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IAM Access in Kubernetes: kube2iam vs kiam

IAM is the de-facto method of authorization in AWS. Most Kubernetes “Quick Start” guides for AWS do not adequately cover how to manage IAM access in your pods. This blog series will first go over the security issues specific to AWS IAM on Kubernetes, then compare solutions, and then end with a detailed walkthrough for setting up your cluster with one of those solutions.

IAM Access in Kubernetes: The AWS Security Problem

Identity and access management (IAM) in AWS is a way to grant access to AWS services and collect and transmit data and credentials. Most Kubernetes “Quick Start” guides for AWS do not adequately cover how to manage IAM access in your pods. This blog series will first go over the security issues specific to AWS IAM on Kubernetes, then compare solutions, and then we will end with a detailed walkthrough for setting up your cluster with one of those solutions.

Kubernetes on AWS: EKS vs Kops

There are three popular methods for running Kubernetes on AWS: manually set up everything on EC2 instances, use Kops to manage your cluster, or use Amazon EKS to manage your cluster. Managing a Kubernetes cluster on AWS without any tooling is a complicated process that is not recommended for most administrators, so we will focus on using EKS or Kops. In this blog post, we compare cluster setup, management, and security features for both Kops and EKS to determine which solution you should use.

Kubernetes Rolling Update Configuration

Deployment controllers are a type of Pod controller in Kubernetes. They provide fine-grained control over how its pods are configured, how updates are performed, how many pods should run, and when pods should be terminated. There are many resources available for how to configure basic deployments, but it can be difficult to understand how each option impacts how rolling updates are performed.

AWS Elasticsearch Health Monitoring: 8 Things to Watch

If you have ever used a search bar on a website, you've probably used Elasticsearch. Elasticsearch is an open-source search and analytics engine used for full-text search as well as analyzing logs and metrics. It allows websites to use autocomplete in text fields, search suggestions, location or geospatial search. Tons of companies use Elasticsearch, including Nike, SportsEngine, Autodesk, and Expedia.

Kubernetes Events Explained

Kubernetes events are a resource type in Kubernetes that are automatically created when other resources have state changes, errors, or other messages that should be broadcast to the system. While there is not a lot of documentation available for events, they are an invaluable resource when debugging issues in your Kubernetes cluster. In this post we will learn how to look at events, learn about a few specific event types, and discuss how to monitor Kubernetes events.

How to Create an Azure Monitor Alert

Azure Monitor gathers performance metrics from your various Azure resources and allows you to explore those metrics through visualizations. It also allows you to manually create alerts that will notify you when a metric crosses a predefined threshold. In this blog post, we’ll cover how to create an alert in Azure Monitor.

Monitoring Amazon RDS with Blue Matador

Amazon RDS allows you to easily run databases in AWS without actually having to manage database servers. Since your databases are critical to the health of your application, properly monitoring RDS is a top priority for most teams. In this blog post, we will go over how Blue Matador monitors RDS automatically and without configuration.

Monitoring Amazon ECS with Blue Matador

Amazon ECS allows you to easily run containers in AWS in units called tasks. Groups of identical tasks are called services, and groups of services running on the same infrastructure are called clusters. Since it is critical to the health of your application, properly monitoring ECS is a top priority for most teams. In this blog post, we will go over how Blue Matador monitors ECS tasks automatically and without configuration.

Quick Guide to Redshift

Redshift is a fast, managed, data warehouse solution that's part of AWS. Although it is traditional SQL and meant for BI (Business Intelligence), it is designed for scalability and can support many workloads typically reserved for Big Data tools. It is protocol-compatible with PostgreSQL and is available through JDBC/ODBC, opening it up to a huge range of existing SQL tools.