May 2019 Summaries

The new L7 observability features in Consul Connect, introduced in Consul 1.5, provide deeper insight into the behavior and performance of services by enabling monitoring of protocol-specific error rates and response codes. This allows for better correlation of events and identification of failures in production. By configuring metrics collection through a centralized configuration file, users can collect L7 metrics from Envoy proxies in a consistent way, regardless of programming language or framework. The features also support distributed tracing and integration with tools like Grafana to provide a comprehensive view of system performance.

Terraform 0.12 introduces several significant improvements and new features, including first-class expression syntax, a generalized type system, iteration constructs, structural rendering of plans, and context-rich error messages. The new version allows for more flexible and readable configuration files, making it easier to work with data structures such as lists and maps. It also provides improved plan output, showing changes in a form that resembles the configuration language, and includes line-oriented diffs for multiline strings. Additionally, Terraform 0.12 includes enhanced error messages with context-rich details, making it easier to diagnose and resolve issues. The release is available now, and provider developers are encouraged to make their providers compatible with 0.12-ready releases as soon as possible.

Microsoft has introduced the Service Mesh Interface (SMI), a specification for service meshes running on Kubernetes, aiming to standardize and enable flexibility and interoperability. SMI supports four primary functions: Traffic Specs, Traffic Access Control, Traffic Split, and Traffic Metrics. HashiCorp Consul will support the Traffic Access Control specification at launch, with possible integrations for others in the future. The company has developed a custom resource called TrafficTarget to assist with securing service-to-service traffic, enabling developers to define Consul Connect intentions using Kubernetes custom resources. By leveraging SMI and Consul, users can utilize Consul's capabilities inside Kubernetes environments more easily, extending its service mesh capabilities to hybrid or multi-cloud environments.

Terraform Cloud is a collaboration platform designed for all Terraform users, offering free collaboration features and additional paid feature sets that provide team management, self-service infrastructure, and governance features. The platform allows users to manage remote state files, eliminating the need for local state storage and shared file management among team members. With Terraform Cloud, users can automatically handle state management, reducing complexity as the number of collaborators grows. This feature is part of a broader set of updates aimed at improving user experience and functionality in Terraform Cloud.

The Consul Team has announced the release of Consul 1.5.0, a multi-cloud service networking platform that enables connecting, securing and configuring services across any runtime platform and public or private cloud. This release introduces several major new features, including L7 observability and load balancing via Envoy integration, Expressive Filtering support for HTTP APIs, Centralized Configuration for managing proxy defaults, and ACL enhancements with expiration times, roles, service identity mappings and auth methods. Additionally, the UI has been improved with live updates, a better search interface, visibility of Connect proxies, and bug fixes. The release also includes support for Azure Snapshot Agent, removal of the legacy UI, and migration of Consul Guides to HashiCorp Learn.

Vault 1.1 has introduced several new features including support for the Transit Secrets Engine to auto-unseal Vault, OpenID Connect (OIDC) as an authentication method, and caching mechanism in the Vault Agent. The company has also updated pre-existing tutorials and provided interactive tutorials for users to learn and integrate these features into their solutions.

The Terraform team has released the first release candidate (RC1) for Terraform 0.12.0, which is expected to be finalized in a few weeks. The RC1 has been tested by various users and feedback has been invaluable in identifying rough edges that automated and manual tests weren't covering. Although it's still a release candidate, users are recommended to test it thoroughly to find any remaining bugs and friction points before the final release. Terraform 0.12.0 includes significant changes such as improved language syntax, new internal models for state and plan, serialization formats, and provider plugin protocol updates. Some providers may not be compatible with this version yet, but the team is working hard to make them available soon. The team thanks the community for their patience during the development process of Terraform 0.12.0.

The new features of Consul Connect aim to simplify service mesh configuration and provide a more robust and secure way to connect services across different environments. The key points include the introduction of Observability, which allows for configurable metrics and tracing, as well as ACL Auth Methods that enable applications to use trusted third-party identities like Kubernetes Service Accounts to obtain ACL tokens with correct permissions automatically. Centralized Configuration for Proxies simplifies the management of proxy configuration, while HTTP Path-Based Routing enables advanced layer 7 routing capabilities. Traffic Shifting allows for weighted service selection and canary testing, and Gateways simplify multi-datacenter network communication by providing secure connectivity between platforms and environments. Advanced Failover Options provide a way to configure multi-datacenter failover without complex queries. The UI Enhancements improve the user experience with automatic refreshing of service state and external dashboard links. Finally, Proxy Ecosystem Support opens up Consul Connect to other proxy vendors through a plugin interface, allowing for more flexibility and customization options.

Terraform is a tool for provisioning and managing infrastructure, particularly useful for multi-cloud infrastructure deployments. Organizations adopting a cloud operating model use Terraform to provision infrastructure, but often miss out on the cost-saving benefits of the cloud. To address this, Terraform has features such as modules, Sentinel policies, and automated policy enforcement that organizations can use to optimize cost savings and management. By codifying infrastructure components into modules, codifying guardrails with Sentinel policies, limiting machine size and lifespan, and automating workflows, organizations can realize significant cost savings and reduce manual effort in managing their infrastructure.

The new device plugin system in Nomad 0.9 introduces a feature called "device plugins" which allow physical hardware devices to be detected, fingerprinted, and made available to the Nomad job scheduler. The NVIDIA GPU device plugin is one of the first devices supported by this feature, enabling users to schedule workloads that benefit from GPU acceleration on Nomad clusters. With device plugins, users can specify custom devices, affinities, and constraints for resource allocation, allowing for more fine-grained control over workload deployment. This feature builds on Nomad's mission of running any application on any infrastructure, providing a production-ready solution for GPU-accelerated workloads. The integration with NVIDIA's TensorRT Inference Server platform enables users to deploy deep learning models as production services, addressing concerns around request routing, monitoring, parallelization, scalability, and cost. By using Nomad with the NVIDIA GPU device plugin, users can take their deep learning models from training to production in a smooth and efficient manner.

Talha Tariq, a seasoned security expert with 15 years of experience, has joined HashiCorp as its new Chief Security Officer. This move comes at a time when the company is increasing its investment in growing its security organization and meeting the evolving needs of its customers, who are transitioning to zero-trust networks. With his extensive background in building and scaling security programs from startups to Fortune 100 organizations, Talha will play a crucial role in ensuring the delivery of HashiCorp's software securely and professionally. The company is committed to its responsibility to deliver secure solutions that protect sensitive information and critical infrastructure, and with Talha on board, it's expected to continue growing and meeting the expectations of its community.