Cloud Chirp #13 🌥️ - 11/12/2023
Hello Cloud Enthusiasts,
Welcome back to the next dose of cloud knowledge! In this edition of our newsletter, we're diving into some of the latest new from various cloud providers. So, let's jump right into it:
🔗 OpenFaaS Inc.: Actuated Updates
Title: December Boost: Custom Job Sizes, eBPF Support & KVM Acceleration — Dec. 4, 2023
Description: In its December update, Actuated introduces the ability to request custom amounts of RAM and vCPU for jobs, run eBPF within jobs, and utilize KVM acceleration. The eBPF support includes features within the Kernel, enhancing observability, security, and networking. Additionally, Actuated now allows dynamic spreading of plans across multiple hosts, providing better value for money, and supports running VMs in CI pipelines with KVM acceleration.
Link: Read more
🔗 Grafana Labs: 'Aggregate by' Feature
Title: Traces to metrics: Ad hoc RED metrics in Grafana Tempo with 'Aggregate by' — Dec. 7, 2023
Description: Grafana introduces a new feature called "Aggregate by" in Tempo, allowing users to compute ad hoc RED metrics from trace data. This feature enables users to analyze and narrow down specific traces based on different attributes, improving the efficiency of root cause analysis. Grafana plans to expand this functionality, allowing users to perform on-the-fly metrics calculations using TraceQL queries in the future.
Link: Read more
🔗 Why is Datadog so Expensive?
Title: Real Talk: Why Is Datadog So Expensive? — Dec. 7, 2023
Description: The article examines the rising costs of Datadog, attributing them to fundamental issues stemming from increased data within cloud-native architectures. The author, affiliated with Chronosphere, explores alternatives like DIY open source solutions and next-gen observability tools. The focus is on addressing the challenges of data growth efficiently in the context of observability platforms.
Link: Read more
🔗 Multipass: 1.13 Release
Title: Canonical releases Multipass 1.13 — Dec. 7, 2023
Description: The latest Multipass release candidate introduces snapshot support, allowing users to create and save instances' configurations for quick recovery in case of issues. Notable changes include the adoption of Qt6 (version 6.2.4), addressing bugs and enabling proxy support via PAC files. Additionally, the SFTP server used for classic mounts has been rewritten to use std::filesystem
, improving reliability, and fetching remote image information is now more efficient and non-blocking for the client.
Link: GitHub Release
🔗 Grafana: 10.2 Release
Title: Grafana Alerting: How to monitor alerts for better alert management — Dec. 8, 2023
Description: Grafana introduces Insights with its 10.2 release, enhancing Grafana Alerting. This feature provides valuable information on alert rules and notifications, aiding effective monitoring and analysis. Insights includes subsections for Grafana-managed and Mimir-managed alert rules, Grafana Alertmanager, and Mimir Alertmanager.
Link: Read more
🔗 Cloud Cost Optimization Strategy
Title: Cutting cloud cost by 99.9% when serving 128 TB data and 5 billion requests — Jul. 6, 2023
Description: The article discusses cost optimization strategies employed by a website serving billions of requests and 128 TB of data. Facing challenges with read operations, they utilized Cloudflare CDN to reduce costs from over $12,000 to $63. Another issue arose with big ZIP file downloads exceeding CDN limits, leading to the development of an open-source downloader for large files. The overall cost reduction approach involved caching static data, leveraging Cloudflare CDN, and addressing specific download challenges.
Link: Read more
🔗 Improve your Sales Skills as an Engineer
Title: Entrepreneurship for Engineers: Level up Your Sales Game — Dec. 8, 2023
Description: The article explores how founders, despite potential discomfort, play a crucial role in sales for startups. Sales experts advise a customer-centric approach, emphasizing collaboration and problem-solving. Practical tips include selling to a friendly audience, active listening, understanding the ideal customer profile, and accepting that mistakes are part of the learning process. The importance of a founder's involvement in sales, the connection between marketing and sales, and the caution against hiring salespeople too early are also highlighted.
Link: Read more
🔗 Reducing the Memory usage of Prometheus
Title: 30 Pull Requests Later, Prometheus Memory Use Is Cut in Half — Dec. 8, 2023
Description: The article discusses how Grafana Labs' successfully reduced Prometheus' memory usage through a series of 30 pull requests. Their work focused on optimizing label handling in Prometheus, resulting in a 50% reduction in memory consumption. The article details the challenges faced, including the sawtooth effect in memory charts, the significance of labels in Prometheus' data structure, and the impact of Boreham's contributions on memory efficiency. This optimization benefits the Prometheus community by lowering operational costs and reducing environmental impact.
Link: Read more
🔗 HashiCorp Vault fork: OpenBao
Title: Open source forkers stick an OpenBao in the oven — Dec. 8, 2023
Description: Rebellion against HashiCorp's license change for Terraform sees the Linux Foundation supporting OpenBao, an open-source alternative to Vault, HashiCorp's secrets management tool. OpenBao is a fork of Vault, responding to the adoption of the Business Source License by HashiCorp. The Linux Foundation, incubating OpenBao, aims to provide a competitive alternative under an OSI-compliant license, in this case, Mozilla PLv2.
Link: Read more
I hope you find these resources as enlightening as I did. Stay tuned for more exciting developments and updates in the world of cloud computing in next week's newsletter.
Until then, keep innovating and soaring in the cloud! ☁️
Warm regards, Teodor