Flux7 Blog

At Microsoft’s Ignite conference last week, the firm announced several updates for Azure, most notably Azure Arc which will allow enterprises to run Azure cloud tools on competing clouds, deploying VMs, databases and more on AWS or the Google Cloud. Using Kubernetes as the base for building hybrid cloud deployments, this move underscores Nadella’s strategy to enable companies to use the best technology for them.

In other Ignite news, Microsoft announced: 

• Azure Synapse Analytics – This evolution of Azure SQL Data Warehouse is a limitless analytics service that seeks to marry enterprise data warehousing and Big Data analytics.
• Azure Sentinel, which went GA not too long ago, has new connectors that allow you to collect data from additional sources, including F5, Zscaler, Barracuda, and Citrix. It also now has new hunting queries and machine-learning-based detection.
• New features for Azure Blockchain including a new managed service to simplify tokenization, investments in off-ledger data management, and expansion of ledger choice and developer productivity.
• Expanded support in Azure Security Center, that now includes continuous discovery of managed AKS instances within Security Center’s registered subscriptions, actionable items to help customers maintain security best practices, and host and cluster-based threat analytics.
• Azure Firewall Manager — a new service that gives enterprise customers a single pane of glass to centrally configure multiple Azure Firewall instances in a hub-and-spoke architecture.

DevOps News

• Red Hat introduced Quarkus, a Kubernetes Native Java framework tailored for GraalVM and HotSpot, crafted from best-of-breed Java libraries and standards. The new framework is said to provide an effective solution for running Java in the cloud and with technologies like serverless, microservices, containers, Kubernetes, and FaaS. Developed with a container-first approach for cloud-native Java applications, it unifies imperative and reactive programming paradigms for microservices development and offers an extensible set of standards-based enterprise Java libraries and frameworks. 
• New from HashiCorp this week is the new tfrun import for Sentinel in Terraform Enterprise and Cloud. According to a blog announcement, it provides policy authors access to context of the run itself to enforce, or ignore, policy rules based on the environment it’s being evaluated within. 
• The open source Git project just released Git 2.24. The new version includes commit graphs enabled by default, which means that your repository will see an improvement the next time you run git gc; feature macros; a contributor code of conduct; alternative history rewriting tools; a new hook; and more.
• GitHub announced internal repository visibility that allows an enterprise-owned repository to be read by any member of any organization that belongs to an enterprise account.
• GitHub also announced that self-hosted runners are now available in beta. It notes that since it announced GitHub Actions support for CI/CD In August, self-hosted runners have been one of the most eagerly anticipated updates, allowing you to create the ideal environment for your workflow; use the specific hardware you need; more easily enable access to firewalled on-premises resources or RDP into the environment that’s running your job, and; persist whatever you like for your jobs and not be subject to the six-hour time-out in hosted virtual environments.
   

AWS News 

• Amazon introduces AWS Service Quotas which allow operators to view and manage their limits for Amazon API Gateway. With API Gateway’s integration with AWS Service Quotas, operators can see the maximum number of resources they can create as their API workloads grow. Whereas before operators needed to review the API Gateway documentation to see default limits for the service, and request limit increases through the AWS Support Console, now they can see account-level API Gateway limits, approved limits, and request limit increases with AWS Service Quotas.
• AWS announced Savings Plans, a new pricing model that reduces costs — according to AWS by up to 72% on Amazon EC2 and AWS Fargate — by committing to a consistent amount of compute usage.
• Amazon EC2 C5d instances are now available in three new sizes: 12xlarge, 24xlarge, and Bare Metal. These new instances support the new Intel Vector Neural Network Instructions which will help speed up typical machine learning operations like convolution, and automatically improve inference performance over a wide range of deep learning workloads. C5d instances are ideal for high-performance computing (HPC), machine learning, deep inference, distributed analytics, batch processing, and other applications. 
• AWS released QuickSight Mobile for iOS and Android devices, allowing users to securely get QuickSight insights from your mobile device.
• And, AWS revealed that users can now use AWS Secrets Manager to pass credentials to AWS CodeBuild build jobs by specifying the secrets directly in your buildspec or as an environment variable in your CodeBuild Project.

Flux7 News

• Not every business needs to be Netflix or Amazon. Knowing the best path forward for your business and how a DevOps model can help you get there is the subject of a new Webinar with GigaOm research analyst, Jon Collins and Dr. Aater Suleman, CEO, and co-founder of DevOps Consulting firm, Flux7. Listen as they discuss strategies for applying DevOps in a VUCA world.
• Read our latest AWS case study of a specialty retailer who began its Cloud Journey with Flux7 Secure Start. While the company had a goal to move toward software modernization and technology transformation, it was due for an upgrade to the tax calculation tool, Veri-Tax, that supports its eCommerce site. This was a natural first step. Read how Flux7 and the retailer partnered to replatform for the cloud.
• We also shared the AWS case study of a security firm that sought out help from the IT consulting team at Flux7 to help it prepare its solution for FedRAMP on the AWS GovCloud. Read the story of how Flux7 helped this security company refactor its solution to achieve FedRAMP authorization. 

Written by Flux7 Labs

Flux7 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.