• SuSE storage spins-up Ceph

  Open source software platform company SuSE has announced SUSE Enterprise Storage 6, a software-defined storage solution powered by Ceph technology.

  Many would argue that storage on its own is snorage (i.e. enough to send you to sleep), but software -defined storage does at least drive us forward into the realm of the software developer.

  By way of a reminder, software -defined storage is a way of managing data storage resources and functionality that is essentially uncoupled from (i.e. has no underlying physical dependencies) the actual hardware resources that offer up the amount of storage being used.

• IBM Open Sources Razee CD Tool to Support Mega Kubernetes Scaling

  IBM open sourced its Razee continuous delivery (CD) tool that allows developers to manage applications in their Kubernetes-based cluster deployments. The move also continues to bolster IBM’s push into the Kubernetes space.

  Razee consists of two parts: Kaptain, which are components that handle the multi-cluster deployments; and RazeeDash, which is basically the control panel.

  The Kaptain component within Razee provides a pull-based deployment model that supports self-updating clusters. This helps in generating inventory and scripts that describe actions for each cluster or each application running in a Kubernetes environment.

• Red Hat Open Sources 3scale Code

  Red Hat has completed open sourcing the API management software of 3scale, the company it bought in June 2016 for an undisclosed sum, saying it has been working on the project for the past three years.

  The company’s full code base has been released under the permissive Apache Software License (ASL) 2.0 licence, with the open sourcing process “much more than throwing code over the wall”, Red Hat said.

  In a short post by the company’s David Codelli on Thursday, he noted: “When Red Hat acquires 3scale it was only a matter of time until it would be open sourced in some fashion. “But the process isn’t instantaneous.”

• Digital Ocean’s Kubernetes service is now generally available

  Like any ambitious cloud infrastructure player, Digital Ocean also recently announced a solution for running Kubernetes  clusters on its platform. At KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe in Barcelona, the company today announced that Digital Ocean Kubernetes is now generally available.

  With this release, the company is also bringing the latest Kubernetes release (1.14) to the platform, and developers who use the service will be able to schedule automatic patch version upgrades, too.

• Serverless and containers: Two great technologies that work better together

  Cloud native models using containerized software in a continuous delivery approach could benefit from serverless computing where the cloud vendor generates the exact amount of resources required to run a workload on the fly. While the major cloud vendors have recognized this and are already creating products to abstract away the infrastructure, it may not work for every situation in spite of the benefits.

  Cloud native, put simply, involves using containerized applications and Kubernetes  to deliver software in small packages called microservices. This enables developers to build and deliver software faster and more efficiently in a continuous delivery model. In the cloud native world, you should be able to develop code once and run it anywhere, on prem or any public cloud, or at least that is the ideal.

• Check Out Rob Szumski’s Keynote on the Kubernetes Operator Community at KubeCon Barcelona
  

  Check out this great keynote talk from our very own Rob Szumski, at this past week’s KubeCon Barcelona. This is hot off the presses, so to speak, as the CNCF has been uploading all of the amazing talks from that show over on it’s YouTube page, today. Hope this keeps you occupied over the long weekend!

• Abby Kearns Interview At CloudNativeCon & KubeCon, Barcelona

  In this episode of Let’s Talk, Abby Kearns, Executive Director of Cloud Foundry Foundation talks about the importance of all other cloud-native projects that are showcased at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon. She also talks about Project Eirini.

Fedora 30 is definitely one of the more interesting releases of this family in a long-time. It brings significant changes, including solid improvements in the desktop performance and responsiveness. Over the years, Fedora went from no proprietary stuff whatsoever to slowly acknowledging the modern needs of computing, so now it gives you MP3 codecs and you can install graphics drivers and such. Reasonable looks, plus good functionality across the board.

However, there were tons of issues, too. Printing to Samba, video screenshot bug, installer cropped-image slides, package management complications, mouse cursor lag, oopses, average battery life, and inadequate usability out of the box. You need to change the defaults to have a desktop that can be used in a quick, efficient way without remembering a dozen nerdy keyboard shortcuts. All in all, I like the freshness. In general, it would seem the Linux desktop is seeing a cautious revival, and Fedora's definitely a happy player. But there are too many rough edges. Well, we got performance tweaks after so many years, and codecs, we might get window buttons and desktop icons one day back, too. Something like 6/10, and definitely worth exploring.

I am happy enough to do two more tests. I will run an in-vivo upgrade on the F29 instance on this same box, and then also test the distro on an old Nvidia-powered laptop, which will showcase both the support for proprietary graphics (didn't work the last time) and performance improvements, if they scale for old hardware, too. That's all for now.

• Rook-Ceph storage Operator now on OperatorHub.io

  We are excited to announce the addition of the Rook-Ceph storage Operator to OperatorHub.io. Operators are design patterns that augment and implement common day one and day two activities with Kubernetes clusters, simplifying application deployments and empowering developers to focus on creation versus remediation. The Rook-Ceph Operator is an upstream effort that Red Hat is leading and is using as part of its work towards Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage 4.

  Developing and deploying cloud-native applications at scale can be complex and challenging. The new Rook-Ceph storage Operator is designed to automate the packaging, deployment, management, upgrading, and scaling of Ceph clusters that provide persistent storage to stateful applications as well as infrastructure services (logging, metrics, registry) in Kubernetes clusters. The release of Rook’s Ceph Operator augments Kubernetes scheduling with a complement of stateful storage services including block, filesystem and object storage.

• Red Hat Satellite 6.4.3 has been released

  Red Hat Satellite 6.4.3 is generally available. The main drivers for the 6.4.3 release are a Request for Feature Enhancement (RFE) for capsule syncing control as well as general stability fixes.

  The capsule syncing control feature enables the user to have control over when capsule syncs occur. Traditionally the capsule sync occurs automatically after a content view is updated, but some customers may want more granular control over when the synchronization occurs. Satellite 6.4.3 introduces a new setting in Administer —> Settings —> Content —> Sync Capsules after Content View promotion.

• Contributors are Empowered When They Know the Process
  

  There is a saying in the legal profession that you should never ask a question you don’t already know the answer to. Despite how this sounds, it is actually a rule most people follow in life. This is the source of that feeling you get when you’re too scared to raise your hand and ask a question. In Open Source we need to make sure that contributors feel like they already “know” the answers, so they will feel confident in making the request.

  As a university lecturer, I always encouraged my students to first think about what they thought the answer was and then ask the question. In some cases, I encouraged them to actually write down what they thought the answer was. In this way, they could judge both their skills and their ability to grow based on what the answer turned out to be. It created an additional feedback loop.

• Alisha and Shraddha: Positive feedback loops in Fedora

  This post is the second introduction to the Fedora Summer Coding interns Class of Summer 2019. In this interview, we’ll meet Alisha Mohanty and Shraddha Agrawal, who are both working on Fedora Happiness Packets to promote positive feedback loops in the Fedora community.

• The OpenStack User Survey is now open

  The 2019 OpenStack User Survey is now open and waiting for your input. Whether you’re a user of OpenStack, or an operator utilising it to power your offerings, the OpenStack Foundation (and the rest of the community) want to hear about your usage.

  2018 saw the 11th OpenStack User Survey unveiled at the Berlin OpenStack Summit, giving some fantastic insight into how and where people are using OpenStack across 63 different countries. Usage in Asia surged dramatically in 2018, with 48% of respondents based in that continent, with Europe 2nd at 26% and North America 3rd with 20% of respondents.