This Week I Learned - Week #30 2020

This Week I Learned -

* Azure VM SLA - 

Single Instance VM using Standard HDD Managed Disks for Operating System Disks and Data Disks: 95%

Single Instance VM using Standard SSD Managed Disks: 99.5%

Single Instance VM using Premium SSD or Ultra Disk: 99.9%

VMs that have two or more instances deployed in the same Availability Set: 99.95%

VMs that have two or more instances deployed across two or more Availability Zones in the same Azure region: 99.99%

* The App Service Migration Assessment Tool runs multiple readiness checks including IIS Server Site Checks and Linux Container Checks

* Netflix created a tool called Chaos Monkey that randomly terminates virtual machines and containers. This way they can make sure that the system is able to handle outages in a production environment.

* When running microservices in a Kubernetes cluster, complexity further increases. While Kubernetes enable capabilities such as auto-scaling, it is not an easy system to administer. To deploy a monolith a simple copy operation may be enough. To start or stop the monolith often a simple command is enough. Kubernetes on the other hand is not for the faint of heart.

* Microservices are not the cure-all for all development problems. Below are a few indications, that a microservice architecture might be a good fit:
- 24/7 reliability required
- Scale to beyond a few requests
- Peak and normal load are significantly different
- More than 10 developers
- The business domain can be divided into smaller domains
- Shorter lived operations
- Operations can be expressed as REST calls or queue events.
- No strict cross-service transactional requirements

* AKS vs ARO - The Azure Kubernetes Service is great for people looking for a managed service that provides pure upstream Kubernetes integrated with the Azure platform. Azure Red Hat OpenShift is a great choice for customers who already have a great relationship with Red Hat and/or are already using OpenShift. Likewise, it’s a great choice for users who are looking for a consistent container solution for hybrid environments that span Azure and on-premise resources.

* Kubernetes is an open source project (or even a framework), while OpenShift or  “Enterprise Kubernetes” is a product that comes in many variants. OpenShift has more strict security policies than default Kubernetes. Red Hat created OpenShift long before Kubernetes project was founded and from the start, it was a PaaS platform. By switching from their custom solution (they used something they called gears instead of containers) to Kubernetes it became easier to bring more features and one of the most exciting is integrated Jenkins. It is also often used with Kubernetes clusters to build container images, perform Continuous Integration tasks on them and deploy them as containers on multiple environments with Continuous Deployment pipelines. Compared to Kubernetes dashboard, with OpenShift web console, you can perform about 80% (or even 90% in OpenShift 4) of tasks directly from it - no need to launch command line or dealing with yaml objects - it can be actually a primary tool for managing OpenShift on a daily basis.

* When the pace of deployment should match the pace of development, it is time to use the best practices of DevOps, and implement a continuous integration and continuous deployment pipeline with a  tool like Jenkins

* CustomScript Extension is a tool to execute your VM customization tasks post VM provision. When this Extension is added to a Virtual Machine, it can download customer’s scripts from the Azure storage or public storage, and execute the scripts on the VM. CustomScript Extension tasks can also be automated using the Azure PowerShell cmdlets and Azure Cross-Platform Command-Line Interface (xPlat CLI).

* Terraform is an open source tool that allows you to define infrastructure for a variety of cloud providers (e.g. AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean, etc) using a simple, declarative programming language and to deploy and manage that infrastructure using a few CLI commands.

* Terraform and HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL) can be used to implement a hub and spoke network topology in Azure.

* Google Connected Sheets, provides the power and scale of a BigQuery data warehouse in the familiar context of Sheets enabling people to analyze billions of rows and petabytes of data in Sheets—without requiring specialized knowledge of computer languages like SQL.

* Quarantine Books Calculator can provide book recommendations based on how much time you have for reading

* Twitter says the hack that compromised the accounts of some of its most high-profile users targeted 130 people. The hackers were able to reset the passwords of 45 of those accounts. It highlighted a major flaw with the service millions of people have come to rely on as an essential communications tool. The July 17 attack broke into the Twitter accounts of world leaders, celebrities and tech moguls in one of the most high-profile security breaches in recent years. According to a cybersecurity researcher, the attack appear to have come from the “OG” community, a group interested in original, short Twitter handles such as @a, @b or @c, for instance. The motivation for the most recent Twitter attack is similar to previous incidents — a combination of financial incentive, technical bragging rights, challenge, and disruption. - AP

*  Brendan Burns, co-founder of the Kubernetes platform has been a Corporate Vice President and Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft. He is not surprised by how Kubernetes has emerged as a basis for development platforms like OpenShift, Helm and Draft, Skaffold amongst others and says - "The ecosystem was always going to be how the platform measured its success. In the platform business, you're only as successful as a function of the number of other partners you make successful. They’re the people who will amplify your platform in places that you could never reach. Likewise, I think we always understood that the Kubernetes APIs are low-level, assembly-language like APIs. To truly empower developers I always knew that we had to look to ways to build higher level abstractions."

* Henley & Partners is the world’s biggest citizenship and residency advisory firm. the company is helping those with deep pockets buy access to a safe haven. For instance, you can acquire the right to live, work and study in New Zealand if you part with NZ$3 million ($2 million) or NZ$10 million, depending on the type of investor resident visa you choose. The company recently established an office in Nigeria and will soon open another in India, where surging virus cases and tensions on the border with China have increased the number of wealthy Indians planning for a potential escape - Bloomberg

* Rumi didn’t start out as the 13th century Persian poet we all cherish today. He was a wealthy nobleman, theologian, and sober Islamic scholar—until he met the wandering dervish monk known as Shams Al Tabriz.

*  Lakshmi Sahgal nee Swaminathan studied in Queen Mary's College and later chose to study medicine and received an MBBS degree from Madras Medical College in 1938. In 1943, Captain Lakshmi led the Rani of Jhansi regiment of Subhas Chandra Bose's  Azad Hind Fauj.  In 2002, four leftist parties – the Communist Party of India, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Revolutionary Socialist Party, and the All India Forward Bloc – nominated Sahgal as a candidate in the presidential elections. She was the sole opponent of A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, who emerged victorious. Sahgal suffered a cardiac arrest and died on 23 July 2012 at the age of 97 in Kanpur.

* Kamaljeet Kaur Sandhu who broke the glass ceiling by becoming the first Indian woman athlete to win a gold at the Asian Games in Bangkok 1970. She was also awarded the Padma Shri in 1971.

* Ultra-heat-treated milk is heated to temperatures of up to 150 °C for several seconds to destroy microbes and deactivate enzymes that spoil milk. ... Nutritionally, UHT milk is slightly poorer than fresh pasteurised milk; it contains around a third less iodine, and the quality of protein degrades during storage

* ‘Indovation’ - innovation that can work under Indian conditions.