June 2023 Summaries

This tutorial explains how to convert a workload-scoped Helm chart to Score, a streamlined method of deploying workloads with Humanitec, providing automatic provisioning of resources, injection of configuration values, and a single configuration file for all environments. The conversion process involves translating the Helm template and accompanying values file into a simplified Score file, which solves challenges that Helm does not address, such as provisioning database resources and injecting configuration values using placeholders. By adopting Score, developers can benefit from improved deployment processes, including automatic resource provisioning, secure secret management, and a single configuration file for all environments. The tutorial requires a Humanitec account, score-humanitec installation, and specific tools like curl, jq, and a POSIX-compliant Bash terminal.

The Humanitec Platform Orchestrator is a crucial component of an Internal Developer Platform (IDP), serving as its core and orchestrating collaboration between multiple tools. To ensure the security and compliance of the platform, Humanitec prioritizes security measures, including regular pen tests, ISO 27001:2013 certification, and GDPR compliance. The Platform Orchestrator connects to network and clusters through various modes, such as direct connection, Bastion Host, agent-based, or self-hosted options. Secrets are managed using four methods: full SaaS, customer-stored secrets with Drivers hosted at Humanitec, customer-stored secrets with Drivers hosted at the client's servers, or self-hosted. The Humanitec Operator is used to resolve secrets during deployment and can be integrated with GitOps operators like ArgoCD or Flux to minimize access to clusters. By utilizing these security modes, Humanitec offers a comprehensive solution for enterprise security.

The Humanitec Platform Orchestrator is designed to bolster the security posture of an engineering organization by enabling security best practices by design. It powers Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs) and enables developers to deploy Workloads with a single specification, automatically configuring resources and injecting secret values into Workloads using placeholders. The platform also offers Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), built-in rollback functionality, auditability, single sign-on (SSO), and an agent-based connection to secure the internal network. By incorporating these features, Humanitec ensures that security is at its core, prioritizing the protection of infrastructure and data, and empowering users to build and manage their platforms with confidence and peace of mind.

This tutorial discusses the use of Placeholders in Resource Definitions to dynamically allocate values to configuration using the Humanitec Platform Orchestrator. It aims to educate platform engineers and developers on how to efficiently manage Resource Definitions with Placeholders, reducing the need for multiple definitions. Resource Definitions are used to provision resources, define matching criteria, and create various types of resources such as Terraform-based resources. A static namespace Resource Definition was created with placeholders to allocate values dynamically, and a global Matching Criteria was applied to all Applications. A workload was then created and deployed to verify the correct namespace allocation. The tutorial emphasizes the importance of understanding Resource Definitions and Placeholders for efficient resource management, allowing for flexible and dynamic resource allocation.

Platform engineering is a discipline that's gaining traction, identified as a top strategic technology trend for 2023 by Gartner. It emerged from the need to alleviate cognitive load and provide developers with more structure, standardization, and abstraction. Platform engineering seeks to alleviate these issues by providing an integrated product, often referred to as an 'Internal Developer Platform', covering operational necessities of an application's lifecycle. This approach addresses problems that arise from poorly adopted DevOps and SRE, prioritizing developer self-service and freedom. By treating the platform as a product, organizations can ensure voluntary adoption, ease of use, and adaptability to changing technology. The platform engineering community is growing rapidly, with initiatives like PlatformCon providing valuable insights and best practices for its practitioners.

The Humanitec Platform Orchestrator is a centerpiece of any enterprise-grade Internal Developer Platform (IDP), enabling Dynamic Configuration Management across the entire software delivery cycle, whereas Port is an internal developer portal that lets developers define any catalog for services, resources, K8s, CI/CD etc. The Orchestrator and Port belong to different categories, occupy different planes of the platform's architecture, and have different primary use cases. To architect an IDP effectively, it's essential to build around a Platform Orchestrator like Humanitec's, enable Dynamic Configuration Management, and then decide on abstraction layers for developers, adopting Port as a portal on top. The combination of these tools enables standardization by design across the entire software development lifecycle, improving developer experience and reducing complexity of app and infra configurations.