Flux7 Blog

“Accelerated cloud performance” was, according to IBM CEO, Ginny Rometty, responsible for driving a majority of the firm’s Q4 growth which ended with $21.8 billion in revenue. Its Red Hat investment is paying off with a reported 24% increase in quarterly Red Hat revenue and a 21% increase in cloud revenue overall. 

Continuing its charge, Red Hat this past week announced an update to Red Hat Runtimes, its toolset for developing and maintaining cloud-native applications. It now features Red Hat Single Sign-on; Open Liberty, an addition to the runtimes portfolio; a single distribution of Node.js; and several new Kubernetes Operators for Red Hat Runtimes.

DevOps News

• GitLab released version 12.7, which features Parent-Child Pipelines, Pipeline Resource Groups, and a beta of  Windows Shared Runners. Now available, 12.7 also features Code Review Analytics and more informative Merge Request widgets designed to optimize quality and cycle time.
• Jira announced a host of new capabilities for its Roadmap feature including: 
  • Progress bar to get a quick view of progress against the roadmap plan
  • Dependency mapping that shows visual relationships between roadmap items 
  • Confluence macro allows you to share a live Jira roadmap across an organization with the Confluence integration
  • Hierarchy Drill Down which allows you to move from macro-level roadmap items to project details
• Container workflow, analysis, and security tool provider, Anchore announced it has secured $20 million in Series A funding. And, Sysdig, DevOps security providers,  announced it has raised $70 million in Series E funding.
• In other business news, CollabNet and XebiaLabs announced their merger, bringing CollabNet’s Agile planning and enterprise version control solutions together with XebiaLabs’ downstream release orchestration and deployment automation capabilities. Ashok Reddy is the new CEO of the merged company.
• Last, our DevOps consulting team enjoyed this article, KubeInvaders – Gamified Chaos Engineering Tool for Kubernetes by Eugenio Marzo. In the article, he shares all about  KubeInvaders, his gamified chaos engineering tool for Kubernetes and Openshift that he says helps test how resilient your Kubernetes cluster is, in a fun way.

AWS News 

• Amazon enhanced threat detection capabilities in its GuardDuty resulting in fewer alerts (50% fewer for port probes, SSH brute force attempts, and indications of DNS data exfiltration according to an AWS blog post) while reportedly increasing accuracy for commonly deployed architectures. These enhancements are available now in Amazon GuardDuty across all supported AWS regions globally. 
• Amazon SageMaker has added support for TensorFlow 2.0, allowing operators to use Tensorflow 2.0 as a pre-built deep learning container. The new version allows operators to take advantage of advanced capabilities like building models using the SageMaker SDK in managed notebooks, hyperparameter tuning, and distributed training.
  
  Relatedly, AWS Deep Learning Containers have been updated with bug fixes to the SageMaker integration with Tensorflow Server and the latest version of SageMaker Debugger.
• AWS announced that AWS DataSync can now transfer data to and from Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, giving enterprises an automated way to accelerate public cloud migration of self-managed file systems to fully managed native Microsoft Windows file systems in AWS.

Flux7 News

If you are looking for a Cloud Service framework for your business needs, then you have likely come across the terms Serverless, EC2, and Containers. While definitely related, they have unique differences that should be taken into consideration when considering your next project. As a result, Flux7’s IT consulting services team has created a new resource in which compare and contrast for you the different models developers can choose from when deploying virtual infrastructure and applications. 

Download the Serverless vs EC2 vs Containers: A Comparative Study

Written by Flux7 Labs

Flux7, an NTT DATA Company, is the only Sherpa on the DevOps journey that assesses, designs, and teaches while implementing a holistic solution for its enterprise customers, thus giving its clients the skills needed to manage and expand on the technology moving forward. Not a reseller or an MSP, Flux7 recommendations are 100% focused on customer requirements and creating the most efficient infrastructure possible that automates operations, streamlines and enhances development, and supports specific business goals.