Containers, and Docker in particular, are probably the most talked-about topic in the IT-world over the last few years. That’s not surprising since Docker really started the container movement since the launch in 2013. It was the first tool that made it possible to package an application with all of its dependencies into a lightweight […]

Over the last few years, we have helped several customers with their transition to a Docker and Kubernetes set-up. Nowadays, in 2017, we are one of the few European IT-companies that are mentioned as an official partner on the Kubernetes website. As true open source aficionados, we like helping other organisations by sharing our knowledge. That is why we decided to extend our services with Kubernetes courses and consultancy.

When adopting a new technology, you will always face some challenges. When it comes to container technology, one of the important questions in this regard is how to get insight in the behaviour of your applications and container environment. Which features are essential when it comes to your monitoring system? Which metrics should processes expose? And what about blackbox and whitebox monitoring? In this article, our Prometheus expert Ed Schouten talks about the monitoring of containers.

The use of containers is growing rapidly since they provide organisations with lots of benefits and competitive advantages, but it’s important to make sure you have done your research before making the decision between virtual machines and containers. In this blog post we will try to answer the question ‘How to choose between containers and virtual machines?’ by providing you some real life business cases and examples. Hopefully, we will give you a good idea of how containers can help you keep up with evolving market and business needs.

Dinsdag 16 mei geeft één van onze medewerkers, Ed Schouten, een presentatie over het monitoringsysteem Prometheus op de voorjaarsconferentie van NLUUG. Kumina past Prometheus toe als monitoring systeem voor haar klanten en heeft diverse exporters (plugins) voor Prometheus ontwikkeld. In de presentatie vertellen we je meer over dit schaalbare en moderne monitoringsysteem. We beantwoorden de volgende vragen: Wat is het datamodel van Prometheus? Hoe komt Prometheus aan zijn data? Hoe raadpleeg ik de data en hoe werkt de querytaal? Hoe genereert Prometheus alerts? En natuurlijk uitleg over hoe wij binnen Kumina Prometheus gebruiken. De speker, Ed Schouten, focust zich bij Kumina op het uitrollen van Kubernetes en Prometheus als vervanging voor de bestaande infrastructuur in Linux-clusters. Hiervoor werkte hij tussen 2012 en 2014 voor Google als Site Reliability Engineer, hier deed hij uitgebreide ervaring op met Borg en Borgmon, waar Kubernetes en Prometheus op gebaseerd zijn.

Container technology is shaping the future of software development and is causing a structural change in the cloud-computing world. Developers as well as CTO’s are embracing container technology and enterprises are adopting it at an explosive rate. And for good reasons: it offers many advantages like the simplification and speeding up of the development process, consistency, reliability, portability, efficiency and cost reduction. In this blog post we will dive a little deeper into the benefits of containerisation and find out how they can provide organisations with an agile IT-infrastructure.

Container technology is causing a structural change in the entire cloud-computing world. A change we embrace at Kumina. In this first post from our blog post series ‘Containerisation with Kubernetes and Docker’, we’ll provide you with a simple introduction to the concept ‘containerisation’ and about how containers relate to virtual machines (VM).

Wednesday April 5, our director Tim Stoop will give a Kubernetes presentation at the Den Bosch Linux User Group. In this presentation, you’ll get a good idea of the basics of container management with Kubernetes. In our tech talk we’ll take you through the history and present use of containers and explain you ll the basics of Kubernetes and its components. Followed by a live demonstration on our pi cluster, so you can see Kubernetes in action. Don’t hesitate to attend our talk: attendance is free of charge!