Managing Cloud-Native Applications

Cloud and containers rewrite monitoring and management rulebooks

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Nomad vs. Kubernetes talk prompts HashiCorp managed service plan

HashiCorp's founders say Nomad and Kubernetes are not mutually exclusive, but the company will launch a Nomad managed service to match cloud providers' turnkey Kubernetes services. Continue Reading

Should you use AI for security in the cloud?

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Netflix Spinnaker pipelines tighten bond with Kubernetes

The Netflix- and Google-led Spinnaker continuous deployment software project has added enterprise appeal with revamped Kubernetes integration. Continue Reading

SRE model requires technical, organizational optimization skills

Practitioners categorize SRE job descriptions two ways -- by distributed systems architecture design that evolves rapidly, and also by the ability to optimize human workflows. Continue Reading

Jenkins on Kubernetes is promising, but integration needs work

Jenkins and Kubernetes are a natural fit for automated application development and delivery, and the open source community has plans to improve how Jenkins runs on containers. Continue Reading

How to achieve application performance improvement in ops

With more complex infrastructure and applications comes increased need for sophisticated performance monitoring and management tools, accompanied by strengthened processes. Continue Reading

GCP Marketplace beats AWS, Azure to Kubernetes app store

Google is the first major public cloud provider to sell prepackaged apps for container orchestration clusters, but expect AWS and Azure to follow quickly with Kubernetes marketplaces of their own. Continue Reading

Istio service mesh tech boosts Kubernetes' work, with trade-offs

Why wouldn't IT teams use a tool that enables developers to focus on writing app code and operations to focus on IT resources? For all its benefits, Istio does require a study on pros and cons. Continue Reading

Don't overestimate the benefits of serverless computing

It's natural to be curious about new technologies, but the hype around serverless computing far outweighs its practical advantages. Continue Reading

Cisco roadmap plots course through clouds to DevOps future

From a Google Cloud partnership to API-based network data integration, Cisco showcased application hosting flexibility and DevOps process flows in its product plans at its annual conference. Continue Reading

IT pros test out fresh crop of serverless monitoring tools

Serverless monitoring is still more of an art than a science, but tools that offer comprehensive insight into serverless infrastructure dependencies are in development. Continue Reading

Serverless infrastructure calls for updated IT ops expertise

IT ops participation is necessary for successful serverless infrastructure management, but operations pros will need to sharpen their skills in systems engineering and infrastructure as code. Continue Reading

Serverless deployment lifts enterprise DevOps velocity

Mainstream companies see mounting demand for serverless deployments for their new apps, but for existing apps, it's another story. Continue Reading

Blue/green deployment on the cloud makes updates easier

App deployment in the cloud operates differently than it does on physical infrastructure. The blue/green deployment model has a couple variations, each of which can save on time and errors. Continue Reading

Cloud Foundry users grapple with stateful cloud-native apps

Cloud Foundry shops can refactor stateless apps according to cloud-native principles, but would like to bring stateful applications on board as well. Continue Reading

CF community debates Cloud Foundry and Kubernetes integration

Cloud Foundry PaaS and Kubernetes container orchestration each appeal to DevOps shops, and users want consolidation, as the two camps continue to negotiate. Continue Reading

Serverless technology obfuscates workflows, performance data

Serverless and microservices reshape the application stack into something that looks like a swath of stars in the sky. How do you find a slow, misconfigured component in this interconnected galaxy? Continue Reading

Master application scalability in cloud computing alongside devs

Just because cloud scales endlessly doesn't mean every component in an application should, too. Teams throw money away and degrade app performance when ops isn't involved in design and test. Continue Reading

Serverless technology obfuscates workflows, performance data

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Predictive IT analytics improves distributed application monitoring

Data analysis on app performance isn't an instantaneous process, but it's worth the wait given the time it will save IT admins in problem-solving in the future. Continue Reading

Three steps to plan a self-service IT portal that actually works

There's no point to a self-service IT portal if the offerings are out of touch with how its users conduct business or the instant builds are on hold while additional capacity spins up. Continue Reading

Six simple cloud security policies you need to know

Data protection takes center stage in modern IT. Step through this cloud security checklist to ensure your organization is covering all its bases. Continue Reading

Integrate DevOps and containers with simple tool adjustments

Organizations with an established DevOps pipeline can migrate from VMs to containers without tossing out the entire toolstack. Focus on these steps to enable containers in production. Continue Reading

What's our future if we don't secure IoT devices?

When everything from the coffee maker to the manufacturing plant's robots to the electric grid is connected, shouldn't security be IT's primary concern? Continue Reading

SaaS support challenges IT ops admins to shift gears

SaaS means no more app support, right? In practice, IT ops teams enter a new realm of upgrade management and capacity planning when their user base migrates to a SaaS offering. Continue Reading

What's our future if we don't secure IoT devices?

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Unikernels vs. containers: See the lightweight championship fight

The drive to minimize app hosting resources yielded unikernels and containers, the IT equivalent of a tiny house and apartment. Containing only the barest essentials, unikernels pose unique benefits and challenges. Continue Reading

Jenkins pipeline as code example demonstrates DevOps coordination

Ellucian, which makes software for colleges and universities, offers a pipeline as code example that unifies the release process for multiple generations of apps and brings IT security into the DevOps fold. Continue Reading

IT ops pros predict routes to DevOps efficiency in 2018

Operations admins have a lot on their plates already, and they'll pile on more in 2018. These IT pros and analysts share what's coming and how to handle it. Continue Reading

Know when to implement serverless vs. containers

Containers save resources and reduce deploy times. So does serverless. Containers are a great host for microservices. So is serverless. But the deployment options are more different than they are alike. Continue Reading

The future of cloud computing looks foggy

The concept of cloud, while never sharply defined, may be growing even less clear. The intenet of things, for example, means more connected devices are showing up in more places, an unstoppable trend that will affect the future of cloud computing.

These edge devices and related functions further blur lines between what's cloud and what isn't. To be sure, there's a good reason these initiatives are often talked about as fog computing.

TechTarget contributor Alan Earls explores all this in the cover story of this issue of Modern Infrastructure. He speaks with experts and IT professionals about how edge and fog computing make a difference in how business is conducted. The ability to meaningfully process data as close as possible to the source is potentially powerful for certain types of organizations, though not an easy task to execute. Having both data and the capability to process it so widely distributed -- rather than collected and centralized -- is a shift in thinking. It's also an acknowledgement that the future of cloud computing is headed in some unexpected directions. IT infrastructures will need to adapt.

The cloud will be a key component in this evolution, a fact that may further stretch our understanding of what -- and where -- cloud computing is.

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Configuration management processes take down GRC challenges

Configuration management processes speed deployments, but tools that know effective licenses and data storage details aid in another area that businesses are keen to get right. Continue Reading

A serverless architecture could live in your data center

Just because you don't see the server doesn't mean it's not there. Serverless frameworks are superseding containers, but is the extra abstraction worth it? Continue Reading

Machine learning algorithms make life easier -- until they don't

Algorithms govern many facets of our lives. But imperfect logic and data sets can make results worse instead of better, so it behooves all of us to think like data scientists. Continue Reading

Machine learning algorithms make life easier -- until they don't

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Deploy patches safely and sanely in a CI/CD workflow

Enterprises engaged in a CI/CD workflow must patch systems and apps strategically. There are multiple technologies to consider, including immutable infrastructure and automation. Continue Reading

When the big cloud infrastructure providers aren't the right fit

When a business chooses one of the major providers for its cloud services, there shouldn't be a lot of surprises. You do your homework, consider the available services, select instance types, compare costs and then make a decision. At that point, you should know what you are getting. But what if you don't want what you're getting?

There are scenarios where a business seeks out the services of one of the specialty cloud infrastructure providers. These niche providers compete against behemoths such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform, but not by trying to match them service for service. Nor can they keep pace on price. Instead, these smaller providers focus on particular niches, trying to offer specialized services, customer care and flexibility that the hyperscale providers may struggle to furnish.

The cover story for this issue of Modern Infrastructure delves into the reasons a business might choose a niche player instead of one of the major cloud infrastructure providers. TechTarget's Kristin Knapp reports on how these situations arise and how businesses respond. The right fit, she finds, might not always be found in one of the expected places.

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Staring down the security issues in cloud computing

Adoption of cloud computing has no doubt been slowed by worries about the security of those out-of-sight servers and resources. While reasonable, those worries have given way over time to acceptance and even optimism.

In this month's Modern Infrastructure cover story, TechTarget’s Trevor Jones writes about why security issues in cloud computing are not the impediment to adoption that they once were. In fact, some organizations are coming to the conclusion that their workloads run more securely in a public cloud than in an on-premises environment. Cloud service providers possess security expertise and experience at levels that aren’t as readily available on a typical IT staff, and certifications give confidence that providers can actually do all they claim to do.

The public cloud is not a risky place to do business, though its safeguards are different from those you've put in place to protect your own data center. These differences are most clearly seen when looking at the shared-responsibility model, which addresses many of the security issues in cloud computing. Users and providers must each do their part. Otherwise, the risks will become apparent, and cloud computing won't be what you need it to be.

This issue also looks at how a new wave of products in development brings memory and storage technologies closer together. Nonvolatile dual-inline memory modules, for example, combine the speed of memory with the persistent qualities of storage in some interesting ways. Also included is an article on how some IT shops that have adopted flash storage are simultaneously impressed and disappointed with the results. Costly flash products invariably improve performance, but they won't solve every problem or clear every bottleneck.

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Application support and maintenance add up to operational ALM

An application isn't fully grown when it moves from development to production -- it still needs nurturing to meet its full potential. Continue Reading

How application scalability works in event-driven vs. IaaS computing

Event-driven computing saves IT admins' time and helps application scalability, compared to managing traditional cloud infrastructure. But IaaS and event-driven computing aren't exclusive. Continue Reading

How is runtime as a service different from PaaS or IaaS?

What is runtime as a service and how does it differ from platform as a service and infrastructure as a service? Continue Reading

OpenStack infrastructure turns to containers

OpenStack is far from perfect. In fact, there are a number of hurdles it needs to clear before widespread adoption in the enterprise becomes a reality. However, a recent technology trend might just be what the OpenStack infrastructure needs, and it's one that many originally thought would be OpenStack's death sentence -- containers.

A recent study from OpenStack's user survey showed that containers generated the most interest among the community, a sign that IT is ready to take the leap from virtualization to containers. OpenStack leaders say containers are the central piece to the underlying cloud framework that OpenStack lives on.

Meanwhile, data analytics continues to drive the next wave of IT ops tools by combining input from various platforms to create predictive information for the enterprise. So where does IT go from here? Read on to find out.

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Component cloud model powers agile application development

In the future, IT pros see cloud as a place to spin up applications to respond to problems on the fly. The component cloud model is just step one. Continue Reading