Category Archives: Uncategorized

Vault for storing secrets (plus Spring Boot & Mongodb)

So this is a mix of a couple of howtos. First, we have a simple Spring Boot app that retrieves some data from a MongoDB database that has authentication enabled to access it. Next, we will see how to store secrets in a Vault implementation and then programmatically access it (in our case the user ID and password to access the database).

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Take2 — Setting up k8s Cluster with k3s on Raspberry Pi 3 & Pi 4

Back to a teach-myself-something type of project, with setting up K8s Cluster on Raspberry Pi devices. I had a couple of older Raspberry Pi 3s and a recently purchased Pi 4 available for this. My old Pi3 devices had Docker Swarm (yes that one) from a couple of years back. This time around I want to get k8s on the 3 Pi devices.

The steps are fairly simple but it can be a bit of work. You should find blogs out there with decent enough directions. So here goes me adding to that library of blogs to make it easier for the next person trying to set this up.

This is an upgrade from my previous similar blog installing Docker Swarm on a two node Pi-3 cluster https://54.210.73.122/running-docker-swarm-raspberry-pi-3/

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Having some fun with Voltswagen to get tests to pass always :)

I will begin by saying ” DON’T EVER DO THIS IN THE REAL WORLD”. https://github.com/auchenberg/volkswagen will detect if your build is running inside a CI tool and then force all tests to pass; even if they fail. Now you know why I said “DON’T EVER DO THIS IN THE REAL WORLD”. Hey just having some fun … code quality purists you have been warned not to read further! 🙂

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forge for fast build/deploy for kubernetes (with minikube)

Just came across a nice dev tool to build and deploy Docker’ized applications. A developer may want to independently build/deploy to a local docker container or another Kubernetes cluster vs. waiting for a remote CI/CD process to deploy to a dev environment. This involves some repetitive tasks such as building the binary, packaging into a Docker container, pushing to a Docker registry and all the way to deploying to a running container. If you run this often it can be a time suck for developers. forge.sh takes away those repetitive steps and lets you build/deploy locally or to another cluster.

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Building HiPeE (High Performance Engineering) teams

Have you worked in a high performance engineering (HiPeE) team, how do you know you are in one and why is it so hard to replicate that?  Are there factors that make it possible for HiPeE teams to grow and sustain. This was a topic of discussion at a recent chat with a few folks. I speak from my own experiences having seen HiPeE teams and was lucky enough to be part of it couple of times. It came down to a few dimensions for me.

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Spring Boot + Spring Cloud (Eureka + Hystrix) to run API/Micro Services

Spring Boot and Spring Cloud are relatively newer additions to the Spring portfolio. Boot makes it faster to spin up your project with less configuration (and an opinionated programming model). Spring Cloud brings in techniques and tools to efficiently standup distributed applications. In a previous blog I had noted my ramblings on API/Microservices style. If you take that path and have more than a handful of API’s then you will need some of the capabilities of what Spring Boot and Spring Cloud offer.
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Career roles for senior techies…

Highly experienced & passionate technologists have a challenging task in terms of figuring out their career strategies. For some this process of self discovery and adjustment works itself out quick, but for others its a harder journey. A passionate technologist often feels the need to be exposed to new cutting edge technologies and at the same time expects appropriate career growth and recognition.

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