Show yourself.

Show yourself.

Update 2024-05-21

Aegis is now maintained by VMware Tanzu GitHub Organization with a new name: VMware Secrets Manager.

It is ready for production use, and as the time of this writing we are already using it in production clusters.

Welcome to the 25th issue of Zero to Hero Highlights.

Several things have been going on, yet I think this week’s highlight was Aegis. It has been very well received by people who are well-known in the Cloud Native security community, and I have a feeling it is growing to become a bit more than a side project, but we’ll see.

Aegis: Keep Your Secrets… Secret

As I said, last week was mainly about Aegis, but what is Aegis?

Aegis is a Kubernetes-native, lightweight secrets management solution that keeps your secrets secret. And last week, I made significant progress with it.

Some key highlights of the current version are:

  • Upgraded Aegis to the latest and greatest SPIRE version as the identity control plane. That gave a bunch of stability improvements and reduced memory usage significantly.
  • A lot of documentation updates to make Aegis easier to use and deploy.
  • Making everything configurable via environment variables.
  • Added liveness and readiness probes to critical components for Kubernetes-native lifecycle management.
  • Started using distroless images for an additional layer of security.
  • Using SPIFFE CSI driver instead of volume mounts (for security again).

Although Aegis is still an alpha product and has yet to be battle-tested, I am confident it can be used in a production cluster.

Random Thought of the Week

In today’s fast-paced and competitive business environment, it is essential to stand out and make your hard work and achievements visible to your management. Unfortunately, you can fall into the trap of being overlooked as a hidden gem among your peers, despite your consistent efforts and contributions to the team.

This can be detrimental to career growth and advancement opportunities. So what are the ways to sort this out, unlock your true potential, and ace your career?

One word: Take initiative… Okay, that was two words, but still 🙂.

By sharing your daily progress, goals, and accomplishments with your manager, you can ensure that your hard work does not go unnoticed.

One effective way to make your work visible is by providing regular updates and participating in huddles with your manager. This allows you to share your progress on current projects, any challenges you may be facing, and any new ideas or solutions you have come up with.

By providing this information regularly, you can create a transparent view of your work for your manager and demonstrate your willingness to actively collaborate and contribute to the team.

Another critical aspect of making your work visible is sharing real-time metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) with your manager. These metrics provide valuable insights into the impact and results of your work and demonstrate your ability to measure and track your progress. This can help your manager better understand the value you bring to the team and your role in achieving business goals.

In addition to regular updates and sharing metrics, it is also essential to proactively offer creative solutions, volunteer extra time and effort, and showcase your skill set to help your manager tackle challenges. This demonstrates your willingness to go above and beyond and showcases your ability to think outside the box and bring fresh perspectives to the team.

All these can put you on your manager’s radar as a valuable asset to the team and help you get the promotion you deserve.

Look What I’ve Found

Here are the things that grabbed my attention this week.

I typically don’t share these anywhere else.

Exclusively hand-picked for you 👌. Enjoy.

Thanks a Lot ❤️

That’s all for this week. Next week, I’ll gather more unique content and resources.

So, until next time… May the source be with you 🦄.

Issues