2021’s top blogs: Kubernetes, AWS Lambda, and more

A lot happened in 2021. Tech kept accelerating, COVID-19 kept happening, and somehow the world kept spinning. So your head might be spinning, too, especially when it comes to keeping up with everything happening in the tech industry. Read on to learn about some of the hottest topics New Relic’s blog covered this year, including Kubernetes, Jamstack, and OpenTelemetry.

Jamstack

Jamstack has been really hot the last few years—so much so that Jamstack now describes itself as "the new standard architecture for the web.” It’s a lofty statement, but there’s a reason for its popularity. Jamstack applications use static sites and content delivery networks (CDNs) along with serverless functions and APIs to create engaging, dynamic content. While Jamstack applications are known for ease of deployment and high performance, it’s still essential to monitor them.

That’s where New Relic comes in. New Relic’s developer relations team blogged about monitoring JamStack applications.

• Are you interested in monitoring your Gatsby builds? New Relic’s documentation site uses Gatsby. Learn how the documentation used New Relic to monitor build time (including how long plugins are taking to build) and page creation time, determine which cloud provider offers the optimal build, and audit images. Read Best practices for optimizing build times for Gatsby applications to learn more. 
• Or are you interested in deploying applications with Netlify? Build an application from scratch that uses Netlify, Eleventy.js, and the New Relic Browser agent to see how you can easily monitor your Jamstack applications. Follow along by reading How to measure Jamstack application performance.

OpenTelemetry

The OpenTelemetry beta came out in 2020 and it has since become one of the most active Cloud Native Computing Foundation’s projects. The goal of the project is to standardize how you collect and send telemetry data to a backend platform. There are many reasons why OpenTelemetry is the future of observability—you can learn more by reading What is OpenTelemetry and why is it the future of instrumentation? It’s the first in a five-part series that that explains what OpenTelemetry is, the core components of an OpenTelemetry project, OpenTelemetry data sources, instrumentation with OpenTelemetry, and how to send OpenTelemetry data to a backend platform.

Kubernetes

Do you want Kubernetes explained to you like you are 38? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. No matter what your age, Kubernetes is complicated, and you deserve a good explanation. See What Is Kubernetes? An introduction to the wildly popular container orchestration platform to learn more about Kubernetes, including exactly why it’s so wildly popular and how it works. You’ll get an overview of everything from deployments to replicas to nodes, and also get the lowdown on why Kubernetes is challenging to work with and how New Relic monitoring can help.

If you’re using Kubernetes, you should also be using Pixie, an open source project that New Relic contributed to the CNCF, to ensure your clusters aren’t being naughty. We wrote a lot about the New Relic One integration with Pixie this year, too. Learn more about Auto-telemetry with Pixie.

AWS Lambda

Servers are so yesterday. Okay, that’s an overstatement, but why maintain on-premises servers when a cloud provider can do it for you? With AWS Lambda, you don’t have to worry about maintaining servers, which means you have more time to code and build new features.

To learn about monitoring your AWS Lambda applications, read Monitoring your AWS Lambda functions inside and out. You’ll learn how to monitor your AWS Lambda invocations from the inside and observe how your application is performing from the outside with New Relic Synthetics.

eBPF

eBPF is short for Extended Berkeley Packet Filter, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. Actually, no, not really. It’s not at all clear what an Extended Berkeley Packet Filter is supposed to be, or why it’s such a powerful tool for cloud native applications and observability. To learn more about eBPF and why it’s generating so much buzz, read What Is eBPF and Why Does It Matter for Observability?

Conclusion

These are just a few of the hot topics that New Relic covered this year. And if you’re wondering what connects them all, it comes down to one word: observability. Whether you are using Jamstack for your applications, AWS Lambda for your serverless infrastructure, or Kubernetes for container orchestration, you need to be monitoring your applications closely. After all, there’s so much going on in the world, and the last thing you need is a service outage. Make sure to check out our top blogs in 2019.