Introducing Play with Kubernetes

Every month for the last year, thousands of people have used Play with Docker and the accompanying hands-on Play with Docker Classroom training site. These sites allow you to use and learn Docker entirely within your own browser, without installing anything. Last summer, we quietly launched the companion site Play with Kubernetes, to give people a full command line while learning Kubernetes on the command line. And today we’re launching a new Kubernetes training site, the Play with Kubernetes Classroom.

The Play with Kubernetes Classroom is a workshop environment just like the Play with Docker Classroom. We currently have an extensive Kubernetes workshop originally based on Jérôme Petazzoni’s Container Training Kubernetes workshop. But instead of doing it all locally or setting up VMs in the cloud, you can now run through the workshop entirely in the browser.

Like the Play with Docker Classroom, we’ll be curating contributions of additional labs from the community. So give Kubernetes in your browser a try, and then come on over to the Play with Kubernetes repository to share your own tutorials with the community.

• Check out the Play with Kubernetes Classroom
• Try Kubernetes in Docker Enterprise Edition

Try Kubernetes in the browser Continue reading

Plan Your DockerCon 2018 Conference Experience: Everything an Enterprise Architect Needs to Know

DockerConSan Francisco 2018 is just around the corner and we’re here to help Enterprise Architects learn what Docker can do for them. DockerCon isn’t just for developers and we want to help you find the sessions and experiences that we’ve created that are developed with this role in mind:

In 2015, I attended DockerCon for the first time. I was sitting in a chair and listening to the amazing stories and ideas presented by speakers at the conference, which set off a chain of events that led to today. I feel privileged, and am really looking forward to being on stage and sharing our transformational journey to inspire the people who would sit in that chair. 
Alex Iankoulski, Principal Software Architect, Baker Hughes GE

The first thing to notice is that as you build your DockerCon agenda this year, we have a “Journey” theme that will help guide you during the conference. Whether you’re just “Getting Started” in your learning about containerization or you want to hear about “Innovation” using the Docker container platform for data sciences, AI, machine learning, and IoT, we have sessions that will be just right for you.

You can will also find content we’ve Continue reading

Posts from the Past, May 2018

This month—May 2018—marks thirteen years that I’ve been generating content here on this site. It’s been a phenomenal 13 years, and I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to share information with readers around the world. To celebrate, I thought I’d do a quick “Posts from the Past” and highlight some content from previous years. Enjoy!

May 2017

A year ago, I touched on the topic of using a Makefile with Markdown documents to help streamline the process of generating various output formats.

I also explored the use of custom SSH configurations with SSH bastion hosts and uncovered a very basic (but important) error I’d previously overlooked.

May 2016

Two years ago in May I was using Terraform to build an etcd v2 cluster on OpenStack.

May 2015

Three years ago, I was doing a lot of work in my home lab, automating the setup of physical hosts. That led to a post on a fully automated Ubuntu install, which was also related to this post on using an Apt proxy (via apt-cacher-ng).

May 2014

Four years ago, I shared some useful Markdown tools for OS X. Of those tools, I still use pandoc pretty extensively.

May 2013

Five years ago, Continue reading

Red Hat Summit 2018 Automation Recap

This year Red Hat Ansible Automation was featured in more talks than ever before at Red Hat Summit, as there was an emphasis on automation and management content throughout the conference. Below you’ll find links to the recorded sessions that included Ansible and our Red Hat Management friends from Red Hat CloudForms, Red Hat Insights and Red Hat Satellite. We hope you enjoy these sessions and share with your colleagues.

Want even more? Mark your calendar for AnsibleFest! We’ll be in Austin, TX this year for two days of conference on Oct 2-3.

SESSION RECAP:

Operations risk remediation in highly secure infrastructures

If you have data concerns about using Red Hat’s operations analytics service, Red Hat Insights, this session is for you. Insights speeds up discovery and automates remediation of potential problems in your Red Hat infrastructure quickly and simply. In this session, William Nix and Bill Hirsch of Red Hat show you how to configure Red Hat Insights to obfuscate and remove sensitive data from Red Hat Insights analytics. You'll learn how Red Hat Insights securely transfers, stores, and protects the data it does use while you're taking advantage of the service. 

Push-button deployments with Red Hat Continue reading

Easy Integration Using Ansible Tower and Red Hat Insights

Welcome to another entry in the Getting Started Series! In our previous post, we covered how to get started with Ansible and Windows.

In this post we’re going to discuss how you can launch automatically generated playbooks to correct compliance, security and patching issues found in your inventory by Red Hat Insights. To start off, let’s do a brief overview of the magic sauce that is Insights. 

What is Insights?

Red Hat Insights is a predictive IT risk analytics tool that helps enable users to proactively identify, prioritize, and resolve vulnerabilities in their environments before business operations are affected. It does this by evaluating select files on a system, getting smarter and better at predicting outcomes with each piece of information it takes in.

Insights conducts an in-depth analysis of customers’ IT infrastructure and compares this information against Red Hat’s constantly expanding knowledge base to identify key risks and vulnerabilities. If a susceptibility or risk is found, Insights has the ability to generate a playbook for most critical problems detected, which can then be used in Ansible Tower to resolve any issues.

Ansible and Insights?

So if Insights makes Ansible Playbooks...how do you use them in Ansible Tower? Continue reading

DockerCon SF 18 and Spousetivities

DockerCon SF 18 is set to kick off in San Francisco at the Moscone Center from June 12 to June 15. This marks the return of DockerCon to San Francisco after being held in other venues for the last couple of years. Also returning to San Francisco is Spousetivities, which has organized activities for spouses, significant others/domestic partners, friends, and family members traveling with conference attendees!

Registration is open right now, so hurry on over and sign up for one or more activities. What’s that—you’re wondering what’s been planned? Here’s a quick overview:

• The activities kick off on Tuesday, June 12, with a tour of Monterey and Carmel. I must admit I’m a bit jealous; I’d love to have the opportunity to visit Cannery Row and see the canneries that inspired John Steinbeck. Join this tour and you’ll have that opportunity! This is a full-day activity, leaving the InterContinental at 8pm and returning around 7pm that evening. Lunch is included, of course.
• On Wednesday, June 13, Spousetivities has arranged for private transportation to the Sonoma Valley for some wine tastings! You’ll visit a couple different wineries and get to enjoy lunch in Sonoma. This event will wrap up back Continue reading

Windows Containers in Docker Enterprise Edition 2.0 – Top 7 Questions from the Docker Virtual Event

The recent Docker Virtual Event, Unveiling Docker Enterprise Edition (EE) 2.0, gave us the opportunity to highlight some of the great reasons to adopt a containerization strategy across your entire application portfolio. In Part 1 of this blog, we covered some of the top questions we received about Swarm and Kubernetes orchestration in Docker Enterprise Edition – the world’s leading enterprise-ready container platform. Today, we will cover some of questions about running Windows containers.

If you missed the live event, don’t worry! You can still catch the recording on-demand here.

Docker Enterprise Edition: Only Fully-Supported Solution for Running Containers on Windows Server 2016

Q: I thought containers were based on Linux processes. How do Windows-based Docker containers work?

A: Docker has been partnering with Microsoft since 2014 to deliver all the same benefits of Docker containers to Windows Server so that customers can easily run .NET and IIS applications in Docker containers. We worked closely together on changes to the Windows Server kernel to support containerization primitives, added Windows Server support to the Docker Engine and CLI  and added multi-architecture support for Windows images. The result is Docker containers run natively on Windows Server 2016, leveraging the Continue reading

Manually Installing Firefox 60 on Fedora 27

Mozilla recently released version 60 of Firefox, which contains a number of pretty important enhancements (as outlined here). However, the Fedora repositories don’t (yet) contain Firefox 60 (at least not for Fedora 27), so you can’t just do a dnf update to get the latest release. With that in mind, here are some instructions for manually installing Firefox 60 on Fedora 27.

These instructions assume you have a dnf-installed version of Firefox (typically Firefox 59) already installed on your Fedora system. These steps should allow you to upgrade your Fedora system to Firefox 60:

1. Download the Firefox 60 archive (typically named firefox-60.0.tar.bz2 or similar) onto your Fedora system. You can do this with your already-installed version of Firefox, but be sure to close/quit Firefox before proceeding with the rest of the instructions.
2. Make a copy of /usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop; you’ll use this later.
3. Remove the version of Firefox installed from the Fedora repositories with dnf remove firefox. This will remove the firefox.desktop file you copied in the previous step (which is why you copied it somewhere else).

4. Use bunzip2 to decompress the downloaded Firefox 60 archive. This will leave you with a plain . Continue reading

Windows Package Management

Welcome to the third installment of our Windows-centric Getting Started Series!

In the previous post we covered how you can use Ansible and Ansible Tower to help manage your Active Directory environment. This post will go into how you can configure some of those machines on your domain. Most of this post is going to be dominated by specific modules. Ansible has a plethora of Windows modules that can be found here. As time is not a flat circle, I can’t discuss all of them today but only a few that are widely used.

MSIs and the win_package Module

So you got your domain up, you have machines added to it, now let’s install some stuff on those machines. I do have a few notes before moving forward in regards to the modules we’ll be discussing. The module win_msi is deprecated and will be removed in Ansible 2.8 (current version as of this post is 2.5). In its place you can use win_package which I will be using throughout this post.

Alright, back to installing stuff. The win_package module is the place to be. It is used specifically for .msi and .exe files that need to be installed Continue reading

One Week Until Spousetivities in Vancouver

Only one week remains until Spousetivities kicks off in Vancouver at the OpenStack Summit! If you are traveling to the Summit with a spouse, significant other, family member, or friend, I’d encourage you to take a look at the great activities Crystal has arranged during the Summit.

Here’s a quick sneak peek at what’s planned:

• On Monday, May 21, Spousetivities attendees will enjoy a tour of the highlights of Vancouver (including things like Stanley Park, Gastown, Chinatown, and Granville Island Public Market), followed by fun at the Capilano Suspension Bridge Park. (If for no other reason, you’ll want to attend this to see Crystal face her fear of heights and suspension bridges!)
• On Tuesday, May 22, Spousetivities is off to Whistler Village. Along the way, see wonderful sights like Howe Sound, Britannia Beach, and Shannon Falls. Then you’ll get to ride the Sea to Sky Gondola up to Squamish for an adventure-filled time.
• On Wednesday, May 23, the activities wrap up with a wine tour. This will include tastings at three beautiful wineries and a lovely picnic lunch at one of the venues.

All of these tours includes private transportation, and the pricing for each of the events is Continue reading

Technology Short Take 99

Welcome to Technology Short Take 99! What follows below is a collection of various links and articles about (mostly) data center-related technologies. Hopefully something I’ve included will be useful. Here goes!

Networking

• David Gee makes the connection between coffee and network automation. No, really. It’s worth reading.
• Matt Oswalt, one of the co-authors of our recently-released network automation book from O’Reilly, recently tackled the topic of running Kubernetes with Tungsten Fabric (formerly known as OpenContrail). A network engineer using AWS and CloudFormation? Yep, get used to it folks—it’s where the industry is headed.
• Vince Power provides a high-level overview of some of the key principles underlying Kubernetes networking.

Servers/Hardware

Sorry, I don’t have anything for you. Feel free to send me links you’d like me to consider for inclusion in the next Tech Short Take!

Security

• Mike Foley talks about new support for Virtualization Based Security (VBS) and Credential Guard in vSphere 6.7.
• Chris Short examines some of the security-related aspects of the adoption of containers.
• The Kubernetes community reflects on fixing the subpath volume vulnerability in Kubernetes.
• Michael Ducy of Sysdig outlines a configuration combining Sysdig Falco, NATS, and Kubeless for “active Kubernetes security.” While the post Continue reading

Welcome New Docker Captains

Today, we are excited to announce our new Docker Captains! Docker Captains are technology experts and leaders in their communities who are passionate about sharing their Docker knowledge with others. Individuals are awarded the distinction of Docker Captain because of their technical expertise, content and technical contributions to the community  and outstanding engagement with Docker’s users.

The New Captains Class

Follow the Captains

Follow all of the Captains on twitter. Also check out the Captains GitHub repo to see what projects they have been working on.

Learn more about each Captain

Docker Captains are eager to bring their technical expertise to new audiences both offline and online around the world – don’t hesitate to reach out to them via the social links on their Captain profile pages. You can filter the captains by location, expertise, and more.

Alex Iankoulski

Alex has 20+ years of experience in the software industry. He is currently a Principal Software Architect for Data Science and Analytics at Baker Hughes, a GE Company where he focuses on enabling deep learning scientists and analytics experts to bring algorithms and new modeling techniques from prototype to production using containers. He believes that good tools get out of Continue reading

Freedom from Lock-in With Docker Enterprise Edition

For customers, choosing the right container platform is more than a technical decision – it is a business decision. As with any decision of this nature, it is critical that the container solution has the flexibility to evolve as business requirements change. Unfortunately, all container platforms are not the same – some lack security while others force organizations into a prescriptive operating model. And even worse, most container platforms will “lock in” an organization to a single OS, single cloud, single type of application, single development  –  leading CIOs down a single dead-end path they will have to abandon in less than two years.

So how can organization address continue to move forward with modern technologies, Continue reading

TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU: Manage Windows like Linux with Ansible

One of my favorite guilty pleasures is the movie "10 Things I Hate About You". If you're not familiar with it, it's a 90's teenybopper flick that's loosely based on Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew". In the movie, our hero Patrick is surreptitiously paid to woo the man-hating Kat so that slimy Joey will be allowed to date her younger sister Bianca. Kat initially can't stand Patrick and his numerous bad habits, but by the end of the story has fallen for him. She reads him a poem that starts off describing ten things she hates about him, but wraps it up declaring her love for him instead.

I love Windows, but I know many Linux admins can't stand it, and avoid working with it at any cost. While working on a talk to espouse the use of Ansible to manage Windows in the same way as Linux, I imagined a Linux admin discovering the power of Ansible's features and common language to see the beauty in an automated Windows setup. It inspired me to write my own version of Kat's poem:

I hate that you're not SSH, and the shell that you call "Power",
I hate Continue reading

Integrating Kubernetes with Docker Enterprise Edition 2.0 – Top 10 Questions from the Docker Virtual Event

At our recent virtual event, we shared our excitement around Docker Enterprise Edition (EE) 2.0 – the most complete enterprise-ready container platform in the market. We shared how this release enables organizations like Liberty Mutual and Franklin American Mortgage Company, both presenters at DockerCon 2018, to efficiently scale their container environment across many teams while delivering choice and flexibility. We demonstrated some of the new advanced capabilities around access controls with secure application zones and building a consistent software supply chain across regions, and highlighted how easy and interchangeable it is to leverage both Swarm and Kubernetes orchestration in the same environment.

If you missed the live event, don’t worry! You can still catch the recording on-demand here.

We got great questions throughout the event and will address the most common ones in our blog over the next few days.

Choice of Orchestration – Swarm and Kubernetes

One of the highlights of this release is the integration of Kubernetes, making Docker EE the only platform that runs both Swarm and Kubernetes simultaneously on the same cluster – so developers do not need to make an orchestration choice. Operations teams have the flexibility to choose orchestrators interchangeably.

Q: Is Continue reading

Hybrid Operations with Ansible

Hybrid Operations with Ansible

One of the most common questions I hear while talking about Ansible's support for cloud providers is whether it will work in hybrid environments. You may not be able to use the ec2 module to create an instance in your datacenter, but Ansible has modules for RHV, OpenStack, and VMWare to talk to virtualization tools in your datacenter. I love working in AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud but most environments I've worked in have had on-prem systems as well.

That's what I've been invited to Red Hat Summit to talk about -- best practices for automating all the infrastructure at your disposal, not just the cloud services. My demos will feature a couple new Ansible Core/Engine 2.5 features, as well as preview new 2.6-only features.

My favorite feature to show off is part of the new ec2_instance module. In the demo we'll have a look at how Tower provisioning callbacks are now built in to the ec2_instance module, making provisioning brand new instances as easy as:

- ec2_instance:
  image:
    id: "{{ latest_centos.image_id }}"
  key_name: my-secret-key
  instance_type: t2.large
  name: call-me-maybe
  security_groups:
    - demo-web-sg
  # COOL MAGIC HERE
  tower_callback:
    host_config_key: "{{ your_secret_here }}"
    job_template_id:  Continue reading

Active Directory & Ansible Tower

 Welcome to the second installment of our Windows-centric Getting Started series!

Last time we walked you through how Ansible connects to a Windows host. We’ve also previously explored logging into Ansible Tower while authenticating against an LDAP directory. In this post, we’ll go over a few ways you can use Ansible to manage Microsoft’s Active Directory. Since AD plays a role in many Windows environments, using Ansible to manage Windows will probably include running commands against the Active Directory domain.

First, Set Your Protocol

We’ll be using WinRM to connect to Windows hosts, so this means making sure Ansible or Tower knows that. Machine credentials in Ansible Tower can be created and used along with variables, but when using Ansible in a terminal the playbook should make it clear with variables:

---
- name: Your Windows Playbook
  hosts: win
  vars:
    ansible_ssh_user: administrator
    ansible_ssh_pass: ThisIsWhereStrongPassesGo
    ansible_connection: winrm
    ansible_winrm_server_cert_validation: ignore

- tasks:

Along with using the local admin account/pass, the WinRM connection method is named specifically. The variable to ignore the certificate validation is for standalone, non-domain hosts because a domain-joined instance should have certificates validated on the domain.

Where’s the Domain?

Speaking of domains, Ansible can spin up a new domain Continue reading

OpenDKIM-OpenDMARC and a Chrooted Postfix Instance

No Postfix installation is complete without OpenDKIM and OpenDMARC.

While some people go for all-in-one solutions that does all of these for them with a single command or two (and then cry to their gods as soon as the system fails as they have no idea how to debug it), the rest of us rather to be our own boss and set things up manually and carefully based on our needs, so we can troubleshoot it if when things go wrong.

This however, is easier to be said than done. In this post, rather than trying to explain what they are and how they can be set up (which can be found everywhere on the web), I am mainly going to address the issues that you might encounter when running your Postfix and these Milters on the same system running Ubuntu.

Background

OpenDKIM and OpenDMARC are designed to be used as Milters. They are two different programs for two different -and yet related- tasks.

They show a lot of similarities in their configuration files and both suffer from the same limitations when running along with a chrooted Postfix instance.

While in a recent enough version of Postfix, daemons are Continue reading

Docker Compose and Kubernetes with Docker for Desktop

With KubeCon EU happening in Copenhagen, we looked back at the most popular posts with our readers on Docker and Kubernetes. For those of you that have yet to try Docker EE 2.0, this blog highlights how in Docker for Desktops you can use Docker compose to directly deploy an application onto a Kubernetes cluster. 

If you’re running an edge version of Docker on your desktop (Docker for Mac or Docker for Windows Desktop), you can now stand up a single-node Kubernetes cluster with the click of a button. While I’m not a developer, I think this is great news for the millions of developers who have already been using Docker on their Macbook or Windows laptop because they now have a fully compliant Kubernetes cluster at their fingertips without installing any other tools.

Developers using Docker to build containerized applications often build Docker Compose files to deploy them. With the integration of Kubernetes into the Docker product line, some developers may want to leverage their existing Compose files but deploy these applications in Kubernetes.

With Docker on the desktop (as well as Docker Enterprise Edition) you can use Docker compose to directly deploy an application Continue reading

What are Docker Captains looking forward to at DockerCon

With less than 6 weeks until DockerCon 2018, we can barely contain our excitement! From their favorite tips and tricks for using Docker in production or levering Docker for Machine Learning, Docker Captains come together at DockerCon to share their knowledge and collaborate with the broader community. We’ve asked Docker Captains to share what they are most looking forward to at DockerCon. Here are some of their responses.  

“I’m looking forward to meeting the many other Docker enthusiasts and champions and listening to other cool things that Docker makes possible” – Kinnary Jangla, Pinterest

“ In 2015, I attended DockerCon for the first time. I was sitting in a chair and listening to the amazing stories and ideas presented by speakers at the conference, which set off a chain of events that led to today. I feel privileged, and am really looking forward to being on stage and sharing our transformational journey to inspire the people who would sit in that chair. I am also looking forward to hearing the keynotes and the exciting new announcements that I am sure are being lined up for the big event.” – Alexandre Iankoulski, Baker Hughes

“Learning about the Continue reading