equipment and medical expenses on his own, but there are still things left.

Monobank Jar:
https://send.monobank.ua/jar/7sYxdJPVuo

Top-up a card directly:
5375411215704862

Bank requisites:

Отримувач: Байда Олексій Сергійович
IBAN: UA383220010000026202344355441
ІПН/ЄДРПОУ: 3139812353
Призначення платежу: Поповнення рахунку банки

Also, if you want to meet Oleksa in person, there gonna be a gathering in Kyiv tomorrow at 19:00 (Kyiv time).

If you want to join, please, fill out this form, so he can book a place with enough space for everyone.
https://forms.gle/Q6P6bHLGJcCEpUps8

#donations #Ukraine

Sometimes, people claim that I am anti-certifications, which is not true. I haven't had an experience in my life when I had to get a certificate for a new job or a promotion. However, if certification works for you, it's great!

Besides, until the 16th of April, you can buy courses from CNCF with 30% discount.

#courses #cncf

Despite a clickbait title, this is actually a good article with a list of good practices for Kubernetes.

tl;dr list:
- Use ephemeral contianers for debug
- Use admission controllers
- Kustomize is a nice tool
- Autoscale based on custom metrics if it makes sense
- Tweak API Priority and Fairness (APF) if it makes sense
- Submariner for multicluster (I have used other tools for multi-cluster, there are many ways of connecting clusters, so it's up to you to decide, what to use)
- Use Topology Spread Constraints

#kubernetes

A programming books bundle on Humble Bundle by Manning Press.

There are a couple of books that could be interesting to you, even if programming is not your primary occupation.

#books #programming

or today's Donations Monday, I'd like to remind you about a big fundraiser by "Come Back Alive" to support the Ukrainian snipers there's still a long way to go, but the majority of the funds are already there.

#donations#Ukraine

I had a whole talk about testing of the Helm charts, but it's not the only (almost) YAML that you could test!

This blog post describes how one could test their Prometheus alerts. Which is more productive than waiting till something happens.

#observability#testing

I'm no Azure user - this thing came from the chat.

Azure has a collection of verified modules for Terraform and Bicep (their own IaC tool).

So, if you happened to work with Azure, check it out! Maybe, it could make your life a bit easier.

#iac #terraform #azure

If you work with Kubernetes, there won't be any new information for you. However, when you encounter a namespace stuck in the "Termination" state the first time, it might be dumbfounding.

This article describes what to do in such situations. Also, it's good to learn about finalizers at some point anyway.

#kubernetes