This Week I Learned - Week #34 2020

This Week I Learned -  

* If you want to have full control of the management and scheduling of your clusters of VMs rather than using the services provided through Azure Batch, consider using HPC Pack which offers a series of installers for Windows that allows you to configure your own control and management plane, and highly flexible deployments of on-premises and cloud nodes. By contrast with the exclusively cloud-based Batch, HPC Pack has the flexibility to deploy to on-premises and the cloud. It uses a hybrid of both to expand to the cloud when your on-premises reserves are insufficient.

Kubernetes has also become the universal control plane for orchestrating, not just containers but also a variety of resources, including virtual machines, databases, and even SAP Hana instances.

AKS is "cheaper than running your own kubernetes distribution in Azure! If you know that the kubernetes code base has changed for about 97% in the last three years, you can imagine the amount of work that falls in your lap if you would want to maintain the same service level yourself"

Image2Docker performs inspection of artifacts in a Windows Server 2003, 2008, 2012 or 2016 VM image - in WIM, VHD or VHDX format. Emits a Dockerfile you can use to build a Docker image from the VM. Image2Docker takes an OS instance, scans it and creates a Docker composition file. That composition file can then be modified and a Docker image built which can then be used within a container. It has a version for Windows and a version for Linux and uses a series of detectives to run against the vhd/vhdx/wim (or anything that can be mounted). It then uses provisioners to create a dockerfile that includes all the files and components that are required (such as the iis files, asp.net, the app or if Linux apache etc) in addition to picking the right base OS image. Once you have the image it can be used on-premises, in Azure or anywhere else.

CloudHedge’s Transform is an automated tool enabling enterprises to modernize applications or its processes into containers. When compared to containerization, Lift-and-Shift migration falls short in terms of features, performance, portability of code and data, agility, and security governance. Gartner predicts that by 2022, more than 75% of global organizations will be running containerized applications in production.

* A single VPC in GCP can span multiple regions without communicating across the public internet. For on-premises, you can share a connection between VPC and on-premises resources with all regions in a single VPC.

Azure & OCI have an arrangement for direct connectivity between ExpressRoute and FastConnect

When AKS retires an older Kubernetes version, you are notified to upgrade your clusters to a higher version to stay within supported versions and SLO.  When you upgrade a supported AKS cluster, Kubernetes minor versions cannot be skipped. For example, upgrades between 1.12.x -> 1.13.x or 1.13.x -> 1.14.x are allowed, however 1.12.x -> 1.14.x is not.  During the upgrade process, AKS adds a new node to the cluster that runs the specified Kubernetes version, then carefully cordon and drains one of the old nodes to minimize disruption to running applications. When the new node is confirmed as running application pods, the old node is deleted. This process repeats until all nodes in the cluster have been upgraded. To upgrade, from 1.12.x -> 1.14.x, first upgrade from 1.12.x -> 1.13.x, then upgrade from 1.13.x -> 1.14.x.

Some things to note when you're migrating from GKE to AKS

Windows Server node support became available from Kubernetes v1.14.  Prior to this support, Kubernetes worker nodes, the virtual or physical servers that host containerized workloads, only supported Linux and thus only ran Linux containers. 

* SUSE acquisition of  Rancher Labs puts it in a better position to compete with the two other major enterprise Linux vendors – Red Hat and Ubuntu – as well as with VMware and the public clouds, which all have ready-to-run Kubernetes options.

* K3s is Rancher Lab's edge-focused, minimized version (40MB) of Kubernetes, which is designed for use in resource constrained edge servers and in remote devices. Edge resources are often limited, making Kubernetes' average 4GB minimum RAM use -- which is not a problem in a data center or public cloud -- a limiting factor for edge computing.

  • VMchooser : to find the best Azure VM-size match
  • DiskChooser : Want to know what the most cost efficient disk layout there is for your given set of specifications?
  • BulkUploader : While VMchooser & DiskChooser are focused on a single search. BulkUploader allows you to find the match for 100s, 1000s, ... of Virtual Machine configuration in one go!
  • VMoptimizer : When to go for a certain contract type (PAYG vs Reserved Instances)? Or what about the Windows license, does it make sense to go PAYG or is it more interesting to buy a license?
  • Azure VMware Sizer : When you need to size an Azure VMware cluster.
  • AzureRedHatOpenshift : When you need to size an Azure RedHat OpenShift cluster.
* AVIF is an image format that compresses to a smaller size than WebP or JPEG

* Sometimes Windows 10 saves JPG files as JFIF or JPEG File Interchange Format files. 

Merging your rich IT data repositories like  Configuration Management Database (CMDB), IT asset management systems (ITAM), Active Directory, management tools, and monitoring systems, with discovery and assessment reports broadens understanding across different dimensions and renders a more complete and accurate view of your business units, IT assets, and business applications.

* In the 1950s Dubai was little more than a fishing village, with 20,000 souls and no airport. Today it is a metropolis

Karan Bajaj led WhiteHat Jr had 5000+ teachers, ALL women. They are all primary school teachers from India who teach US native students to code online.

* The Seven Sisters of India, which include Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, and Tripura are not just your perfect scenic escapade. They also are keepers of India’s richest diversity of flora and fauna, the largest river island in the world (Majuli), home to one-horned rhinoceroses and near extinct brow-antlered deer, and Asia’s cleanest village (Meghalaya). The 500 years old Mahatripura Sundari Temple is in Tripura, making it a holy pilgrimage site for many.

Rube Goldberg is best known for his popular cartoons depicting complicated gadgets performing simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways. The cartoons led to the expression "Rube Goldberg machines" to describe similar gadgets and processes. 

Comments