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Technology Short Take #69

Welcome to Technology Short Take #69! In this post, I’ve collected a variety of links related to major data center technology areas. This episode is a bit long; sorry about that!

Networking

  • Lindsay Hill recently noted that he’s been working to add support to netmiko for the Brocade ICX and MLXe, and is looking into support for VDX. Netmiko, if you haven’t heard, is a fantastic Python library that’s really useful when writing Python-based network automation scripts.
  • I mentioned a while back that I was taking a deeper look at MPLS (to which my colleague Bruce Davie—one of the creators of MPLS—jokingly quipped, “Why are you looking at legacy tech?”). Honestly, I haven’t had a great deal of time to make much progress, but I did come across this article by Sudeep Goyal which helped reinforce some of the basics I already knew. It may prove useful to others who are also seeking to improve their knowledge of MPLS.
  • Peter Phaal has been writing some really interesting stuff (interesting to me, at least). First up, there’s a great article on using IPVLAN with Docker and Cumulus Linux (with a tie back to sFlow, naturally!). I’m really eager to Continue reading

It all started with Dockerizing an old version of Confluence with Docker Datacenter

This is a guest post by Shawn Bower

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In my role as Cloud Architect I often hear, “Docker sounds great but it won’t work for my application.”  In my experience Docker can improve the state of many applications including legacy and vendor solutions.  The first production workload at Cornell on Docker was the University’s wiki which is run on Atlassian’s Confluence in April 2015.

Our installation of Confluence is an interesting intersection of legacy and vendor solution.  We have customized the code, to work with our single sign on solution, as well as a custom synchronization with LDAP for group management.  When we started the project to move Confluence to the cloud the infrastructure, the software was old, compiled from the source and was being hand maintained.  
Our installation of Confluence is an interesting intersection of legacy and vendor solution.  We have customized the code, to work with our single sign on solution, as well as a custom synchronization with LDAP for group management.  When we started the project to move Confluence to the cloud the infrastructure, the software was old, compiled from the source and was being hand maintained.  

The stack looked like this:

Indiana University Uses Docker Datacenter for Production-Ready Orchestration

Founded in 1820, Indiana University has over 115,000 undergraduate and graduate students, 20,000 faculty members and eight campuses located throughout the State of Indiana. The University’s vision is to provide their students with the best possible education experience via a world-class IT team.

For almost a decade the university was building custom scripts and deploying their applications onto VMs running on RHEL 6. A process that involved lots of manual work. In addition to this, their environment was optimized for their legacy Java-based applications.

In order to give their students the best experience possible, the University needed to not only modernize their 150 applications that span across both administrative and student lines and include everything from human resources based applications, course selection, finances and other student-facing applications. They also needed the ability to deploy their applications across their multi-host datacenter environment. They required a production-ready solution. A tool that would enable them to build new process around packaging, deployment, management, and scale for both centralized and de-centralized environments at the same time.

For this, Indiana University turned to the Docker Datacenter (DDC) solution. DDC is our commercial solution that delivers a Containers as a Service platform and includes: Universal Control Continue reading

Introducing Ansible Tower 3

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The Best Way To Run Ansible In Your Organization Just Got Better

We’ve been hard at work since the last release of Tower, listening to community feedback and working to create the best possible experience for Tower users. We are pleased to introduce Ansible Tower 3, evolving from Ansible’s simple, powerful and agentless automation and extending that power to your team and organization.

Tower 3 boasts an entirely reworked UI that makes it simpler and easier to use Tower to automate your environments and share your automation. On top of that, we’ve equipped this newest edition of Tower with a host of new features to speed productivity and visibility within your Tower workflows, managing complex deployments and scaling the power of automation.

These features include: 

Expanded and Simplified Permissions

In prior releases of Tower, we operated on an implicit permissions system. For a user to be able to see, and run, a job, they needed permissions on not only the project that housed the Playbook, but also the inventory, and the credential used.

Now, with Tower 3, we’ve made things much simpler… if you have a job that you want a user or team to run, just give them Continue reading

Swarm Mode on a Raspberry Pi Cluster

Last week I sat down with Dieter Reuter from Hypriot. Dieter is a Docker Captain who spends a lot of time working with ARM and Raspberry Pis in particular. Dieter told me how excited he is by Swarm Mode in particular because of how easy it would be to set-up a collection of Internet of Things devices to work together securely.

So we took a look at how easy it is to set-up a Raspberry Pi cluster and run Docker 1.12 in Swarm Mode. Here’s how he ran Swarm Mode:

So if you want to set-up a cluster of your own, he’s provided this helpful guide with a bit more details on how to set-up a Raspberry Pi Cluster in 29 minutes.

Also a number of people have asked after the visualizer that he’s using in demo. This is a Node.js visualizer originally built by the Docker Cloud team for DockerCon Europe. I modded it for DockerCon in Seattle, and released the code in a GitHub repository. I welcome additional contributions.

Download Docker here www.docker.com/getdocker

Try out the new #docker Swarm Mode on a @Raspberry_Pi Cluster by @Quintus23M & @HypriotTweets!
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Only 6 days left Continue reading

DockerCon 2016 Organizer Summit recap

A huge part of Docker’s success can be attributed to the hard work and dedication of the 400+ Docker meetup organizers in 73 countries who collectively support a global community of over 115,000 members. Local Docker meetups help keep the community engaged and updated on all things Docker. With over 250 groups and counting, we are continuously humbled by the dedication and time these individuals take to organize events and all that they do for their local communities. Continue reading

The Ansible At Red Hat Summit Recap

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Red Hat Summit 2016 was the largest gathering of customers, partners and open source contributors yet with Ansible users and executives contributing in various sessions throughout Summit. These sessions covered topics on DevOps, Automation, Management, Best Practices and more. 

Did you miss us at Summit in San Francisco? Well good news, we've compiled a list of all Ansible related sessions below. Also, AnsibleFest 2016 in San Francisco is also right around the corner on July 28th. But if you want to start digging deeper into Ansible now, see below:

 

DevOps Lessons Automating the Deployment of J.Crew's Website with Ansible (PDF)

Oscar Gonzalez

 

Ansible Best Practices For Startups to Enterprises (PDF)

Tim Appnel and James Martin

 

Red Hat Satellite and Ansible Tower by Red Hat: Doing More Together (Video)

Justin Nemmers and Chris Wells

 

When Flexibility Met Simplicity: The Friendship of OpenStack and Ansible (PDF)

Robyn Bergeron and Major Hayden

 

Reduce Complexity and Increase Optimization with Ansible Automation (PDF)

Jon Davila

 

Ansible Accelerates Deployment at Société Générale (Blog)

Fabrice Bernhard and Justin Nemmers

 

Using Ansible to Install Containers On Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host (Blog)

Matt Micene and Greg DeKoenigsberg

 

Ansible Essentials: Deploy Apps, Manage Systems, and Securely Continue reading

Docker Datacenter @ DockerCon 2016: Image security, Engine 1.12 and Burning Man…

Interested in learning more about our plans for Docker in the Enterprise and getting involved in an upcoming Docker Datacenter beta? Let’s take a deeper look. On the second day of DockerCon, the keynote used different situations to discuss enterprise use of Docker. Our CEO Ben Golub broke down several fallacies in IT, CTO Keith Fulton of ADP painted a delicious picture of microservices as chicken nuggets, and Lily and I… well, we averted a massive security disaster and got our costumes ready for Burning Man.

Aside from shiny sequined jackets (not my normal wardrobe, I promise) and Ben’s enthusiastic “business guy” cameo, we presented a prototype of the next version of Docker Datacenter, our commercial solution for running containers-as-a-service (CaaS) in an on-premises or public cloud enterprise environment. Docker Datacenter is an integrated CaaS platform to securely ship, orchestrate and manage Dockerized apps and system resources. The sneak peek during the keynote shows a prototype UI and features. Some of the things you saw may change as we get to launch but what’s important are the capabilities we are bringing to the enterprise platform.

In the keynote presentation we demonstrated these enterprise use cases:

DockerCon 2016: Videos from Microsoft, Cisco and IBM’s Sessions

Major thank you to our Diamond sponsor Microsoft and Platinum sponsors Cisco and IBM! Your continued support of DockerCon helps us organize an awesome conference for the Docker community.

We are excited to share with you the recordings from their sessions in the Ecosystem track. Microsoft’s session with Steve Lasker covered the container workflow. IBM’s Jason McGee and Chris Rosen talk about how to create production ready containers with IBM and Docker and Balaji Sivasubramanian discuss how Cisco covers the solution addressing the needs of enabling product-grade containerized applications.

 

Workflows for Developing, Debugging and Deploying Containerized Applications by Steve Lasker, Microsoft

Watch @Microsoft’s @SteveLasker discuss #container + orchestration + workflow dev at #DockerCon 2016
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Enabling Production Grade Containerized Applications through Policy Based Infrastructure by Balaji Sivasubramanian, Cisco

#DockerCon: @balajisiva explains how @Cisco uses @Docker for #containerized apps in production
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Production Ready Containers from IBM and Docker by Jason R McGee and Chris Rosen, IBM

#DockerCon: @jrmcgee & @ChrisRosen188 on running #containers in production with @Docker and @IBM
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Live Debugging with Docker

During the DockerCon 2016 keynote, I demonstrated a development workflow with Docker for Mac, going from a fresh laptop to a running app in no time. The especially cool part was when I live-debugged a Node.js app running inside a container from my IDE, despite having no Node.js runtime installed on my laptop. Here I’m going to show you how to do it yourself.

Here’s what you’ll need:

  1. Docker: I recommend Docker for Mac or Windows, which are in public beta.
  2. An IDE which supports Node.js remote debugging: I used Visual Studio Code.
  3. A Node.js application: I’ll create a simple one as part of this tutorial.

 

Example Application

Create a directory to work from:

$ mkdir node-example
$ cd node-example

To get our app running, we’ll need 5 files:

  • A JavaScript file to contain the actual app code
  • A package.json to define the npm dependencies
  • An HTML template
  • A Dockerfile to package the whole app in a container
  • A Compose file to set up a development environment. (The Compose file will also come in very handy if the app ever grows beyond a single container, but we won’t bother with that today.)

Create Continue reading

Three Things You Don’t Want To Miss At AnsibleFest San Francisco

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AnsibleFest is returning to San Francisco on Thursday, July 28th, 2016 at the Westin St. Francis in Union Square. It's going to be a great opportunity to meet and connect with passionate Ansible users, developers and industry partners. Whether you're an experienced user or are just getting started, AnsibleFest is for you.

This year AnsibleFest will not be one to miss, featuring the latest and greatest updates on Ansible and Ansible Tower as well as use cases, technical deep dives and best practices.

As AnsibleFest continues to grow so does its offerings. For those who have never attended and for those wanting to know more, here are three things you won't want to miss:

1) Informative General Session

Kicking off AnsibleFest, this session will feature company updates, product roadmap and new directions as well as a featured customer presentation.  Attendees can:

  • Hear from Ansible leadership about company overivew and key areas of focus 
  • Discover more about the Ansible and Ansible Tower product roadmaps
  • Learn about the latest advancements in using Ansible for networking
  • Get up to speed on the Ansible Container project and see where it's heading in the future
  • Learn from our customer and master software engineer, Chris Weaver Continue reading

Support from the Source: Getting Official Docker Support

Docker is the open platform to build, ship and run any application, anywhere. Whether legacy or microservices, Linux or Windows, Docker provides an OS, infrastructure and application architecture agnostic platform for developers and IT organizations to accelerate their application pipeline. Organizations often look for additional tooling and support as they look to bring Dockerized applications into production with SLAs that mirror their own service level commitments to their customers. Docker is available as free open source software or combined with commercial support with enterprise class service levels.

 

Open Source Support

The Docker team and community collaborate together to release updates to the Docker Engine and other related projects every couple of months. Open source support for the Docker Engine is provided through IRC, GitHub, and Docker Forums for the latest released version of Docker software. Any bugs and issues are filed, in the open, to the Docker repo for contributors and maintainers to ask for more information and discuss resolutions. Fixes and patches are then applied and released as incremental versions to the upstream Docker software.

 

Docker Commercial Support

Docker also provides commercial support for the upstream Docker Engine software directly and through authorized support partners. Commercial Continue reading

DockerCon 2016 Videos: Black Belt Track

Videos from the Black Belt track at DockerCon 2016 are now posted online!

Black Belt talks are advanced technical deep dives presented by Docker experts. These sessions are code and demo heavy and light on the slides. From Docker internals to advanced container orchestration, security and networking, this track should delight most container ninjas.

Watch all of the sessions from the Black Belt track below or head to YouTube for the DockerCon 2016 playlist to watch more talks from the conference.

 

The Golden Ticket: Docker and High Security Microservices by Aaron Grattafiori


Check out the slides + video of @dyn___’s #DockerCon talk on #Docker security + #microservices
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Cloning Running Servers with Docker and CRIU by Ross Boucher, Playground Theory


Learn about cloning running servers with #Docker and #CRIU by watching @boucher’s #DockerCon talk
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Docker for Mac and Windows: The Insider’s Guide by Justin Cormack, Docker


Watch @justincormack’s #DockerCon talk for the inside scoop on #Docker for Mac and Windows
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Containerd: Building a Container Supervisor by Michael Crosby, Docker


Watch @crosbymichael’s session on the #Docker ecosystem & lifecycle at #DockerCon 2016
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Continue reading

DockerCon 2016 Videos: Docker, Docker, Docker track

We are excited to share the videos and slides from the Docker, Docker, Docker track at DockerCon 2016!

Note that the following sessions videos from the Docker, Docker, Docker track have already been published in previous blog post:

Check out the videos (and slides) from the remaining sessions below!

Continue reading

Your Docker Agenda for July

Weren’t able to attend DockerCon 2016 last month? Don’t worry, there are several DockerCon recap meetups scheduled this month all over the world!

Have you signed up yet for the Docker 1.12 Hackathon? Teams of up to three individuals will hack the new features included in Docker 1.12 including Swarm Mode, cryptographic node identity, service API, and built-in routing mesh to win some awesome prizes. Submissions are due by July 25th so register your team today and start hacking!

Take a look at this month’s agenda including Docker trainings and meetups in your community.

Continue reading

ADP + Docker Datacenter Delivers Security and Scale for Both Legacy and Microservices Applications

At DockerCon 2016, the second day’s general session featured products and stories related to Docker running in the enterprise. From product demonstrations of integrated security features, to deployment templates to a session featuring Keith Fulton, CTO of ADP, speaking about their evolution to a tech company and how Docker Datacenter enables them to ship faster, securely at scale across apps big and small.

ADP is the largest global provider of cloud based human capital management (HCM) solutions. ADP has over 630,000 clients that span more than 35 million users in over 100 countries. More than just payroll services, ADP delivers solutions across the entire spectrum of HCM for their customers in each one of these areas with right sized versions for SMBs, mid market and large enterprises.

 

 

This breadth and depth of solutions developed over the last 60 years does lead to some complexity in product development. ADP views this as a transition from a services company to a technology company and Docker is the key to future acceleration. Speeding up product development, not just in writing more code faster, but also helping ADP ship the resulting end product faster. Docker enables them to have a common Continue reading

Zenly + Docker 1.12 + 1M teenagers

Zenly is a mobile app that helps you locate your friends in real time. Recently the Zenly app reached the million registered users mark — and half of them signed up in the last three months.

In the words of Steeve Morin, VP Engineering of Zenly, “Behold, the power of teenagers.”

zenlyThe rapid growth in users, traffic and data points generated posed new challenges for the Zenly team.

As one of the early users of Docker 1.12, the Zenly team shared their experience during the keynote presentation at DockerCon US 2016 in Seattle.

Here is the story as told by Steeve, JB Daildo and Corentin Kerisit:

 

The sudden growth of traffic has been both amazing and a real challenge to scale, not on our production stack, but our analytics pipeline as our app started to generate half a billion events a day and counting. Our analytics stack was starting to experience failures due to scaling issues, the costs were rising with how we were running the cluster in the cloud and our 6 person team was challenged in supporting it while also building, scaling and supporting the Zenly app.

What we wanted was to Continue reading

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