In the realm of collaborative platforms, SharePoint Online stands as a robust solution that continually evolves to meet the dynamic needs of modern enterprises. The 2023 updates have notably elevated the platform’s capabilities, particularly in terms of file and document management and integration with other Microsoft 365 offerings.

Kubernetes has been around for nearly 10 years now. In the past five years, we’ve seen a drastic increase in adoption by engineering teams of all sizes. The promise of standardization of deployments and scaling across different types of applications, from static websites to full-blown microservice solutions, has fueled this sharp increase.

According to the latest Crowdstrike report, in 2022 cloud-based exploitation increased by 95%, and there was an average eCrime breakout time of 84 minutes. Just as significantly, in 2021, the Biden administration passed an executive order to improve the nation’s cybersecurity standards. There are also upcoming laws like DORA in the European Union. So, increased cyber attacks and legislative pressures mean you need to (a) actively protect against threats and (b) prove that you are doing so.

Many DevOps teams work proactively to meet security and compliance standards. They consider security best practices when developing software with open source components, scanning code for vulnerabilities, deploying changes, and maintaining applications and infrastructure. Security is a key feature of many of the tools they’re using, and the policies and industry standards they’re following.

In this article, we are going to discuss how to set up Kafka monitoring using Prometheus. Kafka is one of the most widely used streaming platforms, and Prometheus is a popular way to monitor Kafka. We will use Prometheus to pull metrics from Kafka and then visualize the important metrics on a Grafana dashboard. We will also look at some of the challenges of running a self-hosted Prometheus and Grafana instance versus the Hosted Grafana offered by MetricFire.

Azure Reservations and Savings Plans are discounted pricing models for certain Azure services. By purchasing a reservation or savings plan, you can reduce your costs in Azure by committing to specific usage terms in advance. The commitment gives Azure more visibility into your one-year or three-year resource needs while guaranteeing your usage for the term, and you will enjoy discounts on those core services.

Grafana is one of the most popular dashboarding and visualization tools for metrics. The Grafana Dashboards are a very important part of infrastructure and application instrumentation. In this post, we will deep dive into Grafana dashboards. We will create a Grafana dashboard for a VM’s most important metrics, learn to create advanced dashboards with filters for multiple instance metrics, import and export dashboards, learn to refresh intervals in dashboards and learn about plugins.

The last interim release before an LTS (Long Term Supported release for those new to the Ubuntu terminology) is a particularly exciting time. This is the release where the team aims to land as many major changes as possible to ensure that the community has the chance to take them for a spin and provide feedback for further refinement ahead of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. These features span the entire Ubuntu Desktop stack, from the user interface, to software management, to core security and architectural changes.