Recent blog posts

It’s been a few weeks since I did one of these blog wrapups, and there’s been a lot of great content by the RDO community recently.

Here’s some of what we’ve been talking about recently:

Project Teams Gathering (PTG) report – Zuul by tristanC

The OpenStack infrastructure team gathered in Denver (September 2017). This article reports some of Zuul’s topics that were discussed at the PTG.

Read more at http://rdoproject.org/blog/2017/09/PTG-report-zuul/

Evaluating Total Cost of Ownership of the Identity Management Solution by Dmitri Pal

Increasing Interest in Identity Management: During last several months I’ve seen a rapid growth of interest in Red Hat’s Identity Management (IdM) solution. This might have been due to different reasons.

Read more at http://rhelblog.redhat.com/2017/09/18/evaluating-total-cost-of-ownership-of-the-identity-management-solution/

Debugging TripleO Ceph-Ansible Deployments by John

Starting in Pike it is possible to use TripleO to deploy Ceph in containers using ceph-ansible. This is a guide to help you if there is a problem. It asks questions, somewhat rhetorically, to help you track down the problem.

Read more at http://blog.johnlikesopenstack.com/2017/09/debug-tripleo-ceph-ansible.html

Make a NUMA-aware VM with virsh by John

Grégory showed me how he uses virsh edit on a VM to add something like the following:

Read more at http://blog.johnlikesopenstack.com/2017/09/make-numa-aware-vm-with-virsh.html

Writing a SELinux policy from the ground up by tristanC

SELinux is a mechanism that implements mandatory access controls in Linux systems. This article shows how to create a SELinux policy that confines a standard service:

Read more at http://rdoproject.org/blog/2017/09/SELinux-policy-from-the-ground-up/

Trick to test external ceph clusters using only tripleo-quickstart by John

TripleO can stand up a Ceph cluster as part of an overcloud. However, if all you have is a tripleo-quickstart env and want to test an overcloud feature which uses an external Ceph cluster, then can have quickstart stand up two heat stacks, one to make a separate ceph cluster and the other to stand up an overcloud which uses that ceph cluster.

Read more at http://blog.johnlikesopenstack.com/2017/09/trick-to-test-external-ceph-clusters.html

RDO Pike released by Rich Bowen

The RDO community is pleased to announce the general availability of the RDO build for OpenStack Pike for RPM-based distributions, CentOS Linux 7 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. RDO is suitable for building private, public, and hybrid clouds. Pike is the 16th release from the OpenStack project, which is the work of more than 2300 contributors from around the world (source).

Read more at http://rdoproject.org/blog/2017/09/rdo-pike-released/

OpenStack Summit Sydney preview: Red Hat to present at more than 40 sessions by Peter Pawelski, Product Marketing Manager, Red Hat OpenStack Platform

The next OpenStack Summit will take place in Sydney, Australia, November 6-8. And despite the fact that the conference will only run three days instead of the usual four, there will be plenty of opportunities to learn about OpenStack from Red Hat’s thought leaders.

Read more at http://redhatstackblog.redhat.com/2017/08/31/openstack-summit-fall2017-preview/

Scheduled snapshots by Tim Bell

While most of the machines on the CERN cloud are configured using Puppet with state stored in external databases or file stores, there are a few machines where this has been difficult, especially for legacy applications. Doing a regular snapshot of these machines would be a way of protecting against failure scenarios such as hypervisor failure or disk corruptions.

Read more at http://openstack-in-production.blogspot.com/2017/08/scheduled-snapshots.html

Ada Lee: OpenStack Security, Barbican, Novajoin, TLS Everywhere in Ocata by Rich Bowen

Ada Lee talks about OpenStack Security, Barbican, Novajoin, and TLS Everywhere in Ocata, at the OpenStack PTG in Atlanta, 2017.

Read more at http://rdoproject.org/blog/2017/08/ada-lee-openstack-security-barbican-novajoin-tls-everywhere-in-ocata/

Octavia Developer Wanted by assafmuller

I’m looking for a Software Engineer to join the Red Hat OpenStack Networking team. I am presently looking to hire in Europe, Israel and US East. The candidate may work from home or from one of the Red Hat offices. The team is globally distributed and comprised of talented, autonomous, empowered and passionate individuals with a healthy work/life balance. The candidate will work on OpenStack Octavia and LBaaS. The candidate will write and review code while working with upstream community members and fellow Red Hatters. If you want to do open source, Red Hat is objectively where it’s at. We have an institutional culture of open source at all levels and this has a ripple effect on your day to day and your career at the company.

Read more at https://assafmuller.com/2017/08/18/octavia-developer-wanted/
Quelle: RDO

Extending Microsoft Azure IP Advantage to China

This blog post was authored by Erich Andersen, Corporate Vice President and Chief IP Counsel, Microsoft Intellectual Property. 

Cloud-fueled digital transformation enables companies around the world to create new products and services, and engage with their customers at an unprecedented pace and scale. As they become digital businesses, companies need to address legal challenges which come with participating in the digital economy. Microsoft has developed strategies and assets to manage the intellectual property infringement risks that come with digital transformation. As our customers and partners become digital businesses, we are using our IP expertise and patent portfolio to help our customers protect their innovations in the cloud and focus on developing their business to succeed in their transformation.

Today, we are announcing that Microsoft Azure IP Advantage will be available in China beginning October 1, 2017, ensuring that Azure customers in China can enjoy the same great IP protection benefits as customers in the rest of the world. 

We have had a tremendous response to the program since we launched it last February. Customers recognize that uncapped indemnification coverage, including for open source software that powers Azure experiences, access to 10,000 Microsoft patents, and the springing license right are valuable benefits that help them manage IP risk.

Many customers tell us that the patent pick benefit alone serves as a significant deterrent against patent assertions and that the breadth of our indemnification pledge is unmatched by competitors. ISVs building on Azure are excited by the ability to access 10,000 Microsoft patents to complement their own patent portfolio. TechInsights confirms that, “Microsoft Azure IP Advantage outranks competitors Oracle, Google, Amazon and VMware’s portfolios.” None of Microsoft’s Azure competitors offer a similar package of offerings. The fact that these tools are available for free to eligible Azure customers makes it all the more compelling.

Extending these benefits to China aligns well with Microsoft’s approach to delivering cloud services on a truly global scale. Azure has 42 regions around the world and that number is growing. In China, Microsoft has partnered with 21Vianet to deliver Microsoft Azure services to our customers since March 2014. No other cloud service provider can match the Azure global data center footprint, and many of them are just getting started in China while Microsoft has already been in market for several years. Beyond the public cloud, customers can leverage Azure Stack to use Azure services in their private data centers or in markets where Azure public cloud is not available yet, all through a consistent set of services and APIs.

The benefit of Azure IP Advantage is obvious. A recent study by IPlytics has shown that patent assertion entities have increased their stockpile of cloud computing patents by 130% since 2011. Worse, cloud-related patent litigation in the US has grown by 700% since 2012. We can see these trends taking hold in China as well where patent litigation has increased 158% between 2011 and 2016. Patent filings in China have surpassed the US since 2015.

We’re pleased to be supported in our Azure IP Advantage launch in China by valued customers. MoBike, the world largest bicycle sharing company headquartered in Beijing, is using the Azure platform to rapidly and expand its business outside of China into to Manchester in the UK and other cities worldwide. Azure IP Advantage protections follow MoBike in its international expansion.

Azure IP Advantage is already available outside of China. With this announcement, customers can rely on Azure IP Advantage protections anywhere they deploy their SaaS applications.
Quelle: Azure

More and more fun with Terraform on Azure

Just one month ago, we announced our increased investment in Terraform. It is amazing to see the progress we have already made together with HashiCorp and the Terraform community. In the last month alone, we added support for Azure Container Instances and Azure Event Grid to the Terraform provider. Today at HashiConf, I announced native Terraform support built-in to the Azure Cloud Shell. I also announced 8 verified Azure Modules as part of the Terraform Module Registry launch. Now is a great time for you to try Terraform on Azure.

Terraform Module Registry

HashiCorp just announced their Terraform Module Registry, allowing Users to generate Terraform modules that represent infrastructure topologies that can then be expressed on the cloud platform of their choice. I am pleased to announce that there are 8 Azure Modules available in the Terraform Registry at launch including Load Balancer, Virtual Network, Virtual Machine Scale Sets, Virtual Machines, Azure SQL, Consul and Vault.

As I demonstrated on stage, with these modules, you should be able to deploy complex topologies in an easy way on Azure.

Terraform in the Azure Cloud Shell

We want to make it incredibly easy for you to get started with Terraform on Azure. Today, I also announced that Terraform is available to every Azure user directly in the Azure Portal via Azure Cloud Shell.

The Azure Cloud Shell is a browser-based command-line experience that enables bash commands directly in the portal. This shell can run on any machine and any browser. It even runs on your phone, enabling provisioning using Terraform from anywhere your phone can go.

With the shell, any Azure user can start using Terraform in the portal. You have nothing to install. You have nothing to configure. We even authenticate Terraform to your subscription for you!

I am really excited about the progress we’re making with HashiCorp and the Terraform community. Go ahead, try out Terraform in Azure and the new Terraform Module Registry. Tell us what you think! I hope you find these improvements helpful to deploy your services and solutions.

See ya around,

Corey
Quelle: Azure