Local Kubernetes Lab: Quick and Easy
August 1, 2022 | By Matthew Schuchard
Introduction At the end of 2017 Kubernetes had won the container orchestration wars. Rival container orchestration platforms had transitioned to instead providing managed service offerings of Kubernetes. There were and are multiple powerful and enterprise offerings for this functionality. However,…
Read More →How do you evaluate emerging technology?
July 8, 2022 | By Nick Marcarelli
I asked an IT leader how they evaluate emerging technology for use within their organization. The response was interesting. The internet – Google, Reddit, LinkedIn Direct with an independent software vendor Referrals from colleagues or friends Gartner Trial and error…
Read More →Packer Image Pipelines
July 5, 2022 | By Matthew Schuchard
Introduction Packer is the industry standard tool for managing machine image artifacts. It is also essentially the “only game in town”. It supports a variety of platforms and provisioners for sophisticated management of various sources and builds using HCL2, and…
Read More →Terraform Dynamic Ansible Inventory Management
June 17, 2022 | By Matthew Schuchard
The typical workflow design pattern for server provisioning is to create instance image artifacts, and then provision infrastructure, and then provision software and configuration unique to the instance. There may also be a desire to independently update and modify the…
Read More →Alternative CI Pipeline Tools Comparison
June 7, 2022 | By Matthew Schuchard
Introduction I can still recall with clarity from over a decade ago when one of my job responsibilities was ensuring the source control management, building, packaging, quality assurance, delivery, and release of an enormous monolithic software tool suite comprised of…
Read More →Ansible and Puppet Orchestration: A Comparison
May 27, 2022 | By Matthew Schuchard
Introduction In August of 2005, Luke Kanies created Puppet because he was tired of remembering how the different package management systems worked, and wanted to unify them into a single interface. In February of 2012, Michael DeHaan created Ansible as…
Read More →Kubernetes Scheduler Algorithm Combinatorial Modeling
May 24, 2022 | By Matthew Schuchard
Introduction Most people familiar with the Kubernetes scheduler algorithm are aware of the basic mathematical concepts around its logic. Anyone who has also pursued an interest in learning about it at a low level is aware of its relation to…
Read More →DIY Vault Backup
May 19, 2022 | By Matthew Schuchard
Introduction Hashicorp’s Vault is the industry standard for secrets management. In version 1.4 of Vault, the integrated storage backend supplied by Raft was promoted from beta to general availability. This Raft integrated storage backend has replaced Consul as the default…
Read More →QA Migration to Kubernetes in 1.5 Weeks: Then and Now
April 18, 2022 | By Matthew Schuchard
Introduction Recently I was asked once again to build out Kubernetes cluster infrastructure, and deploy and configure supporting software, and then migrate a client’s QA environment and applications to the cluster. This was all to be completed in a week…
Read More →Terraform Config for Multi-Cloud: Solution
March 10, 2022 | By Matthew Schuchard
Introduction Terraform is the industry standard tool for infrastructure provisioning. It provides a unified language for interacting with any supported API. This enables developers to interact with a variety of platforms via knowledge of Terraform, and some measure of knowledge…
Read More →Terraform Config for Multi-Cloud: Problem
March 8, 2022 | By Matthew Schuchard
Introduction Terraform is the industry standard tool for infrastructure provisioning. It provides a unified language for interacting with any supported API. This enables developers to interact with a variety of platforms via knowledge of Terraform, and some measure of knowledge…
Read More →Get started with Kubernetes for the price of a Ford Bronco
February 17, 2022 | By Nick Marcarelli
IT has arrived as an essential expenditure to producing revenue for an organization. Almost everything is a software expenditure. We buy hardware to run applications that run our businesses. We invest in the cloud as an alternative to run applications…
Read More →Custom Vault Integrations: C++ (Bonus)
February 10, 2022 | By Matthew Schuchard
Introduction Hashicorp’s Vault has become the industry standard tool for secrets management. It comes packaged with multiple solutions for engines supporting various authentication methods, secrets integrations, and storage. However, not every application has a first-party, third-party, or community secrets engine…
Read More →Custom Vault Integrations: Javascript
January 31, 2022 | By Matthew Schuchard
Introduction Hashicorp’s Vault has become the industry standard tool for secrets management. It comes packaged with multiple solutions for engines supporting various authentication methods, secrets integrations, and storage. However, not every application has a first-party, third-party, or community secrets engine…
Read More →Custom Vault Integrations: Python
January 28, 2022 | By Matthew Schuchard
Introduction Hashicorp’s Vault has become the industry standard tool for secrets management. It comes packaged with multiple solutions for engines supporting various authentication methods, secrets integrations, and storage. However, not every application has a first-party, third-party, or community secrets engine…
Read More →Custom Vault Integrations: Ruby
January 18, 2022 | By Matthew Schuchard
Introduction Hashicorp’s Vault has become the industry standard tool for secrets management. It comes packaged with multiple solutions for engines supporting various authentication methods, secrets integrations, and storage. However, not every application has a first-party, third-party, or community secrets engine…
Read More →Custom Vault Integrations: Go
January 13, 2022 | By Matthew Schuchard
Introduction Hashicorp’s Vault has become the industry standard tool for secrets management. It comes packaged with multiple solutions for engines supporting various authentication methods, secrets integrations, and storage. However, not every application has a first-party, third-party, or community secrets engine…
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