5 Favorite DevOps Memes

In the DevOps webisphere, there are plenty of blogs, articles, commentary, pundits and ideas floating around to keep you busy until your head explodes. We here at ScriptRock tend to have a somewhat cynical perspective on things because we've spent years trying & failing to 'do DevOps' (by the way.... DevOps is NOT a verb for the good of the order) which is what lead us to creating the company to begin with. Our culture promotes having fun and we try to keep a sense of humor about stuff. We all know that a picture is worth a thousand words, so here are our top 5 favorite internet memes related to DevOps.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Original :scriptrock.com

10 of the most useful cloud databases

IDC predicts that big data is growing at an annual rate of 60% for structured and unstructured data. Businesses need to do something with all that data, and traditionally databases have been the answer. With cloud technology, providers are rolling out more ways to host those databases in the public cloud, freeing users from dedicating their own dedicated hardware to these databases, while providing the ability to scale the databases into large capacities. "This is a really huge market given all the data out there," says Jeff Kelly, a big data expert at research firm Wikibon. "The cloud is going to be the destination for a lot of this big data moving forward."

Some concerns remain for what some call database as a service (DBaaS), specifically around sensitive information being stored in the cloud and around cloud outages. But still, an emerging market of cloud database services and tools seems to be picking up steam. Here, Network World looks at 10 cloud database tools. Some of these are providers of direct relational, SQL or NoSQL databases, while others are niche focused on various open source databases. Please note this list is not meant to be exhaustive, as some big players, like Oracle, HP and EMC/VMware are still rounding out their cloud-based products and strategies for these tools.

Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services has a variety of cloud-based database services, including both relational and NoSQL databases. Amazon Relational Database (RDS) run either MySQL, Oracle or SQL Server instances, while Amazon SimpleDB is a schema-less database meant for smaller workloads. On the NoSQL side, Amazon DynamoDB is its solid-state drive (SSD)-backed database that automatically replicates workloads across at least three availability zones. AWS CTO Werner Vogels says DynamoDB is AWS's fastest growing service in AWS history. Amazon also offers a variety of auxiliary data management services, such as its newly announced data warehouse named Redshift, as well as Data Pipeline, which helps users integrate data from multiple sources for easier management.

More information: Amazon Web Services' databases

EnterpriseDB

EnterpriseDB focuses on the open source PostgreSQL databases, but its real claim to fame is its ability to work with Oracle database applications. With EnterpriseDB's Postgres Plus Advanced Server, organizations can use applications written for on-premise Oracle databases through EnterpriseDB, which runs in clouds from Amazon Web Services and HP. It has binary replication and scheduled backups as well.

More information: EnterpriseDB

Garantia Data

Garantia offers a gateway service for users to run open source Redis and Memcached in-memory NoSQL databases services in AWS's public cloud. Using Garantia's software allows for automatic configuration of these open source data platforms by helping developers scale nodes, create clusters and architect for fault tolerance.

More information: Garantia Data

Google Cloud SQL

Google's cloud database service is centered on two major products: Google Cloud SQL, which Google describes as a MySQL-like fully relational database infrastructure, and Google BigQuery, an analysis tool for running queries on large data sets stored in its cloud.

More information: Google cloud databases

Microsoft Azure

Microsoft uses its SQL Server technology to provide a relational database, allowing customers to either access a SQL database on its cloud, or hosted SQL server instances on virtual machines. Microsoft also emphasizes hybrid databases that combine data both on a customer's premise and with the Azure cloud through SQL Data Sync. Microsoft has a cloud-hosted NoSQL database service named Tables as well, while Blobs (binary large object storage), are optimized for media files such as audio and video.

More information: Microsoft Azure

MongoLab

In the NoSQL world, there are a variety of database platforms to choose from, including MongoDB. MongoLab gives users access to MongoDB on a variety of major cloud providers, including AWS, Azure and Joyent. Like other gateway-type services, MongoLab also integrates with various platform as a service (PaaS) tools at the application tier. MongoLab run on either shared or dedicated environments, with the latter being slightly more expensive.

More information: MongoLab

Rackspace

Rackspace's database comes in either a cloud or managed hosted offering via Cloud Databases, which is the name of its product. Rackspace emphasizes the container-basedvirtualization of its Cloud Databases, which it says allow for higher performance of the database service compared to if it was run entirely on virtualized infrastructure. Cloud Databases also incorporates a SAN storage network and it's based on an OpenStack platform. This month, Rackspace announced a NoSQL database in its cloud from provider Cloudant.

More information: Rackspace Cloud Databases

SAP

Enterprise software giant SAP is now playing in the cloud with HANA, a platform built on in-memory technology. Its cloud database from HANA complements the company's other on-premise database tools, including Sybase, and is available in Amazon Web Services' cloud. HANA includes other non-database apps too, including business management tools and application development.

More information: SAP HANA

StormDB

Unlike other databases in the cloud, StormDB runs its fully distributed, relational database on bare-metal servers, meaning there is no virtualization of machines. StormDB officials claim this leads to better performance and easier management because users do not have to choose the size of virtual machine instances their database runs on. Despite running on bare metal, customers do share clusters of servers, although StormDB promises there is isolation among customer databases. StormDB also automatically shards databases in its cloud. The company is currently in a free beta.

More information: StormDB

Xeround

Xeround (pronounced zeh-round) is a management tool for deploying easily scalable MySQL databases across a variety of cloud providers and platforms. Its software allows for high availability and scalability and it works across a variety of cloud providers including AWS, Rackspace, Joyent and HP, as well as on OpenStack and Citrix platforms.

More information: Xeround

Original : networkworld.com

How to optimize your app’s layout on iOS 7

Whilst there is not necessarily a right way and a wrong way to design your app’s layout, there are some tricks you can use to make sure that the user experience is as optimal as possible.

Ample Space for Controls

We all know that smartphone screens are small, and iPhones are consistently on the lower end of the screen-size spectrum.

To optimize your app’s layout for iOS 7, try to make sure that your main, controllable elements are at least 44×44 points. This way, users will have no trouble performing basic tasks with one finger or one hand while they are on the go.

Draw User Focus to Main Elements

There are two simple ways to draw the user’s attention to the main elements of your app.

1) Place important items in the upper-left of the screen (i.e. the menu) , with less important items going in the bottom-right (i.e. terms & conditions, privacy policies)

2) Make important items larger than less-important items, since larger items tend to draw the eye more easily. Larger items are also easier to access on a touchscreen, so users can perform the most essential tasks quickly and easily

Communicate Groupings

Effectively communicating which elements of your app go together can a make-or-break factor of your app’s layout. This can also be done in two ways:

1) Use alignment and indentation to organize your content and make it easier for users to discern which groups of content are related. For example, align any images or graphics with the text that they compliment. This is a cue to the reader that the picture is meant to associated with that text.

2) Consistent UI elements will also help users understand which elements belong together. A general rule of thumb is that elements that perform similar functions should also look similar. Any design inconsistencies could confuse the user and make them waste unnecessary time trying to figure things out.

Text Size

On the iPhone, users have the option of changing their default text-size setting across their device. While this is sometimes done for aesthetic reasons, many users actually use this feature due to visual impairments that make small text hard to read. If a user changes their default settings, they will expect your app to adhere to those settings as well.

For iOS 7, developers should consider adopting Dynamic Type, which will automatically adjust line spacing, line height, delineate between text types (heading, body, footer, etc…), and resize any text-size changes requested by the user.

Developers should also consider using a single font type throughout their app. This way, it will be easier for you to ensure that the font will render correctly at all different text sizes.

You should also consider making your app responsive to changes in text-size. For example, if you have a two-column, text-based app, you can make your layout shift to one column for any text-size larger than the default 17 points.

For more iOS 7 layout tips, visit Apple’s Developer Library!

 

Preference : developer-tech.com