DevOps.com on why you need to back up your GitHub repositories

You’ve probably heard the joke that there are two types of people in IT: Those who do backups and those who will start. Though it’s still valid, this joke has become less relevant to businesses and professionals. The IT industry has been increasing expenditures on security for years, and backup is a critical area. However, despite the growing awareness of the need for backups and the wide availability of modern backup solutions, the problem still exists. The number of security breaches is growing, and the topic of data security looks like an endless arms race. So what can organizations do?

Find that out in this article: https://devops.com/why-do-you-need-github-backup/

https://redd.it/ujik66
@r_devops

DevOps.com on why you need to back up your GitHub repositories

You’ve probably heard the joke that there are two types of people in IT: Those who do backups and those who will start. Though it’s still valid, this joke has become less relevant to businesses and professionals. The IT industry has been increasing expenditures on security for years, and backup is a critical area. However, despite the growing awareness of the need for backups and the wide availability of modern backup solutions, the problem still exists. The number of security breaches is growing, and the topic of data security looks like an endless arms race. So what can organizations do?

Find that out in this article: https://devops.com/why-do-you-need-github-backup/

https://redd.it/ujik66
@r_devops

Current Windows / Azure Sysadmin interested in DevOps

### Background
I am a Sysadmin at a large MSP. I mostly deal with Windows and macOS. I am advanced level with PowerShell scripting, I have some limited experience with Python and Bash (just haven't had much need for either). I have a strong background with Azure / M365 (Enterprise admin certified) also VMWare and Hyper-V virtualization. I try to automate everything I can when I can in my job. I am getting a bit bored with it and I feel like DevOps or straight development might be a better fit for me.

If you were in my position, how would you start working towards a DevOps career?

https://redd.it/ujsa7v
@r_devops

Best and cheapest way to run lambda functions

Hello!I'm a JR Devops engineer tasked with reducing time and cost of some lambda functions we run on EC2 instances.

Currently we use hourly spot runs (to minimize cost), with most of the time being spent on installing requirements (python project, being cloned and set up from scratch every run).

How can I utilize a docker here?

I have read about Amazon ECS, serverless, and some other solutions, but i'm not sure which is the best case for our use.

Maybe utilize Docker? How do I go on about creating a docker image from this project and run it on an EC2 instance without having to set up the whole environment (especially requirements).

Edit:To be clear, I don't want hand to hand guiding, just a point out of best services to use.

Thanks!

https://redd.it/ujmbau
@r_devops

Engineers Who Redesigned and Successfully Rebuilt an Already Established, Painfully Disorganized and Manually Built Cloud Infrastructure - How did you do it?

Azure, GCP or AWS. I’ve rebuilt one in the past and prefer to not have to do it ever again. I’m curious how others accomplished this massive undertaking.

https://redd.it/uk3rpd
@r_devops

What's your preferred container Linux distribution?

There are plenty of alternatives but three big players (from my point of view):

* [CoreOS Fedora](https://getfedora.org/en/coreos?stream=stable)
* AWS [Bottlerocket](https://aws.amazon.com/de/bottlerocket/)
* [Flatcar](https://flatcar-linux.org/)

We run container workloads on AWS EKS, Rancher on VMware and may be other platforms in the future. I'm searching for a container Linux distribution which could fit all these use cases.

So my question is: What's your preferred distro for running these workloads. Are there any better candidates or do you run multiple different distros depending on the use case?

https://redd.it/uka05x
@r_devops

Sharing Junior DevOps interview questions I have been asked.

OS questions were for Linux.

1. You connect two PCs with an Ethernet cable, what shell commands you'll use so they can communicate?

2. Difference between TCP and UDP packets.

3. How to check open ports on current PC and some other PC?

4. How to check the amount of free RAM? How to make the results more human friendly? :)

5. How to check average load?

6. What do two exclamation marks mean in user entry in /etc/shadow?

7. How to execute something inside a Docker container?

8. What are the replication tiers of Azure Storage Accounts?

9. What are the main components of Ansible?

10. How to create a new branch in git?

11. The difference between git merge and git rebase.

12. What are mutable and immutable objects?

13. Difference between Python tuple and list.

14. How to design High Availability system on-prem or in the cloud?

15. How to see pods from other namespaces in Kubernetes?

16. How to see the amount of CPU cores?

17. What to put in the first line of a Bash script? (shebang)

18. Why do we use DNS?

19. Does Terraform support multiple clouds at once?

20. What is the CIDR notation?

21. ARM templates. Main components (parameters, variables, resources, output).

22. What is CI/CD and why do we use it?

23. What databases do you know? Relational vs non-SQL? Basic queries?

24. How would you parse JSON files?

25. How to check who's currently logged in?

If you have work experience, they'll just ask you what kind of problems you faced and how did you solve them + some of the questions above, so they know you didn't lie on your resume.

https://redd.it/ukfl9y
@r_devops

I need advice for my gitlab integration on a personal project

Hello there, I am seeking advice for my already overly complicated project.

For context, I use Gitlab CD/CI tools at my job and I absolutely love them, and I would have liked to use them as well for a personal project. I am a junior web developer and far from a devops expert, mostly an enthusiastic hobbyist and I mostly want to get to know a little bit more about devops doing so. I don't want my project to be deployed on the internet, I just want it deployed on my local network at home.

I would have liked to set pipelines so that when my master branch is modified, Gitlab would build and deploy it on a raspberry pi on my private network.

My first idea was to use docker on my raspberry pi that would run three containers exposing three ports on my local network : one for Gitlab, one for Sonarqube and one for my project. Doing so, everything could run at home, easily communicate with each other and I would have been perfectly happy. The main issue is that a raspberry pi, mine is a 3B+, is far from being a war machine and would most probably not be able to handle it (or would it ?)

This leads me to two alternatives : Considering that I will most probably only use my personal laptop for this project, I could have a local Gitlab on a docker on my working machine and keep everything local. The other way would be to use the regular gitlab.com and deploy to my raspberry from the internet, needing that I expose a port of my private network, which I am pretty sure is an overly risky solution for the newbie I am, is it really ?

I do know that this is completely overkill for my small project but out of curiosity for devops, I really wish I could set up all of this.

Thanks to anyone who made it this far and thanks in advance for your advice !

https://redd.it/uklncg
@r_devops

How do you manage your Helm packages for production?

I'm interested in how the community manages Helm for production, do you use Terraform and Helm provider? Do you use CI/CD with the Helm CLI as the deployment mechanism?

I've used both, generally prefer a pipelined cli driven approach, besides the obvious benefits of having Helm deployments stored in state files, I don't see a strong reason for deploying it in Terraform (same for native k8s).

https://redd.it/ukxt2v
@r_devops

Jira Integrations

My company like a lot of them out there use Jira. I have no ability to influence that in any way to get away from the entire Atlassian suite, so this isn't an option. We run in a federated environment which makes authentication .... tricky with some things. My end goal is to have a single application I can use to get status on JIRA things, interact with our JIRA tickets/issues/stories from that same tool, and then pop back over to keep coding without breaking my workflow.

I'm actively moving my workflows to use Dendron with vscode to keep track of my thoughts and meetings and asks and my own personal tips/tricks/discoveries. The vscode JIRA plugin doesn't quite fit the bill. I can leave comments, but I can't say resolve issues since we require a reason for resolution or closure and that breaks the plugin. I looked at maybe mirroring into Trello, and using a plugin to drive trello but that'll be prohibitively expensive.

Is my only option to roll my own? I've looked at kanban boards in vscode and i don't think it would be super terrible to convert to MD for those and then back to jira-ese. Anyone else built a single pane of glass like this before?

https://redd.it/uklag9
@r_devops

Wrote up a post on backup and disaster recovery planning

Hey folks,

I'm relatively new to writing, but I am really enjoying trying to document up some of the things I've learned from being in Dev Ops for 10-ish years. One of my favorite topics is backups/disaster recovery planning and testing. I think it's because I'm a fairly anxious person, and having a solid backup program has really helped me sleep at night.

Designing a Backup and Disaster Recovery Plan

If you have feedback, other perspectives, please hit me up. I'm still new to writing. I'm planning on going through each of the facets listed here: The Many Facets of Infrastructure.

https://redd.it/ul7ixk
@r_devops

How to value equity vs up front cash?

Hey all, I'm doing a negotiation for the next step of my career and I'm struggling to really grasp the value and reality of stock options and job titles and what direction to go in it.


One company is giving a massive raise (30-35%), title increase to management and very little stock. The other is giving a much smaller raise (10%) and monstrous pile of stock. Both numbers are life changing but I guess I don't understand why company A would give so little stock or why company B would give so much or even how to properly evaluate the differences.


They're both unicorns valued over $1B & etc.

​

Any help from veterans of the process would be appreciated.

https://redd.it/ulsyux
@r_devops

How I learned to stop worrying and love the YAML

Following on from my Deploying Kubernetes Cluster in absurd languages is my next blog post,

How I learned to stop worrying and love the YAML

https://redd.it/ulrlsq
@r_devops

Have there been any pipeline exploits that have been made public?

I've been putting a lot of time recently into getting a firm grasp on pipeline security. But I'm curious about how much of a threat this is.

If code is being pushed to a private Github (with in-team code review), then being built via Github actions / cloud provider pipeline, doesn't that make the whole thing pretty secure from bad actors.

Yes there could be dependancy issues, there could be an NPM that has bad code pushed to it / exploits found etc.

I'm not arguing against checking / securing these things, I'm trying to understand the actual risk involved.

So I'm curious whether there have been any exploits / hacks etc that have used the pipeline to get data / do bad things in prod environments?

Edit: just to add, the responses so far just show me that I know nothing at all!

https://redd.it/umc6o6
@r_devops

Leaving a high-tech company that you don't feel aligned with

Have you ever worked in a high-tech product company, but in a sector that is not "aligned" with your values or whatever you like?

Let's imagine that you're working on really cool stuff, but you're also increasingly feeling that technique isn't enough if you don't feel aligned with the product / industry you work for.

Thinking about changing company cause you (a bit of) a sense of failure because you feel like you're giving up on something very cool.

Has this ever happened to you? What would you do in such a situation?

https://redd.it/umf3v7
@r_devops

My DevOps Checklist

https://www.thecodedmessage.com/posts/process-checklist/ is what I personally look for in a new project I’m joining and what I strive for in my own projects. What do you think is important that I don’t mention? Anything you guys disagree with?

https://redd.it/umi62m
@r_devops

Tart – open source virtualization for Apple Silicon

Tart is a virtualization toolset to build, run and manage macOS virtual machines on Apple Silicon. Built by CI engineers for your automation needs.

One of the most interesting/unique features is the integration with OCI-compatible container registries. Tart can pull/push virtual machines from/to a registry. This feature was inspired by OCI Artifacts initiative.

https://redd.it/umlcnp
@r_devops

Portainer users can now provision Kubernetes environments on cloud providers directly from within Portainer. In the latest release, provisioning is supported on DigitalOcean, Linode and Civo.

With the launch of Portainer 2.13, you can now provision Kubernetes environments on cloud providers directly from within Portainer. In the latest release, provisioning is supported on DigitalOcean, Linode and Civo. Get the details here.

https://redd.it/umy43h
@r_devops

DevOps career stalled.

I have worked in Devops / System administration for 10 years. I make an above average salary at a midsized company. We do not use k8s or have a strong CI pipeline. The release processes is an over complicated mess the infastructure has largely been developer driven until last year when the CEO decided to build a "devops" team.

​

I am unsure what to do to make things better the company is very sucessful and growing but a release processes that seems like it should be very simple ( we have a monolith and some workers) has become increasingly complex eg. some of a terraform code is generated by python ( which is fine it just does not seem necessary)

​

Not sure what to ask to be honest . I am finally a little frustrated at not making any major improvements after a year and not seeing a path forward.

https://redd.it/unsp8r
@r_devops

Cheapest managed Kubernetes ?

Hi, I'm looking for a cheap managed Kubernetes cluster at any Cloud Provider. I want to host 2 websites with very low traffic, the Grafana/Prometheus/Loki stack to train monitoring, and maybe working later with telemetry and tracing tools. I'll also add a LoadBalancer with nginx-ingress. What are the options for a cheap cluster ? DigitalOcean starts at ~25$/month, can it be cheaper ?

https://redd.it/unlgco
@r_devops

Introduction to Test Driven Development course

I've just released another course: Introduction to Test Driven Development on Coursera in addition to my Introduction to DevOps and Introduction to Agile Development and Scrum courses. This course is an adaptation of part of the graduate class that I teach at NYU on DevOps and Agile Methodologies. The focus is on the practice of Test Driven Development (TDD). That is, writing tests first for the "code you wish you had" and then writing the code to make the tests pass. TDD keeps you focused on the behavior of the code and ensures that your code is always working properly.

Throughout this course, I'll teach the workflows and techniques that I use every day as a software engineer. You will learn how to write test assertions to check the behavior of your code. How to use test fixtures to establish an initial state so that tests run in isolation and you get repeatable results. I will teach you how to use factories and fakes to generate test data, and how to use mocking to make sure that your tests are isolated from external systems, and to simulate error conditions to test your exception handlers. Finally. I will take you through the red, green, refactor workflow with hands-on sessions.

We tied something different in this course. I recorded live demonstrations of me implementing the testing concepts that I just explained in the video lecture. So you get to watch me code "live" and then you get to try your hand at it in the hands-on labs. The idea is to present a concept, demonstrate the concept, and then have you perform the concept in the lab to reinforce your learning.

I'm looking for feedback on how well you think this works and if I should continue with this approach in future courses. Here is a link to the course introduction video of me giving a course overview: https://www.coursera.org/lecture/test-and-behavior-driven-development-tdd-bdd/course-introduction-0yZqX

https://redd.it/uo3ser
@r_devops