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2024

Introduction to Jupyter Notebooks

Jupyter Notebook is open-source software created and maintained by the Jupyter community. A Jupyter notebook allows for the creation and sharing of documents with code and rich text elements. It works with over 40 programming languages including Python, R, and Ruby making it versatile and flexible for data scientists. In this introductory blog to Jupyter notebooks, we will look at "why it exists" and "what it looks like".

Jupyter Logo

Choosing between Amazon ECS and EKS

We frequently get asked by users that are currently on AWS whether they should be using Amazon ECS or EKS to deploy and operate their containerized applications. Since this is such a common question and the answers are somewhat nuanced, we wanted to share our thoughts and recommendations for the benefit of all users.

Resize and Right Size Applications on Kubernetes

It is a well understood fact on Kubernetes that there is a significant amount of "wastage" of expensive cloud/infrastructure because of over provisioned applications. In this blog, we will look at how app developers and platform teams can save their organizations millions of dollars by right sizing their applications using a free, open-source tool called resize that we recently developed for our customers.

Important

Note that this is just one tool in a comprehensive Cost Control solution that Rafay provides our customers. Please contact us if you are interested in this.

CPU Request and Limit

Introducing Rafay's Generative AI based Copilot

A few days back, as part of our early March 2024 release, we opened up Rafay's Generative AI based Copilot to our customers. For the folks that are active readers of our product blogs, you will recognize that this is the result of a GenAI focused Hackathon we ran in late 2023. You can read more about our learnings from the Hackathon in 2023.

Just like Batman works way better with Robin as his copilot, we are seeing our customers benefiting immensely by using the Rafay Copilot that is integrated right in the console. In this blog, we will use a few examples to showcase the value of the Rafay copilot.

Batman and Robin

Kubernetes v1.29 for Rafay MKS

Our recent release update in Feb to our Preview environment adds support for a number of new features and enhancements. We will write about the other new features in separate blogs. This blog is focused on support for Kubernetes v1.29 with Rafay MKS (i.e. upstream Kubernetes for bare metal and VM based environments).

This release will be promoted from Preview to Production in a few days and will be made available to all customers.

Both new cluster provisioning and in-place upgrades of existing clusters are supported. As with most Kubernetes releases, this version also deprecates and removes a number of features. To ensure there is zero impact to our customers, we have made sure that every feature in the Rafay Kubernetes Operations Platform has been validated on this Kubernetes version.

Kubernetes v1.29 Release

Amazon EKS v1.29 using Rafay

Our recent release update in Feb to our Preview environment adds support for a number of new features and enhancements. We will write about the other new features in separate blogs. This blog is focused on our turnkey support for Amazon EKS v1.29.

Both new cluster provisioning and in-place upgrades of existing EKS clusters are supported. As with most Kubernetes releases, this version also deprecates and removes a number of features. To ensure there is zero impact to our customers, we have made sure that every feature in the Rafay Kubernetes Operations Platform has been validated on this Kubernetes version.

This release will be promoted from Preview to Production in a few days and will be made available to all customers.

Note that no action is needed on the part of our SaaS customers with the new release. Once the rollout is completed, all they need to do is learn about the new features and determine how and when they would like to use them.

Google GKE v1.28 Clusters using Rafay

Our recent release update in Jan to our Preview environment adds support for a number of new features and enhancements. We will write about the other new features in separate blogs. This blog is focused on our turnkey support for GKE v1.28.

This version of GKE was Generally Available (GA) starting Jan 2024 and go end of life in Nov 2024

Both new cluster provisioning and in-place upgrades of existing GKE clusters are supported.

This release will be promoted from Preview to Production in a few days and will be made available to all customers.

Kubernetes v1.28

Challenges of Container Vulnerability Management

In the dynamic landscape of modern application development, containers have emerged as the cornerstone of microservices, revolutionizing the way software is deployed and managed. However, as we celebrate the agility and efficiency brought by containers, a critical concern looms large in the background — the chaotic state of vulnerability management within the container ecosystem. Several noteworthy challenges persist :

  • Current-generation container vulnerability scanners lack contextual considerations and actionable suggestions, posing difficulties in effectively addressing and resolving vulnerabilities.

  • Security teams, accustomed to traditional methods, face challenges in adapting to container security, where the absence of clear context and mitigation measures complicates the resolution of issues.

  • Open source container projects exhibit inconsistent practices in disclosing vulnerabilities and providing information about fixed versions, further complicating the task of maintaining a secure environment.

AKS v1.28 Clusters using Rafay

Our recent release update in Jan to our Preview environment adds support for a number of new features and enhancements. We will write about the other new features in separate blogs. This blog is focused on our turnkey support for AKS v1.28.

This version of AKS was Generally Available (GA) starting Nov 2023 and go end of life in Nov 2024 i.e. with a 12 month support runway.

Both new cluster provisioning and in-place upgrades of existing AKS clusters are supported.

This release will be promoted from Preview to Production in a few days and will be made available to all customers.

Kubernetes v1.28