Flux7 Blog

Gartner releases its annual Magic Quadrant look at the Cloud market. While the review has been updated to cover both cloud infrastructure and platform services, the result should be familiar to many as Gartner places AWS as a Leader within the report, giving it the highest score for both its ability to execute and completeness of vision. Remaining true to past reports, Gartner places Microsoft and Google as the only other market leaders while IBM, Oracle, Alibaba and Tencent Cloud are all relegated as Niche Players.

Looking to further its vision, Google Cloud announces a new category that it is calling a Business Application Platform. Google describes it as, “encompassing API management, no-code application development, automation and data insights capabilities.” The goal is to provide a “consistent way of consuming services, data, and functionality, via APIs, despite complex backends and empower non-technical employees to quickly build data-driven applications without coding.” The Business Application Platform leverages Google Cloud’s Apigee API management and AppSheet investments.

DevOps News

• At the .NEXT Conference, Nutanix unveiled Karbon Platform Services. Described in a press release as “a Kubernetes-based multicloud Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) with automated system-managed security,” the new services seek to speed microservice application development and deployment across clouds. The company says it provides IT operations teams with a simplified and consistent application lifecycle management and security framework.
• GitHub integrates with Microsoft Teams. Now available in a public beta.
• In related Git news, Perforce Software announces the availability of Helix TeamHub Command-Line Client. The new hth-cli empowers developers to execute Git commands across repositories.
• Microsoft makes the source code of TensorFlow-DirectML available to the public as an open-source project on GitHub. An extension of TensorFlow on Windows, TensorFlow-DirectML is a machine learning framework for developing, training, and distributing machine learning models.
• Now in preview, Microsoft announces Azure Cost Management + Billing’s cost allocation which helps enterprises get a view into costs for internal chargeback.
• Azure Cloud Services introduces support for Resource Health, giving live health status and status history on Portal for Azure Cloud Services deployments, roles and role instances.
• Red Hat brings the Red Hat Marketplace to enterprises looking for a single place to find, try, buy, deploy and manage enterprise applications for their hybrid IT infrastructure. The market currently offers 50 products from categories like security and developer tools.

AWS News 

• Amazon EKS expands to support assigning EC2 security groups to Kubernetes pods. Whereas before all pods on a node shared the same security group, operators can now use EC2 security groups to secure applications with varying network security requirements on shared cluster compute resources.
• In other EKS news, the service also now supports the creation and management of EKS Fargate profiles using AWS CloudFormation. The new functionality should make it easier for operators to templatize and configure EKS clusters to use AWS Fargate in a single step.
• AWS makes it easier to find anomalies with AWS X-Ray’s new X-Ray Insights, now in preview. The feature uses anomaly detection to proactively identify issues signaled by increases in the fault rate of an application. Operators can use X-Ray Insights to determine root cause and see upstream and downstream services affected.
• AWS Systems Manager adds the ability to patch on-demand in two clicks. According to a blog announcement, operators can now initiate on-demand scanning for patch compliance in accordance with patch rules, remediate when patches are out of compliance within seconds using AWS Systems Managers Patch Manager, and track the progress in real-time.
• Amazon CloudWatch makes two announcements. First, it has released a Java client library for the Embedded Metric Format, helping operators ingest complex high-cardinality application data in the form of logs, from which they can create actionable metrics. And operators can use Amazon CloudWatch to monitor Prometheus metrics from Amazon ECS, Amazon EKS, AWS Fargate, and Kubernetes clusters. This means that operators can now automatically discover services for containerized workloads.

Flux7 News

• DevOps World has gone Virtual and we’re proud to have our very own Elysia Lock presenting DevOps Metrics that Matter on Thursday, Sept ember 24th at 7:30 – 8:00 a.m. Pacific Time.  Check out the sessions and register here: https://sessions.devopsworld.com/sessions
• In uncertain times, it’s a natural reaction to focus on funds. Yet, there is a clear difference between tripping over dollars to pick up pennies and being a good steward of one’s budget, ensuring systems are optimized for cost efficiency. Fortunately, cloud cost optimization is a pillar in both AWS’s Well Architected Framework and Microsoft Azure’s Architecture Framework. Indeed, with the help of several tools offered by the cloud providers themselves and some analysis, cloud cost optimization can be achieved. Read How: Seven Cloud Cost Optimization Resources

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.