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Managing an Origo OS Kubernetes Cluster with Rancher
Rancher is a very popular solution for easy management of Kubernetes clusters. Rancher provides a nice UI with consolidated management tools for multiple Kubernetes clusters spread across spread across public and private clouds. Rancher also provides a curated assortment of Helm charts, that can easily be installed to the Kubernetes clusters you have imported into Rancher.
We have written a simple guide to getting Rancher up and running in Stabile, installing a Kubernetes cluster and importing the cluster into Rancher. The guide should only take a few minutes to complete – try it out, and be sure to try out some of the Helm charts provided by Rancher.
Install Longhorn to a Origo OS Kubernetes Cluster
Longhorn is a popular choice for providing vendor-agnositic, replicated block storage in Kubernetes clusters. Longhorn provides a fault-tolerant alternative to the storage-options available in e.g. AWS and GKE. Longhorn is Open Source and provides a nice UI.
We have written a simple guide to getting Longhorn up and running in a Stabile Kubernetes cluster. The guide should only take a few minutes to complete, so try it out!
Running a MinIO Object Storage Service in Stabile
MinIO
has emerged as the solution of choice for providing fast, scalable, portable and S3-compatible object storage – i.e. S3-storage without vendor lock-in.
Reliable object storage is relevant if you need to store large amounts of photos, videos, log files, backups or other relatively unstructured data, and particularly useful if you also want http(s) access to this data out of the box.
We provide two easy ways to install and use MinIO in any Stabile cloud:
- A stand-alone MinIO stack so you can get a MinIO service up and running in a matter of a few minutes in any Stabile cloud. The stack installs the stand-alone binary version of MinIO and provides access to the MinIO web console through an Apache proxy.
- A guide to getting MinIO up and running in a Stabile Kubernetes environment. Installing MinIO as a Kubernetes service is a bit more complex, and particularly relevant if you already use Kubernetes and need a very scalable object storage solution.
New Stack available: Ghost
We just published a new Stack for Stabile targeting independent publishers – the excellent Ghost blogging platform.
Ghost is a beautiful alternative to e.g. WordPress with a distinctly modern feel, ease of use and speed.
Check out the short time-lapse video above and then go try it out.
On Cloud Repatriation
If you’ve stumbled across this post using a search engine, you might be wondering what this cloud repatriation is all about. Well, to us it’s about trying to build a locally hosted alternative to placing all of our data in the datacenters of a few very large corporations. Why are we spending our time doing this? you might also wonder. Well, there are obvious economical aspects, but I, for one, have always just liked the thought of running my own basic information infrastructure, controlling my own data, etc. It probably boils down basic desires of self-sustainability and to know exactly what is happening with my data. And I’m certainly not the only one feeling this way. Others are sceptical of leaving all their data, and the control of what is done with it, in the hands of corporations that in reality answer to no one. Or they also just like to tinker and run stuff themselves.
The Curious Case of Enterprise Infrastructure
Summary
After devolving into a reservoir of inefficient software and expensive hardware, the enterprise IT industry was unable to mount a defence to the onslaught of AWS. As a consequence developers and new enterprises are now going directly to the cloud. The former industry leader, VMware, has folded and repositioned itself as a gateway to AWS and steward of legacy workloads. The hosting industry is to a large extent following this example. While this is unfortunate for the enterprise industry, we claim that this also presents a market opportunity.
Installing Elementary OS on a discarded MacBook Air
So, for various reasons I wanted to install the wonderfull Elementary OS on an old MacBook Air (13″ ultimo 2010, 2.13 GHz Intel Core 2Duo) I had lying around. Mostly because, why not? but also because I really like Elementary OS. Quickly I ran into what must be a very common problem, namely that after succesful installation, one is rewarded with a completely black screen. No signs of life, not even during booting. However, my MacBook Air did in fact boot and did even sign onto my wifi – my router’s web interface revealed the IP address the MacBook had been assigned, and I could ping that address. So the issue was clearly related to the video driver, but also hard to fix, since, well – no screen. This is probably keeping some from repurposing old Macs, which I think is a great thing to do.
On the trail of the SuperMicro BMC hack
By now most people in the infrastructure business will know about Bloomberg’s story about the alleged hacking of Super Micro hardware by the Chinese.
But what’s really going on here? As this story unfolds, what do we know so far?
First of all let’s assume we know that the Chinese / PLA is involved in hardware hacking for purposes of espionage. China produces a very large part of the computer hardware that is currently running in the data centers of the world. A large chunk is still manufactured in Taiwan (another good reason for China to invade, I guess) and elsewhere, but still. Hardware hacking has always been a part and parcel of the spook agencies’ toolbox, there is no reason to assume the Chinese would not try to leverage the incredible advantage they have here. Assuming the opposite, that PLA is not involved in hardware hacking for intelligence purposes, would not be credible IMHO.
Running your own non-bouncing Zimbra server
Despite having configured SPF, DKIM and DMARC for my email domain, I recently noticed that the mail queue of my Zimbra server was going through the roof with thousands of undelivered and postponed email messages, mostly with sender “mailer-daemon” and some recipient I did not know. If you run a Zimbra server and have this problem or perhaps even better; if you don’t have it yet and don’t want to have it, read on.
