April 2024 Summaries

The blog post outlines the process of migrating a GitLab group to the Harness Code Repository, highlighting the benefits of using Harness for enhanced DevOps integration and advanced continuous integration (CI) features. It provides a step-by-step guide on importing repositories from GitLab into Harness and setting up CI pipelines, emphasizing the familiar Git experience and advanced intelligence features that reduce build and test times. The post describes how to generate and execute a Harness CI pipeline, offering flexibility in storing pipeline configurations and showcasing the platform's Cache Intelligence feature, which optimizes dependency management. Overall, the post positions Harness as a compelling alternative to GitLab by combining comprehensive governance, security features, and efficient CI capabilities.

The seamless migration from Spinnaker to Harness CI/CD using the Spinnaker > Harness Migrator Tool offers a transformative solution for DevOps and IT professionals facing the challenge of transitioning application deployments between tools. This migration is often necessitated by organizational changes such as acquisitions or the need for better financial or technical alignment. With Harness's acquisition of Armory, the integration of Spinnaker's expertise with Harness's advanced CI/CD platform allows for a smooth transition of pipelines, facilitated by the Migrator Tool's automation and intelligent mapping algorithms. Harness provides a comprehensive platform with features like DORA Metrics and automated deployment verification, enhancing software delivery efficiency and reliability. The integration of Spinnaker's capabilities into Harness empowers businesses to maintain their existing investments while accessing advanced tools like Supply Chain Management and Cloud Cost Optimization. This migration not only simplifies the traditionally complex process but also accelerates digital transformation, enabling faster innovation and greater business agility in a competitive digital environment.

Harness CI integrates GitHub Actions to create reusable CI/CD pipelines, enhancing the efficiency, consistency, and scalability of software development by leveraging pre-defined workflows. This integration allows developers to automate processes, reduce duplication, and maintain code quality across the development lifecycle. By utilizing community plugins and exploring tools like act, developers can test actions locally, ensuring fast feedback and streamlined workflows. Harness CI, built on Drone, supports the execution of GitHub Actions from both public and private repositories, offering isolated build environments with preconfigured tools for simplified pipeline setup. Dewan Ahmed, a Principal Developer Advocate at Harness, is passionate about solving DevOps challenges and emphasizes the importance of reusable pipelines and automation in achieving effective CI/CD. His advocacy extends beyond his work, supporting underrepresented groups in tech and offering career coaching to give back to the community.

Harness has introduced a new feature that simplifies east-west traffic routing for DevOps teams by integrating with SMI or Istio, aiding in A/B testing, Canary, and Blue/Green Deployments. This feature allows users to split traffic between different environments, providing greater control and customization of their delivery pipelines. By offering an out-of-the-box solution, Harness enables users to easily manage traffic routing through a service mesh, enhancing the flexibility and efficiency of deployment processes. Users can access this feature through a feature flag and are encouraged to contact Harness Support to enable it, thereby improving their pipeline customization and control.

The integration of Machine Learning Operations (MLOps) with DevOps practices has become crucial for optimizing machine learning projects by streamlining workflows and enhancing efficiency. MLOps focuses on operationalizing and managing machine learning models throughout their lifecycle, while DevOps emphasizes collaboration, automation, and continuous delivery. This convergence allows organizations to leverage CI/CD pipelines, version control, and automation tools, effectively addressing unique challenges in machine learning workflows, such as data management, algorithm complexity, and ethical considerations. Harness, a platform that merges DevOps and MLOps principles, enables organizations to efficiently create, deploy, and manage ML models, addressing issues like data drift and model reproducibility while fostering collaboration between data science and operations teams. By implementing MLOps best practices, including version control, automation, and monitoring, organizations can improve the reliability, efficiency, and scalability of their machine learning operations. Dewan Ahmed, a Principal Developer Advocate at Harness, emphasizes the importance of these integrations and best practices in accelerating the development and deployment of machine learning applications.

Harness Cloud Asset Governance, part of the Harness Cloud Cost Management (CCM) suite, is an automated solution designed to manage and reduce cloud expenses by creating and maintaining cost optimization policies without manual intervention. Utilizing the AI-powered Harness AI Development Assistant (AIDA™), the system streamlines rule creation by allowing users to describe rules in plain language, which AIDA then translates into policy code. It also provides built-in validation to catch errors before implementation. This approach democratizes cost optimization by allowing all team members, regardless of technical expertise, to understand and contribute to cost-saving strategies. By automating the management of cloud resources and enforcing smart policies, the system helps organizations transition from reactive to proactive cloud cost management, fostering a culture of cost-consciousness and enabling teams to focus on strategic efforts.

Harness introduced a series of updates to its platform in April 2024, aimed at enhancing DevOps modernization, developer experience, secure software delivery, and cloud cost optimization. Key features include natural language codebase searches and AI-generated PR summaries, which streamline code management and review processes. The platform also improves failure strategy signals and execution expressions in Continuous Delivery and GitOps, alongside enhancements in chaos engineering for Windows. Developer experience is further enriched through updated workflow visualizations and a new Catalog Metadata Ingestion API in the Internal Developer Portal. Security is bolstered by integrating Open Policy Agent (OPA) for security test results and offering one-click configurations for various security scanners. Cloud cost management is optimized through multi-policy evaluation downloads and native user approvals for commitment recommendations, with a revamped asset governance overview. These updates aim to empower users to deliver software more efficiently and securely while managing resources effectively.

Harness University offers in-depth training courses on Harness Modules to promote education and learning about Harness products. These courses, led by Harness Product Education Engineers, are available through two-day, hands-on Instructor-Led Training (ILT) sessions that provide a cloud shell with a Linux virtual machine and a Kubernetes cluster, as well as an ephemeral Harness Account for safe experimentation. The ILT sessions cater to different needs with three delivery methods: shared virtual, dedicated virtual, and dedicated on-site. Harness University serves as a comprehensive educational resource, offering both self-paced and instructor-led learning formats, culminating in a certification program to prepare participants for admin or architect level certifications. Interested individuals can purchase shared classroom experiences or contact their account manager for dedicated sessions.

Harness IDP has introduced new capabilities that enhance developer productivity and operational efficiency by enabling dynamic metadata updates in the Software Catalog without manual YAML edits. These updates facilitate real-time test coverage tracking and integration with ServiceNow CMDB, allowing for customization of Catalog pages, creation of new Scorecard checks, and improvements to the Workflows UI. The new features include Catalog Metadata Ingestion APIs, an Entity Additional Info Card for displaying test coverage scores, and an Autocomplete Picker UI field for Workflows, which simplifies the process for developers to access and utilize metadata. These enhancements aim to address the challenges of keeping YAML files updated for numerous microservices by providing a more streamlined and automated approach, benefiting use cases such as measuring test coverage scores and integrating with ServiceNow for asset management.

Split integrates with Stable Diffusion to enhance image generation and data refinement, providing a tailored user experience through the use of diffusion models, which generate images from textual descriptions by refining random noise. These models are optimized for consumer-grade hardware, making them accessible to developers and creators. To improve efficiency and reduce computational costs, feature flags in the Split platform allow users to experiment with different parameters, such as image size, prompt complexity, and various Stable Diffusion models. This approach enables personalized user experiences, like generating character images for fantasy video games, while maintaining performance and user engagement. Split's platform allows for controlled deployment, feature experimentation, and performance analysis using metrics like image generation time and CPU usage, enabling data-driven decisions without disrupting existing services.

Harness Security Testing Orchestration (STO) streamlines shift-left security by integrating with over 40 leading commercial scanners and introducing built-in open-source scanners, making it easier and more cost-effective for organizations to adopt DevSecOps practices. The platform supports a range of security testing categories, such as SAST, DAST, SCA, container, and secrets detection, offering users the flexibility to choose their preferred scanners. For those new to shift-left security, Harness provides a set of open-source scanners that can be easily incorporated into development pipelines with minimal configuration. Additionally, the platform offers features like auto-detection for scanner targets and variants, reducing configuration errors and manual input, thus enhancing the efficiency of security testing throughout development processes.

Harness SEI's new Business Alignment reports are designed to optimize engineering efforts by providing comprehensive insights into resource allocation and effort investment metrics, ultimately facilitating data-driven decisions that align engineering activities with business value creation. This feature, now available upon request, enables organizations to measure and visualize engineering efficiency through categorization and prioritization of resources. Key additions include customizable investment categories, enhanced allocation goal settings, and detailed effort analysis by ticket types, allowing for strategic resource distribution and maximized returns. The reports also offer drill-down capabilities for in-depth insights into effort allocation across ticket types and individual contributors, helping organizations identify bottlenecks, rebalance efforts, and maintain a balanced workload. This feature is currently in beta and can be enabled through contact with Harness Support, offering actionable insights that support smarter decision-making and enhance engineering success.

SCIM provisioning, or System for Cross-domain Identity Management, standardizes and automates the management of user identities across various applications, simplifying tasks such as creating, updating, and deactivating user accounts while ensuring security and compliance. Acting like a universal translator, SCIM allows seamless communication between identity providers, such as Okta or Azure Active Directory, and applications, ensuring user identity data is consistent and up-to-date across platforms. This reduces manual administrative work, minimizes errors, and enhances IT efficiency and security by automatically synchronizing user data changes, ultimately lowering operational costs. Despite challenges in integration and the need for robust vendor support, the benefits of SCIM provisioning, including improved operational efficiency and security, often outweigh the difficulties, making it a vital tool in modern IT environments. Split, a platform leveraging SCIM, offers a streamlined solution for managing user access, ensuring smooth onboarding and offboarding processes, and synchronizing user information from identity providers directly into its system, thus enhancing security and reducing administrative burden.

In March 2024, a critical vulnerability known as CVE-2024-3094 was discovered in XZ Utils, affecting versions 5.6.0 and 5.6.1, which are widely used in Linux distributions. This flaw allowed attackers to insert a backdoor using a modified build script and exploit the IFUNC mechanism in glibc to manipulate OpenSSH authentication. Various Linux distributions like Fedora, Debian, and openSUSE have been affected, prompting urgent updates and downgrades to earlier, secure versions. Harness Software Supply Chain Assurance (SSCA) provides a solution for identifying and mitigating this vulnerability by utilizing Software Bill of Materials (SBOMs) to detect affected deployments, blocking vulnerable versions in build pipelines, and tracking remediation progress. This proactive approach helps organizations maintain the integrity of their software supply chains by preventing the deployment of compromised software and enhancing overall security.

Harness SSCA enables organizations to achieve SLSA Level 3 compliance, which is crucial for ensuring tamper-proof software builds and safeguarding against supply chain attacks, while aligning with Executive Order 14028 for improved cybersecurity. SLSA, originally developed by Google and now maintained by the Open Source Security Foundation, is a security framework designed to protect the integrity of software artifacts, organized into levels that enhance software supply chain security. The blog post highlights the importance of SLSA in mitigating supply chain attacks, building consumer trust, enhancing software transparency, and providing a proactive defense strategy. Harness's Software Supply Chain Assurance (SSCA) module facilitates meeting all SLSA levels, with detailed processes for achieving each level, such as generating and signing provenance and ensuring isolated build environments to prevent tampering. This comprehensive approach, combined with SBOM lifecycle management, results in a robust supply chain security solution that addresses emerging threats.