Converting URLs to Jekyll References
In my post about the story behind the migration, I mentioned that I made extensive use of regular expressions (“regexes”) to help reformat portions of the Markdown documents that are used by Jekyll to build this site. In this post, I wanted to briefly share one of the regexes I used (and am still using) to convert URLs to Jekyll references.
First, let me clarify what I mean by Jekyll references. Jekyll offers a tag (not to be confused with content tags, more like a function) named post_url that will automatically build the correct URL when passed the filename of a content source. For example, if my _posts directory had a Markdown file named 2015-01-02-my-first-blog-post-of-2015.md, then I could use the filename (2015-01-02-my-first-blog-post-of-2015) inside a post_url tag, and Jekyll would automatically convert that to the appropriate permalink (URL) for that blog post. If the permalink ever changed for whatever reason, whenever the site is regenerated Jekyll would convert that tag to the new permalink. This helps you ensure that every time you update your site (which, when used on GitHub Pages like I’m doing, means every time you push commits to GitHub using git push origin Continue reading
Ansible Tower 2.1 Released
Today we're excited to release Ansible Tower 2.1, the next version of the UI, Server, and REST endpoint for Ansible Tower. This release adds several major new features:
Surveys may now be created with our easy form builder and can be attached to any job template in Ansible Tower. When launching a job with an attached survey, the system will prompt the user to answer any number of questions - multiple choice, numeric, text, etc. The results of these questions will then be available as variables in Ansible Tower jobs. Surveys are graphically constructed from within the interface with no programming required.
Portal Mode is a simplified view into Ansible Tower. If you have users who are not Ansible experts that need to run Ansible jobs, Portal Mode presents a simple two column view. On one side, there's a list of all the job templates they can launch. On the other side, there's a list of all the completed or in-progress jobs they can view, to know how their job is running.
Combined, these two features provide solid options for users that want to provide self-service features to others. For instance, admins can let developers or QA departments provision Continue reading
Technology Short Take #47
Welcome to Technology Short Take #47! This is the first Technology Short Take for 2015 and the first to be published on the new blog platform. I have quite a bit of information to share this time around, so buckle up and let’s get started!
Networking
- Michael Webster isn’t a name that normally pops up here in the Networking section of my Technology Short Takes, but he recently wrote an article on installing Cumulus Linux from a MacBook Pro that I thought might be handy. I’m particularly jealous that Michael was able to get his hands on a Cumulus-supported switch while here I am—with a full NSX installation just ready to integrate with Cumulus—not making any progress on that front.
- Speaking of Cumulus Linux, here’s a write-up on using Cumulus Linux on Dell Networking switches; in particular, this article describes how to install Cumulus Linux on a Dell S6000-ON. I spoke to some folks at Dell a while ago about getting my hands on a Cumulus-compatible switch, but never heard back. Sure would be nice…(hint, hint).
- The folks over at Weave (who are building a lightweight overlay networking solution for Docker containers) recently posted some thoughts on life and Continue reading
The Story Behind the Migration
A number of people have asked me why I migrated from WordPress—which powered my blog for 9 years—to Jekyll and GitHub Pages. Now that the migration is finally complete, I can share with you the story behind the migration: why I migrated, the process I followed, and some of the tools I used.
Why I Migrated
“Why?” is a question I heard quite a bit as I was sharing updates on the progress of the blog migration over the Christmas/New Year holiday. It’s quite simple, really: I needed to walk the walk.
Allow me to explain. For the last couple of years, I’ve occasionally been giving presentations at VMUG meetings and other events on how to stay relevant in the fast-changing world of IT. The most recent instance was a whirlwind tour of Dallas, Chicago, and Phoenix in September of this last year, where I presented this deck, titled “Closing the Cloud Skills Gap.”
In that presentation, one of the recommendations I made to the audience was to become more familiar with the software development process. That includes tools like Git (and, by extension, GitHub), Vagrant (a quick introduction is available here), and others. I Continue reading
Upcoming Ansible Training Classes
We are pleased to announce to training courses. These courses are taught by members of the Ansible Team and will give a great look at how to get started using Ansible.
In this course, students will explore the origins of Ansible, how Ansible approaches automation, and the common use cases for Ansible. Students will learn about key Ansible concepts, including playbooks, plays, tasks, and modules, and the course will go through step-by-step creation of a playbook to deploy a full application from beginning to end.
The cost is $199.
Choose from one of the dates below.
Blog Migration Complete
The blog migration is finally complete! It’s taken quite a while, but I’ve finally managed to migrate the over 1,600 posts from my original WordPress installation over to Jekyll hosted on GitHub Pages. I’ll have another post later that goes into more detail on the process that I followed (and why) as well as some of the tools that I used in the migration.
As of right now, there are 2 outstanding issues:
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While all the content is here, what’s not here is the comments (yet). I’m still working through some issues with Disqus, but I hope to have the issues resolved soon.
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Also, depending on when you read this, my original domain (“blog.scottlowe.org”) may or may not be working with the new content.
I appreciate your patience as I work through these issues.
I’d also appreciate it if you could let me know if you find anything that’s not working, such as links to other blog posts, code listings, images, etc. Because this entire site is a GitHub repo, if you’re so inclined you’re welcome to clone the repo, fix the problems, and submit a pull request. If you don’t feel like doing that, just drop me Continue reading
Greg DeKoenigsberg’s Blog: A Good Year for Ansible
Ansible's VP of Community, Greg DeKoenigsberg, compiled a nice statistical look back at our 2014.
Here is a nice example of Ansible's growth on GitHub:
Read the full post on Greg's blog.
GigaOm: NASA Uses Ansible to launch web infrastructure into the cloud
GigaOm published a great article on how NASA launches their web infrastructure into the cloud today. The article features our own Jonathan Davila.
To help with the nitty gritty details of transferring those applications to AWS and setting up new servers, NASA used the Ansible configuration-management tool, said Davila. When InfoZen came, the apps were stored in a co-located data center where they weren’t being managed well, he explained, and many server operating systems weren’t being updated, leaving them vulnerable to security threats.
Without the configuration-management tool, Davila said that it would “probably take us a few days to patch every server in the environment” using shell scripts. Now, the team can “can patch all Linux servers in, like, 15 minutes.”
Read the full article on GigaOm.
Read our case study on How NASA Uses Ansible Tower.
Brian Coca: Ansible for Enterprise
Our own Brian Coca presented at the recent OpenStack for Enterprises NYC Meetup and talked about how large companies are using Ansible and Ansible Tower.
Check out his presentation below.
More information on Ansible Tower or Ansible Services.
Download a free preview copy of Ansible: Up & Running
Blog Migration in the Works
You might have noticed that blog content has been a bit sparse over the last few weeks. The reason I haven’t generated any new content is because all my spare time is taken up with preparing to migrate this site to a new hosting platform.
Sometime over the holiday season, I’ll be migrating this site from a hosted WordPress installation to Jekyll running on GitHub Pages. Given that I have 9 years of content (over 1,600 blog posts), this is a pretty fair amount of work.
Most of the “structural” work on the new site is already complete; you can get a preview of the site by visiting http://lowescott.github.io. There’s no content there yet (other than some boilerplate content), but you’ll be able to get a feel for how the new layout will look and work. As you can see, I’ll be using the Lanyon theme, which provides a nice clean layout and a good mobile as well as desktop experience.
There’s still some additional “structural” work to be done, such as adding support for comments (which will be handled via Disqus), but I hope to have that done in the next few days.
Once the Continue reading
Blog Migration in the Works
You might have noticed that blog content has been a bit sparse over the last few weeks. The reason I haven’t generated any new content is because all my spare time is taken up with preparing to migrate this site to a new hosting platform.
Sometime over the holiday season, I’ll be migrating this site from a hosted WordPress installation to Jekyll running on GitHub Pages. Given that I have 9 years of content (over 1,600 blog posts), this is a pretty fair amount of work.
Most of the “structural” work on the new site is already complete; you can get a preview of the site by visiting http://lowescott.github.io. There’s no content there yet (other than some boilerplate content), but you’ll be able to get a feel for how the new layout will look and work. As you can see, I’ll be using the Lanyon theme, which provides a nice clean layout and a good mobile as well as desktop experience.
There’s still some additional “structural” work to be done, such as adding support for comments (which will be handled via Disqus), but I hope to have that done in the next few days.
Once the Continue reading
Ansible Automation on AWS: Webinar Recording
We were proud to have DualSpark join us for a great webinar this week on automation on AWS using Ansible. Presenting from Ansible was Dave Johnson and Patrick McClory handled the discussion from the DualSpark side.
Ansible Automation on AWS: Best Practices by Battle-Hardened Experts
- Using Ansible to manage infrastructure in multi-tier deployments
- Using CloudFormation and Ansible to manage configuration for more complicated scenarios
- How Tower adds visibility to systems at runtime
- Using CloudFormation and Ansible to manage configuration for more complicated scenarios
- How Tower adds visibility to systems at runtime
Be sure to follow
Ansible on Twitter to be informed of all our upcoming webinars.
Download a free trial of Ansible Tower
here.
Ansible Named a Top 10 Open Source Project by OpenSource.com
We are pleased to announce that Ansible has been named a Top 10 Open Source Project for 2014 by Opensource.com. Be sure to watch Michael DeHaan's presentation on why your IT infrastructure should be boring, read his interview with Opensource.com's Jen Krieger and learn about one of his favorite Star Trek quotes.
View the full list here.
Compliance and Automation Using Ansible
Compliance is a big deal in many industries, from e-commerce and PCI, to healthcare and HIPAA, to federal government and FedRAMP. At the core, compliance is all about making sure that IT systems are secure. The controls for the various industries will inevitably have some overlap; there are fundamental security controls that (should) apply to all IT systems. However, as technology advances, even the fundamental controls need to be refreshed in order to address the ever increasing advancements in security threats.When the need comes for your IT environment to be both compliant and automated, Ansible makes the most sense.
Why? For simple but very powerful reasons; readability, encryption, architecture and transport.
Architecture:
For starters, Ansible requires the smallest architecture. In it’s simplest form, none whatsoever, just its installation on your laptop (presuming linux or OSX). Even in our enterprise offering it is a single server. With Ansible there is no notion of Masters, Slaves, Masters of Masters, etc.
Secondly, you don’t/shouldn’t need to change anything. If you run a linux shop, SSH over port 22 is probably already in place for all servers and if you’ve been doing any sort of Windows automation, you likely already have remote Continue reading
Sorting Bookmarks in Safari for Mac OS X
If you’re anything like me, then you may just be a bit OCD or ANAL when it comes to some things. One of those things is, I like my bookmarks/favorites in alphabetical order with folders sorted first....[[ Summary content only, you can read everything now, just visit the site for full story ]]
Some common networking operations in Perl
A collection of various network- and socket API-related functions with code snippets.Ansible’s Mark Phillips at DOXLON
Ansible's Mark Phillips recently presented at DOXLON in London.
The Presentation:
The Video:
Follow DOXLON on Twitter and join the Meetup here.
Ansible Makes Work Easier
Michael DeHaan, the founder of Ansible, gave a lightning talk at the Opensource.com event prior to the All Things Open conference in Raleigh, NC. He talks about how Ansible can make work easier, less stressful and more efficient.
Watch the video:
See the full post at OpenSource.com
Ansible on AWS: Free Best Practices Webinar on December 17th!
We'd like to invite you to a free webinar on December 17th featuring Ansible and our friends at DualSpark, an expert Amazon Web Services consulting partner.
Ansible Automation on AWS: Best Practices by Battle-Hardened Experts
- Using Ansible to manage infrastructure in multi-tier deployments
- Using CloudFormation and Ansible to manage configuration for more complicated scenarios
- How Tower adds visibility to systems at runtime
- Using CloudFormation and Ansible to manage configuration for more complicated scenarios
- How Tower adds visibility to systems at runtime
Presenters:
Patrick McClory (DualSpark) is a software engineer and architect who fell into 'ops by accident.' Through years of experience in multi-platform and multi-layered systems, he's honed his craft and learned how to build systems at scale that both leverage the best of breed software solutions and frameworks as well as the flexibility of highly configurable infrastructure before it was cool to call it infrastructure-as-code. Today, Patrick helps to run the boutique consulting firm DualSpark Partners which focuses on helping clients make a move to the cloud using cloud-native strategies from infrastructure management through to application design and development. Follow Patrick and DualSpark on Twitter.
Dave Johnson (Ansible) started his career at Red Hat prior to its IPO, ultimately building and leading Continue reading
Ansible Chicago Meetup Recap
If you don't follow Ansible's VP of Community, Greg DeKoenigsberg, on Twitter you may have missed his recap of the Ansible Chicago Meetup.
Dean Strelau and Rick Pollak of Trunk Club invited us to host our inaugural Ansible Chicago meetup at their headquarters in downtown Chicago. This is often how it happens: a company that uses Ansible volunteers to host a meetup, and gets the benefit of being seen as a technology leader in their community; we get to show the local community how a prominent user puts Ansible to best use. Everybody wins! We’ve done similar meetups in New York, San Francisco, London, and many other cities.
Trunk Club, though, was one of the most fascinating yet. For those who aren’t familiar with the business model,check out their site for a detailed description. The short version: they talk to you about what you like, they use business intelligence to help their stylists pick out the best clothes for you, and then they send you a trunk full of clothes they think you’ll like. And then you keep what you like, send back what you don’t, and they charge you appropriately. Great model, Continue reading