Network Break Quick Take – New Video Series
New video series Network Break Quick Take
Crystal Notes: Arrays
Arrays in Crystal are an ordered collection of elements, generally of the same type. Although, it is possible to have an array of multiple types. Creating an array Iterating an Array Accessing Elements Array Operations Static Arrays If the size of an array is fixed it is much more...continue reading
Crystal Notes: Variables
Like most languages, variables in Crystal are defined with the = operator. Considerations Variable types are inferred by the compiler and do not have to be specifically defined. When a variable type is declared, it must be assigned a value before it can be accessed. There are no global...continue reading
Crystal Notes: Hashes
Hashes in Crystal are a collection of key/value pairs of defined types. Creating a hash # Deduce the type signature of a hash. typeof(stuff_and_things) # => Hash(String, String) # To create an empty hash, you must define # the intended type of its key/value pairs. # There are 2 ways to define...continue reading
Do you really need a service mesh?
The challenges involved in deploying and managing microservices have led to the creation of the service mesh, a tool for adding observability, security, and traffic management capabilities at the application layer. While a service mesh is intended to help developers and SREs with a number of use cases related to service-to-service communication within Kubernetes clusters, a service mesh also adds operational complexity and introduces an additional control plane for security teams to manage.
What is a service mesh?
A service mesh is a software infrastructure layer for controlling and monitoring internal, service-to-service traffic in microservices applications.
Service mesh provides some of the middleware and some of the components that enable service-to-service communication, such as dynamic discovery. It provides capabilities around service discovery, load balancing traffic across services, security features around encryption and authentication, tracing observability, and more. The service mesh architecture leverages design patterns to enable communication between services without requiring microservices to rewrite applications.
Service mesh architecture
One of the key aspects of how a service mesh works is that it leverages a sidecar design pattern. Services communicate and handle requests via a proxy, which is dynamically injected into each pod. Envoy is one of the most popular proxies Continue reading
Upcoming Live Webinar: Data Center Fabrics
I’ll be teaching a three-hour live webinar on data center fabrics on the 20th of August—
Data centers are the foundation of the cloud, whether private, public, on the edge, or in the center of the network. This training will focus on topologies and control planes, including scale, performance, and centralization. This training is important for network designers and operators who want to understand the elements of data center design that apply across all hardware and software types.
Mitigating the Risks of Multi-Cloud Environments
New security challenges emerge as more organizations launch or expand their multi-cloud strategies as part of their digital transformation initiatives.Helping build a green Internet
When we started Cloudflare, we weren't thinking about minimizing the environmental impact of the Internet. Frankly, I didn't really think of the Internet as having much of an environmental impact. It was just this magical resource that gave access to information and services from anywhere.
But that was before I started racking servers in hyper-cooled data centers. Before Cloudflare started paying the bills to keep those servers powered up and cooled down. Before we became obsessed with maximizing the number of requests we could process per watt of power. And long before we started buying directly from renewable power suppliers to drive down the cost of electricity across our network.
Today, I have a very good understanding of how much power it takes to run the Internet. It therefore wasn't surprising to read the Boston Consulting Group study which found that 2% of all carbon output, about 1 billion metric tons per year, is attributable to the Internet. That’s the equivalent of the entire aviation industry.
Cloudflare: Accidentally Environmentally Friendly By Design
While we didn't set out to reduce the environmental impact of the Internet, Cloudflare has always had efficiency at its core. It comes from our ongoing fight with Continue reading
Announcing Green Compute on Cloudflare Workers
All too often we are confronted with the choice to move quickly or act responsibly. Whether the topic is safety, security, or in this case sustainability, we’re asked to make the trade off of halting innovation to protect ourselves, our users, or the planet. But what if that didn’t always need to be the case? At Cloudflare, our goal is to bring sustainable computing to you without the need for any additional time, work, or complexity.
Enter Green Compute on Cloudflare Workers.
Green Compute can be enabled for any Cron triggered Workers. The concept is simple: when turned on, we’ll take your compute workload and run it exclusively on parts of our edge network located in facilities powered by renewable energy. Even though all of Cloudflare’s edge network is powered by renewable energy already, some of our data centers are located in third-party facilities that are not 100% powered by renewable energy. Green Compute takes our commitment to sustainability one step further by ensuring that not only our network equipment but also the building facility as a whole are powered by renewable energy. There are absolutely no code changes needed. Now, whether you need to update a leaderboard every five Continue reading
Designing Edge Servers with Arm CPUs to Deliver 57% More Performance Per Watt
Cloudflare has millions of free customers. Not only is it something we’re incredibly proud of in the context of helping to build a better Internet — but it’s something that has made the Cloudflare service measurably better. One of the ways we’ve benefited is that it’s created a very strong imperative for Cloudflare to maintain a network that is as efficient as possible. There’s simply no other way to serve so many free customers.
In the spirit of this, we are very excited about the latest step in our energy-efficiency journey: turning to Arm for our server CPUs. It has been a long journey getting here — we started testing our first Arm CPUs all the way back in November 2017. It’s only recently, however, that the quantum of energy efficiency improvement from Arm has become clear. Our first Arm CPU was deployed in production earlier this month — July 2021.
Our most recently deployed generation of edge servers, Gen X, used AMD Rome CPUs. Compared with that, the newest Arm based CPUs process an incredible 57% more Internet requests per watt. While AMD has a sequel, Milan (and which Cloudflare will also be deploying), it doesn’t achieve the same Continue reading
Cloudflare: 100% Renewable & Zeroing Out Emissions Back to Day 1
As we announced this week, Cloudflare is helping to create a clean slate for the Internet. Our goal is simple: help build a better, greener Internet with no carbon emissions that is powered by renewable energy.
To help us get there, Cloudflare is making two announcements. The first is that we're committed to powering our network with 100% renewable energy. This builds on work we started back in 2018, and we think is clearly the right thing to do. We also believe it will ultimately lead to more efficient, more sustainable, and potentially cheaper products for our customers.
The second is that by 2025 Cloudflare aims to remove all greenhouse gases emitted as the result of powering our network since our launch in 2010. As we continue to improve the way we track and mitigate our carbon footprint, we want to help the Internet begin with a fresh start.
Finally, as part of our effort to track and mitigate our emissions, we're also releasing our first annual carbon emissions inventory report. The report will provide detail on exactly how we calculate our carbon emissions as well as our renewable energy purchases. Transparency is one of Cloudflare's core values. It's how Continue reading
Green Hosting with Cloudflare Pages
At Cloudflare, we are continuing to expand our sustainability initiatives to build a greener Internet in more than one way. We are seeing a shift in attitudes towards eco-consciousness and have noticed that with all things considered equal, if an option to reduce environmental impact is available, that’s the one widely preferred by our customers. With Pages now Generally Available, we believe we have the power to help our customers reach their sustainability goals. That is why we are excited to partner with the Green Web Foundation as we commit to making sure our Pages infrastructure is powered by 100% renewable energy.
The Green Web Foundation
As part of Cloudflare’s Impact Week, Cloudflare is proud to announce its collaboration with the Green Web Foundation (GWF), a not-for-profit organization with the mission of creating an Internet that one day will run on entirely renewable energy. GWF maintains an extensive and globally categorized Green Hosting Directory with over 320 certified hosts in 26 countries! In addition to this directory, the GWF also develops free online tools, APIs and open datasets readily available for companies looking to contribute to its mission.
