This Week I Learned - Week #42 2020

This Week I Learned - 

* You can attach and configure Kubernetes clusters inside or outside of Azure by using Azure Arc enabled Kubernetes Preview

* Azure Red Hat OpenShift service enables you to deploy fully managed OpenShift clusters. Azure Red Hat OpenShift extends Kubernetes. Running containers in production with Kubernetes requires additional tools and resources. This often includes needing to juggle image registries, storage management, networking solutions, and logging and monitoring tools - all of which must be versioned and tested together. Building container-based applications requires even more integration work with middleware, frameworks, databases, and CI/CD tools. Azure Red Hat OpenShift combines all this into a single platform, bringing ease of operations to IT teams while giving application teams what they need to execute.

* Scaling a cluster to zero still leaves the system pool running (and running up a bill); the new az aks stop and az aks start commands (in preview currently) turn on and off the control plane and agent nodes completely so there’s no cost when stopped and at the same time you don’t need to create the cluster and reinstall images when you want the cluster back. That takes advantage of the fact that AKS is already backing up the cluster state for resiliency. When you stop a cluster, you’re taking the state of the etcd database, and you’re preserving it out to file that is backed up. The cluster state is only stored for 12 months and won’t be recoverable after that. Start stop is ideal for bursty and batch scenarios, as well as workloads that are used during the workday, like call centers and doctor’s offices. 

* Fully managed Cloud Run is an ideal serverless platform for stateless containerized microservices that don’t require Kubernetes features like namespaces, co-location of containers in pods (sidecars) or node allocation and management. Each microservice is implemented as a Docker image, Cloud Run’s unit of deployment.

* A Cloud Run use case - Let’s take a look at an example use case, a service that adds, updates, deletes and lists addresses. You can implement this address management service by creating one containerized microservice for each operation. Then, once the images have been created and registered in a container registry, you can deploy them to managed Cloud Run with a single command. After executing four commands (one deployment for each microservice), the service is up and running on a completely serverless platform. The following figure shows the deployment using Cloud Spanner as the underlying database.

* Migrate for Anthos is offered at no charge for migrating workloads to Google Cloud. Customers will still pay for all other Google Cloud services they consume (compute, storage, networking, etc.), but by itself, the use of this tool (Migrate for Anthos) does not incur additional cost. 

* Anthos GKE enables enterprise-grade conformant Kubernetes service across hybrid and multi-cloud environments 

* GKE Sandbox provides an extra layer of security to prevent untrusted code from affecting the host kernel on your cluster nodes. GKE Sandbox uses gVisor, an open source project. 

* Several open source software companies including MongoDB, Elastic, Databricks, Confluent, and Hashicorp have become multibillion-dollar businesses. For open source founders just now establishing business model roadmaps, it’s increasingly important to approach co-existence with the big-three cloud providers with finesse. That’s especially true because most commercial open source companies depend on at least one cloud provider, and often all three, for hosting and distribution, so they are both partners and competitors. Getting these relationships right is critical to every open source company’s long-term success; after all, billions in revenue are at stake - Forbes

* Many companies in India are set up with the intention of financial management or as shell firms, rather than with the intent of starting a new business. A crude measure of intent is the percentage of new companies whose paid-up capital exceeds the minimum requirement of ₹1 lakh.  Of the 20 sectors in the MCA classification, the top two sectors that registered the highest growth in new incorporations in August (over January) are agriculture and allied activities and manufacturing of food items. Both cater to essentials, and demand for them has been much more robust compared to other products during the course of the pandemic - Mint

* On average, it takes about 5-10 times the duration of the video to caption it. A trained transcriptionist takes four to five hours transcribing one hour of audio or video content from scratch.

* Netflix employs people called "taggers," which are part-time employees who get paid to watch TV shows and movies on the streaming service. Taggers associate Netflix content with various tags, helping the service recommend other shows and movies to viewers after they finish watching.

* HMD Global Oy, largely run by former Nokia executives, partners with Google and uses the Android operating system under the Android One program on their Nokia smartphones.

* We knew about immunity long before we knew about the immune system. As early as 1500, medical healers in China had realized that those who survived smallpox did not catch the illness again (survivors of the disease were enlisted to take care of new victims) and inferred that the exposure of the body to an illness must protect it from future instances of that illness. 

* Jimmy Wales created Wikipedia back in 2001. As a a pathological optimist, he wanted to create a free encyclopedia, written by volunteers, for everyone in the world. Today, Wikipedia has over 50 million articles written by more than 250,000 volunteer editors around the world. The Wikimedian of the Year award started in 2011,celebrates those volunteers who go above and beyond to fulfill the mission of free knowledge for the world. The 2020 Wikimedian of the year is Sandister Tei  of Accra, Ghana for her contributions since 8 years.

* The function of Solar Charge Controller is same as inverter. It converts AC power as well as DC power & maintains proper voltage level.