Open Source

This is were I will blog about Open Source technology.

Guest on StreamingClouds – Navigating AKS: Scenarios and strategies, GitOps, Fleet Management, Platform Engineering and more

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I recently was a guest on StreamingClouds. StreamingClouds is a multicloud live stream by Microsoft CSA Kevin Evans and Microsoft MVP Robin Smorenburg. With topics ranging from cloud native to hybrid, security, architecture, strategy, careers, personal development, and more.

StreamingClouds is more than just a live stream podcast its also a diverse community where the members can all learn from each other.

To highlight what we covered in the episode, we discussed how to effectively use Microsoft’s AKS documentation, reference architectures, scripts, and tools for your AKS project. We also touched on GitOps, Fleet Management, Platform Engineering and more.

Here is a full description of what we covered on the episode:
Starting an AKS project soon or in the middle of one and lost? Have you tried to use the Microsoft AKS documentation, reference architectures, scripts, and tools but feel stuck on what to use and when to use it? Let’s talk about it and get you the guidance you need. There is a formula and framework to using these AKS artifacts from Microsoft.

In 2022 I wrote a couple of blog posts that give guidance on how to utilize the Microsoft AKS artifacts and tools. In these blog posts I baked in experience from my days delivering AKS projects to Fortune 500 enterprises. We thought it would be a good idea to dive into the content from these live on the podcast talking through these topics to help listeners who are embarking on an AKS journey. Here aforementioned blog posts for reference:

A Guide to Navigating the AKS Enterprise Documentation & Scripts
Simplify your AKS IaC Deployments using the AKS Construction Helper tool

We dove into:

Architecture Design:
Baseline architecture for an Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster
AKS Secure Baseline with Private Cluster
AKS baseline for multi-region clusters
AKS regulated cluster for PCI
Advanced Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) microservices architecture

Deployment:
AKS landing zone accelerator
AKS Construction Helper
AKS Baseline Automation
Azure Draft for AKS

Operation:
Operations management considerations for Azure Kubernetes Service
Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS) day-2 operations guide

You can watch a recording of the stream here:

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Kubernetes Panel Event

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In February Come Cloud With Us is hosting a Kubernetes panel with some of the industry’s BEST Kubernetes experts. I am honored and humbled to be one of the panelists. This panel consists of K8s experts from Dell, Google, Microsoft, Intercept, United Wholesale Mortgage, and Admincontrol. This is a global panel with panelists and hosts from the United States, Norway, United Kingdom, and Canada. Several of the panelists are also authors, Microsoft MVP’s and CNCF Ambassadors.

Here is a breakdown of the hosts and the panelists:

The hosts:

Abdul Kazi – Cloud Expert

Chris Gill – Cloud Expert and Microsoft MVP

The K8s Panelists:
Kristina Devochko – Microsoft Azure MVP
Kaslin Fields – Developer Advocate at Google
Kat Cosgrove – Lead Developer Advocate at Dell
Steve Buchanan – Principal Program Manager at Microsoft
Nills Franssens – Director of Digital and Application Innovation at Microsoft
Richard Hooper – Microsoft Azure MVP
Glen Belton – Kubernetes Platform Engineer

The panel will discuss Kubernetes and answer attendee questions. This will be a virtual event. This will be an event that you DON’T want to miss! Mark your calendars for the event on Thursday, February 16, 2023 4:00PM-5:30PM CST!

Register for the event here:

https://www.meetup.com/comecloudwithus/events/290494259

***Update

If you missed the live panel here is the recording for it:

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19th Pluralsight Course Published – “Getting Started with WordPress”

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This week I published a second course on Pluralsight this year. This marks my 19th course! This course is titled “Getting Started with WordPress“. Startups, enterprises and more continue to adopt content management systems at a fast rate with WordPress owning a 60% market share. WordPress is the number one choice from startups to enterprises. It is being used for many uses from web apps, a marketing tool, e-commerce, or even a company’s main website.

I have been working with WordPress in various aspects for over sixteen years. I use WordPress for this blog, have used it for websites, hosted it for businesses, administered WordPress sites for customers, WordPress development for customers, and even managed the development of WordPress plugins. With all of my history with WordPress, I was excited when the opportunity came up to build a course about it.

This course is ideal for bloggers, entrepreneurs, Product Managers, Marketing managers, Marketing executives, Marketing consultants, Marketing employees, web developers, project managers, business analysts, web designers, graphic designers, UX/UI, designers, and anyone interested in content management systems specifically WordPress.

This course will take you from little to no knowledge of WordPress to a place where you can be confident enough to get started. Whether you want to create a personal blog, a business website, or an online store, WordPress is a skill you should have and this course has you covered.

In this course, Getting Started with WordPress, you’ll learn its many uses, features, tech stack, and you’ll also explore hosting it. Next, you’ll learn how to install it. Finally, you’ll discover its user interface and general configuration.

By the end of this course, you will have a better understanding of content management systems, & WordPress itself, its uses, features, & tech stack. As well as knowledge of how to get a domain name, hosting, and install WordPress along with a tour of its interface and general configuration.

Check out the “Getting Started with WordPress“ course here:

https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/wordpress-getting-started

I hope you find value in this new Getting Started with WordPress course. Be sure to follow my profile on Pluralsight so you will be notified as I release new courses! 

Here is the link to my Pluralsight profile to follow me:

https://www.pluralsight.com/authors/steve-buchanan

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“Building a REST API in JavaScript with Express” – my 18th Pluralsight Course Published

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Another exciting announcement for the new year. I have published my 18th course with Pluralsight. This one is a JavaScript course. It is titled “Building a REST API in JavaScript with Express“. This is my first course in 2023. This course will teach you how to utilize JavaScript and Express to build a REST API for your web app.

Most business apps need to communicate with other internal or external apps and APIs are the most common way to do this. Knowing how to build a REST API is a much-needed skill. And JavaScript is typically in the top 5 programming languages year after year according to StatisticsTimes Top Computer Languages report, so it makes sense that knowing how to build a REST API in JavaScript is even better. This course is suitable for Web Developers, Developers, Project Managers, DevOps Engineers, programming students, cloud professionals, and anyone who needs to build a REST API or learn more about JavaScript.

In this course, Building a REST API in JavaScript with Express, you’ll learn to build a REST API. First, exploring REST APIs, JavaScript, and Express. Next, you’ll learn about JavaScript-based REST API project structures. Finally, you’ll learn how to build REST APIs with JavaScript and Express and test with Postman/curl.

Some of the major topics that are covered in this course include:

  1. A journey into the REST API Tech Stack.
  2. How to set up a REST API Project including how to plan, design, & structure your REST API in JavaScript.
  3. A walk-through on building the REST API, including the REST API code so you can practice.
  4. Guidance and demos on how to test your REST API using Postman and Curl.

When you’re finished with this course, you’ll have a better understanding of REST APIs, JavaScript, Express, REST API project structures, and how to actually build the REST API with JavaScript and test it using CRUD operations.

Check out the “REST API JavaScript“ course here:

https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/javascript-express-building-rest-api

This will be my 1st JavaScript course in a new JavaScript path on Pluralsight. The JavaScript path will be full of additional courses taking you from zero knowledge in JavaScript to an expert. This path has a variety of Pluralsight authors building courses with some of the most well-known authors. I will post a link to the path when it is live. In addition to this REST API course, I will also be authoring a course on how to build a web app with JavaScript and enhance the performance of your JavaScript web app. Keep an eye out for those in the new future.

Also keep an eye out for me utilizing JavaScript and Python apps in my work with Kubernetes and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) in the form of talks, demos, blogs, articles, and more.

I hope you find value in this new Building a REST API in JavaScript with Express course. Be sure to follow my profile on Pluralsight so you will be notified as I release new courses! 

Here is the link to my Pluralsight profile to follow me:

https://www.pluralsight.com/authors/steve-buchanan

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Guest on AzureTalks Podcast – Containerize apps to AKS with Azure Draft, and Hybrid with Azure Arc

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I am kicking off the new year as a guest on the “AzureTalks” podcast by Rolf Schutten. Rolf is a Microsoft MVP based out of the Netherlands. The AzureTalks podcast is a free-form conversation with experts and advocates around the industry discussing various topics on Azure, its services, and integration points with Azure. Some of the topics also get into strategy career, personal development, and more. You can listen to podcast episodes on Google Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. You can find the website for this podcast here: www.azuretalks.com

The episode I am a guest on is #004 titled “Containerize apps to AKS with Azure Draft, and Hybrid with Azure Arc“.

In this episode, we discuss how developers can utilize Azure Draft to streamline taking their non-containerized app from code to running on AKS. Azure Draft takes you through the entire process from creating the container, the files needed to run on Kubernetes manifests, Helm charts, or Kustomize, pushing up to an Azure Container Registry, and deploying to AKS.

We also dive into GitHub, GitOps, the differences between push and pull methods with continuous deployment, and even we even touched on hybrid cloud strategies and what role Azure Arc plays in this space. Listen to the audio version of the podcast episode here:

or check out the video version here.

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Guest on Kubernetes Unpacked Podcast EP014 – “Using GitOps and AKS to Build and Deploy Apps

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I recently was a guest on Michael Levan‘s Kubernetes Unpacked Podcast on the Packet Pushers network.

This is Kubernetes Unpacked episode #014 it is titled: “Using GitOps And AKS To Build And Deploy Applications“

Michael and I talked about using GitOps and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) to automate the building and deployment of applications. We also chat about an entire architecture incorporating AKS, GitHub Actions, Azure Container Registry, GitHub, and ArgoCD along with how it all comes together to make a useful stack. Check out the podcast below.

Link to the podcast:

https://packetpushers.net/podcast/kubernetes-unpacked-014-using-gitops-and-aks-to-build-and-deploy-applications/

Listen here:

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17th Pluralsight Course Published – “Python for Linux System Administration”

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I am excited to announce that I published a Python course on Pluralsight! This course is titled “Python for Linux System Administration“. This is my 17th course with Pluralsight overall and 6th for 2022. It will teach you how to utilize Python to administer Linux servers. This course is suitable for system administrators, DevOps engineers, and anyone working with servers running on cloud.

In this course, Python for Linux System Administration, you’ll learn the core of the Python language, various Python admin modules, & how to combine python scripts with other Linux tools for administration.

Here are some of the major topics that are covered in this course:

  1. Gaining an understanding of the many benefits of using Python for systems administration.
  2. What goes into setting up a Python environment and what IDE’s are the best options to assist you with your Python scripting.
  3. How to install and use Python to Interact with the Linux System.
  4. How to utilize Python modules such as the OS module & psutil to perform various administrative functions.

When you’re finished with this course, you’ll have the skills and knowledge about the core of Python, how it can be used for administration, why you would use it for administration, how to get setup for Python scripting, insight into Python administrative modules & scripts, as well as some real-world examples of administering Linux servers with Python.

Check out the “Python“ course here: https://app.pluralsight.com/library/courses/python-linux-system-administration

I hope you find value in this new Python for Linux System Administration course. Be sure to follow my profile on Pluralsight so you will be notified as I release new courses! 

Here is the link to my Pluralsight profile to follow me: https://app.pluralsight.com/profile/author/steve-buchanan

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My 1st Microsoft Article: Build and deploy apps on AKS using DevOps (GitHub Actions) and GitOps (ArgoCD)

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Yesterday a new article titled “Build and deploy apps on AKS using DevOps and GitOps” was published. This is an article I was working on for a while and it is the first item of work that I can share publicly since joining Microsoft. I am working on many other things I can’t share publicly at the moment. :-)!

The article is a part of the Azure Architecture Center. This article is about modernizing end-to-end app build and deploy using containers, continuous integration (CI) via GitHub Actions for build and push to an Azure Container Registry, as well as GitOps via Argo CD for continuous deployment (CD) to an AKS cluster.

The article can be found here: 

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/example-scenario/apps/devops-with-aks

The article explores deploying a Python and Flask based app via two CI/CD approaches push-based and pull-based (GitOps). It is complete with a pros and cons comparison of both approaches and architecture diagrams for each that you can download. Here is a screenshot of the pull-based (GitOps) architecture:

The technologies used in this article and scenario include:

GitHub

GitHub Actions

Azure Container Registry

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Argo CD (GitOps Operator)

Azure Monitor

This article also has a repository with code for both the push-based CI/CD scenario and the pull-based CI/CD (GitOps) scenario in the AKS Baseline Automation. I had the opportunity to spearhead and work on these. They will walk through using each approach and have the code for the Flask App, and GitHub Actions to run the approaches. A direct link to this section of the article is here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/example-scenario/apps/devops-with-aks#deploy-this-scenario

I hope that you find all of this useful. Now go check out the article and deploy the app using the approaches. Stay tuned for more from me at Microsoft and for more blog posts here!

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IP exhaustion in AKS got you down? Try Azure CNI Overlay.

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One of the top concerns I see from companies when architecting AKS is running out of IP addresses. This is commonly known as IP exhaustion. This concern would come up when selecting the network model for AKS specifically with Azure CNI.

Companies would lean towards Azure CNI at first but quickly opt for Kubenet. Azure CNI provides benefits on Azure. It has deeper integration between Kubernetes and Azure networking. With Azure CNI you don’t have to manually configure routing for traffic to flow from pods to other resources on Azure VNets. Pods get full network connectivity and can be reached via their private IP address. Supports Virtual Nodes (Azure Container Instances), it supports either Azure or Calico Network Policies and Windows containers. Azure CNI does however require more IP address space. The traditional Azure CNI assigns an IP address to every Pod from a subnet reserved for pods or pre-reserved set of IPs on every node. This method can lead to exhausting available IPs.

The alternative to Azure CNI with AKS is Kubenet. A lot of companies opt for Kubenet to avoid IP Exhaustion as it conserves IP address space. Kubenet assigns private IP addresses to pods. It does not have routing to Azure networking. In order to route from pods to Azure VNets you need to manually configure and manage user-defined routes (UDRs). With Kubenet a simple /24 IP CIDR range is able to support up to 251 nodes in an AKS cluster. This would give you support IPs for up to 27,610 pods (at 110 pods per node).

With Azure CNI the same /24 IP CIDR range would be able to support up to 8 nodes in the cluster supporting up to 240 pods (default max of 30 pods per node w/Azure CNI. Allocation of 31 IP address; 1 for the node + 30 for Pods.).

Here is a side by side breakdown of Kubenet and Azure CNI:

AreaKubenetAzure CNI
Capacity using ‘/24’ address range251 nodes / 27,610 pods (110 pods / node)8 nodes / 240 pods (30 pods / node)
Max nodes per cluster400 (UDR max)1,000 (or more)
Network policyCalicoCalico, Azure
Pod IPsNAT’ed / UDR /Subnet-assigned
LatencySlightly greater (NAT hop)Best
Virtual nodesNoYes
Windows containersNoYes
SupportCalico community supportSupported by Azure support and the Engineering team
Out of the Box Logging/var/log/calico inside the containerRules added/deleted in IPTables are logged on every host under /var/log/azure-npm.log
ConclusionBest w/limited IP space Most pod comms within cluster UDR management is acceptableAvailable IP space Most pod coms outside cluster No need to manage UDR Need advanced features

As you can see you can get a lot more pods on Kubenet and you will burn through a lot more IP’s with Azure CNI. One would think when using Azure CNI to just assign a large CIDR for the subnets like /16 instead of /24. This would work however most IT teams in the enterprise that are connecting AKS to existing networks don’t have that option based on the existing IP design and are stuck working with smaller IP address ranges they can use.

Microsoft has built a solution to the IP exhaustion problem. The solution is Azure CNI Overlay. Azure CNI Overlay for AKS has been around for a while but was recently released into public preview on 9/4/22. Azure CNI Overlay for AKS helps us avoid IP exhaustion with our AKS clusters. It does this by assigning using a private /24 IP CIDR range and assigning IPs from this for pods on every node.

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Simplify your AKS IaC Deployments using the AKS Construction Helper tool

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After designing and architecting AKS the next step is to deploy your cluster/s. It is ideal to build your AKS deployments out as code.

This means taking your Azure infrastructure & AKS cluster/s design and scripting them as IaC (Infrastructure as Code). Scripting the AKS deployment vs manually deploying gives you documentation as code, standardization, & a templatized deployment for repeatability. You can deploy this code as is, place it in a pipeline for ease of deployment, in inner-source, or in a service catalog for access by multiple teams.

Microsoft has built a tool named the AKS Construction helper to accelerate building out your IaC for AKS. This tool is not as well-known as it should be. I wanted to blog about this tool to share this great resource that will save you tons of time. The AKS Construction helper was originally launched by Keith Howling of Microsoft. The core contributors to this tool have been Gordon Byers and Keith Howling with contributions from others as well.

The AKS Construction helper unifies guidance provided by the AKS Secure Baseline, Well Architected Framework, Cloud Adoption Framework, and Enterprise-Scale. It also is part of the official AKS Landing Zone Accelerator (Enterprise Scale). The AKS Construction helper lets you configure your AKS deployment using wizard/form style selections. After you complete your selections the tool gives you IaC code that you can copy to perform the AKS Deployment/s. You can get code for Az CLI, a Github Actions workflow, Terraform, or a Parameters file that can be used with an ARM Template.

Let’s go ahead and take a tour of the tool.

The tool lets you select Operations Principles or Enterprise-Scale path for configuring the options.

This helps narrow down the overall design requirements of your AKS deployment.

The next section of the AKS Construction helper is to fine-tune your AKS deployment. This gives you the chance to tweak things like the cluster name, K8s version, resource group, region, to be created, IP and Cider, initial RBAC, SLA, autoscaling, upgrade configuration, cluster networking, add ons such as an ingress controller (App Gateway, NGINX, etc), monitoring such as Azure Monitor, Azure policy, service mesh, secret storage, Keda, GitOps with Flux, and even has a few options to deploy some sample apps. This is done across 5 tabs in the Fine tine and Deploy section.

After you have set all of the configurations for your cluster there is code available for you to copy on the Deploy tab. Again you have options for Az CLI, a Github Actions workflow, Terraform scripts or an ARM Template Parameters file. Running the deployment code will deploy your AKS cluster exactly how you have it configured in the AKS Construction helper tool. 

What if you are not ready to deploy your AKS Clusters now but you do not want to lose your configuration? The tool has you covered. At the end of the Deploy Cluster code you can click the link as shown in the screenshot to get a URL for your configuration.

The URL will look similar to this:

https://azure.github.io/AKS-Construction/?deploy.deployItemKey=deployArmCli&ops=oss&preset=defaultOps&deploy.location=EastUS2&addons.ingress=nginx&addons.monitor=aci&addons.openServiceMeshAddon=true&addons.fluxGitOpsAddon=true

You can access this URL at any time to pick up where you left off with your AKS deployment configuration.

That brings us to the end of this blog post. Stop wasting time, head over to the tool, and start using this for all of your AKS Deployments. Here are the links for the tool:

The wizard-driven tool can be found here:

https://azure.github.io/AKS-Construction

The GitHub Repository for the tool can be found here:

https://github.com/Azure/AKS-Construction

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