Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Large Language Models, or LLMs, have become a near-ubiquitous technology in recent years. Promising the ability to generate human-like content with simple and direct prompts, LLMs have been integrated across a diverse array of systems, purposes, and functions, including content generation, image identification and curation, and even heuristics-based performance testing for APIs and other software components.

Microservices are now the architecture of choice for many developers when crafting cloud-native applications. A microservices application is a collection of loosely coupled services that communicate with each other, enhancing collaboration, maintainability, scalability, and deployment. There are several options for enabling this communication between microservices. When it comes to Python, gRPC and REST are two extremely popular directions to go.

Memory leaks happen when a program fails to release memory it no longer needs, and can be a big issue for developers and system administrators alike, as the gradual depletion of available memory often makes for complex troubleshooting and debugging. Given how the consequences of a memory leak can range from decreased system performance to outright crashes, it’s crucial to isolate the root cause of the leak quickly and efficiently.

In the process of developing software, designing and performing testing is a critical aspect of ensuring high software reliability, improving software quality, and deploying strong fit and function. The shift-right testing approach moves testing to later in your production cycle as a way of doing this with more accurate user data and post-production testing practices. Also known as “testing in production,” with shift-right, you test software after it has been deployed.

It’s impossible to learn about containerization without hearing about Docker and Kubernetes. These two tools together dominate the world of containers, both being the de facto standard in what they each do. When you’re first getting started learning about containers, it can be quite a challenge to figure out the differences between these two tools.

Today’s complex, dynamic applications demand rigorous resilience testing. A common hurdle is accurately mimicking real user behavior. This post discusses a possible solution: production traffic replication (PTR), a technique that captures actual user interactions to enhance chaos testing, and the principle of intentionally introducing failures to evaluate application recovery.

Local preview environments are transforming how developers test and validate code changes before merging them into the main codebase. Acting as temporary cloud environments, they provide a production-like setting where new features and bug fixes can be tested in isolation, catching issues early and streamlining the development code review process. These environments are crucial for enhancing development velocity, especially in CI/CD workflows used by DevOps engineers and QA teams.

One of the most important aspects of a product is the ability to showcase its functionality. In the API space, it’s very important for a product to not just claim something, but to show that utility and use. One of the best ways to do this is through the use of a demo environment. A demo environment is a perfect method to surface a specific use case or example for users, showcasing functionality that is often tailored to a specific interest group.

Today’s fast-paced development environments require new approaches to testing. Enter continuous performance testing. Unlike traditional performance testing, automated continuous performance testing is part of every build, monitoring the application continuously under increased load. With continuous performance tests, organizations with lots of users can expect to improve the customer experience, prevent major outages, and find and resolve issues faster.

Skaffold is a command line tool that facilitates continuous development by streamlining the workflow for building, pushing, and deploying Kubernetes applications. Skaffold handles the complexities of Kubernetes deployments, allowing developers to focus on local application iteration while managing deployments efficiently. Get started with our tutorial.