UPDATE: Beginning in June, 2020, GKE will charge for the control plane. This means the design below will jump from $5/month to nearly $80/month. I was recently inspired by a post claiming it was possible to run kubernetes on Google for $5 per month. One reason I have been shy to jump all in with… Continue reading
Posts by Daniel Watrous
Let’s Encrypt quicker start
In spite of the popularity of Let’s Encrypt for generating free SSL/TLS certificates, I think their getting started page stinks. In case you feel the same way, I’ll try to give you a real quick start that will get you to your first certificate. Certificate Authority Let me point out that anyone with Linux (or… Continue reading
Software Development and batch size
I’ve been having a lot of conversations lately about batch size and how the choice of batch size impacts software development and release processes. Today I went looking for some other perspectives and I found this post about optimization on the IBM website. The author provides a good summary of the benefits available by decreasing… Continue reading
Generate TLS Secret for kubernetes
Often in development or when working on proofs of concept (PoC), I need working SSL to protect an endpoint. If I controlled the domain, I would use Lets Encrypt to generate a certificate. When I don’t control the domain, I often use self signed certificates. Below is how I create them and then use them… Continue reading
Kubernetes bootcamp
Introduction Kubernetes (also written k8s) is a powerful container orchestration platform that works with Docker. This first video provides a high level explanation of how kubernetes differs from traditional application deployment and infrastructure management. Overview A kubernetes cluster is made up of masters and nodes. The masters are responsible for orchestration and the nodes host… Continue reading
kubernetes overview
Kubernetes is getting a lot of attention recently, and there is good reason for that. Docker containers alone are little more than a developer convenience. Orchestration moves containers from laptop into the datacenter. Kubernetes does that in a way that simplifies development and operations. Unfortunately I struggled to find easy to understand high level descriptions… Continue reading
IT General Controls: Infrastructure vs Routing
IT general controls are important for various reasons, such as business continuity and regulatory compliance. Traditionally, controls have focused on the infrastructure itself. In the context of long running servers in fixed locations, this was often an effective approach. As virtualization and container technologies become more prevalent, especially in public cloud, infrastructure focused IT controls… Continue reading
Focus on Activities and Outcomes, not Procedures and Tools
An unfortunate digression in many technology selection efforts amounts to philosophical debates around tools and procedures. These debates revolve around tool selection, access controls, SLAs, ownership, responsibility, etc. What’s so bad about this? These debates too often fail to identify and measure against the outcomes that will benefit the business and the activities that will… Continue reading
Developer Productivity and Vertical vs Horizontal Deployments
I’ve recently had many conversations related to developer productivity. In order for a developer to be productive, he must have control over enough of the application lifecycle to complete his work. When a developer gets stuck at any point in the application lifecycle, his productivity drops, which can often reduce morale too. One question I’ve… Continue reading
Infrastructure as Code
One of the most significant enablers of IT and software automation has been the shift away from fixed infrastructure to flexible infrastructure. Virtualization, process isolation, resource sharing and other forms of flexible infrastructure have been in use for many decades in IT systems. It can be seen in early Unix systems, Java application servers and… Continue reading