Episode 106: Is “observability” just “instrumentation”? Or, monitoring sucks? No, you suck.

The DevOps kids have decided to come up with a new term “observability.” We get to the bottom of the WTF barrel on what that is - it sounds like a good word-project. Also, there’s a spate of kubernetes news, as always, and some interesting acquisitions. Plus, a micro-iOS 11 review.

Meta, follow-up, etc.

• Patreon - like anyone who starts these things, I have no idea WTF it is, if it’s a good idea, or if I should be ashamed. Need some product/market fit.
• Check out the Software Defined Talk Members Only White-Paper Exiguous podcast over there.
• Join us all in the SDT Slack.

Is “observability” just “instrumentation”?

• Write-up from Cindy Sridharan.
• This guy: “Thinking directionally, Monitoring is the passive collection of Metrics, logs, etc. about a system, while Observability is the active dissemination of information from the system. Looking at it another way, from the external ‘supervisor’ perspective, I monitor you, but you make yourself Observable.”
• So, yes: if developers actually make their code monitorable and manageable…easy street! It’s a good detailing of that important part of DevOps.
• Cloud Native Java has a good example with the default “observability” attributes for apps, and then an overview of Zipkin tracing.

Weekly k8s News

• Heptio gets funding, now “has raised $33.5 million in funding to date.”
  • I think we’ll cover this press release in a WP episode.
• Also, something called “StackPointCloud” now with the Istio.
• Mesosphere adding K8s support - “Guagenti also noted that he believes that Mesosphere is currently a leader in the container space, both in terms of the number of containers its users run in production and in terms of revenue (though the company sadly didn’t share any numbers).”
• "I think it’s fair to call Kubernetes the de facto standard for how enterprises will do container orchestration,” Derrick Harris.
• Is Kubernetes Repeating OpenStack’s Mistakes? - Boris throwing bombs
• Meanwhile, an abstract of a containers penetration study, from RedMonk: "Docker, is running at 71% across Fortune 100 companies. Kubernetes usage is running in some form at 54%, and Cloud Foundry usage is at 50%”
• This update from the Cloud Foundry Foundation is a little more, er, “responsible” in pointing out flaws. Instead it just says there’s lots of growth and tire-kicking: 2016/2017 y/y shows those evaluating containers went up from 31% to 42%, while “using” ticked up a tad from 22% to 25%, n=540.
• Oracle’s in the CNCF club! K8s on Oracle Linux, K8s for Oracle Public Cloud. “At this point, there really can’t be any doubt that Kubernetes is winning the container orchestration wars, given that virtually every major player is now backing the project, both financially and with code contributions.”
• James checks in on Red Hat.

Acquisitions & more!

• Rackspace acquires Datapipe “The reason we’re buying them is that we want to extend our leadership in multi-cloud services,” Rackspace chief strategy officer Matt Bradley told me. “It’s a sign and signal that we’re going for it.” Bradley expects that the combined company will make Rackspace the largest private cloud player and the largest managed hosting service.
• Datadog acquires Logmatic.io to add log management to its cloud monitoring platform
• Puppet Acquires Distelli, known for their Kubernetes dashboard.
  • Jay Lyman at 451.
  • Sizing Puppet: “The company has grown to more than 500 employees, and has estimated annual revenue in the $100m range.”
  • Coverage from Susan Hall: “What we haven’t had up to this point is all the requisite automation for moving infrastructure code and application code through any kind of automated delivery lifecycle” and now they gots that. https://thenewstack.io/puppet-will-extend-infrastructure-automation-capabilities-distelli-acquisition/
  • “In May, the company launched its Kubernetes dashboard K8S. It allows users to connect repositories, build images from source, then deploy them to that Kubernetes cluster. You can also set up automated pipelines to push images from one cluster to another, promote software from test/dev to prod, quickly roll back and do all this in the context of one or more Kubernetes clusters… The Kubernetes service is offered as a hosted service or in an on-prem version. It provides notifications through Slack.”
• Google pays $1.1 billion for HTC team and non-exclusive IP license

Security Corner

• The Apple Effect? — Why BMW might get rid of car keys
• Don’t blame Apache — EQUIFAX OFFICIALLY HAS NO EXCUSE
• Is there anything to do here? Setup layers of credit cards? Require Touch ID (etc.) approval of all financial decisions and transactions in your “account”? Food & Safety like inspectors for security?
• Hackers respond to Face ID on the iPhone X

iOS 11

• Coté has been running the beta. It seems fine.
• There’s the usual Re-arrangement of how some gestures work that’s jarring at first, but after using it for awhile, you forget what they even are.
• The extra control center stuff is nice.
• The Files.app is interesting, but not too featureful.
• The new photo formats are annoying because, you know, non-Apple things need to support it (which they seem to?)

Bonus Links Coté gives up on defining DevOps, and more

• Interview about DevOpsDays Auckland.

Is Solaris dead yet?

• Strongly confirmed rumors that Oracle is shutting it down.
• This guy has written a big Solaris-brain to Linux-brain manifesto/guide, plus: “[n]owadays, Sun is a cobweb-covered sign at the Facebook Menlo Park campus, kept as a warning to the next generation.” SICK BURN!
• Layoffs and more: “In particular, that employees who had given their careers to the company were told of their termination via a pre-recorded call — “robo-RIF’d” in the words of one employee — is both despicable and cowardly.”

HPE

• We Can See The New Hewlett Clearly Now, Says CEO Whitman - AI in storage arrays, Docker in OneView.
• Clearly?
• Making money.
• They bought CTP!?
• Selling hardware to cloud providers is rough.

Huawei

• New board.
• Microsoft app support.

We can all agree on food

• Someone has to pay attention to this real world stuff.
• This Tiny Country Feeds the World

More on VMware/AWS

• The possible failures in the partnership - sort of an odd article in that the larger point is “maybe it won’t work.”
• Meanwhile, Matt Asay does some loopty-loops on it all.

JEE

• Code put in github.
• They’re giving it over to the Eclipse Foundation. Probably a good idea.

VMware’s OpenStack

• Little report form 451.
• “Going forward, users pay a onetime $995-per-CPU socket license fee, in addition to ongoing support.”

Recommendations

Brandon: Prophets of Rage.

Matt:

• American Gods, the TV show.
• Zero History: finale(?) to William Gibson’s Blue Ant trilogy
• LOT: a subscription-based service which distributes a basic set of clothing, footwear, essential self-care products, accessories, and media content.
• Engineering the End of Fashion

Coté:

• Rick & Morty.
• These cultural guides are fucking awesome! See America, Australia, and Latvia (no one sang at the meals I was at!).
• Cardenal Mendoza, brandy de jerez. And, you know, cognac/brandy in general - be a fucking adult already, you damn kids.