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Articles by Eric Shanks
Brix Pizza - A Demo App
Over the past several years, I worked in marketing and spent a lot of time trying to make technical demos more compelling. The goal was always to demonstrate a capability or product feature, but there’s no reason a demo can’t also be fun, memorable, and grounded in reality. “Hello World” gets the job done, but it doesn’t feel real. It doesn’t resemble how applications are actually built, deployed, or operated. And because of that, it’s easy to forget.
Just how to network nowadays
Just how to network nowadays This short post outlines some advice from those who are wanting to understand ways in which to network-- see below for more. Depending on the niche of your service you will find that there will be a number of networking clubs more info which you will be able to join. Those such as Nasser Al Khelafi have seen how this is a terrific way to remain in the loop with regard to knowing or hearing which events to attend.
Execs Invest in Platform Engineering: Here's Why
Development teams are more agile than ever, developing and deploying new applications at the speed required to be competitive in increasingly more saturated markets. One of the ways developers have become more agile is through adopting cloud native technologies like containers and Kubernetes, which offer a lightweight and dynamic infrastructure for faster application development. Although containers are known for being fast and efficient, they are also not simple to manage.
Best Practices for Optimizing Kubernetes Storage
Kubernetes has become the de-facto container orchestration tool and continues to dominate the container orchestration landscape. Kubernetes storage is a complex but essential part of any stateful application and ensures data persistence across clusters. Understanding the best practices of Kubernetes storage can positively affect your deployment strategies. This article is a companion to our Kubernetes persistent volume tutorial.
Portworx Protects Hundreds of Volumes on Kubernetes for Telecommunications Companies
No matter what your industry, providing an excellent customer experience is a requirement. In fact, PwC reports that one in three consumers will walk away from a brand they love after one bad experience 1. A good customer experience is frictionless and personable, with some of the most important aspects being speed and convenience. Telecommunications companies are no exception. In fact, they are held to more rigorous standards than most.
The Power of a Blameless Culture
Today marks the beginning of the 2024 Formula 1 season, a notable day for my mental well-being as it begins the end of a long, cold winter. The winter months often challenge me, limiting my time outdoors and casting shadows over my daily routines. The start of the Formula 1 season provides a needed distraction and spark of excitement as I look forward to warmer weather.
Harvester and IPMI Integration
Maybe it’s bougie, but one of the reasons I purchased E200-8d Supermicro Servers for my home lab was because they had IPMI built into them. Being able to remote into my lab at night when I’m messing around with different configurations was a nice to have. When I was consulting and traveling a lot, being able to remotely start my servers up was really important. I tested out things many times in my lab so that customers wouldn’t have to spend time figuring it out themselves.
Deploy Harvester VMs from a Template
Virtual infrastructure has a lot of advantages, but one of the biggest time savers is being able to provision new virtual machines quickly from a template. As part of this series we’ve covered, how to deploy harvester, how to setup a new virtual network, how to create a new virtual machine, and how to backup and restore VMs. In this post we’ll take a look at how we can create templates and deploy harvester VMs from templates.
Backup and Restore Harvester VMs
In our previous posts we , configured the network, and deployed our first VM. Here we will explore the backup and restore options available to us from the Harvester console. If you’re new to running virtual machines on Kubernetes, you’re probably questioning a few things, like will your current VM backup tool work? The answer is maybe, but only if it is able to backup a container since our VMs are now wrapped inside of a Kubernetes Pod thanks to Kubevirt.
Harvester Installation
The installation of Harvester starts with deploying your nodes. This process would be similar to deploying ESXi hosts in a VMware deployment. To start the process, download the latest stable harvester release from their github repository. You can then mount this ISO file from your bare metal server. After booting to the iso choose the version of Harvester to deploy from their GRUB list.
The Harvester Home Lab - VMs and Containers
I have a very soft spot in my heart for VMware. Pretty early on in my career when I was a System Administrator I got the opportunity to convert my companies physical infrastructure to a virtual infrastructure on VMware vSphere. The version of VMware we moved to, is not relevant to this discussion other than to show how truly old I am, and in order to save the parties involved some embarrassment we’ll ignore this implementation detail.
Create a Harvester Virtual Machine
In the previous posts, we setup the Harvester cluster and optionally added a virtual machine network and some cluster configs. In this post we’ll deploy our first Harvester virtual machine on our cluster. Before we do this, I wanted to point out that we’ve gotten to this point really without ever needing Kubernetes.
Add Kubernetes to Harvester Installation
During the previous posts in this series, we deployed a Harvester cluster, setup virtual networks to segment traffic, and deployed our first virtual machine. So far this has been a pretty good experience, but most of my day job requires me to do a lot of work on containers so I’d like to have Kubernetes clusters at home. Of course I could deploy a bunch of VMs for a new Kubernetes cluster, but Harvester is built on top of Kubernetes already.
Creating a Harvester Virtual Machine Network
In the first post in this series I deployed a Harvester cluster to my home lab servers. Before I get into deploying virtual machines though, I want to make some common configuration updates to my cluster. For instance, I want my virtual machine network traffic to be placed on a different network. Placing the small amount of network traffic that my virtual machines might be using on their own NIC is probably not necessary in my lab.
Data on Kubernetes at Scale: Why Your CSI Driver Can’t Keep Up
In our first blog post about data on Kubernetes, Embracing Data on Kubernetes, we discussed the different types of data that live in your organization, where data on Kubernetes makes sense, and how Kubernetes is now commonly used to run applications plus persistent data all in one stack.
Continuous Application Development - Platform Engineering
In recent years, teams have discovered that the way they approach software development can wield a profound influence on their business outcomes. Organizations that possess the capability to not only integrate their ideas into their codebase but also expedite their journey to production gain a distinct competitive edge.
College football realignment future: Predicting two 20-team mega-conferences Original
It’s coming. You can see football Darwinism at work, and so can we. College athletics is relentlessly consolidating its power and profits in the hands of the few. It is inexorably transforming from a sprawling association of regionally based conferences into a tighter consortium of the super-rich and super-powerful, in concert with their network overlords. Charming, we know. Where will it end? Right here, says Sports Illustrated.
Analyzing conference realignment and its inevitable next step
In a normal week in the offseason, I put up the submission form for Mailbag questions late afternoon on Monday and you guys post around 30-50 responses. This week, I had more than 300 in the first 12 hours. Realignment for the win (again). I want to get to as many as I possibly can, so this week's Mailbag will be a little different than usual: More questions, shorter answers. It's still super-sized, though - much like college conferences.
Drive Simplicity with a Kubernetes Data Platform
Kubernetes data platforms provide a simple way to manage complex tasks at scale. Platform Engineers have become the glue that holds technical operations together. They need to provide a seamless experience for developers to get their product into production, all while ensuring that deployed applications meet our company’s SLAs. Organizations want their developers to be focused on their code rather than figuring out how to deploy everything.
Fully Managed Portworx Backup Cluster Access
We love to use solutions that make our lives simpler. As a Platform Engineer, you have a lot of responsibilities and a lot of work to do to ensure your applications are always available and protected from a catastrophic failure. You need to use tools that either let you get more done in less time or reduce the complexity of day-to-day work tasks.
Run Kafka on Kubernetes with Portworx Data Services
Apache Kafka has become a critical component of modern data architectures. As teams have shifted toward event-driven or microservices architectures, Kafka has become a popular choice for handling large volumes of data, often in real time. With the ability to scale horizontally, process data in real time, and integrate with a wide variety of technologies, Kafka has become a key tool in many organization’s toolboxes.
Configure a Private Registry for Tanzu Kubernetes Clusters
A really common task after deploying a Kubernetes cluster is to configure it to use a container registry where the container images are stored. A Tanzu Kubernetes Cluster (TKC) is no exception to this rule. vSphere 7 with Tanzu comes with an embedded harbor registry that can be used, but in many cases you all ready have your own container registry and so you’d like to continue using that instead.
Tanzu Community Edition on vSphere Installation Notes
I was messing around in my vSphere home lab and wanted to try out the new Tanzu Community Edition that was recently announced. After getting up to speed on some of the documentation, I tried the installation out in my vSphere 7 lab. There were a couple of notes that I think will help some other people get started with their installation. Bootstrapping on MacBook The installation on my MacBook kept failing when trying to deploy the management cluster in my vSphere environment.
VMware Tanzu Challenge - Plex Server
Early this year I saw a challenge drop in my inbox for VMware vExperts to deploy a Plex server with Tanzu Community Edition (TCE). I hadn’t gotten to try out TCE yet, and had never messed with Plex so this sounded like a fun adventure. The goal was to architect an entire solution as though this Plex server was going to be a production app that a company might run their business off of. Which means, that I needed to not only get the thing working, but start making some steps to operationalize it.
Enable the Harbor Registry on vSphere 7 with Tanzu
Your Kubernetes clusters are up and running on vSphere 7 with Tanzu and you can’t wait to get started on your first project. But before you get to that, you might want to enable the Harbor registry so that you can privately store your own container images and use them with your clusters. Luckily, in vSphere 7 with Tanzu, the Harbor project has been integrated into the solution. You just have to turn it on and set it up. NOTE: This article takes advantage of the updates in vSphere 7 U1c.
Ubiquiti USG VPN Setup for VMware Cloud on AWS
My day job requires me to do a lot of work with VMware Cloud on AWS. If I plan on doing any real work with the virtual machines, kubernetes clusters, or applications I really need a VPN tunnel to securely access those resources. My problem has been setting up my aging Ubiquiti USG firewall with BGP. This post will show how I setup a route based VPN tunnel with my Ubiquiti USG. Big shoutout to Brian Beach for his work setting up the USG with an AWS Transit Gateway.
Customize vSphere 7 with Tanzu Guest Clusters
Kubernetes clusters can come in many shapes and sizes. Over the past 18 months I’ve deployed quite a few Kubernetes clusters for customers but these clusters all have different requirements. What image registry am I connecting to? Do we need to configure proxies? Will we need to install new certificates to the nodes? Do we need to tweak some containerd configurations? During many of my customer engagements the answer to the above questions is, “yes”.
2021 Home Lab - The IT Hollow
Time for an update on the home lab. 2020 meant spending a lot of time at home and there were plenty of opportunities to tinker around with the home lab. I did purchase some new hardware, and did plenty of reconfiguring so here’s the 2021 version of my home lab in case anyone is interested. Rack The rack is custom made and been in use for a while now. My lab sits in the basement on a concrete floor. So I built a wooden set of shelves on casters so I could roll it around if it was in the way.
vSphere 7 with Tanzu Updates
At some point, you’ll be faced with an upgrade request. New Kubernetes features, new security patches, or just to maintain your support. A vSphere 7 with Tanzu deployment has several components that may need to be updated and most of which can be updated independently of one another. In this post we’ll walk through an update to vSphere, then update the Supervisor namespace, and then finally the Tanzu Kubernetes cluster. vSphere Update To begin we’ll start with a vSphere update.
Scale-Out Object Storage Service in Portworx Enterprise 2.12
Before deploying their production applications in Kubernetes, Portworx Enterprise users no longer need to manually provision object storage with a third-party service. As of the latest release of Portworx 2.12, scale-out object storage can be managed directly through the Kubernetes API. Scale-out object storage is an early access feature that adds to the already best-in-class block and file-based services provided by the Portworx storage cluster.
Setting Up Kubernetes Clusters on AWS Using Cluster API
Welcome to this tutorial, where we’ll walk through the process of setting up a Kubernetes cluster on AWS by leveraging the Kubernetes upstream sub-project called Cluster API. As part of this tutorial, we will leverage Docker Desktop to bootstrap our management cluster on our local laptop before deploying a workload cluster in Amazon Web Services. Cluster API Primer Cluster API is a Kubernetes sub-project that was started by the Cluster Lifecycle Special Interest Group (SIG).
theITHollow Turns 10 Years Old
Yes, that’s right, this website is now 10 years old, and while there is no cake or ice cream for this celebration, I thought I’d take a second to reflect on what this website, and the 550 blog posts in it, have meant to me personally. This site has in many ways chronicled my technology career, starting when I was a System Administrator, trying to learn Virtualization, up until now.
Introducing VMware Cloud on AWS Logical Design Poster for Workload Mobility - Cloud Blog – VMware
VMware Cloud on AWS is an integrated hybrid cloud service that enables organizations to migrate or extend their on-premises vSphere environments rapidly. VMware Cloud on AWS includes VMware HCX, a solution that streamlines workload migration across data centers and clouds. There is a variety of connectivity options and migrations methods available with VMware HCX.
Announcing availability of VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts - Cloud Blog – VMware
Get the agility and innovation of VMware Cloud in your data center delivered as a Service with VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts. Today, we are very excited to announce that VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts will be available in VMware’s Q3FY22 and customers will be able to purchase it via the VMware Cloud Service Portal in VMware’s Q3FY22.
Home Audio/Visual Setup
I was asked for a post detailing my home A/V setup. So this post will outline the equipment in my office that I use for video conferencing and recording videos. Desk One of the best things I did for my office was to switch to a standing desk. I was spending way too much time sitting in a chair and a standing desk helped to alleviate muscle pain. It also kept me in a bit more active mood if that’s a thing. After doing a bit of research I decided to try the Terra 2 desk.
After 25 years on NASCAR TV and a Dale Earnhardt film, what’s next for Michael Waltrip?
Former NASCAR Cup driver Michael Waltrip is a longtime television analyst for races. He covered the 2018 Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway for FOX Sports. William Hauser FOX Sports Although it has been 20 years since Dale Earnhardt’s fatal crash at the 2001 Daytona 500, the memory and impact of that day never wanes for former NASCAR driver Michael Waltrip. “I wake up with it every day,” Waltrip said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s 20 years or tomorrow or the next day.
Using YTT to Customize TKG Deployments
If you’ve worked with Kubernetes for very long, you’ve surely run into a need to manage YAML files. There are a bunch of options out there with their own benefits and drawbacks. One of these tools is called ytt and comes as part of the Carvel tools (formerly k14s). If you’re working with the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid product from VMware, you’re likely to be using ytt to mange your TKG YAML manifests. This post aims to help you get started with using ytt for your own customizations. How Does YTT Work?
Ingress Routing - TKG Clusters
If you have been following the series so far, you should have a TKG guest cluster in your lab now. The next step is to show how to deploy a simple application and access it through a web browser. This is a pretty trivial task for most Kubernetes operators, but its a good idea to know whats happening in NSX to make these applications available. We’ll walk through that in this post.
Deploying Tanzu Kubernetes Clusters on vSphere 7
This post will focus on deploying Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) clusters in your vSphere 7 with Tanzu environment. These TKG clusters are the individual Kubernetes clusters that can be shared with teams for their development purposes. I know what you’re thinking. Didn’t we already create a Kubernetes cluster when we setup our Supervisor cluster? The short answer is yes. However the Supervisor cluster is a unique Kubernetes cluster that probably shouldn’t be used for normal workloads.
Create a Content Library for vSphere 7 with Tanzu
In this post we’ll setup a vSphere Content Library so that we can use it with our Tanzu Kubernetes Grid guest clusters. If you’re not familiar with Content libraries, you can think of them as a container registry, only for virtual machines. Why do we need a content library? Well, the content library be used to store the virtual machine templates that will become Kubernetes nodes when you deploy a TKG guest cluster.
Replace vSphere 7 with Tanzu Certificates
When setting up your vSphere 7 with Tanzu environment, its a good idea to update the default certificate shipped from VMware with your own certificate. This is a good security practice to ensure that your credentials are protected during logins, and nobody likes to see those pesky certificate warnings in their browsers anyway, am I right? Create and Trust Certificate Authority This section of the blog post is to create a root certificate.
Connecting to a Supervisor Namespace
In this post we’ll finally connect to our Supervisor Cluster Namespace through the Kubernetes cli and run some commands for the first time. In the last post we created a namespace within the Supervisor Cluster and assigned some resource allocations and permissions for our example development user. Now it’s time to access that namespace so that real work can be done using the platform.
Creating Supervisor Namespaces
Congratulations, you’ve deployed the Workload Management components for your vSphere 7 cluster. If you’ve been following along with the series so far, you’ll have left off with a workload management cluster created and ready to being configuring your cluster for use with Kubernetes. The next step in the process is to create a namespace. Before we do that, it’s probably useful to recap what a namespace is used for.
vSphere 7 with Tanzu - Getting Started Guide
VMware released the new version of vSphere with functionality to build and manage Kubernetes clusters. This series details how to deploy, configure, and use a lab running vSphere 7 with Kubernetes enabled. The instructions within this post are broken out into sections. vSphere 7 requires pre-requisites at the vSphere level as well as a full NSX-T deployment. Follow these steps in order to build your own vSphere 7 with Kubernetes lab and start using Kubernetes built right into vSphere.
Kubernetes Pod Auto-scaling
You’ve built your Kubernetes cluster(s). You’ve built your apps in containers. You’ve architected your services so that losing a single instance doesn’t cause an outage. And you’re ready for cloud scale. You deploy your application and are waiting to sit back and “profit.” When your application spins up and starts taking on load, you are able to change the number of replicas to handle the additional load, but what about the promises of cloud and scaling?
Joe Buck Does Play By Play On Fan Submitted Videos
Fox Sports broadcaster Joe Buck, who doesn’t have any games to call amid the coronavirus pandemic, explained on “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday how the idea to narrate people’s home videos while they are quarantined came about.
Tanzu Mission Control - Cluster Upgrade
Kubernetes releases a new minor version every quarter and updating your existing clusters can be a chore. With updates coming at you pretty quickly and new functionality being added all the time, having a way to upgrade your clusters is a must, especially if you are managing multiples of clusters. Tanzu Mission Control can take the pain out of upgrading these clusters.
Tanzu Mission Control - Deploying Clusters
I’ve written about deploying clusters in the past, but if you are a TMC customer, those steps can be skipped altogether. TMC will let us deploy a Kubernetes cluster and add it to management, all from the GUI or CLI. For this example, I’ll create a new Kubernetes cluster within my AWS account. Before we setup the cluster, we need to configure access to our AWS Account so that TMC can manage resources for us. Connect AWS Account Within TMC in the settings menu, we click Connect Account.
Tanzu Mission Control -Resize Clusters
A pretty common task that a Kubernetes administrator must do is to resize the cluster. We need more nodes to handle more workloads, or we’ve overprovisioned a cluster and are trying to save costs. This usually took some custom automation scripts such as node autoscaler, or it was done manually based on request. Tanzu Mission Control can resize our cluster very simply from the TMC portal. Scale Out a Cluster Within the TMC Portal, find the cluster that needs to be resized.
Tanzu Mission Control - Access Policies
Controlling access to a Kubernetes cluster is an ongoing activity that must be done in conjunction with developer needs and is often maintained by operations or security teams. Tanzu Mission Control (TMC) can help use setup and manage these access policies across fleets of Kubernetes clusters, making everyone’s life a little bit easier. Setup Users Before we can assign permissions to a user or group, we need to have a user or group to assign these permissions.
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