Category Archives: Immutable

DRP v3.11 PROVISIONS WITHOUT REBOOTING

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Some features are worth SHOUTING about, so it’s with great pride that I get to announce DRP v3.11.

The latest Digital Rebar release (v3.11) does the impossible: PROVISION WITHOUT REBOOTING.  Combined with image-based deploy and our unique multi-boot workflows, this capability makes server operations 10x faster than traditional net install processes.

But it’s not enough to have a tiny golang utility that can drive any hardware and install any operating system (we added MacOS netboot to this release).   RackN has been adding enterprise integrations to core platforms like Ansible Tower, Terraform, Active Directory, Remedy, Run Book and Logstash.

Oh!  And checkout our open zero-touch, HA Kubernetes installer (KRIB) based on kubeadm.  We just added advanced Helm features for automatic Istio and Rook Ceph examples.

To see more: https://github.com/digitalrebar/provision/releases/tag/v3.11.0

Infrastructure Provisioning for Ansible with Digital Rebar Provision

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Digital Rebar Provision (DRP) is the perfect technology partner for Ansible customers looking to automate their infrastructure setup before applying their orchestration tool of choice. DRP automatically generates a complete inventory of provisioned infrastructure which is a must have for Ansible to complete its orchestration. In addition, DRP is able to deploy Kubernetes clusters using Ansible and Kubespray as part of its standard Workflow automated process.

Together, DRP and Ansible enhance the automation, repeatability, and transparency for DevOps teams.

Learn more about DRP and Ansible in the demonstration video and podcasts below.

Demonstration Video of Kubespray with Digital Rebar Provision:

Learn more about Digital Rebar Provision and Ansible in this podcast:

Learn more about Digital Rebar Provision, Ansible and Kubernetes installation with Kubespray in this podcast:

Week in Review – Immutable Infrastructure and Podcast with CNCF Ambassador

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Welcome to the RackN and Digital Rebar Weekly Review. You will find the latest news related to Edge, DevOps, SRE and other relevant topics.

Immutable Infrastructure

Immutable infrastructure offers IT a new deployment methodology of create / destroy / repeat from a fixed image for deploying services vs the more common method of deploying once and then patching regularly to keep a service in operations. Continually tearing down and launching fixed images solves challenges such as hacking, version control, and unknown service status.

RackN automation and provisioning management simplify the immutable infrastructure methodology allowing IT team to focus on issues other than version control and hacked services.

Learn More 

L8istSh9y Podcast

Chris Short, Senior DevOps Advocate, SJ Technologies and CNCF Ambassador provides his thoughts on Site Reliability Engineering, DevSecOps, Kubernetes and other hot topics in the industry.

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Catch up with the RackN and Digital Rebar Team at OpenStack Summit

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We are heading out to Vancouver next week for the OpenStack Summit from May 21 – 24. Rob Hirschfeld, our Co-Founder/CEO will be available to meet onsite as well as help drive the OpenStack community forward. If you are interested in meeting, please contact me.

Rob has 2 sessions scheduled and we encourage you to attend.

Sessions

Security Considerations for Cloud Edge Computing
Date & Time: May 23 from 11:50 – 12:30pm

Location: Vancouver Convention Centre West – Level 2 – Room 205-207

Panel: (Moderator) Beth Cohen, Verizon : Rob Hirschfeld, RackN : Glen McGowan, Dell EMC : Shuquan Huang, 99cloud

Cloud Edge computing use cases range from IoT to VR/AR and any widely distributed application in between.  However, taking OpenStack out of the data center requires an entirely new approach to security when there is far less ability to restrict access and often the applications require a shared tenant model.

Avoiding Infrastructure at Rest – The Power of Immutable Infrastructure

Date & Time: May 23 from 3:30 – 4:10pm
Location: Vancouver Convention Center West – Level Three – Room 301

Keeping up with patches has never been more critical.  For hardware, that’s… hard.  What if servers were deployed 100% ready to run without any need for remote configuration or access?  What if we were able to roll a complete rebuild of an entire application stack from the BIOS up in minutes.  Those are key concepts behind a cloud deployment pattern called “immutable infrastructure”  because the servers are deployed from images produced by CI/CD process and destroyed after use instead of being reconfigured.

We’ll cover the specific process and it’s advantages.  Then we’ll dive deeply into open tools and processes that make it possible to drive immutable images into your own infrastructure.  The talk will include live demos and go discuss process and field challenges that attendees will likely face when they start implementation at home.  We’ll also cover the significant security, time and cost benefits of this approach to make pitching the idea effective.

Meet with RackN Next Week at GlueCon

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Look for the RackN team next week in Colorado at GlueCon 2018. As a Bronze sponsor, we have a small booth for attendees to meet with our team and talk DevOps, Bare Metal, Immutability, Edge Computing and other topics. In addition, be sure to attend Rob Hirschfeld’s session on Wednesday.

If you are interested in meeting with us during the event please contact me to setup a meeting time.

Session

Making Bare Metal Go Cloud Native: The Power of Immutable Deploys
Speaker: Rob Hirschfeld, Co-Founder/CEO RackN
Wednesday May 16 from 2:50 – 3:30pm
Breakout 2 Track: DevOps

The benefits of automated cloud deployments for speed, reliability and security are undeniable.  The cornerstone of this approach, immutable deployment, promotes the idea of continuously rolling safe, stable images instead of trying to keep up with managing a fixed pool of machines,  If this pattern is so great, shouldn’t we bring it into the physical layer too?

In this talk, we’ll explore the immutable infrastructure pattern and how to use continuous deployment and continuous integration (CI/CD) process to build and manage server images for any platform.  Then we’ll show how automate deploying these images quickly and reliability with open DevOps tools like Terraform and Digital Rebar.  Not only is this approach fast, it’s also more secure and robust for operators.

If you are running physical infrastructure, this talk will change how you think about your job in profound ways.

Podcast – Baruch Sadogursky on Pipeline, Immutability, and Edge

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Joining us this week is Baruch Sadogursky, Head of Developer Relations at JFrog. Baruch is an industry veteran in management of complex software and is a fantastic event speaker; I highly recommend attending his sessions at a future event. Short promotion for JFrog Swamp Up (May 16 – 18, 2018)

Highlights

  • Short overview of JFrog and its relationship to CI/CD pipelines
  • Discussion of immutability (shifting left) in deployment paradigms
  • Metadata and the impact of scale (Toyota Manufacturing Model)
  • How can I update software components with confidence?
  • Distributed programming and impact of edge computing

Topic                                                                                        Time (Minutes.Seconds)

Introduction                                                                            0.0 – 2.17
JFrog Artifactory                                                                    2.17 – 3.26
Pipeline (Starting)                                                                  3.26 – 7.53
Immutability (Shifting Left)                                                  7.53 – 11.51
Metadata (Surrounds the Artifact)                                     11.51 – 16.45
Impact of Scale (Excessive File Names)                           16.45 – 23.30 (Toyota Model)
Updating Software Components                                       23.30 – 28.32 (Pain is Instructional)
Edge Computing (IoT is Next Frontier)                              28.32 – 38.01
Wrap Up                                                                                 38.01 – END

Podcast Guest: Baruch Sadogursky

Baruch Sadogursky (a.k.a JBaruch) is the Developer Advocate at JFrog. His passion is speaking about technology. Well, speaking in general, but doing it about technology makes him look smart, and 17 years of hi-tech experience sure helps. When he’s not on stage (or on a plane to get there), he learns about technology, people and how they work, or more precisely, don’t work together.

He is a CNCF ambassador, Developer Champion, and a professional conference speaker on DevOps, Java and Groovy topics, and is a regular at the industry’s most prestigious events including JavaOne (where he was awarded a Rock Star award), DockerCon, Devoxx, DevOps Days, OSCON, Qcon and many others. His full speaker history is available on Lanyrd: http://lanyrd.com/profile/jbaruch/sessions/

You can follow him @jbaruch on Twitter.

Immutable Image Deployment from Digital Rebar Mastered Golden Image

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Shane Gibson, Sr. Architect and Community Evangelist, RackN created a new Digital Rebar Provision (DRP) video highlighting immutable provisioning from a “golden image” as well as the ability to create that “golden image” from within Digital Rebar Provision.

Highlights:

  • Immutable Image Deployment Solution to 20 Target Bare Metal Machines
  • Creation of a “Golden Image” in Digital Rebar Provision
  • Detailed Overview of the RackN Portal UX to Support this Demo

More information on the Digital Rebar community and Digital Rebar Provision:

Podcast: Justin Garrison on Cloud Native Infrastructure, Immutability, Observability and Much More

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In this week’s podcast, we speak with Justin Garrison, co-author of Cloud Native Infrastructure (CNI).

  • Behind scenes for O’Reilly book and choice of cover animal
  • Infrastructure and CNI approach
  • State and Immutability / Immutable VM
  • Terraform and Kubernetes
  • Observability
  • The Why of Immutability
  • Infrastructure as Software (Netflix)
  • Site Reliability Engineering and DevOps

Topic                                                               Time (Minutes.Seconds)

Introduction                                                     0.0 – 2.11
TechNative Podcast on writing book          2.11 – 2.45
Cover of Cloud Native book                         2.45 – 4.52 (Andean Condor)
Why is infrastructure a dead carcass?        4.52 – 5.38 (Shift and lift is not enough)
Describe your approach to infrastructure  5.38 – 8.40
Maintain state with immutability                  8.40 – 13.14 (Containers don’t mean cloud native)
Immutable VM                                                13.14 – 18.55
Terraform                                                         18.55 – 21.55
Kubernetes                                                      21.55 – 27.52 (Helm example)
Observability                                                   27.52 – 35.32 (Prometheus)
Immutability and Why                                   35.32 – 38.08 (Repository dependencies)
Infrastructure as Software                            38.08 – 40.33 (Chaos engineering)
Google SRE Book                                           40.33 – 44.11 (Build empathy vs everyone as dev)
Wrap Up                                                          44.11– END

 

Podcast Guest

Justin Garrison, co-author of Cloud Native Infrastructure (CNI)

Justin loves open source almost as much as he loves community. He is not a fan of buzz words but searches for the patterns and benefits behind technology trends. He frequently shares his findings and tries to disseminate knowledge through practical lessons and unique examples. He is an active member in many communities and constantly questions the status quo. He is relentless in trying to learn new things and giving back to the communities who have taught him so much.

 

Week in Review: RackN talks Immutability and DevOps at SRECon Americas

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Welcome to the RackN and Digital Rebar Weekly Review. You will find the latest news related to Edge, DevOps, SRE and other relevant topics.

Immutable Deployments talk at SRECon Americas

Rob Hirschfeld presented at SRECon Americas this week, “Don’t Ever Change! Are Immutable Deployments Really Simpler, Faster and Safer?”

Configuration is fragile because we’re talking about mutating a system. Infrastructure as code, means building everything in place. Every one of our systems have to be configured and managed and that creates a dependency graph. We can lock things down, but we inevitably have to patch our systems.

Immutable infrastructure is another way of saying “pre-configured systems”. Traditional deployment models do configuration after deployment, but it’s better if we can do it beforehand. Immutability is a DevOps pattern. Shift configuration to the left of our pipeline; move it from the production to build stage.

Finish Reading Review from Tanya Reilly (@whereistanya)

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Week In Review: Immutability in your Data Center with RackN

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Welcome to our new format for the RackN and Digital Rebar Weekly Review. It contains the same great information you are accustomed to; however, I have reorganized it to place a new section at the start with my thoughts on various topics. You can still find the latest news items related to Edge, DevOps and other relevant topics below.

Cloud Immutability on Metal in the Data Center

Cloud has enabled a create-destroy infrastructure process that is now seen as common, e.g.  launching and destroying virtual machines and containers. This process is referred to as immutable infrastructure and until now, has not been available to operators within a data center. RackN technology is now actively supporting customers in enabling immutability within a data center on physical infrastructure.

Read More

Physical Infrastructure Automation

Automation is not simply taking manual tasks and replacing them with a machine. Rather, it is a methodology to assemble hardware and software infrastructure in a reliable, repeatable way saving time and effort. Automation also provides IT teams with the capability to rapidly meet new business challenges, learn new technologies, and reduce fire drills rather than spending significant cycles manually pushing buttons.

Read More

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