As we continue to build our vision around Shipa Insights, we are pleased to announce that we are now including engineering efficiency statistics along with the policy and security violations from our initial release.
Getting started with Shipa Insights is very easy, Shipa Insights is there for you automatically. Navigate to the Insights Module and take a look at what Shipa has been keeping track of / discovering on your behalf.
Your First Shipa Insights
There are two paths to Shipa Insights. You can deploy workloads through Shipa and/or auto-discover/ingest existing workloads with Shipa. Based on the Shipa Framework defined, policy violations will be scored against what is configured in a Framework.
Ingesting Workloads
Shipa has a robust auto-discover capability e.g Application Discovery. First, connect a Kubernetes cluster to Shipa. Then you can ingest workloads. If you do not have a workload, installing something like Magento via Helm is a good example.
helm repo add bitnami https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami helm install my-release bitnami/magento
Next, can create a Shipa Framework to ingest the workloads.
Shipa -> Frameworks -> Create Framework
Option: Discover existing applications
Click Next to configure. The Kubernetes Namespace for the installed Magento Chart is “default”. You can validate this by running “kubectl get pods -A”.
Name: disoverworkload
Plan: shipa-plan
Kubernetes Namespace: default
Teams: shipa-team
Cluster Connection: cluster you connected to Shipa
Click Next to configure the import. Shipa Application Discovery works off of Labels.
If you would like to take a look at the Labels provided by the Helm install, can run the following: kubectl get pods -n default –show-labels
In this case, importing on “app.kubernetes.io/name” makes the most sense.
Label: app.kubernetes.io/name
Naming suffix: -imported
Click Create and your workloads will be ingested. Can validate they have been ingested by returning to Applications.
After a few moments, policy violations will start to appear. For example, mariadb when compared against your discoverworkload policy, has a Resource Limit Policy Violation.
This is due to when setting up the Framework, the Shipa default “shipa-plan” sets the cpushare to 100.
Security Scanning
By default with quick-starts, the Container Scanning feature is turned off. Can update the Framework to turn this on to get scanning results for the running ingested workloads. Update your created discoverworkload.
Shipa -> Frameworks -> discoverworkload -> Update
Click Update and then click on Security Scans in the left-hand panel.
Un-check “Disable app scans” then click Update & Close. Shipa will now start to scan your running containers.
Heading back to Insights, you will notice that mariadb has one more violation from the Resource Limit violation.
Clicking into mariadb, the Security ScanPolicy will allow you to now take a look at the security scan.
Click on the Scan report to take a look at the report.
Just like that, you were able to ingest existing Kubernetes workloads to start to get a deeper understanding of what is running.
Deploying Workloads
For workloads that you deploy through Shipa, the process is similar. Shipa has a one-click to deploy which is very simple. Similar to creating the Application Discovery Framework, can create one to deploy.
Shipa -> Frameworks -> Create Framework
Option: Deploy applications with reasonable defaults
Click Next to configure the Framework.
Name: shipadeploy
Plan: shipa-plan
Teams: shipa-team
Connect to cluster: Your Kubernetes cluster
Then click Create.
Now you can add an Application [deploymnet] with Shipa.
Shipa -> Application + Create
Name: myfirstapp
Framework: shipadeploy
Team: shipa-team
Now you can specify an image to deploy.
Deployment source: Public-registry
Image URL [Test with Sample Image]: docker.io/shipasoftware/hello-shipa:latest
Click Deploy and you are off to the races again with Shipa.
Circling back to Insights, you will notice that your newly deployed Application has no policy violations. Shipa was able to enforce the decisions that were prescribed by the Framework.
Digging into the engineering efficiency section, now statistics will be there around deployment frequency, average deployment time, and total deployments.
We are just getting started with Shipa Insights.
Shipa, Fighter of Kubernetes Toil
We are making some great strides around Shipa Insights to start combating problems of current and future as organizations continue their Kubernetes journey. Shipa already has rock-solid Kubernetes abstractions and policy enforcement to get your workloads on Kubernetes. As Kubernetes adoption starts to scale, looking at security and efficiency items, especially for existing workloads where the authoring engineers are long gone is challenging. Shipa is here to change that. Feel free to signup for a free Shipa Cloud account to take Shipa Insights for a spin.
Cheers,
-Ravi