This week I got to dive a little deeper on Kubernetes networking as well as on GitOps and CI/CD best practices. I’m also highlighting Azure services for IoT, such as Azure IoT Central and Azure Sphere. Finally, if you also find it hard to keep track of what’s included with each Microsoft 365 subscription plan, here is a cool website to help you.

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Podcasts

The Azure Podcast

Episode 413: Thinking Cloud Native
Microsoft Cloud Solution Architect Stephen Kaufman gives us valuable insights into the considerations for making applications ‘Cloud Native’ when hosting them on Azure.

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Kubernetes: Networking

Have you heard about extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF)? It’s a new technology that allows safe and efficient extensions to the Linux kernel without requiring changes to the kernel source code or loading kernel modules. Cilium is an open source project that leverages this technology to provide great improvements to networking which can be used in Kubernetes.

Cilium
Cilium is an open source project to provide networking, security, and observability for cloud native environments such as Kubernetes clusters and other container orchestration platforms. At the foundation of Cilium is a new Linux kernel technology called eBPF, which enables the dynamic insertion of powerful security, visibility, and networking control logic into the Linux kernel. eBPF is used to provide high-performance networking, multi-cluster and multi-cloud capabilities, advanced load balancing, transparent encryption, extensive network security capabilities, transparent observability, and much more.

New GKE Dataplane V2 increases security and visibility for containers
Today, we’re introducing GKE Dataplane V2, an opinionated dataplane that harnesses the power of eBPF and Cilium, an open source project that makes the Linux kernel Kubernetes-aware using eBPF. Now in beta, we’re also using Dataplane V2 to bring Kubernetes Network Policy logging to Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE).

AWS picks Cilium for Networking & Security on EKS Anywhere
AWS has just announced the availability of EKS Anywhere to manage on-premises Kubernetes clusters. As part of this, AWS picked Cilium as the built-in default for networking and security. So, as you create your first EKS-A cluster, you will automatically have Cilium installed and benefit from the powers of eBPF.

Introduction to Cilium & Hubble
Hubble is a fully distributed networking and security observability platform. It is built on top of Cilium and eBPF to enable deep visibility into the communication and behavior of services as well as the networking infrastructure in a completely transparent manner.

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Service Mesh

Kiali
Kiali is a management console for Istio service mesh. Kiali can be quickly installed as an Istio add-on, or trusted as a part of your production environment.

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gRPC

openapi2proto
This tool will accept an OpenAPI/Swagger definition (yaml or JSON) and generate a Protobuf v3 schema and gRPC service definition from it.

Streaming with gRPC on .NET
I just couldn’t stop myself to dig more into gRPC on .NET, I found it really interesting and fun in learning. In my last article here gRPC on .NET, I have demonstrated about “How to create gRPC API in .NET 6”. I feel that one is good article to start with for gRPC learning.

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GitOps

If you are serious about using Kubernetes in production, GitOps is a new concept you need to understand.

Guide To GitOps
Have you heard about GitOps and are curious to know what it’s all about?  In this page we’ll describe the principles and patterns of GitOps workflows and how you can implement them to run Kubernetes in production and at scale. We’ll also describe the differences between GitOps and infrastructure-as-code (IAC) configuration management tools and of course show you how to adopt GitOps best practices as part of your own development environment.

GitOps for Istio – Manage Istio Config like Code
At this year’s Kubecon conference held in Copenhagen, Alexis Richardson, CEO of Weaveworks, and Varun Talwar of a stealth startup spoke about GitOps workflows and Istio.  The talks were followed up with a demo and tutorial by Weaveworks’ Stefan Prodan on how to rollout and manage canary deployments to Istio using GitOps principles.

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Azure IoT

Microsoft Azure has a lot of interesting services in the IoT space, not just in the Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) model, but also in the application Platform as a Service (aPaaS) model.

What is Azure Internet of Things (IoT)?
The Azure Internet of Things (IoT) is a collection of Microsoft-managed cloud services that connect, monitor, and control billions of IoT assets. In simpler terms, an IoT solution is made up of one or more IoT devices that communicate with one or more back-end services hosted in the cloud.

What’s the difference between aPaaS and PaaS solution offerings?
IoT solutions require a combination of technologies to effectively connect devices, events, and actions to cloud applications. Microsoft provides open-source Device SDKs that you can use to build the apps that run on your devices. However, there are many options for building and deploying your IoT cloud solutions. The technologies and services you use depend on your scenario’s development, deployment, and management needs.

Glossary of IoT terms
This article lists some of the common terms used in the IoT articles.

What is Azure IoT Central?
IoT Central is an IoT application platform as a service (aPaaS) that reduces the burden and cost of developing, managing, and maintaining enterprise-grade IoT solutions. If you choose to build with IoT Central, you’ll have the opportunity to focus time, money, and energy on transforming your business with IoT data, rather than just maintaining and updating a complex and continually evolving IoT infrastructure.

What is Azure Sphere?
Azure Sphere is a secured, high-level application platform with built-in communication and security features for internet-connected devices. It comprises a secured, connected, crossover microcontroller unit (MCU), a custom high-level Linux-based operating system (OS), and a cloud-based security service that provides continuous, renewable security.

IoT concepts and Azure IoT Hub
Azure IoT Hub is a managed service hosted in the cloud that acts as a central message hub for communication between an IoT application and its attached devices. You can connect millions of devices and their backend solutions reliably and securely. Almost any device can be connected to an IoT hub.

What is Azure IoT Edge
Azure IoT Edge moves cloud analytics and custom business logic to devices so that your organization can focus on business insights instead of data management. Scale out your IoT solution by packaging your business logic into standard containers, then you can deploy those containers to any of your devices and monitor it all from the cloud.

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Cool Stuff

Microsoft 365 Licensing
This is an awsome website, built and kept up-to-date by Aaron Dinnage, to help everyone understand the complexities of the Microsoft 365 licensing models. It allows you to understand the features included with each plan and compare multiple plans feature by feature.

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Have an awesome week!

Photo by Dan LeFebvre on Unsplash