staging-devopsy.kinsta.cloud

Tag: compute

  • InfluxDB to Revamp Storage Engine for Time-Series Database

    InfluxDB to Revamp Storage Engine for Time-Series Database

    InfluxData has launched an open source InfluxDB IOx project that it said will become the foundation for the next generation of the company’s time-series databases.

    At the same time, the company has made InfluxDB Open Source 2.0 generally available. This version of the company’s database comes in the form of a single binary that makes it easier to secure.

    InfluxDB Open Source 2.0 also provides access to Data Explorer visualization tools as well as a lighter-weight Flux query language purpose-built for time series data.

    InfluxData CTO Paul Dix said while improvements are still being made to the existing database offering, the time has come to start working toward addressing a number of issues via a new project anchored around a storage engine that will make it possible to query petabytes of data across thousands of servers. The InfluxDB IOx project will address that issue by eliminating current restrictions on cardinality, data size and cluster size that are inherent in the current platform, he said.

    The InfluxDB IOx project is written in the Rust programming language and incorporates Apache Arrow, an open source in-memory analytics engine that incorporates a columnar data store that is being advanced under the auspices of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). That approach will also make it possible for InfluxDB to natively support SQL along with InfluxQL and Flux query languages.

    The current plan is to make InfluxDB IOx an optional storage backend in a future point release. By the latter half of next year, InfluxData plans that InfluxDB Enterprise customers will have a commercially supported version of InfluxDB IOx and InfluxDB Enterprise. InfluxDB IOx will have its own builds and can be run separately. In effect, Dix noted, InfluxDB IOx will make it easier to separate compute and storage requirements.

    Dix said that while InfluxDB has served as the foundation that enables a wide range of monitoring tools to collect data in real-time, current cardinality limits that impact the number of tables that can be joined requires a new approach to add support for distributed tracing capabilities required to observe microservices-based applications. The IOx version will also employ object storage platforms to reduce the total cost of ownership while making it possible to address the requirements of distributed computing environments that now include a wide range of edge computing platforms, he noted.

    The decision to embrace Apache Arrow also opens the platform to end users who prefer to work with SQL and other scripting languages, he added.

    It may be a while before observability tools that leverage InfluxDB IOx find their way into DevOps tools. However, it’s clear that time-series databases will evolve to meet the requirements of cloud-native applications that will be based on large numbers of microservices spanning distributed computing environments. The only issue is to what degree the current rate of deployment of these applications might outpace the current ability of InfluxDB to keep pace.

  • Cisco CEO: Developers Need More Infrastructure Control

    Cisco CEO: Developers Need More Infrastructure Control

    Cisco Systems CEO Chuck Robbins said this week that the company’s No. 1 priority going forward is to enable IT organizations to better manage application experience via abstraction layers that make to possible for developers to programmatically manage infrastructure.

    Speaking at its annual Cisco Partner Summit, which occurred online, Robbins said Cisco is working toward making it possible for developers to not only programmatically provision IT infrastructure but also impact how services are delivered using application networking services the company is currently developing.

    Over time, the entire Cisco portfolio will either be cloud-delivered or cloud-managed as Cisco increasingly delivers its technology as a service, he said. As part of that effort, Cisco is now exposing application programming interfaces (APIs) across its portfolio.

    At the core of the initiative are investments Cisco is making in AppDynamics, ThousandEyes and its Intersight IT operations management platform. Those tools will be employed to provide insights and observability across a diverse application environment that increasingly includes cloud-native applications running on Kubernetes clusters, Robbins said.

    In effect, Cisco is signaling a more aggressive transition toward managing infrastructure as code inside and out of the cloud. This week Cisco announced it has added an Intersight Workload Optimizer to optimize infrastructure consumption along with adding support for dynamic provisioning of Kubernetes clusters via Cisco Intersight. The company also added a Cisco Nexus dashboard to provide visibility into networks spanning multiple clouds, on-premises IT environments and edge computing platforms, and expanded the Cisco Identity Services Engine to now secure a wider variety of internet of things (IoT) endpoints.

    Cisco, like every other provider of IT infrastructure, is shifting toward a cloud operating model that promises to enable IT teams to manage on-premises IT infrastructure in the same way IT teams consume public cloud resources. As part of that effort, Robbins noted Cisco has been disaggregating all the software functionality it provides from hardware whenever possible, which will provide IT teams with more flexibility and control over highly distributed IT environments.

    The COVID-19 pandemic has only accelerated a transition to managing IT as service, as organizations rely more on applications to engage their end customers, he added.

    Of course, Cisco is not the only provider of IT infrastructure with similar ambitions. Not only is networking software is becoming accessible via APIs, but it’s also now possible to deploy a software-defined network on commodity processors almost anywhere. That transition is also the primary reason that network operations are increasingly being folded into DevOps teams seeking to manage compute, storage and networking as code across an extended enterprise.

    It may be a while yet before network and storage operations are fully assimilated into DevOps processes. However, it’s now no longer a question of if as much as how long before most IT organizations achieve that goal.