Google Cloud SQL recently introduced the capability for an instance to have an IP address within the private address space of your VPC network. Previously, all Cloud SQL instances had IP addresses within the address space of the public Internet. Obviously, the public IP was a security and privacy concern, as well as a potential violation of some compliance and governance frameworks. Now, each instance may have a public IP, private IP, or both. There’s another potential benefit to using a private IP address: performance!

I have a QNAP NAS at home which I use for file storage. It shares several folders with the family’s Mac, Linux, and Windows computers. Many of these files are are irreplaceable, especially our digital photos, so I back them up to the cloud. QNAP provides the Hybrid Backup and Sync application, which supports multiple cloud storage endpoints. QNAP also provides specific documentation for backing up and syncing to Google Cloud Storage. However, QNAP’s instructions don’t explain how to set up a Google Cloud Storage bucket destination, so here is the procedure I used to set up Google Cloud Storage to back up my QNAP NAS.

Setting up disk space utilization alerts in Google Stackdriver is almost unbelievably tricky. It’s easy to think that you can just choose the metric “Disk Utilization” and add a condition to alert when disk utilization crosses some threshold for some length of time (such as over 55% for 1 hour).

File System Type Filter

Your first problem is that a Linux system has many types of file systems, even if it only has one disk. You probably want to alert when your root disk is running out of space; therefore, you need to filter out non-disk filesystems like procfs or tmpfs. Add a device filter to select exactly which devices you want to alert on; in my case, with only one disk per server, I match only on device rootfs.

I love using Salt to configure and manage servers at scale. Typically, a Salt master server manages an army of servers which are on the same private network. A salt-minion daemon runs on each client server and communicates with the master. Sometimes you need to manage a server which is outside of your internal network, such as a marketing web server running on a service like AWS LightSail, Linode, or Digital Ocean. That’s when salt-ssh comes in handy.

Scenario

A single Percona MySQL 5.7 server replicates asynchronously with a cluster of Percona MySQL 5.7 servers. After rebooting the single server, replication failed with the following symptoms:

mysql> show slave status \G**************************** 1. row **************                Slave_IO_State: Waiting to reconnect after a failed registration on master                   Master_Host: my-replication-partner                   Master_User: repl                   Master_Port: 3306                 Connect_Retry: 60               Master_Log_File: mysql-bin.000120           Read_Master_Log_Pos: 3848512                Relay_Log_File: my-host-hame-relay-bin.000012                 Relay_Log_Pos: 4         Relay_Master_Log_File: mysql-bin.000120              Slave_IO_Running: Connecting             Slave_SQL_Running: Yes

I checked my MySQL text log (/var/log/mysql.log in my case, but the path may vary, or messages may go to syslog) and found the following error:

Overview of the Netgear GS Switch Series

Netgear switch models GS728TS, GS728TPS, GS752TS, and GS752TPS (Gigabit Smart Switches) are value-priced edge switches (about $1000 on Amazon for the GS752TPS 48-port model with PoE) with limited Layer 3 routing capabilities. These switches are best deployed as edge switches in a small office environment with a limited budget. The fan noise is annoying but not deafening, so they should be located in a network closet or noise-insulated rack. In the case of budget constraints, the GS7 series could be used as core switches. They can be stacked for high availability, and they support LAGs and bonding to allow equipment with multiple NICs to run one cable to each switch, allowing the equipment to stay up even if one switch unit dies. However, these switches are not really designed for “enterprise” use as core switches.

Creating Kubernetes secrets isn’t intuitive the first time you do it. A common reason to use a secret is to add a SSL/TLS certificate to a cluster. Kubernetes provides two ways to add a secret: directly on the command line, and from a YAML source file. First, let’s generate a test certificate to work with and select our cluster.

Prerequisites

openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 365 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout tls.key -out tls.crt -subj "/CN=foo.bar.com"

This command produces two files: tls.key and tls.cert. In production, you’d generate a key file and use it to obtain a certificate from a certificate authority.

I found the solution for getting the New Relic APM Agent to run on a CentOS 7 system with SELinux Enforcing. The only SELinux modification you have to make is to change the context of the log file directory /var/log/newrelic. You can temporarily make these changes with the chcon command: [code lang=“bash”] chcon -R -t httpd_log_t /var/log/newrelic/ [/code] Kill any running instances of newrelic-daemon. If you’re using New Relic’s recommended default setup, make sure that the file /etc/newrelic/newrelic.cfg does not exist. Verify that all required values in /etc/php.d/newrelic.ini are correct (especially the license key and the application name). Finally, restart httpd: [code lang=“bash”] systemctl restart httpd [/code] If that works, you should see output in both /var/log/newrelic/newrelic-daemon.log and /var/log/newrelic/php_agent.log. Now, make this file context change persistent, and verify the result: [code lang=“bash”] semanage fcontext –add –type httpd_log_t “/var/log/newrelic(/.*)?” restorecon -RF /var/log/newrelic/ ls -laZ /var/log/newrelic/ [/code] When you restart Apache, it spawns the newrelic-daemon processes, which communicate with APM via the socket file /tmp/.newrelic.sock. You really don’t want to run the newrelic-daemon processes via systemd if you can avoid it. The resulting process tree should look like this:

I’m moving to a new address in Central Florida which has multiple Internet Service Providers (ISPs) available. Spectrum (formerly BrightHouse) provides speeds up to 100Mbps via cable modem. AT&T just installed fiber in the neighborhood, so I was excited to find out what they would offer.

Spectrum Cable Internet

Here’s a cost breakdown by service:

Lightning Internet (200Mbps download data rate, 30Mbps upload): $90/month Static IP address: $10/month Modem rental: $4/month  (you must rent a modem to get a static IP) Taxes: $0.26