Posts

Managing Secrets in Kubernetes with Helm and HashiCorp Vault In the dynamic landscape of cloud migrations, securely and efficiently managing application configurations, particularly secrets, is a critical task. This article explores a practical scenario where an organization is migrating its applications from on-premises infrastructure to Amazon EKS, using HashiCorp Vault’s CSI driver to handle secrets. Here, we’ll dive into the challenges and solutions of using environment variables to access these secrets—a common yet sensitive practice—and provide a step-by-step guide to implementing robust solutions using Helm hooks. ...

A New Perspective on Helm Charts Whale hello there (docker pun) DevOps enthusiasts! As someone who’s been navigating the waters of AWS and Helm for years, I’ve largely relied on the tried-and-tested methods like ChartMuseum and S3 backends for managing Helm charts. Occasionally, I’ve also pulled charts directly from version control when the stakes weren’t too high on audit trails, because it’s straightforward and gets the job done when conditions allow. ...

In the dynamic world of software architecture, the debate between microservices and serverless functions (like AWS Lambda) is similar to the classic face-off between Ryu and Ken in the Street Fighter world. Both have their strengths, their unique moves, and their situational advantages. As developers, we’re often in the position to make a choice between the two, so let’s break down the details in a clear, concise, and human manner. ...

A Practical Guide for GitHub Self-Hosted Runners Hey everyone, today let’s talk about something that can make a real difference in your CI pipelines: effective caching. If you’ve been following along, you know we’ve explored using Docker registry mirror before. In our last post, we talked about the context and challenge of CI cache in a dynamic and fully scalable environment. Since our setup is like a revolving door with nodes coming and going based on demand, holding onto a Docker cache is like trying to catch smoke with your bare hands. So, when it comes to GitHub Actions self-hosted on EKS, especially with scale sets, caching needs a bit more attention. ...

As someone who’s spent a fair bit of time tinkering with CI/CD pipelines and automating infrastructure, I’ve really started to see the value in GitHub Actions, particularly after moving away from Jenkins. My journey took an exciting turn when I began experimenting with self-hosted GitHub Actions runners on Kubernetes, using the summerwinds actions runner controller. Things got even more interesting when I shifted to scale-sets, thanks to GitHub embracing the ARC project. ...