Categories

Tools

Semaphore: Ansible UI When the Team Grows

Semaphore is the open-source Ansible web UI that solves the four scaling problems: audit trails, role-based permissions, execution history, and centralised secrets. It consumes ~500 MB versus AWX at ~4 GB. The pragmatic choice for mid-size teams that have outgrown running playbooks from a shared terminal.

Methodologies

Flux CD vs ArgoCD: Which to Choose for Your Platform

Flux CD and ArgoCD are the two CNCF-graduated GitOps tools for deploying to Kubernetes with Git as the source of truth. ArgoCD offers a centralised visual UI that manages several clusters from one instance, while Flux is a set of Kubernetes-native controllers with built-in image automation. Neither choice is wrong: it depends on your team and use case.

Architecture

GitOps With ArgoCD: From Hype to Stable Production

ArgoCD has established GitOps as the standard deployment practice for Kubernetes: the Git repository is the single source of truth for the desired state, and the agent continuously reconciles the cluster. This guide covers the four formal GitOps principles, sync policies, common production mistakes, and a comparison with Flux.

Methodologies

SLSA Level 3: Hardening the Software Supply Chain

SLSA v1.0, published in April 2023, defines four maturity levels for securing the software supply chain, from basic provenance to isolated builds. Level 3 requires every build to run in an ephemeral, stateless environment, eliminating attacks like build contamination and insider threat, and is achievable with GitHub Actions and OIDC signing via Sigstore.

Technology

Trivy and Grype: Container Image Scanning in CI

Trivy and Grype are the two leading open-source tools for container image scanning in CI/CD pipelines. Both detect CVEs in OS packages and language dependencies with less than 5% coverage difference. Trivy stands out for IaC scanning; Grype natively integrates the SBOM workflow with Syft.