My 2019 In Review - Hello Open Source!
OpenFaaS and OpenFaaS Cloud Contributions
In October I started contributing to the OpenFaaS project. It started out as a bugfix here, a documentation change there and it has expanded into 75+ PRs. Not all my contributions were in the OpenFaaS org you can see my OpenFaaS Contributions here. I still managed to get to 15th most contributions in the 12 weeks I have been involved.
I was even given the chance to present some of my work on the OpenFaaS community call which you can watch on Youtube (I’m presenting from about 50 minutes in).
Probably my largest impact has been in adding features and fixing issues in the OpenFaaS Cloud project (OFC).
If I had to pick one feature that I implemented to show you it would be the addition of Runtime logs to the OpenFaaS Cloud dashboard. This means users can view their logs directly from the UI, reducing the time taken to debug and making it easier to focus on their code. It looks a little like this:
Other things I have done:
- Upgraded OFC cert-manager version to 0.11.0
- Added a slash screen to the OFC dashboard for new users to learn more about OpenFaaS and OpenFaaS Cloud
- Added validation for the Registry config file and a command to generate it (In the ofc-bootstrap tool)
- Users can now only see their own OFC dashboards & function information (validating a user has claims for the information they are trying to view)
- Migrated Kubernetes YAML manifests to 1.16
- Added frontend (Gateway) support for new the Multi-Namespace support in OpenFaaS
There’s a great community around OpenFaaS, you can join their slack here
k3sup
Alex Ellis has created this amazing tool to provision k3s clusters and manage the installation of various Kubernetes apps and tools. With a few commands you can provision a new cluster, install OpenFaaS and setup TLS ingress. There are a load of other supported apps. I made a few small contributions to k3sup, which was fun!
I had a few spare RPi boards (Or other compute) with IPs of
- 192.168.0.10
- 192.168.0.20
- 192.168.0.30
I created a new k3s cluster with just 3 commands:
First install a master k3s node like this:
k3sup install --ip 192.168.0.10 --user pi
Then join the two workers:
k3sup join --ip 192.168.0.20 --server-ip 192.168.0.10 --user pi
k3sup join --ip 192.168.0.30 --server-ip 192.168.0.10 --user pi
This leaves me with a 3 node cluster
It’s really cool and you can check it out here.
Birmingham (UK) Meetups and Events
Docker & Cloud Native
This year I co-organised monthly Docker & Cloud native meetups. We had some great speakers come along, as well as talks from the organisers. You can check out the past meetups by following the links.
CoffeeOps
In September a group of us from Birmingham went to DevOpsDays London 2019. On the morning of the Friday some people attended a one-off CoffeeOps organised and run by Jennifer Davis and they loved the format so much that we decided to run a weekly meetup on Tuesdays from 0730 to 0900 in Urban Coffee.
Every week a group of us get together to talk about Dev, Ops and Technology in general. We have seen a good turnout (14 at max).
DevOpsDays Birmingham 2021
We loved DevOpsDays London SO MUCH that we decided that Birmingham needed to organise its own.
So five of us have got together and booked a venue for Birmingham’s first DevOpsDays, in early 2021.
Tech Birmingham
As we found ourselves in the business of organising a large multi-day conference, we thought it would be a good idea to get some practice in.
Between us we organise half a dozen meetups in Birmingham. We usually all individually host our own “Christmas” event, but this year we decided that we would try and raise some sponsorship and put on a larger event with the idea of bringing people together who might not normally mingle.
We were able to provide a free alcoholic drink (or 2 non-alcoholic) and mountains of pizza. Over 90 people were scanned in by us at the venue!
We hosted on the 12th December in a Pinball bar in Birmingham:
We got sponsorship from these amazing companies:
Other Things
Civo cloud sent me some personalised business cards as a joke
I have been using Civo Cloud’s Kubernetes service as a Beta tester, and have been finding a few little issues here and
there. They thought it would be funny to send me some business cards with a made-up job title.
Alex Ellis sent me some swag
After my first few contributions to OpenFaaS Alex sent me a personalised note and an OpenFaaS Mug!
I wrote a tweet, people seemed to like it!
My 2020 Plans
Work
I left my job at the end of this year to start my own consulting company. This means my January is going to be very interesting!
I’m focusing on Cloud Native platform engineering, building DevOps cultures and empowering teams to deliver move value to their customers!
If you think we might be able to work together to build great things then get in touch.
Tech Community
I’m going to be mentoring for the School of Code, a free 16 week bootcamp run in Birmingham. I think they are always on the lookout for mentors and guest speakers. If you are interested you can contact them via their website.
I’m going to be continuing to run the Docker, CNCF and CoffeeOps meetups in birmingham. Alongside these I’m looking to write more talks and then give these outside Birmingham. I have given talks in Nottingham and Bristol so far.
Open Source
I have no plans to scale back my Open Source contributions. I have really enjoyed being part of the OpenFaaS community and being able to see my efforts have an impact.
If you were considering getting into OpenSource but are not sure where to start I would be happy to have a chat, and guide you through your first contributions! Its great fun and very rewarding!
Have a great 2020
Thanks for taking the time to read my blog. Hope you had a good year too!
It would be great to connect with more people so feel free to contact me using the icons below!
