Pod Disruption Budgets (PDB) in Kubernetes

PDB - What they are, why they’re important, and how to use them effectively.

https://medium.com/geekculture/kubernetes-pod-disruption-budgets-pdb-b74f3dade6c1

https://redd.it/13ko55u
@r_devops

Automating the pain away: Solving common issues to improve team workflow

https://www.offerzen.com/blog/automating-to-improve-team-workflow


Thought this was interesting as they dig into some tools they use to better automate local dev workflows.

I hadn't heard of Plop or zx before. Has anyone used them/alternatives?

https://redd.it/13ktqqy
@r_devops

Welcome to our Enterprise Developer Survey!

We have a new, short survey in order to understand the technologies and tools that Enterprise Developers use. Are you a software developer, a database administrator, a data scientist, an engineer, an architect or involved in DevOps and SRE? Help us and make an impact on the developer ecosystem. Start here

https://redd.it/13ku7dx
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Programming without a stack trace: When abstractions become illusions

This [insightful article](https://architectelevator.com/architecture/stacktrace-abstraction/) by [Gregor Hohpe](https://linkedin.com/in/ghohpe) covers:

* Evolution of programming abstractions.
* Challenges of cloud abstractions.
* Importance of tools like stack traces for debugging, especially in distributed systems.

Gregor emphasizes that effective cloud abstractions are crucial but tricky to get right. He points out that debugging at the abstraction level can be complex and underscores the value of good error messages and observability.

The part about the "unhappy path" particularly resonated with me:

>The unhappy path is where many abstractions struggle. Software that makes building small systems easy but struggles with real-world development scenarios like debugging or automated testing is an unwelcome version of “demoware” - it demos well, but doesn’t actually work in the real world. And there’s no unlock code. ... I propose the following test for vendors demoing higher-level development systems:
>
>1. Ask them to enter a typo into one of the fields where the developer is expected to enter some logic.
>
>2. Ask them to leave the room for two minutes while we change a few random elements of their demo configuration. Upon return, they would have to debug and figure out what was changed.
>
>Needless to say, no vendor ever picked the challenge.

# Why it interests me

I'm one of the creators of [Winglang](https://github.com/winglang/wing), an open-source programming language for the cloud that allows developers to work at a higher level of abstraction.

We set a goal for ourselves to provide good debugging experience that will allow developers to debug cloud applications in the context of the logical structure of the apps.

After reading this article I think we can rephrase the goal as being able to easily pass Gregor's vendor test from above :)

https://redd.it/13kz8y5
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DataDog: Where does it hurt.

As we all know, DataDog is expensive:
"The DataDog pricing model is actually pretty easy. For 500 hosts or less, you just sign over your company and all its assets to them. If >500 hosts, you need to additionally raise VC money." - wingerd33
But there are a number of different dimensions to their model and I'd like to better understand whether everyone is getting hit on the same axis.
For instance, APM charges on Indexed spans, $2.55/M, but you get 1M spans included per APM host. Are the big bills primarily due to the ingestion costs at scale? Or because of scale out in the number of hosts. Is there one particular gotcha or is it evenly spread? If I limit how many APM spans / log lines I let out of my system is that going to be an effective way to reduce my spend?

I made a \~poll with some of the main things I've heard, but the answer can be "it's complicated" and maybe better as a comment. https://forcerank.it/invite/6b853c3bd8472ace

https://redd.it/13ky2iq
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Do you actually need to "Know" Linux to work in DevOPS?

I've gotten plenty of DevOps interviews, I even work myself as a DevOps Engineer right now - and I would say I only use Linux about 10% of the time - when I'm writing Pipelines for Github Actions. But that's literally just writing some CLI commands, nothing more. It's incredibly easy, and if i didn't know anything about Linux, I could learn what I need to do for my job within 2-3 days.

Yet on the internet everybody and their grandmothers are saying that you need to know a ton of Linux to be able to make it in DevOps, you need to read the Linux Programming Interface book, you need to know every thing inside out.

So question 1:
Are people just lying, or are does it depend from job to job, or...? My experience is just that you can get by with knowing very little.

Question 2:

I've done a bunch of random tasks using Linux (for Kodekloud, just to get more adept).

Just to list 6-7 random ones:

1) Installed & configured PostgresQL databases, users and their permissions

2) Created Linux users with non-interactive shells, and linux users with expiration dates

3) Managed incoming & outgoing connections for Apache & Nginx using IPTables

4) Used sed & awk to manipulate strings through bash scripts.

5) Limited access to webservers through securing URLs with PAM Authentication - requiring OS users to authenticate their SSL connection before connecting

6) Implemented passwordless SSH authentication for scripts

7) Configured Apache servers, controlling ports, changing headers, hiding version numbers, and redirecting URLs

Just a bunch of random tasks like this - quite a few more than this. I google my way through like any good engineer. If you ask me anything about the Kernel or whatever, or how Linux actually works, what are the differences between the Distros, I woudn't have a clue. What is /etc vs /home vs all those other random folders? No idea.

So do I "know" Linux? How much do I need to know to be able to say I "know" Linux? And why do all these subreddits say you need to "Know" Linux when the only time I ever use Linux in my job is when I'm writing very basic CLI commands for e.g a pipeline in Github Actions - which is less than 10% of my job?

https://redd.it/13l1cxm
@r_devops

How does your team manage OS dependency upgrades?



View Poll

https://redd.it/13l2q7a
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Trigger Jenkins pipelines via Ansible

Continuing on the same topic from: https://www.reddit.com/r/devops/comments/13k9wy7/infrastructure\_as\_code\_trying\_to\_setup\_an/

​

Is there a possibility on Trigger Jenkins pipelines via Ansible for deploying ISTIO & NGINX? I know it works well on other way around where running Ansible scripts via Jenkins.

​

Let me know your thoughts people's

https://redd.it/13l0nyh
@r_devops

Best tips for reducing cloud costs?

Overtime I've learned many tricks from other engineers on where and how to reduce costs by using niche parts of cloud vendors. I'm mainly focused on AWS, but some of the tips are cloud agnostic. Some of them might be basid but are nontheless important. I'd love for you to share yours so we could all learn from each other. Here are mine:

General:
- Cache external dependencies locally to reduce network transfer costs. For example - pull-through docker image registries.
- Always prefer spot instances where stateless and possible as opposed to on-demand.
- Use automated scaling solutions to power off dev workloads during weekends if possible.
- Filter your logs, metrics and traces before they reach your monitoring solution. In almost all solutions, SaaS or not, you're being charged for their storage or ingestion.

AWS:
- Use Reserved Instances and Savings Plans. Consider using "smart" automated RI SaaS solutions which are based on your existing workloads.
- Prefer higher generation EC2 instances, they will always be cheaper. It is also true for other products such as storage solutions like gp2 as opposed to gp3.
- Use S3 object classes to majorly reduce costs on less frequently accessed buckets.
- When using multiple private subnets that access the internet, make sure they each have a NAT gateway. It will cost more to send the traffic only through one of them.
- Move away from Classic load balancers as they are deprecated and cost more, use Network or Application load balancers instead.
- Move away from VPC peering to Transit gateways (or Network Manager). Peering is costlier when there are many VPCs.

Kubernetes:
- Consolidate your pods on less nodes. Leave only as little headroom as you intend for in your nodes.
- Don't over commit resources. Pod requests must be optimized over time in order to not over provision.
- If possible, prefer using only a single region to avoid network transfer costs between nodes. Preferably when it's not production.

https://redd.it/13l6rde
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GitHub Actions vs Cloud Build

We had to make some CI pipeline and we thought Cloud Build would be easy since we’re on GCP. However, to me it is a pain in the ass. Especially installing dependencies seems impossible. I gave GitHub Actions a try, and setting up the same pipeline there was ten times faster. Is it just me, or is Cloud Build just shitty for some use cases?

https://redd.it/13l8dr6
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SQL or no sql for user analytics

We are going to measure user behavior in our app. Like which users view which profiles, who updates their profile most frequently etc. Should we use our existing Postgres z’n for this? Or should a no sql en be better for this? We know some actions beforehand but will add other actions and data types as necessary. So our first thought would be to use a separate mongodb instance for this.

Thanks in advance

https://redd.it/13l5gc5
@r_devops

I'm new to a DevOps role (it is also my first tech job). How do I get better at my job and set myself up for growth?

I work as an infrastructure developer which deals with a lot of CI/CD stuff and containerization. Essentially Jenkins and OpenShift have a lot to do with my position. I like the idea of cloud stuff but my company doesn't do much cloud computing at all, so I don't know if I should spend my time on learning much more of that since I love this company and would like to stay here.

I am assuming just learning the tools of my position would get me 80% of the way. What else should I be doing to learn as much as possible and to develop skills that will make my manager think I am valuable, and will set me up to move to a higher position within the next 2 years?

https://redd.it/13kz3nt
@r_devops

When did DevOps start "clicking" for you?

Was it months? Years? Was it never?

Or maybe it was 0 time...you...genius?

https://redd.it/13kzr6g
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What kind of Monitoring or Observability questions should I be asking?

Hello,


I am looking for some guidance on a new task I was given. My task involves integrating observability into our new applications, specifically in the context of Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and our primary use of Google Cloud Managed Service for Prometheus. I am a bit lost on what kind of questions I should be asking, which areas should I focus on, considering our usage of GKE and Google Cloud Managed Service for Prometheus? Any best practices, lessons learned, or recommended resources you can offer would be super helpful.

https://redd.it/13lf5in
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How I Used Terraform Effectively | Terraform

Increase Your Deployment Efficiency and Scale with Terraform’s Best Practices

https://medium.com/illumination/how-i-usedterraform-effectively-a-guide-to-best-practices-2c5aa6495214

https://redd.it/13li9rh
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Which role to accept?

2 YOE DevOps engineer

Got offered DevOps role in swe team. Dealing with on prem self managed gitlab cicd and kubernetes.

Also offered SRE role in gaming industry dealing with cloud and terraform and pager duty. SRE role has roughly around 4k more in terms of total annual compensation.

Which offer should I take?

https://redd.it/13ll1wf
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MKPM Makefile Package Manager

https://github.com/clayrisser/mkpm

https://redd.it/13lo5hc
@r_devops

Read the DevOps handbook and Phoenix project. But I don't have a way to change the Org practices because of low rank. What should I do?

The idea seems good but how to apply it?

https://redd.it/13lor87
@r_devops

Detailed article on increasing volume size of virtual machine.

No GUI involved!.

https://medium.com/@4yub1k/safely-extend-volume-size-of-vmware-ubuntu-server-linux-3f81a04cf3ad

https://redd.it/13lra5j
@r_devops

Awesome Cloud Cost Repository

Based on my previous post and your great tips I decided to open a repository for awesome cloud cost. It can be a place where we share the latest and most curated tips and tricks, and better ourselves as engineers and help us through our careers.

https://github.com/jatalocks/awesome-cloud-cost

https://redd.it/13lsltj
@r_devops

Branch and merge, improvements since TFS?

I didn't have a very good experience branch and merge in TFS some years ago, and since then most of my clients moved to Git and it's worked pretty well and it's what I'm used to.

I've had to use DevOps on my current project, and it's time to branch and I'm seriously worried.

Should I be?

https://redd.it/13ltsky
@r_devops