A Technical I.T./DevOps Blog
Question
What are guardrails in the I.T. industry?
Answer
A measure, technology or authentication policy in place to prevent problems in an enterprise network or with a application. With guardrails, a server or web application is protected from hackers or accidental misuse. It is a common metaphor based on highway guardrails. To learn more, see this posting:
https://devops.com/building-great-cloud-security-guardrails/
There is a specific product called GUARDRAILS that detects,
…
Question
Attention to details such as terminology can be important in technical writing. When making software, should you use the term build, create, develop, grow, produce or write?
Answer
We think that context matters. It seems that the terms write or build are often ideal when you are describing the process for creating/producing a software product, application or “work.”
Richard Stallman said ‘I think it is ok for authors (please let’s not call them “creators”,
…
Continue reading “Do You Build, Create, Develop, Grow, Produce or Write software?”
Question
You have heard the term “white box computer.” What is it?
Answer
A workstation or server that is not created by a well-recognized brand. Some people refer to plain flavors as “vanilla.” If a data center is getting white-box servers, they are not getting Dell or HP servers. White-box servers are affordable and may compete with the public cloud. Commodity servers are well known for being acceptable for Hadoop.
…
Question
You have read that CI is different from CD. How are they different (CI vs. CD)?
Answer
CI, continual integration involves integrating code from two or more developers on a continual (regular or ongoing) basis. CD (with the “C” standing for continuous or continual) can refer to delivery (with a manual process into production) or deployment (an automatic process even to production)*.
…
Problem scenario
You want to have a release. You are concerned that if new code changes are made to the main branch of the relevant repository that the upcoming production release will have a problem. You are not sure if you should allow changes to take place or if should you have a code freeze. Is it a best/recommended practice to have a code freeze going into the release weekend?
…
Continue reading “Is It a Recommended/Best Practice to Have a Code Freeze?”
Problem scenario
You read that it was usually a best practice to check code in daily or more frequently to the main branch. Is this always true?
Solution
No, it is not always true. It is advisable to check code in regularly, but you cannot always check code in this frequently.
In some situations a developer would be terminated for checking in code daily.
…
Continue reading “Is It a Best/Recommended Practice to Check Code in Frequently?”
Problem scenario
You have read about heaps in computer programming and in operating systems. What do the different definitions of “heap” mean in I.T.?
Overview
Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary (11th Edition, on page 574) defines a heap as “a collection of things thrown one on another” or as a “pile.” The same word can have completely different meanings in English; a trash heap,
…
Continue reading “What Is The Disambiguation of The Word “heap” in I.T.?”
CI is not always automated. “CI acts as a safety net that lets developers prevent many issues before they reach users. As a result, developers ship code with more confidence, but not necessarily faster — the deployment process may still be manual, long, and error-prone.” This quote was taken from this website.
…
Question
You have heard about different types of containers and seek a disambiguation. Can containers be disambiguated?
Answer
One type of container is a virtual environment like Docker. Another type of container is a data structure of a programming language such as an array, set, list, tuple, or dictionary. These different types of collections of data are called containers.
…
Question
You know cgroups provide isolation (along with namespaces in the context of containers). But what exactly are cgroups?
Answer
cgroups enforce hard limits of subsystems to allow efficient allocation of resources of the super-system.
Cgroups allow you to allocate resources — such as CPU time, system memory, network bandwidth, or combinations of these resources — among user-defined groups of tasks (processes) running on a system.
…