Why Consider Hiring a Web Development Consultant in 2024
Are you planning to establish an online presence in 2024? Great going! Gaining success online is not a matter of chance. It requires proper strategies and implementation of relevant technologies. In the ever-evolving landscape of technology, you cannot rely on conventional and fixed approaches to grow. You need a web development consultant who can guide you with their expertise and experience. This post explains why one should consider hiring web development consultants. Without any further delay, let us get started. Web Development Consultancy Overview A web development consultant is an expert who gives advice and support in planning, developing, and maintaining websites and applications. The consultant helps you throughout the journey of making a concept into reality. They not only streamline the web development process but also improve the visibility of your website. In short, web consultants enable you to reach your target audience. Let us understand what exactly a web development consultant does. What Services do Web Development Consultants Offer? Generally, a web development consultancy assists businesses in creating, improving, and maintaining their web presence. Depending on your requirements, they create a strategy to develop your website from scratch or revamp the current one. Individuals can seek consultancy for website development, E-commerce websites, CMS (Content Management Systems), software development, and more. In addition to this, they also help you with website design, performance optimization, SEO, website security, and maintenance. If we discuss the process for web development consultancy, it goes like this: Initial Consultation The initial consultation involves meeting with a client and understanding their business goals. In this process, a consultant tries to identify your target audience, scope of work, and budget. Planning of Project After the initial discussion, the consultant does comprehensive project planning based on objectives. It includes making project timelines and milestones. After that, the expert determines the framework, tools, and expertise required. Designing Phase In this phase, web development consultants guide you in developing the structure and layout of the website. They give expert advice on design elements like UI and UX. They can also prepare website navigation paths and UX content strategies. Development An experienced consultant chooses the most suitable website development platform for your website. They also mentor you for the integration of 3rd party tools. Maintenance Web development consultants offer ongoing support for your website maintenance. Post-website launch, they advise on necessary improvements and security updates. You can also discuss future improvements and additions to your online business. Advantages of Hiring Website Development Consultants What is the benefit of hiring a web development consultant? Several people ask this question. They think that hiring website developers and designers is adequate to succeed online. Remember, a successful online business requires a holistic approach. The web development consultancy provides a broader perspective on online business. Some benefits you can acquire from hiring a web development consultant include: Expert Advice Taking business online is not child’s play. You must have a deep understanding of the web development world. Website development consultants have years of experience in the industry and are aware of trends. Consequently, they help you understand things better and make smarter business decisions. Customized Solutions Every online business is unique in itself. You cannot rely on the strategies that worked for someone. Consultants provide you with tailored solutions for your unique businesses. They help you create a website that aligns perfectly with your business goals. Web consultants possess the knowledge and skills required for different areas of website development. Cost-Effective Some newbies may find hiring a web development consultant an additional expense. Nevertheless, it has numerous long-term benefits that outweigh its initial cost. A web consultant optimizes your website for better conversion, which naturally increases your revenue. Besides this, they optimize website design and layout that enhance the experience of your end users. They also ensure your website is optimized for search engines. These small things increase traffic to your website and ultimately your business grows. Let You Focus on Your Core Business Web development consultants take care of the overall growth of your online business. They plan strategies for your website and help you execute the right action at the right moment. You do not need to worry about what trend is going on and what tools you need to use. The consultant will guide you on everything. It allows your internal team to focus on their core competencies. Do not Wait for Years to Get Results If you are a beginner, learning things and growing online can take years. However, when you work with a web development consultant, you get faster results. They have tried and tested strategies to succeed online. Web development consultants have tools and experience that can help you get faster results. It saves your time as well, which is a valuable resource in online business. Knowledge Transfer Hiring consultants also transfer knowledge to your internal team. You and your team can learn from their experience and expertise. They provide you with knowledge that is useful for your future projects. Final Words: Should I Hire a Web Development Consultant in 2024? There are more than 200 factors that determine how your website will perform in search engines. Website speed, mobile responsiveness, search optimization, and various aspects of UI and UX are things you cannot compromise on. If you want to take your online business to the next level, you need to work on all these. And an experienced consultant can help you with that. Do not miss out on the opportunities. Partner with Almas to get professional web development consultancy. We will elevate your online presence and make sure your website aligns with the latest industry standards. So what are you waiting for? Consult with us and stay ahead of your competitors in 2024.
Parcel Bundler The Ultimate Guide for Beginners
The web development landscape has been continuously progressing. Today, it has become easier to optimize the performance and efficiency of a web project – thanks to bundling tools. These platforms boost productivity and save the headache of setting up and configuring different web tools. While numerous bundling tools have emerged recently, one renowned is the Parcel Bundler. This post explores the different features of Parcel Bundler. Before we get to know its features, let’s learn more about it. Parcel Bundler Overview Parcel Bundler is an advanced tool that helps web developers utilize bundle web resources. The bundler supports zero configuration. It means it does not need any configuration file to bundle web applications. Parcel Bundler is an open-source tool that supports various languages and file types. It can integrate multiple files into a single file. Parcel Bundler can bundle files like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript into a format, optimized for the web. Furthermore, it lets you optimize your codes and prepare web projects for deployment. Some well-known features of Parcel Bundler are as per below: Features of Parcel Bundler Zero Config Module Bundler Parcel Bundler supports a zero-config setup. It means developers can bundle their web applications without configuring the bundling processes. It eliminates the need for interpreting configuration files. Hot Module Replacement HMR or Hot Module Replacement is an advanced feature of Parcel Bundler. It lets developers update their web codes in real time without reloading the full page. As web developers make changes to their codes, Parcel rebuilds the changed files and updates their applications in the browser. Parcel Bundler’s HMR updates modules in the browser at runtime without refreshing the entire page. As a result, web developers retain their application while making small changes in their codes. Bundling Parcel Bundler enables users to keep all their project files together. It can bundle JavaScript, CSS, and other files together. As Parcel automatically examines the requirements of your projects, it produces optimized bundles accordingly. File Compression Parcel Bundler performs a wide range of optimizations when creating the production build. File compression is one of them. The bundler minimizes the size of files by altering their variable names. Code Minification Parcel bundler has a built-in feature for code minification. It eliminates unnecessary characters, such as spaces, comments, etc.., from web codes without influencing their functionality. Code Minification improves the performance of your web application by reducing the overall loading time. Minification starts naturally when you start your project using the production mode (Parcel Build Command) parcel build index.html The command indicates the Parcel to bundle your project specified in the index.html file. Image Optimization Parcel bundler also excels at handling image optimization. It minimizes the size of images without affecting their quality. Therefore, websites and applications load faster. There are various ways Parcel Bundler optimizes images. For example, it adjusts the compression settings of PNG and JPEG files. Moreover, it may convert the format of images. It also resizes the dimensions of images. Development Caching Parcel Bundler caches certain resources during the development to avoid reloading those files while making changes. It speeds up the building process by updating and recompiling the parts of a web application that have been changed. Development caching is an exceptionally helpful feature for large projects. Code Cleanup The parcel comes with a built-in feature to eliminate unnecessary notes. While building a website or application, we put some notes for ourselves. For instance, we write console.log in the code. Parcel removes such statements from code automatically. As a result, your codebase looks neat and clean. Tree Shaking Tree Shaking is another crucial feature of Parcel Bundler. It lets the user remove unused codes, known as dead codes, from the final bundle. The term ‘tree shaking’ gets inspiration from the idea of shaking a tree to eliminate dead leaves. Tree shaking automatically identifies the unused codes and removes them. It works perfectly with ES6 module syntax (import/export). Tree Shaking supports the static identification of imports and exports. It makes it easier to determine unused codes. To eliminate all the dead codes, tree shaking analyzes the whole dependency tree right from the entry point of an application. It traces functions, variables, or imports used and removes the rest during the bundling process. Browser Compatibility Parcel Bundler provides a smooth development experience – thanks to its browser compatibility. The tool makes sure that you get compatibility across different browsers. Below is how Parcel ensures browser compatibility Parcel integrates with Babel, and transpiles JavaScript code (ES6+ syntax) into a backward-compatible version. Consequently, it works with a diverse range of browsers. It can work with older browsers that do not support JavaScript. Installation of Parcel If you have Node.js and npm installed, you can install Parcel Bundler using the following command. // Installing Parcel Bundler globally npm install -g parcel-bundler Installing parcel globally helps you utilize the parcel command in any project folder. Conclusion Parcel Bundler is a trustworthy and efficient service for bundling web applications. Its features like zero-configuration, caching, and tree shaking give it an edge over its competitors. No matter if you are a beginner or an experienced web developer, you can leverage this technology to improve your productivity and efficiency. So what are you waiting for? Boost your web development workflow with this excellent bundling tool.
Ceph Persistent Storage for Kubernetes with Cephfs
Kubernetes is a prominent open-source orchestration platform. Individuals use it to deploy, manage, and scale applications. It is often challenging to manage stateful applications on this platform, especially those having heavy databases. Ceph is a robust distributed storage system that comes to the rescue. This open-source storage platform is known for its reliability, performance, and scalability. This blog post guides you on how to use Ceph persistent storage for Kubernetes with Cephfs. So let us learn the process step-by-step. Before we jump into the steps, you must have an external Ceph cluster. We assume you have a Ceph storage cluster deployed with Ceph Deploy or manually. Step 1: Deployment of Cephfs Provisioner on Kubernetes Deployment of Cephfs Provisioner on Kubernetes is a straightforward process. Simply log into your Kubernetes cluster and make a manifest file to deploy the RBD provisioner. It is an external dynamic provisioner that is compatible with Kubernetes 1.5+. vim cephfs-provisioner.yml Include the following content within the file. Remember, our deployment relies on RBAC (Role-Based Access Control). Therefore, we will establish the cluster role and bindings before making the service account and deploying the Cephs provisioner. — kind: Namespace apiVersion: v1 metadata: name: cephfs — kind: ClusterRole apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1 metadata: name: cephfs-provisioner namespace: cephfs rules: – apiGroups: [""] resources: ["persistentvolumes"] verbs: ["get", "list", "watch", "create", "delete"] – apiGroups: [""] resources: ["persistentvolumeclaims"] verbs: ["get", "list", "watch", "update"] – apiGroups: ["storage.k8s.io"] resources: ["storageclasses"] verbs: ["get", "list", "watch"] – apiGroups: [""] resources: ["events"] verbs: ["create", "update", "patch"] – apiGroups: [""] resources: ["services"] resourceNames: ["kube-dns","coredns"] verbs: ["list", "get"] — kind: ClusterRoleBinding apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1 metadata: name: cephfs-provisioner namespace: cephfs subjects: – kind: ServiceAccount name: cephfs-provisioner namespace: cephfs roleRef: kind: ClusterRole name: cephfs-provisioner apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io — apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1 kind: Role metadata: name: cephfs-provisioner namespace: cephfs rules: – apiGroups: [""] resources: ["secrets"] verbs: ["create", "get", "delete"] – apiGroups: [""] resources: ["endpoints"] verbs: ["get", "list", "watch", "create", "update", "patch"] — apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1 kind: RoleBinding metadata: name: cephfs-provisioner namespace: cephfs roleRef: apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io kind: Role name: cephfs-provisioner subjects: – kind: ServiceAccount name: cephfs-provisioner — apiVersion: v1 kind: ServiceAccount metadata: name: cephfs-provisioner namespace: cephfs — apiVersion: apps/v1 kind: Deployment metadata: name: cephfs-provisioner namespace: cephfs spec: replicas: 1 selector: matchLabels: app: cephfs-provisioner strategy: type: Recreate template: metadata: labels: app: cephfs-provisioner spec: containers: – name: cephfs-provisioner image: "quay.io/external_storage/cephfs-provisioner:latest" env: – name: PROVISIONER_NAME value: ceph.com/cephfs – name: PROVISIONER_SECRET_NAMESPACE value: cephfs command: – "/usr/local/bin/cephfs-provisioner" args: – "-id=cephfs-provisioner-1" serviceAccount: cephfs-provisioner Next, apply the manifest. $ kubectl apply -f cephfs-provisioner.yml namespace/cephfs created clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/cephfs-provisioner created clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/cephfs-provisioner created role.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/cephfs-provisioner created rolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/cephfs-provisioner created serviceaccount/cephfs-provisioner created deployment.apps/cephfs-provisioner created Make sure that the Cephfs volume provisioner pod is in the operational state. $ kubectl get pods -l app=cephfs-provisioner -n cephfs NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE cephfs-provisioner-7b77478cb8-7nnxs 1/1 Running 0 84s Step 2: Obtain the Ceph Admin Key and Create a Secret on Kubernetes Access your Ceph cluster and retrieve the admin key to be used by the RBD provisioner. sudo ceph auth get-key client.admin Save the value of the admin user key displayed by the above command. Later, we will incorporate this key as a secret in Kubernetes. kubectl create secret generic ceph-admin-secret \ –from-literal=key='<key-value>' \ –namespace=cephfs Where <key-value> is your Ceph admin key. Verify the creation by using the following command. $ kubectl get secrets ceph-admin-secret -n cephfs NAME TYPE DATA AGE ceph-admin-secret Opaque 1 6s Step 3: Make Ceph Pools for Kubernetes and Client Key To run a Ceph file system, you will need at least two RADOS pools, one for data and another for metadata. Usually, the metadata pool contains only a few gigabytes of data. Generally, individuals use 64 or 128 for large clusters. Therefore, we recommend a small PG count. Now let us make Ceph OSD pools for Kubernetes: sudo ceph osd pool create cephfs_data 128 128 sudo ceph osd pool create cephfs_metadata 64 64 Create a Ceph file system on the pools. sudo ceph fs new cephfs cephfs_metadata cephfs_data Confirm Ceph File System Creation. $ sudo ceph fs ls name: cephfs, metadata pool: cephfs_metadata, data pools: [cephfs_data ] UI Dashboard Confirmation Step 4: Make Cephfs Storage Class on Kubernetes A StorageClass serves as a means to define the “classes” of storage you offer in Kubernetes. Let’s create a storage class known as “Cephrfs.” vim cephfs-sc.yml Add the following content to the file: — kind: StorageClass apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1 metadata: name: cephfs namespace: cephfs provisioner: ceph.com/cephfs parameters: monitors: 10.10.10.11:6789,10.10.10.12:6789,10.10.10.13:6789 adminId: admin adminSecretName: ceph-admin-secret adminSecretNamespace: cephfs claimRoot: /pvc-volumes Where: ⦁ Cephfs is the name of the StorageClass to be created. ⦁ 10.10.10.11, 10.10.10.12 & 10.10.10.13 are the IP addresses of Ceph Monitors. You can list them with the command: $ sudo ceph -s cluster: id: 7795990b-7c8c-43f4-b648-d284ef2a0aba health: HEALTH_OK services: mon: 3 daemons, quorum cephmon01,cephmon02,cephmon03 (age 32h) mgr: cephmon01(active, since 30h), standbys: cephmon02 mds: cephfs:1 {0=cephmon01=up:active} 1 up:standby osd: 9 osds: 9 up (since 32h), 9 in (since 32h) rgw: 3 daemons active (cephmon01, cephmon02, cephmon03) data: pools: 8 pools, 618 pgs objects: 250 objects, 76 KiB usage: 9.6 GiB used, 2.6 TiB / 2.6 TiB avail pgs: 618 active+clean Once you have updated the file with the accurate value of Ceph monitors, give the Kubectl command to make the StorageClass. $ kubectl apply -f cephfs-sc.yml storageclass.storage.k8s.io/cephfs created Next, list all the available storage classes: $ kubectl get sc NAME PROVISIONER RECLAIMPOLICY VOLUMEBINDINGMODE ALLOWVOLUMEEXPANSION AGE ceph-rbd ceph.com/rbd Delete Immediate false 25h cephfs ceph.com/cephfs Delete Immediate false 2m23s Step 5: Do Testing and Create Pod Create a test persistent volume claim to ensure that everything is smooth. $ vim cephfs-claim.yml — kind: PersistentVolumeClaim apiVersion: v1 metadata: name: cephfs-claim1 spec: accessModes: – ReadWriteOnce storageClassName: cephfs resources: requests: storage: 1Gi Apply manifest file $ kubectl apply -f cephfs-claim.yml persistentvolumeclaim/cephfs-claim1 created The successful binding will show the bound status. $ kubectl get pvc NAME STATUS VOLUME CAPACITY ACCESS MODES STORAGECLASS AGE ceph-rbd-claim1 Bound pvc-c6f4399d-43cf-4fc1-ba14-cc22f5c85304 1Gi RWO ceph-rbd 25h cephfs-claim1 Bound pvc-1bfa81b6-2c0b-47fa-9656-92dc52f69c52 1Gi RWO cephfs 87s Next, we can launch a test pod using the claim we made. First, create a file to store that data: vim cephfs-test-pod.yaml Add content
Kubernetes Persistent Volumes — 5 Detailed Steps to Create PVs
If you want to persist data in Kubernetes, you may utilize the readable and writable disk space available in Pods as a convenient option. But one thing you must know is that the disk space depends on the lifecycle of Pod. Unsurprisingly, your application development process features independent storage available for every node and can handle cluster crashes. Kubernetes Persistent Volumes got your back with their independent lifecycle and great compatibility for stateful applications. This article will lead you to 5 extensive steps to create and implement persistent volumes in your cluster. Before that, let’s dig down to know what exactly persistent volumes in Kubernetes are along with some important terms! Persistent Volumes in Kubernetes A Kubernetes Persistent Volume is a provisioned storage in a cluster and works as a cluster resource. It’s a volume plugin for Kubernetes with an independent lifecycle and no dependency on the existence of a particular pod. Unlike containers, you can read, write and manage your databases without worrying about disk crashes because of restart or termination of the pod. As a shared unit, all the containers in a pod can access the PV and can restore the database even if an individual container crashes. Here are some important terms you must know! Access Modes The accessModes represent the nodes and pods that can access the volume. The field ReadWriteOnce defines every pod having access to read and write the data in a single mode. If you’re using Kubernetes v1.22, you can read or write access on a single node using ReadWriteOncePod. Volume Mode The volumeMode field is mounting functionality of volume into the pods based on a pre-set directory. It defines the behaviour of volume in each Filesystem of a pod. Alternatively, you can use a volume as a raw block storage without any configuration with a Block field. Storage Classes As the name describes, storage classes are the different storage types you can use according to the hosting environment of your cluster. For instance, you can choose azurefile-csi for Microsoft Azure Kubernetes (AKS) clusters while do-block-storage is great for DigitalOcean Managed Kubernetes. Creating a Persistent Volume Step 1: YAML file The process of creating Kubernetes persistent volumes starts with creating a YAML file. The storage configuration represents a simple persistent volume of 1 Gi capacity. Here’s how you can create a YAML file for your PV in Kubernetes: apiVersion: v1 kind: PersistentVolume metadata: name: example-pv spec: accessModes: ReadWriteOnce capacity: storage: 1Gi storageClassName: standard volumeMode: Filesystem Step 2: Adding Volume to the Cluster Once you have created the Persistent Volume, you can add your new persistent volume to your cluster. We recommend using Kubectl for this to make it easier. To add new persistent volume, run: $ kubectl apply -f pv.yaml If you see the following error message while running the command, The PersistentVolume "example-pv" is invalid: spec: Required value: must specify a volume type Try using dynamic volume creation which will automatically create a persistent volume whenever it’s used. That’s because the cloud providers usually restrict allocating inactive storage in the cluster and dynamic volume can be your good-to-go option. Step 3: Linking Volumes to Pods Linking PVs with the pods requires the request to read/write files in a volume. Here the Persistent Volume Claim (PVC) can get you access to the example-pv volume. Let’s see how an example volume claim looks like! apiVersion: v1 kind: PersistentVolumeClaim metadata: name: example-pvc spec: storageClassName: "" volumeName: example-pv As discussed above, you may need dynamic volume creation in some scenarios. You can request a claim for that in the way mentioned below. apiVersion: v1 kind: PersistentVolumeClaim metadata: name: example-pvc spec: accessModes: – ReadWriteOnce resources: requests: storage: 1Gi storageClassName: standard Now, you have unlocked accessModes and storageClassName fields after the claim. All you need to do is to apply the claim to your cluster using Kubectl. Run the following command to quickly apply the claim to your cluster. $ kubectl apply -f pvc.yaml persistentvolumeclaim/example-pvc created In the last, use the volumes and volumeMount fields to link the claim to your pods. This will add pv to your containers section of the manifest and make the files overlive the container instances. To link the claim, run: apiVersion: v1 kind: Pod metadata: name: pod-with-pvc spec: containers: name: pvc-container image: nginx:latest volumeMounts: – mountPath: /pv-mount name: pv volumes: – name: pv persistentVolumeClaim: claimName: example-pvc Step 4: Demonstrating Persistence In the demonstration, you can verify the behaviour of PV in different scenarios. Let’s take a quick example for better understanding. Get a shell to the pod: $ kubectl exec –stdin –tty pod-with-pvc — sh Write a file to the /pv-mount directory mounted to: $ echo "This file is persisted" > /pv-mount/demo Detach the file from the container: $ exit Delete the pod using kubectl: $ kubectl delete pods/pod-with-pvc pod "pod-with-pvc" deleted Recreate the pod: $ kubectl apply -f pvc-pod.yaml pod/pod-with-pvc created Get a shell to the container and read the file: $ kubectl exec –stdin –tty pod-with-pvc — sh $ cat /pv-mount/demo This file is persisted Step 5: Managing Persistent Volumes Kubectl allows you to manage your Kubernetes Persistent Volumes whether you want to retrieve a list or remove a volume. To retrieve a list of PVs, run: $ kubectl get pv NAME CAPACITY ACCESS MODES RECLAIM POLICY STATUS CLAIM STORAGECLASS REASON AGE pvc-f90a46bd-fac0-4cb5-b020-18b3e74dd3b6 1Gi RWO Delete Bound pv-demo/example-pvc do-block-storage 7m52s Review persistent volume claims: $ kubectl get pvc NAME STATUS VOLUME CAPACITY ACCESS MODES STORAGECLASS AGE example-pvc Bound pvc-f90a46bd-fac0-4cb5-b020-18b3e74dd3b6 1Gi RWO do-block-storage 9m Sometimes, a volume or PV claim may show a Pending status as the storage class is yet to provision storage. But you can check what’s slowing down the claim process in object’s event history with describe command. $ kubectl describe pvc example-pvc … Events: Type Reason Age From Message —- —— —- —- ——- Normal Provisioning 9m30s dobs.csi.digitalocean.com_master_68ea6d30-36fe-4f9f-9161-0db299cb0a9c External provisioner is provisioning volume for claim "pv-demo/example-pvc" Normal ProvisioningSucceeded 9m24s dobs.csi.digitalocean.com_master_68ea6d30-36fe-4f9f-9161-0db299cb0a9c Successfully provisioned volume pvc-f90a46bd-fac0-4cb5-b020-18b3e74dd3b6 Conclusion: By combining Kubernetes and Persistent Volumes, you can effectively and easily
