Tag: Open Source

Reading Time: 6 minutes

What is SaltStack?

SaltStack is an open-source infrastructure management platform built on a dynamic communications bus. The main structure of SaltStack contains two main components for work: one Salt Master and several Salt Minions. Salt Master is the main control system used to send commands to Salt Minion and their configuration. Salt Minions (they are also called Nodes) are subsystems that work on managed servers and receive commands from the master, as well as their configuration. At least two servers are required for interaction settings. One for the Master and one for the node. All nodes are configured in the same way.

Reading Time: 8 minutes

Which one is appropriate for you?

Table of Contents

I. Puppet
II. SaltStack
III. Chef
IV. Ansible
IV. Conclusion

Introduction

Configuring a single server with the required software is a reasonably simple task. However, if numerous servers need to have the same or similar software and configurations installed on them, the process would use numerous man-hours to complete, which would deplete your already strained resources. Without some form of automation, this task can become nearly insurmountable. With this task in mind, new configuration management tools were developed to address the need to deploy new servers with premade configurations and updates, that allowed for a smoother and more manageable automation process. To keep these servers syncing and to manage updates across a broad swath of hosts in a data center or cloud environment, automation tools like Puppet, SaltStack, Chef, and Ansible meet this need.

Reading Time: 5 minutes

What Is Istio?

Istio is an open-source service mesh that makes it easier for a team to create a network or server cluster of deployed services. Istio provides several vital services consistently across a mesh network such as:

Reading Time: 11 minutes

In our previous article on Selenium, we touched on the tools that the software provides for testing web applications. In this article, we will review the installation of these tools and some basic tests that can be run using the following tools. 

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Introduction

Selenium is a suite of open-source testing tools for web apps that can be utilized across multiple platforms and browsers. Selenium is comprised of four different tools, each providing a different testing capability.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

What is Chef?

Chef is a popular, open-source, IaC (Infrastructure as Code) management tool. It eases administration, configuration, and deployment of server resources across a network from a central location. 

Reading Time: 4 minutes

What Is Jenkins?

Jenkins is an open source automation server software developed in Java. It allows developers to integrate CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery) pipelines within their organization that ease and automate workflows. It has an extensive help community, supports over 1000 plugins, allows users the ability to automate almost any task and, it saves significant time that can be better utilized addressing other issues.

Reading Time: < 1 minute

What is a Service Mesh?

A service mesh is a layer of communication and control between applications or microservices and the network stack they typically communicate over. This layer controls communication and helps microservices share data. This service-to-service interaction is governed by logic built into the service mesh layer. Simply put, microservices are small or partial applications, or individual functions, and the network stack is the physical networking layer.