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Scenario: much of the staff’s time is spent making sure that the infrastructure as code (IaC) implementation is in compliance with the standards and policies that his company has for cloud resources. This was the reason why he brought me in to run a proof of concept (POC). The POC would validate what would become a Policy as Code solution based on one of the common IaC products. By Tim Coulter @redhat.com.

Policy As Code aligns technical environments, processes and resources to agreed standards. Many of the policies are applied by doing pattern matching or using boolean logic through a policy engine, validating the IaC. For example, checking to make sure that none of the computing resources have a direct route to the Internet (violating a security policy), or limiting the service ports to just HTTPS and SSH. The policy engine stores the policies and uses them to ensure the resource creation will be in compliance. Most of the solutions allow for deny, warn or report based on compliance for business requirements of the specific attribute. This is a simplistic use case, but there can be variations and much more complex policies requiring a greater compliance need in frequency and scale.

The article covers in great detail:

• What is “Policy as Code?”
• Applying Policy As Code to Ansible Automation Platform
• High level details of the tasks
• Resources and tools
• Overview of the solution
• Details

Cloud-based management using Azure Arc + Azure AutomanageWindows Server is the platform for building an infrastructure of connected applications, networks, and web services. As a Windows Server administrator, you’ve probably used many of the native Windows Server Microsoft Management Consoles (MMC) to keep the infrastructure secure and available. By Thomas Maurer and others.

This documentation then covers:

• Cloud-based management using Azure Arc + Azure Automanage
• Deep Windows Server and cluster administration with Windows Admin Center
• Datacenter-scale management with System Center
• Local management tools

As the foundation of many on-premises, hybrid, and cloud native applications, the Windows Server teams have continued to invest in making the management and administration of your Windows Server instances easier by offering management tools like Azure Arc, Azure Automanage, Windows Admin Center, and System Center. These tools are designed to work together, and each have capabilities to meet you where you are in your server management needs. Good read!

Nowadays, Continuous Integration helps developers to automate their own build and test in remote repositories. Moreover, when we work as a team, CI ensures that all the branches on remote repositories will be tested by automated build. By Sahanon Phisetpakasit.

Suppose that we have got 4 services, let’s call it service A, B, C and D respectively. Each service will have its own database system and dependencies between each service.

What is covered on the article:

• Setup Github Actions
• Create Docker compose for building the service container
• Add Docker to GitHub Actions

With the power of GitHub Action and docker it can create the test environment on our remote repository so we don’t need to deploy other services in order to use it in testing. You will also find example configuration and code in the article. Good read!

Monorepos are extremely helpful when working with larger codebases. But they also come with additional management costs. In this article, we will go through the process of managing a monorepo with a tool like Melos and set up our repository for CI/CD with Codemagic. By @codemagic.io.

But what is a monorepo? A monorepo is a single version-controlled repository that can store many different projects. To provide a practical example, we are using the Flutter counter app with a few adjustments.

The article then covers:

• Advantages of a monorepo
• Disadvantages of a monorepo
• Example app
• Tools
• Setting up Melos
• Setting up your Flutter monorepo for CI/CD

… and more. Monorepos are great for larger codebases. However, as you may have noticed in this article, they require a bit more effort to manage. Nevertheless, you should now be able to manage your own Flutter monorepo with Melos and configure your CI/CD. Nice one!

Understanding how data flows and is transformed across the different layers of an organization’s application and data stack is one of the most challenging governance problems companies are facing today. Who is producing data? By David Araujo and Julia Peng.

Data is the lifeblood of the modern business, flowing to and from every corner of an organization, but without proper controls and visibility, it might end in undesirable, dangerous places and give rise to data obscurity or distrust.

With Kafka at its core, Confluent is in a prime position to empower teams to observe and track critical data flows across their organization immediately as they occur.

The article main parts:

• Stream Lineage: The map of all your data in motion
• Top 3 use cases powered by Stream Lineage
• Building data pipelines
• Troubleshooting data pipelines
• Compliance: Tracking data processing flows

With Stream Lineage, organizations can access an interactive, graphical UI of their data relationships in real time, with both a bird’s eye view and drill-down magnification. This full visibility lets you know what is happening with your data at any time: where your data is coming from or going, and how it was transformed upstream at a given time. Good read!

How API management needs to evolve beyond its roots. This change is necessitated by APIs moving from being connective glue to being the primary building blocks of modern software. We also defined the key components of the new age of API platforms in our API platform landscape. Our intent was to describe how the many different pieces of technology and tooling fit together to help organizations deliver on the API-first model of software development. By Abhinav Asthana.

Author wants to share some of these key learnings with you, along with a 2022 update on the API platform landscape:

• Industry-wide trends
• Challenges that companies are facing
• Emerging organizational roles and their mandates

Along with all of the new trends and roles, we’re also seeing new vendors entering the landscape. Good read and here is an updated version of today’s API platform landscape:

Source: https://blog.postman.com/2022-api-platform-landscape-trends-and-challenges/

Web Developers often fixate on optimizing the delivery of assets to the end-user’s device, and overlook the computation that takes place on the end-user’s device once those assets arrive. By Joe Liccini.

Further reading in the article:

• The importance of asset delivery
• Web application bottlenecks
• A concrete scenario
• System overview
• IPC cost
• Disk cost
• Parse and compilation cost

Inter-Process Communication (IPC) is how processes in the browser send messages between each other.

Browser cache stores cached files on the end-user’s device on disk. Disk access is not granted to the process executing your web application and is performed by the dedicated Network process, which loads cached assets from disk for all tabs and windows across the browser. Caching assets is a fantastic way to optimize the network overhead of your web application, there is still plenty of computational overhead associated with cached JavaScript. Good read!

A robust UI kit can help elevate a brand’s look and feel with cohesive, innovative visualization. Here’s how. By Goran Paun.

When user interface (UI) designers embark on the course toward a new design, attaining a central hub of assets opens the opportunity for smooth sailing. At the heart of a design, its cohesive and uniform design system strengthens a design’s look and feel with consistency that eliminates cognitive friction when applied to digital or print mediums.

Main sections in the article:

• What does a UI kit entail?
• UI kits steady the design process
• UI kits and brand storytelling
• Streamline your design process

Before piecing together the puzzle, it is important to navigate a conceptual phase to sort out what the intention of your design will achieve, if it aligns with a brand’s tonality or if there are any pain points it will plausibly mend. Good read!

The global NFT market relies on designers to support artists, Web3 platforms and marketplaces, and major global brands. Toptal designer Gabor Molnar offers insights from his experience breaking into this emerging field. By Gabor Molnar @toptal.com.

In 2021, non-fungible token sales surged to more than $17 billion. The opportunities created by this rapidly growing sector aren’t only for artists and collectors: The market for NFTs also opens new doors for UX and UI designers.

The main parts of the article:

• A brief introduction to NFTs
• Major players in the NFT world
• NFT opportunities for designers
• Design challenges
• The novelty of cryptocurrency use
• Transaction processing time
• Gas fees
• Security

NFTs have a great deal of cachet due to novelty and media attention, not to mention the sheer amount of money focused on their creation and sale. Even though NFT sales experience volatility, the pioneer technology won’t go away anytime soon. As a vital part of Web3, the next evolution of the internet, NFTs will likely play a significant role in the future metaverse and yield numerous use cases that have yet to be discovered. Nice one!

I am going to setup a mobile lab on my MacBook Pro with the help of VMware Fusion 12 so I can run some ESXi servers with nested virtualization. This way I will have a lab I can carry around with me on my travels around the world. By Edwin Weijdema.

The article then covers following steps:

• Planning of the mobile lab
• Getting started
• Installing VMware ESXi in VMware Fusion Pro
• Deploying a vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) on top of the ESXi
• Configuring vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA)
• Post-Configuration changes

The mobile lab is running smooth now on author’s MacBook Pro with better than expected performance. He is now deploying Microsoft Windows 2022 Servers and running security tests with Veeam Backup & Replication v12 Beta 2 in combination with gMSA, Kerberos, NTLM, Hardening and Active Directory management domains. Well done!