Digest #140: Stripe's Zero Downtime, Zero Trust network on AWS, Tips for SRE Interview and Running Lambda Locally

Uncover Stripe's uptime secrets, meet the hacker who shook North Korea, and learn to boost your SSD performance.

Jun 21, 2024

Welcome to this week’s edition of the DevOps Bulletin!

Get ready to dive into some exciting updates in the DevOps world. Learn how Stripe keeps its services running smoothly with a clever approach to database management that ensures zero downtime. Discover the intriguing story of a hacker who took down North Korea’s internet and shared their experience on Reddit. Find out how HelloFresh improves its software delivery process using SLOs.

We'll also explore why your SSD might be slowing you down and what you can do about it. Understand the challenges faced with OpenTelemetry and why it might not always be the best fit. Plus, join a lively discussion from Reddit on whether you should .gitignore everything by default, a practice that's sparking debate among developers.

In our tutorials section, we’ve got tips on optimizing AWS costs after mergers, preparing for SRE interviews, automating Microsoft web app deployments, and more. From managing Kubernetes manifests with Helm, Kustomize, and raw manifests, to building a Zero Trust network on AWS, there's something for everyone.

Don't miss our project highlights featuring SQLSync, Spilo, Overmind, and Keycloak, which are tools designed to improve your DevOps practices.

Newsworthy Stories

Stay informed with the latest news impacting the DevOps and SRE world:

Should I .gitignore everything by default?

In a recent Reddit post, a user questioned their team's practice of git ignoring everything by default and then adding exceptions for files to be committed. This practice is unusual and was criticized by many devs.

Tutorials of the week

Optimize Costs After Mergers and Acquisitions: Best practices and considerations for optimizing and managing AWS resources and costs after a merger and acquisition using AWS Organizations.
Cracking the SRE Interview: Tips to help you prepare for Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) interviews.
Microsoft WebApp Deployments with GitHub Actions and Terraform: The process of creating a pipeline and how to implement automated deployments quickly and efficiently.

GitHub environment setup architecture (stage 3)

Combining Helm, Kustomize, and Raw Manifests: This method allows for fine-grained configuration and seamless management of deployment manifests.

Cost-Effective Management of Static Data: This article will cover the options available in serverless (which extends to most cloud-based) architectures.

Zero Trust Network Router on AWS: How to implement a Zero Trust Network using AWS and Tailscale.
Creating a Sustainable Business Card: A tutorial on leveraging AWS CloudFront for a cost-effective and sustainable digital business card solution.
Anomaly Alerting in Prometheus: Exploring how to do anomaly alerting on seasonal data in Prometheus.

AWS Resource Observability: A CloudFormation template that provides an automated approach to AWS resource inventory observability with AWS Systems Manager, Config, Athena, and Grafana.
Build, Debug, Test, and Deploy AWS Lambda Functions Locally: Comprehensive guide to using AWS Serverless Application Model (SAM) for local Lambda development.

Projects of the week

Highlighting cool DevOps projects to keep an eye on:

SQLSync is a collaborative offline-first wrapper around SQLite designed to synchronize the web application state between users, devices, and the edge.
Spilo is a Docker image that provides PostgreSQL and Patroni bundled together. Multiple Spilos can create a resilient High Available PostgreSQL cluster.
Overmind is a powerful tool for real-time impact analysis on Terraform changes. Overmind can identify the blast radius and uncover potential risks.

Keycloak is an open source Identity and Access Management for modern applications and services