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Using Træfik for internal tools at Bleemeo

At Bleemeo, as many geeks, we use a couple of tools on a day to day basis. Most of those tools are small Open Source web applications and, to be trendy, we deploy those tools with Docker. In the past, we used to create a virtual machine per service, deploy the tool and configure web server on each machine. Moreover if you are using https, you need to deploy certificates and private keys on each server.

Free Amazon Web Services (AWS) Infrastructure Designer Tool.

Design Amazon Web Services Infrastructure Diagrams For Free. Site24x7's Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure designer tool is a free, online design platform that helps you create and depict your Amazon Web Services architecture. Effortlessly create simple or complex cloud architecture diagrams in a matter of minutes, without even signing up. The Site24x7 AWS infrastructure designer tool has two views: the resource view on the left, and the canvas view in the center, where the action happens.

My Let’s Encrypt mistake

SSLping was born as a side project. It’s useful to people, which is cool, but today it was also helpful to me! I use it to monitor my HTTPS websites. This morning, my own SSLping project sent me an email about how my website https://hire.chris-hartwig.com is about to expire (in 10 days): it’s using Letsencrypt, and it’s been 80 days since I installed the cert.

What after I install Let’s encrypt?

TL;DR you’re never done with Let’s encrypt: once your servers are secure, you must ensure they stay that way. Let’s encrypt is a no brainer: this initiative benefits us all, with free domain-validated certificates. It’s easy to setup and free. There’s probably automatic installation for your web server of choice, the community behind it can help, and tutorials are everywhere. Then you head to https://.com and you’re done… not.

How’s your SSL security doing?

It was in your TodoList: install the SSL certificate. So you’ve setup your SSL certificate on the web server. It’s quite trendy to use SSL. Google will give you a modest ranking bump, some users will feel safer, all is good. You have even tested your configuration with Qualys, got you an A+. Good job: most got a C, even banks. Now what? What will happen when your cert is about to expire? Your CA will send an email to renew your cert. But maybe someone in the accounting dept will get that email.

Managing Application Uptime - Hosted Status Page vs DevOps Team

When your software goes down, there are two audiences that need to know about it. One: the people who are going to get frustrated and blame you for the inconvenience. Two: the people who can fix the problem. The first audience doesn’t need to know the details of the problem – they just need to know that you’re on top of fixing it, and how long they can expect to wait before full functionality is restored (insofar as you can make a realistic estimate about that).

SaaS Application Uptime- APM and DevOps

If you care about the uptime status of your website or SaaS application, there are two really great pieces of content shared last month that you should look into. One is an article on continuous testing from Parasoft Corporation, featured on DZone. The other is a recorded presentation on Application Performance Monitoring (APM) by Expected Behavior, from the Full Stack Toronto conference.