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Articles by Nicolas Vermande
Trivago Aggressively Monitors to Reduce Software Test Flakiness
Test flakiness is one of the main challenges with automated testing. It happens when test failures are triggered by issues unrelated to the application being tested. It’s tricky a problem to solve: How do you troubleshoot failures that aren’t necessarily failures? To combat the issue, online travel broker Trivago added monitoring practices to its testing workflow and reduced the end-to-end tests that failed from flakiness failures to just under 1%.
Railway Plans to Simplify Infrastructure for Developers
Railway’s goal is to make infrastructure simpler for developers, and one step it recently took to achieve that was revamping its CLI (command line interface) from Go to Rust. “Our message for the frontend and for web developers is that we’re making infrastructure tasks into buttons that you just press to get what you want,” David Banys, product marketing manager at Railway, told The New Stack.
IBM Aspera Faspex High-Speed File Transfer Has a Killer Bug
Now in an ideal world, this would just be a good teaching moment. In it, they explain how a remote attacker can exploit a YAML deserialization flaw for arbitrary code execution using specially crafted API calls to a now obsolete API call Guess what? We don’t live in such a world. Rapid7 has confirmed at least one recent case where a customer’s system was compromised.
Q&A: How EnterpriseDB Brings Five Nines to PostgreSQL
Marc Linster is the chief technology officer of EnterpriseDB (EDB), which offers a high-performance supported version of the open source PostgreSQL (or Potsgres) relational database system. He recently sat down with The New Stack to discuss all things Postgres, including a new release of the EBD’s platform that includes increased availability (to 99.999%) and Transparent Data Encryption (TDE). Linster: Think about EDB and Postgres the way you think about Red Hat and Linux.
Deploy KubeSphere for Easy Kubernetes Cluster Management
If you’re looking for a Kubernetes platform that is tailored for hybrid multicloud, KubeSphere might be just the tool you need. KubeSphere can help with full-stack, automated IT operations and even streamline your DevOps workflows with a developer-friendly web UI. KubeSphere offers a plug-and-play platform and allows seamless integration of third-party applications.
Artificial Intelligence: The Work of AI Satirist Eve Armstrong
For nearly six years I’ve written tech features — over 400 of them — for The New Stack. But one of my all-time favorites was the tale of what I’d described as “a new research paper with an intriguing title” about artificial intelligence that “caught the attention of the scientific community” back in 2017. But of course, it was more than that.
Dev News: Web Push, Nuxt’s New DevTools and a Boon for Rust
Web Push makes it possible for web developers to send push notifications to their users through the use of Push API, Notifications API and Service Workers, according to WebKit’s blog. WebKit is the web browser engine used by Safari, Mail, App Store, and many other apps on macOS, iOS, and Linux. “Deeply integrated with iOS and iPadOS, Web Push notifications from web apps work exactly like notifications from other apps,” the post said.
How to Fix Kubernetes Monitoring
It’s astonishing how much data is emitted by Kubernetes out of the box. A simple three-node Kubernetes cluster with Prometheus will ship around 40,000 active series by default! Do we really need all that data? It’s time to talk about the unspoken challenges of monitoring Kubernetes. The difficulties include not just the bloat and usability of metric data, but also the high churn rate of pod metrics, configuration complexity when running multiple deployments, and more.
GPT-4 AI-Powered Microsoft Security Copilot Arrives
This extension also translates natural language into code. This service can be used with such editors as Microsoft Visual Studio, Neovim, VS Code, and JetBrains IDE. In other words, OpenAI and Copilot were already working together. Combine all this with the desperate need for skilled security professionals — Microsoft estimates there are 3.4 million openings — and this may prove to be yet another Microsoft service destined to mint money.
Making Career Decisions During a Time of Tech Layoffs and AI
It’s a strange time for developers, with the double threat of tech layoffs and generative AI causing an almost existential threat to the profession. In times like these, it’s useful to know how industry veterans are tackling these challenges. With that in mind, I interviewed Robbie Clutton, who has worked as a senior director at Pivotal Labs (and stayed during its transition with VMware) and was most recently a senior engineering VP at Snyk — until being made redundant.
5 Trends to Watch for at KubeCon EU 2023
This post is one of a series of posts previewing KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2023, April 18-21, Amsterdam. Join us there, to learn more about the transformative nature of cloud native applications and open source software. There’s always a lot going on in the world of Kubernetes. But the eve of a big community gathering like KubeCon gives us the opportunity to take stock of how far we’ve come — and where we’re going next.
Python in the Browser: Free PyScript SaaS Launches
Anaconda is offering a free Pyscript software-as-a-service, Pyscript.com, starting today, nearly a year after launching the open source language project last April. It will allow developers to deploy Python to run in the browser, alongside other HTML content. “Everything that you can do with Pyscript.com, you could do without it — pretty much like you could run your own Git server and access Git on your own,” Fabio Pliger, principal architect at Anaconda and PyScript creator, told The New Stack.
Looking for a k3OS Alternative? Choosing a Container OS for Edge K8s
As a system administrator, you know that deploying and maintaining Linux distributions can be painful. Even with the advent of Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) paradigms, like Terraform, Linux systems often end up in different states (“snowflakes”) due to incremental updates. The Container OS: Built for Containers and Kubernetes Today we need our Linux distributions to be optimized for containerized, cloud native workloads using Kubernetes.
MIT-Created Compiler Speeds up Python Code
Python is a popular, beginner-friendly language. It’s also an interpreted language, which makes it easy to use but slower than a compiled language such as C or C++. At the large scale that becomes a problem, as Ariya Shajii, an MIT CSAIL Ph.D. graduate, and his colleague Ibrahim Numanagić noticed when working with genomics, which involved large data sequences.
A Deep Dive into the Security of IAM in AWS
Public clouds are valuable targets for cybercriminals looking to exploit vulnerabilities in organizations’ infrastructure. While the time frame for a potential breach can vary, it’s common for hackers to scan newly deployed cloud resources within a matter of minutes in search of weaknesses to exploit.
Veteran C++ Developer Says Python Is Best Starter Language
New programmers who are looking for a first language and anyone wanting to add another language to their toolkit should start with Python. So says Phil Nash, one of the original authors of the C++ test framework, Catch2, and a developer advocate for SonarSource. “It’s a boring choice, but for exciting reasons,” Nash told The New Stack. “It’s very simple to start with, but it scales with you right up to being a really industrial-strength, very popular language.
Open Source Africa: How OSCA Empowers Developers
Goddy himself experienced the power of One Laptop Per Child program in grade school — and it inspired his lifelong passion for open source software.
Grab a Snapshot of Your Container Image with Checkpoint
Have you ever been in a situation where you have a Docker or Podman container running exactly how you need and wished you had the ability to save a snapshot of it, so you can ensure you’ve got a running state saved in case something goes awry with the container? Should disaster strike, you can simply start a new container using the snapshot. That’d be nice, wouldn’t it? Well, it’s actually possible, thanks to the checkpoint feature.
Setting Kubernetes Standards with Platform Engineering
You can’t be an expert at everything. But lack of expertise should not prevent you from doing anything at all, or that it should take you ages to accomplish stuff. Instead, you just need to know what the standards are, to use golden paths and to see the data that matters. This is what platform engineering is about. It creates reusable elements for developers, such as redeploying image tags, updating auto-scaling-group to provision a new package and more.
Informatica Launches Freemium AI-Powered Integrator
So there’s data, and there’s IT to process it for business purposes. A common missing link in enterprise systems is what’s in between: A setup app or service that sorts, categorizes, and preps the various forms of data — not to mention serving as a traffic cop to keep the streams moving efficiently and to the right production locations.
Tech Works: Layoffs, a Ticking Time Bomb for Your H-1B Visa
Editor’s note: Tech Works is a new monthly column by longtime New Stack contributor Jennifer Riggins that explores workplace conditions, management ideas, career development and the tech job market as it affects the people who build and run the software the world relies on. We welcome your feedback, and ideas for future columns. One of the most popular pieces of advice for those facing tech layoffs is just to take a break. Mourn. It’ll help you perform better in your next interview.
JavaScript or WebAssembly: Which Is More Energy Efficient and Faster?
Which runs faster and is more energy-efficient: JavaScript or WebAssembly? The University of Minho in Portugal researched this very question and came to the conclusion that while JavaScript can be more energy efficient and faster than Wasm when it comes to in-lab micro-benchmarks, in real applications Wasm outshines JavaScript on speed and energy efficiency — sometimes by as much as 30% on average. And that’s with Wasm still in its early days.
Demystifying Kubernetes: how to get comfortable with complexity
Is Kubernetes as hard as people think it is? Kubernetes has a reputation for being a complex, even difficult, technology. Our 2022 State of Production Kubernetes survey found that 4 in 5 people that are already running Kubernetes in production say that Kubernetes is more complex than other technologies they use. The complexity of Kubernetes has even spawned its own meme accounts.
Why Kubernetes now? A beginner’s guide to modern cloud-native infrastructure
In ancient Greek, the word “Kubernetes” referred to a helmsman, someone who steered a ship (a ship full of containers in this case!) The Kubernetes we’re interested in here is not nearly so old as the age of Homer — it was released back in 2015. But in just a few short years, a lot has already changed. Today, defining Kubernetes conventionally as just a “container orchestrator” is certainly reductive, if not an outright fallacy.
How Does HashiCorp Vault Work with Kubernetes Secrets?
Nicolas Vermandé Nicolas is the principal developer advocate at Ondat. He is an experienced hands-on technologist who has been working in the fields of cloud native technologies, open source software, virtualization and data center networking for the past 17 years. You'll often see him speaking at global tech conferences and online events. The biggest problem with Kubernetes Secrets? They are neither secret nor secure.
4 Best Practices for Microservices Authorization
There are unquestionable advantages to cloud native technologies, but significant challenges as well. Case in point: microservices authorization. Anders is a developer advocate at Styra with a long background in software development, security and identity systems in primarily distributed environments. When not in front of his computer, he enjoys watching football, cooking and Belgian beers.
What Is a Microservice Catalog and Why Do You Need One?
Is this story familiar? You and your engineers decide that a microservices architecture is right for your software. You’re humming along, building out everything, but by the fifth or sixth service, you start to notice issues. You realize you can’t find anything. Then you start asking yourself why certain parts of the data are duplicated over there and over there. You notice a service has been failing and wonder, “How long has this been going on?” I suspect some of these questions are familiar.
Use Multi-Availability Zone Kubernetes for Disaster Recovery
Nicolas Vermandé Nicolas is the principal developer advocate at Ondat. He is an experienced hands-on technologist, evangelist and product owner who has been working in the fields of cloud native technologies, open source software, virtualization and data center networking for the past 17 years. Passionate about enabling users and building cool tech solving real-life problems, you'll often see him speaking at global tech conferences and online events.
App Modernization: 5 Tips When Migrating to Kubernetes
Containerization may be the key to a more automated infrastructure, but migrating your apps to Kubernetes can feel like a major step. Nicolas Vermandé Nicolas is the principal developer advocate at Ondat. He is an experienced hands-on technologist, evangelist and product owner who has been working in the fields of cloud native technologies, open source software, virtualization and data center networking for the past 17 years.
Better Together: Hyper-Converged Kubernetes with Terraform
Nicolas Vermandé Nicolas is the principal developer advocate at Ondat. He is an experienced hands-on technologist, evangelist and product owner who has been working in the fields of cloud native technologies, open source software, virtualization and data center networking for the past 17 years. Passionate about enabling users and building cool tech solving real-life problems, you'll often see him speaking at global tech conferences and online events.
The Future of Microservices? More Abstractions
The author of this post is the editor-in-chief at Container Solutions. Microservices emerged 10 years ago as one of the examples of convergent evolution that sometimes happens in software. While the term can be credited to James Lewis and Martin Fowler at Thoughtworks, the global software consultant, similar ideas were being discussed by Adrian Cockcroft, then at Netflix and many other Silicon Valley firms.
Microservices Explained - The New Stack
In this article, I’ll discuss what microservices are, where the concept comes from, and why they’re important. We’ll start with a brief history of microservices and how they compare to a monolithic system design. Then, we’ll discuss some of the principles that underpin microservice architectures, their potential downsides, and how modern tools like containers and Kubernetes fit in. How Microservices Came to Be Catherine is head of marketing at Buoyant, the creator of Linkerd.
Microservices vs. Monoliths: An Operational Comparison
Alexander Kainz has been in IT for over 20 years. Java, Python, JavaScript and Smalltalk are his programming languages of choice. His focus has been on the enterprise especially in the financial industry. In his career he has worked in Germany, USA, Australia and finally Thailand. He is lucky to live in Bangkok, a city that he adores for its energy, its diversity and its people. He writes about his interests, that include Digital Transformation, Microservices, Rest APIs and DevOps.
5 Steps to Ensure your Microservices Are Running Optimally
Trends come and go, of course, and the attention they get is often exaggerated and doesn’t reflect what’s really going on. With microservices, though, there seems to be more consensus that the trend is here to stay. It makes sense. Conceptually, microservices extend the same principles that engineers have employed for decades. The Flip Side of Microservices Tal Weiss is co-founder and CTO of OverOps and is responsible for product and engineering strategy.
The Hows, Whys and Whats of Monitoring Microservices
Dave Swersky is a technical staff writer for Raygun.com, a software intelligence platform that helps development teams create error-free experiences for users. Dave is focused on DevOps as a central part of his work as an experienced software developer and TOGAF-certified enterprise architect. Monitoring remains a critical part of managing any IT system, while the challenges associated with monitoring microservices are especially unique.
Microservices 101
Microservices have got the tech world, and especially DevOps circles, buzzing. And no wonder, since this is the perfect technology for taking advantage of the cloud computing delivery model. As with any rapidly trending Next Great Thing, however, it can be tough to sort through all the hype vs. how microservices actually apply to every day, rubber-meets-the-road project work.
The Ten Commandments of Microservices
Microservices mark the beginning of the new era in distributed computing. With the emergence of containers, the unit of deployment gradually started to shift from away from the VM models. Linux container technologies, such as LXC, Docker, runC and rkt, make it possible to run multiple containers within the same VM, allowing DevOps to package each app component or app module in a dedicated container.
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