Private repositories on Docker Hub

July 16th, 2017

Sometimes Docker Hub really is just the quickest and easiest way to share an image from one place to another, particularly when the place I’m trying to share to is expecting to just do a docker pull. It’s not always the case that I want to share those images with the rest of the world though. Docker Hub’s answer to this is the private repository but, on a free plan, you only get one private repository. What you have to remember though is that a repository can contain multiple images: they all share the same name but each has a different tag.

So, a while back I created a repository in my personal namespace called private and made it private using the button on the settings page:

When I then want to push an image up I use the local name as the tag. For example:

Simple as that. There are obviously limitations here in that I lose the ability to have multiple versions of my image with different tags but so far, for my limited use cases, I’ve been able to live with that. In fairness to Docker Inc, I should say that have multiple private repositories is not the only reason to pay for an account on Docker Hub. You also get the ability to run parallel builds on.

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Microservice Builder GA Update

July 12th, 2017

As I posted here on the Microservice Builder beta, I thought it only fair that I should offer an update now that it is Generally Available. There is already the official announcement, various coverage in the press including ZDNet and ADT, a post from my new General Manager Denis Kennelly, and, indeed, my own post on the official blog, so I thought I’d focus on what has changed from a technical standpoint since the beta.

If I start with the developer CLI, the most significant change here is that you no longer need a Bluemix login. Indeed, if you aren’t logged in, you’ll no longer be prompted for potentially irrelevant information such as the sub-domain on Bluemix where you want the application to run. Note, however, that the CLI is still using back-end services out in the cloud to generate the projects so you’ll still need internet connectivity when performing a bx dev create.

Moving on to the next part of the end-to-end flow: the Jenkins-based CI/CD pipeline, the Helm chart for this has been modified extensively. It is now based on the community chart which, most significantly, means that it is using the Kubernetes plugin for Jenkins. This results in the use of separate containers for each of the build steps (with Maven for the app build, Docker for the image build, and kubectl for the deploy) and those containers are spun up dynamically as part of a Kubernetes pod representing the Jenkins slave when required.

The Jenkinsfile has also been refactored to make extensive use of a Jenkins library. As you’ll see in the sample projects, this means that the generated Jenkinsfile is now very sparse:

I could say much more about the work we’ve done with the pipeline but to do so would be stealing the thunder from one of my colleagues who I know is penning an article on this subject.

Looking at the runtime portion, what we deploy for the Microservice Builder fabric has changed significantly. We had a fair amount of heartache as we considered security concerns in the inter-component communication. This led us to move the ELK stack and configuration for the Liberty logstash feature out into a sample. This capability will return although likely in a slightly different form. The fabric did gain a Zipkin server for collation and display of Open Tracing data. Again, the security concerns hit home here and, for now, the server is not persisting data and the dashboard is only accessible via kubectl port-forward.

Another significant change, and one of the reasons I didn’t post this immediately, was that a week after we GA’d, IBM Spectrum Conductor for Containers morphed into IBM Cloud private. In the 1.2 release, this is largely a rebranding exercise but there’s certainly a lot more to come in this space. Most immediately for Microservice Builder, it means that you no longer need to add our Helm repository as it will be there in the App Center out of the box. It also meant a lot of search and replace for me in our Knowledge Center!

You may be wondering where we are heading next with Microservice Builder. As always, unfortunately I can’t disclose future product plans. What I can do is highlight existing activity that is happening externally. For example, if you look at the Google Group for the MicroProfile community, you will see activity ramping up there and proposals for a number of new components. Several of the Microservice Builder announcements also refer to the Istio service mesh project on which IBM is collaborating with Google. It’s still early days there but the project is moving fast and you can take a look at some of the exciting features on the roadmap.

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Emma Goes Ape

July 9th, 2017

Having passed the minimum age limit, Emma was keen to try out the adult Go Ape at Itchen Valley Country Park. There was a certain amount of expectation setting that had to be done before we left home as she needed shoes on to be taller than the limit of 140cm but they seem fine with that when we arrived at check-in. Quite apart from any qualms over heights, my back gave out last Monday, and so the job of trailing Emma round fell to Christine, with Duncan and myself watching from ground-level.

Emma had a big cheery smile on her face the whole way round although Christine says she was a bit nervous at times. (I think she meant Emma, not herself.) It certainly didn’t hold her up though as she flew along many of obstacles. Some of the attachments were a bit of a stretch for her so she certainly needed to have Christine there to help her clip on. Christine didn’t give her any chance to forget about clipping on either! Emma’s certainly keen to return so perhaps my back pain will have to become a recurring problem…

More photos over on Flickr.

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Donutting

June 4th, 2017

Emma reached double-figures last week and, conveniently, the school had scheduled an Inset day so that she and her friends (and Duncan!) could celebrate by going donutting at the dry ski-slope in Southampton. They all had a whale of a time although, with the requirement to wear helmets and full body cover, frequent refreshment stops were required in the midday sun. (Also, drag lifts require a little more effort when you’re not actually wearing skis!)

Thankfully the chalet where party tea was held offered plenty of shade. The activity also made a good theme for the cake although I think I put about as much effort into constructing a sloping stand as actually decorating the cake itself! Once we’d seen everyone back home we packed up the car and joined the Bank Holiday traffic for a weekend of camping near Corfe Castle.

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Multi-Stage Docker Build

May 5th, 2017

Docker 17.05 enabled the ability to perform multiple build stages in a single Dockerfile, copying files between them. This brings to regular Docker build a capability that I’ve previously talked about in the context of Rocker, and something that’s of particular use in a compiled language like Java. Let’s see what it would look like in the context of the WebSphere Liberty ferret sample.

The original Dockerfile looks as follows:

We can see that it assumes that the application has already been built and just pulls in the WAR file, in this case from Maven Central. With a multi-stage build we can perform the build of the application and the build of the image in a single Dockerfile:

The first line uses the Maven on-build image to build the application using the source in the same directory as the Dockerfile. Although the stages are given an index by default, naming them using the AS keyword makes the file much more readable. Further down in the Dockerfile we can see that the COPY command takes the built WAR file from the first stage and copies it into the Liberty dropins directory as before. The important thing about all of this is that the final image doesn’t end up with the application source in it, or Maven, or an SDK – just the artifacts that are needed at runtime – thereby keeping down the final image size.

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Lite Weekend of Running

May 2nd, 2017

 We had a fun Bank Holiday weekend in South Wales competing in the OMM Lite. Christine and I were entered on the Long Score with her Mum having offered to mind the children at the event centre in Cwm-du, nestled in the Black Mountains. The Lite is significant as the event is quite different from the OMM itself. Firstly, as with the Capricorn, you return to the event centre on Saturday so there is no need to carry camping equipment or food. Secondly, the weather at this time of year was considerably better than your average OMM. Lastly, the event was restricted to using rights of way only. This latter point makes a major difference: the navigation was simple, the course was much more runnable, and lastly, it meant that the route choice options were much more limited.

In the seven hours on Saturday, we ended up running 53km – considerably more than either of us had been expecting. This included an ascent of Waun Fach. Unfortunately, with Pen Cerig-calch effectively out-of-bounds it also meant that, with two hours to go, there was nothing for it but a long run back round the lanes and connecting footpaths, picking up a few checkpoints on the way. We finished the first day in second place. The winners were miles ahead of us (rumour has it that they ran a further 10km) but there was another mixed pair just behind us who we knew had been running faster than us.

The map had all of the available checkpoints for the weekend marked on it and, although it was only at the start of each day that you discovered the controls that were open and how much they were worth, there was still plenty of opportunity for route planning on Saturday night. In the end, we only made one small tweak to the route I had chosen, taking in Mynydd Troed at the beginning and returning to Mynydd Llangorse, where Christine’s Dad was stationed, towards the finish. With blisters from her new Inov-8s, Christine chose to wear road shoes on Sunday and wasn’t significantly disadvantaged. In contrast, my new Inov-8 Talon 212s didn’t give me any trouble despite only having worn them for half an hour before the event.

Rather embarrassingly, our attempt to avoid the Brecons over Easter backfired completely as there was a control within 50 metres of where we had parked the car at Llangorse Lake! It didn’t give us any advantage though with no option for canoeing across the lake! Christine’s knee started to give her some trouble with 1.5 of the 5 hours still to go but she soldiered on and, as we had time, was even persuaded to take in an extra control at the end. This brought our distance for the second day to nearly 35km, gave us a win for day 2 and confirmed our place as second overall and first mixed-pair.

Overall, a fun weekend although, as I say, quite different from the OMM. It was certainly family friendly with the children enjoying the organised walks and the mountain bike skills course laid on at the event centre. The Lite format has another couple of events in the south with the Chilterns and Surrey Hills but, even with the requirement to stick to the paths, I don’t think they can compete with being out on the open fells.

 

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Easter Part II

April 21st, 2017

After the JK we headed over to Monmouth to spend a few days with Christine’s parents. The Tuesday was a lovely day and we stopped off at Westonbirt Arboretum on the way. Although a little pricey for a Forestry Commission venue there is plenty to see and we spent more time there than we had originally intended. As with, I suspect, most first-time visitors, we set off along the Treetop Walkway that takes you 13 metres up into the trees. As well as being a beautiful structure, it also has a mine of interesting information (most of which I’m afraid I immediately forgot).

After a picnic lunch, we continued around the Spring Trail which took us through the Cherry Glade to the Silk Wood barn where there was a selection of Easter activities on offer (and an opportunity to stock up on yet more chocolate!). After briefly checking out the play area next to the café (Emma was stretching the declared age range a little), we continued on into the Old Arboretum. As well as dog free zone, it also seemed to be largely toddler free which made for a much more peaceful walk than the first half.

On Wednesday we headed over to Llangorse Lake to meet up with Christine’s cousin, her family, and her extended family-in-law. We started with a walk around the lake where we temporarily lost a pair of shoes in the mud where the field had been under water just a week or two ago. Having returned to the cars for lunch, we then took to the water on an assortment of different boats (rowing plus one- and two-seater and Canadian canoes).

Christine headed off to a conference in Birmingham of the next two days and the rest of us had a quiet day around Monmouth on Thursday. We still managed to visit the Museum (an eclectic mix of Nelson and Rockfield Studios memorabilia) and Shire Hall both of which were firsts for me despite 20+ years of visiting the town. The latter is full of gruesome stories from its days as Assize Court.

On Friday I returned home with the children but we stopped off on in Gloucester on the way back with Christine’s parents. Emma hadn’t got her climbing fix at Llangorse so the kids went bouldering at The Warehouse. We then had our lunch down by the quays and wandered around the waterfront until our parking ran out.

Just two more days until everyone is back at work!

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JK 2017

April 17th, 2017

We spent most of the Easter weekend south of London orienteering at the JK. We didn’t go to the sprint on Friday (quite frankly, it didn’t seem worth the high entry fee) so our first event was the medium race on Saturday on Ambersham Common. Christine went out first and had a respectable run finishing third on W40. I amused the children with the string course before we walked Emma to the start for her first W10B course. Unfortunately she took a wrong turn and missed out a control, something that Duncan didn’t repeat when he then ran the white course with Christine in tow (it was the same course as Emma’s). I had a scrappy start to my run, wasting a good couple of minutes on #7. Roger Goddard gave me a tow for a while until Geoff Ellis took him away. 12th place was set to become a recurring theme for the weekend.

Part of the draw for the weekend was a chance to catch up with friends over from the Czech Republic and we had a nice meal on the Saturday night. Sunday was the classic distance race and I had a long trek over to my start in St Leonard’s Forest. No major blunders this time but I don’t have the speed in the rough terrain as the course wound its way back on to the Holmbush map and I finished… 11th but still 12th over the two days! Emma took another wrong turn on her course but recovered successfully this time. She was still beaten by Duncan though who went out on his first course unaccompanied. Christine had another successful day in the forest and we stayed to watch her collect her 3rd prize.

There was just a string course for the children on Monday and Christine and I made up either end of a Men’s Short team. I was off first and was pleased to discover there were only seven finishers in front of me with second place under 90 seconds ahead. Dan put in a sterling effort for his first relay, holding on to 8th place. After Christine’s run we finished a respectable… 12th.

It was a fun weekend of orienteering and, probably most importantly, the children seemed to have enjoyed themselves and are looking forward to our summer orienteering holiday.

Posted in Family, Orienteering, Travel | Comments Off on JK 2017

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