Newsletter

March 2020 cloud-native news

Hello, from all of us here at Sysdig! First, we want to acknowledge that we are all living through a unique and challenging time, and we’re wishing good health to you and your families.

At Sysdig, we’re all working from our homes, continuing to drive product enhancements and share cloud native news. After many months in the works, we are thrilled to announce full Prometheus compatibility in Sysdig Monitor. But the news doesn’t end there as we also released PromCat, a catalog of enterprise-class monitoring resources.


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Ping us @sysdig or on our open-source Sysdig Slack group to share your feedback and suggest topics we should include in future issues! You can find previous issues by browsing the archive.

Scaling cloud native monitoring

Obtaining observability is key to shipping applications faster. After all, how can you be confident if you cannot detect and troubleshoot the issues that affect your cloud-native applications?

There are many tools to monitor Kubernetes. In particular, Prometheus is considered a best practice. It’s a versatile tool that helps monitor the components of your cluster (like the Kubernetes control plane) and your applications. Using PromQL, you can display Prometheus metrics in dashboards and even create custom alerts.

However, when it comes to scaling for enterprise-class workloads, things are not quite as easy. You need tools that scale up to your needs, but you also need reliable resources to set up your monitoring environment as soon as possible.

Learn how Sysdig Monitor can help you ship applications faster with full prometheus compatibility.

Industry buzz

Best practices are more important than ever

As COVID-19 spreads, we’re adapting as best we can. Working from home has become the norm and tech events are being delayed and cancelled worldwide.

Washing your hands is always a good practice, and now it’s more important than ever before. It’s similar with managing security, availability and performance of applications. Your applications and infrastructure may be pushed to the limit as everyone goes online. Sadly, some people try to leverage this situation. Phishing attacks have increased recently, and vulnerabilities in VPN software are being targeted. Best practices have not changed, it’s just more critical that you implement them today.

We, at Sysdig, send our best wishes to everyone in these difficult times, and encourage you to follow the recommendations of your local health authorities.

Why gaps in Kubernetes capabilities are really a good thing

By focusing on its core, Kubernetes helped create a rich ecosystem of third-party solutions that expand its functionalities. Learn which gaps Kubernetes is leaving open on purpose:
https://thenewstack.io/why-those-gaps-in-kubernetes-are-really-a-good-thing/

Interoperability of open-source tools: the emergence of interfaces

Expanding on that, discover the interfaces that power the Kubernetes ecosystem:
https://medium.com/@kgamanji/interoperability-of-open-source-tools-the-emergence-of-interfaces-f3b7a90891e4

Multi cluster Kubernetes with service mirroring

Whether for high availability or proximity, you might be considering moving to a multi-cluster architecture. Here is how service mirroring can help you:
https://linkerd.io/2020/02/25/multicluster-kubernetes-with-service-mirroring/

Summing Up: Container Image Building

When it comes to image building, Docker is the standard tool. However, it’s not the only one. Discover what other tools there are and how they compare:
https://blog.giantswarm.io/summing-up-container-image-building/

What’s new in the community?

Introducing istiod: simplifying the control plane

Istio 1.5 is out, bringing one of its biggest changes to date. In a search for simplicity, this version unifies its control plane into a single binary: Istiod
https://istio.io/blog/2020/istiod/

Extra: Want to get started on Istio and service meshes? Don’t miss this overview:
https://research.nccgroup.com/2020/03/04/a-survey-of-istios-network-security-features/

Docker Images: Details Specific To Different Languages

If you want to optimize your applications for Kubernetes, don’t miss these tips on building images for go, java and other languages:
https://www.ardanlabs.com/blog/2020/02/docker-images-part2-details-specific-to-different-languages.html

Kubeflow: Cloud-Native ML for Everyone

Kubeflow makes it easy to deploy machine learning workflows on Kubernetes. After two years of hard work, they are putting out their first major release:
https://medium.com/kubeflow/kubeflow-1-0-cloud-native-ml-for-everyone-a3950202751

Weathervane 2.0: Performance Benchmark for Kubernetes

The first rule of performance tuning is to measure the impact of every change. Whether you want to validate a configuration change or evaluate a new cluster, this is how Weathervane can help you:
https://blogs.vmware.com/performance/2020/02/weathervane2-kubernetes.html

What’s New with Sysdig?

Announcing the first cloud-scale Prometheus monitoring offering

We just announced a new iteration of Sysdig Monitor with full Prometheus compatibility. Learn how to scale monitoring to millions of time series with long-term retention.
https://sysdig.com/blog/cloud-scale-prometheus/

In case you missed it, you can watch again our launch webinar: Scaling Prometheus Monitoring, the No-Hacks Way →

PromCat: A resource catalog for enterprise-class Prometheus monitoring

We created a catalog with curated, documented and supported monitoring integrations. Learn why we did this and discover what you can expect from PromCat.
https://sysdig.com/blog/promcat-prometheus-catalog/

Sysdig extends security control with VMware Tanzu Service Mesh

Discover how Sysdig Secure combines with the just announced Tanzu Service Mesh to increase the security and compliance capabilities of cloud-native workflows.
https://sysdig.com/blog/secure-tanzu-service-mesh/

Announcing the enhanced Sysdig Terraform Provider

Terraform is a wonderful tool to define infrastructure as code. Learn how to use it to define alerts from Sysdig Monitor as well as rules and policies from Sysdig Secure.
https://sysdig.com/blog/sysdig-terraform-provider/

GitOps Security with k8s-security-configwatch

Securing GitOps is easier with our new open-source tool. Learn how to detect changes on your Kubernetes security configuration with this GitHub Action.
https://sysdig.com/blog/gitops-k8s-security-configwatch/

Stay safe. Meet us online:

In the coming weeks, we’ll be hosting some exciting webinars with Q&A sessions. We’d love to talk to you and your team about your cloud-native journey.

Kubernetes Limits and Requests by example →
Mar. 31 | 10am PDT | 6pm GMT

Automating Security for DevOps Workflows →
Apr. 2 | 10am PDT | 6pm GMT

Owning Secure DevOps for Google’s Anthos & GKE →
Apr. 7 | 10am PDT | 6pm GMT

In case you missed it, you can watch again our launch webinar: Scaling Prometheus Monitoring, the No-Hacks Way →
Find more Sysdig events →
Browse the On-Demand webinars →