Articles
Running qemu-user-static with Podman
Recently, I had to run ARM64 containers on a customer’s x86 laptop. Easy, you might say: just install qemu-user-static on the laptop! And you also have a ready-made container on Docker Hub, just in case! That’s it? Not so sure… Continue reading
Behind the scenes at Open Code Quest: how I implemented the Leaderboard in Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management
After revealing the behind-the-scenes design of the Leaderboard for the “Open Code Quest” workshop during the Red Hat Summit Connect France 2024 , it’s time to delve deeper into its practical implementation! In this article, I’m going to take you through the configuration of Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management as well as the various adaptations needed to connect the Leaderboard created earlier with the Open Code Quest infrastructure. Come on board with me for this new stage, which is more technical than the previous one, as I had to get creative to wire up a very “conceptual” Grafana dashboard with the reality of OpenShift clusters! Continue reading
Behind the scenes at Open Code Quest: how I designed the Leaderboard
At the Red Hat Summit Connect France 2024 , I led a workshop for developers entitled “Open Code Quest”. In this workshop, developers had to code microservices using Quarkus, OpenShift and an Artificial Intelligence service: IBM’s Granite model. The workshop was designed as a speed competition: the first to complete all three exercises received a reward. I designed and developed the Leaderboard which displays the progress of the participants and ranks them according to their speed. Was it easy? Well, not really, because I imposed a certain style on myself: using Prometheus and Grafana. Follow me behind the scenes of Open Code Quest: how I designed the Leaderboard! Continue reading
Homelab: 2U server, short depth, with front IO, based on Ampere Altra and Asrock Rack ALTRAD8UD-1L2T motherboard
In March of this year, I decided to find a new server to host the family’s data (Jellyfin, Nextcloud, etc.), control the house with Home Assistant and run the VMs I need for my work. In this article, I detail my constraints and the construction of this server, based on an Ampere Altra CPU (ARM64 architecture). Continue reading
Build multi-architecture container images with OpenShift, Buildah and Tekton on AWS
In 2022, I wrote an article on this subject named Build multi-architecture container images with Kubernetes, Buildah, Tekton and Qemu . The article described the configuration I had set up for my personal projects. It even went beyond its initial purpose as it has also been used by several colleagues at Red Hat who had the same need. While the configuration described in this previous article is still relevant, the approach is somewhat dated. With the increasing availability of ARM servers in the Cloud, I revisited the topic of building multi-architecture container images using the AWS cloud. Continue reading
Build multi-architecture container images with Kubernetes, Buildah, Tekton and Qemu
ARM servers are becoming mainstream (Ampere Altra server, Raspberry Pi SoC, etc.) and people start using them with containers and Kubernetes. While official Docker Hub images are built for all major architectures, the situation is less clear for other Open Source projects. It is possible to acquire an ARM server and use it to build container images, but it puts an additional constraint on the Continuous Integration chain. This article explores another option: build ARM container images on a regular x86 server, using Kubernetes, Buildah, Tekton and Qemu. Continue reading
Deploy APIs from your CI/CD pipeline with the 3scale REST API
In the past years, I spent time (maybe too much) designing and implementing CI/CD pipelines around 3scale. This led to the birth of the threescale_cicd ansible role. I also helped on the design of the 3scale_toolbox and crafted a Jenkins shared library as well as sample CI/CD pipelines using the 3scale_toolbox. I had the opportunity to train colleagues and transmit this knowledge but I never took the time to set it down on paper. Continue reading
Deploy OpenShift Single Node in KVM
Starting with version 4.8, OpenShift can now officially be installed on a single virtual machine (instead of three). This effectively lowers the resources requirements and open up new possibilities for home labs or developer workstations. This article explores how to deploy OpenShift Single Node (SNO) using KVM on your Fedora workstation. Continue reading
Consistent DNS name resolution for virtual machines and containers
When developing on microservices, developers need to run a mix of software. Some of them running in containers, others in virtual machines, some others in the cloud and the rest on the developer’s workstation. Microservices having a lot of connections between themselves in addition to technologies such as TLS or OpenID Connect implies DNS names to be consistent. Consistent DNS names means that no matter if a client on the developer workstation, on a VM or on a container, trying to reach a server on the developer workstation, on a VM or on a container, the server DNS name must always be the same. This article explains how to setup a developer workstation on Fedora, with Libvirt VMs and Podman containers and achieve consistent DNS name resolution. Continue reading
How to run performance tests with K6, Prometheus and Grafana
K6 is a novel performance testing tool written in Go, using plain Javascript for the test definition and presenting the test results through Grafana. An existing article written in 2018 explains how to setup K6 with InfluxDB and Grafana, however Prometheus gained popularity over InfluxDB since then. Proper integration of K6 with Prometheus is a clear lack identified by the community. Here I explain how to integrate K6 with Prometheus using the existing StatsD support in K6, present the Grafana dashboard I built, and show how to use it. This integration fills a gap and provides a quick win for companies already using Prometheus. Continue reading