In this installment we turn to Jon Henrik Bjørnstad. In this particular piece read about configuring, and managing connected devices with CFEngine. If you have other such stories of CFEngine use, we would love to hear back from you. Thanks Jon Henrik for a great post! The world of partially connected devices forms the basis of both mobile IT and the much discussed Internet of Things (“IoT”). Hand-held tablets and phones equipped with applications for interacting with various services are merely the beginning of the pervasive computing experience, and smart home projects by Xerox, HP and Google merely underestimate the possible role of embedded devices in society at large. The Android operating system is based on a stripped down Linux kernel, and is highly portable. This open platform has spread to everything from television sets and refrigerators to cars and in-flight entertainment systems. This diaspora of partially-connected devices is the interaction point for users and contributes in no small part to creating WebScale workloads. Fortunately, the issue of configuration, security and maintenance in a partially connected environment is the natural domain of CFEngine due to its distributed architecture and lightweight autonomous agent. Self-healing configuration on the move CFEngine was designed with the world of embedded computing firmly in mind (see CFEngine founder Mark Burgess’ novel Slogans from 2005, if you want to see how Mark was thinking). Today, any device
Are you a CFEngine user in sunny Los Angeles interested in learning more about the new CFEngine Enterprise 3.6.0? If so, you should definitely look into attending a joint meetup being held by the LA CFEngine User Group and the League of Professional System Adminstrators (LOPSA) next Tuesday, July 8th, at 7pm in the Marina Del Ray area. CFEngine System Engineer Nick Anderson will be at the event to speak about some of the new and enhanced features of CFEngine Enterprise 3.6.0, such as enhanced inventory and reporting capabilities, improved templating, and new language abstractions. He will also be available to answer any CFEngine questions you might have. You can learn more and register here. We hope to see you there next week!
We had a fantastic webinar last month with CFEngine CTO Mark Burgess and guest speaker Forrester Research, Inc. Vice President and Research Director Glenn O’Donnell. During this wide-ranging discussion, Mark and Glenn discussed the concept of continuous operations, and how great service design combined with automation can empower organizations to survive and thrive in what is becoming know as “The Age of the Customer.” Mark also talked about Promise Theory and gave a short look at CFEngine Enterprise 3.6.0. Be sure to check out the recording here!
There is still time to register for one of our upcoming “Introduction to CFEngine Enterprise 3.6.0” webinars being held next Tuesday and Wednesday. By attending one of these live webinars, you will learn how CFEngine Enterprise 3.6.0 can help you:
Proactively alert on policy drifts in your environment through a simple-to-use, configurable dashboard Gain comprehensive visibility into your IT infrastructure with enhanced compliance and and extensible inventory reporting Leverage new language abstractions to improve administration productivity Achieve painless integration with other IT systems using native JSON support Please visit our registration pages to learn more and sign up today:
Are you interested in learning more about WebScale IT and its increasing relevance to the enterprise datacenter? If so, you should definitely check out the global online event ‘WebScale Wednesday’ being hosted this week by Nutanix. Our CTO and Co-founder Mark Burgess will be participating in this event alongside pioneers and practitioners from companies such as Dell, Twitter, and Citrix for an engaging and interactive discussion around WebScale IT and how it is making its way into the mainstream datacenter. The event stream live from 9am to noon this Wednesday, June 25th, and there are various sessions throughout the morning you can choose to attend. You can learn more about the agenda and speakers at the registration page here. Sign up before the event and get a free t-shirt - we hope to see you there!
Continuing an extremely hectic month at CFEngine we are wrapping up the month by sponsoring DevOpsDays Silicon Valley which is being held at the Computer History Museum. With an impressive array of sponsors and many attendees this will hopefully be an event to remember. So what will CFEngine be doing at DevOpsDays? Well, after lots of hard work CFEngine 3.6.0 has finally been released so we’ll be showcasing that and explaining how we can help you in your DevOps journey. Mark Burgess will be presenting at the event. It’s my first time seeing Mark present at DevOpsDays as a CFEngine employee. I saw an awesome session by Mark at DevOpsDays London last year which certainly influenced my decision to join CFEngine. I hope Mark’s session leaves a lasting impression on those of you attending too! The real magic of DevOpsDays is the open space sessions, although for me the ignite sessions are also special because the content is so varied, although this time I have decided not to submit an ignite session, I need a break! I’m sure the open spaces will be enlightening as usual and I’m looking forward to Mark proposing an open space on the future of configuration management. There were many unanswered questions from his presentation of the SVDevOps meetup as well as some lively discussion making it perfect for an open space! Look forward to seeing you next week!
Big news today - I am happy to share the news that CFEngine Enterprise 3.6.0 has been released! This release is a huge step forward for our company and our customers, with a number of both new and enhanced features designed for providing a secure, scalable, and reliable foundation for IT automation. Customers and users are crucial when it comes to feedback and continuous improvement. The fact that CFEngine 3.6.0 leapfrogs the competition across many facets is testament to an innovative development team working in tandem with customers experiencing and solving real world IT issues together. With 3.6.0 we have addressed some key needs you put forth:
There is still time to register for our upcoming webinar with Forrester Research this Thursday! Please join CFEngine Co-Founder and CTO Mark Burgess and guest speaker Forrester Research, Inc. Vice President and Research Director Glenn O’Donnell for a fascinating look into the principles of continuous operations and service management - and how great service design combined with automation can empower your organization to survive and thrive in what is becoming know as “The Age of the Customer.”
Earlier this week CFEngine sponsored DockerCon. Let me start by congratulating Docker on an awesome show. The energy, and enthusiasm was contagious but more so sincere. The commitment to establishing open standards without locking in users to Docker is commendable. The CFEngine table had heavy traffic and the conversations were frequently in Depth. Attendees were not only wanting to know what value CFEngine adds on top of Docker but also what guidance on how others are using Docker. People we talked to understood the need to have a solution that could manage not only Docker containers but also their other physical and virtual infrastructure. We had very positive feedback on how we integrated Docker configurations into our CFEngine policies. For those of you who may be unaware Docker finally reached 1.0 status, which means the warning about running in production no longer applies, not that being pre 1.0 stopped the Docker community running Docker in production! Some key takeaways for me were
CFEngine are sponsoring DockerCon14. We’re excited to be able to show you how CFEngine and Docker can be used together to help manage your docker containers and make sure that you don’t go back down the path of golden images! If that isn’t enough to get your excited our very own Diego Zamboni is flying in from Mexico from the event. Stop by and have a chat with Diego about CFEngine, security or anything else. Diego will also be signing copies of Learning CFEngine 3. We look forward to seeing you there.
