add blog

src/static/data/Blogs.ts

@@ -8,6 +8,7 @@ import SP2023 from "./blogs/spring-break-projects-2023.md";
 import SPLG1 from "./blogs/side-project-log-3-20-2023.md";
 import SPLG2 from "./blogs/side-project-log-3-27-2023.md";
 import SPLG3 from "./blogs/side-project-log-4-29-2023.md";
+import SPLG4 from "./blogs/side-project-log-7-12-2023.md";
 
 const CSharpBlog: Blog = {
     uri: "c-assignments-in-csharp",
@@ -81,5 +82,14 @@ const SideProjectLogThree: Blog = {
     private: false
 }
 
-export const AllBlogs: Blog[] = [CSharpBlog, PrivateBlog, TestBlog, NWSSSLBlog, SpringBreak2023Blog, SideProjectLogOne, SideProjectLogTwo, SideProjectLogThree];
+const SideProjectLogFour: Blog = {
+    uri: "side-project-log-7-12-2023",
+    title: "Side Project Log 7/12/23",
+    date: new Date(2023, 7, 12, 12, 0, 0),
+    image: VrboImage,
+    mdfile: SPLG4,
+    private: false
+}
+
+export const AllBlogs: Blog[] = [CSharpBlog, PrivateBlog, TestBlog, NWSSSLBlog, SpringBreak2023Blog, SideProjectLogOne, SideProjectLogTwo, SideProjectLogThree, SideProjectLogFour];
 

src/static/data/blogs/side-project-log-7-12-2023.md

@@ -0,0 +1,84 @@
+This side project log covers work done from 4/29/2023 - 7/12/2023
+
+This side project log is more than a bit late due to working a busy summer internship at [FUTO](https://futo.org)!
+
+## NWS Container Deployment Service
+I have finally added SSL to NWS CDS. This was challenging, as it required handling ACME challenges and certificate
+distribution across a set of geo-distributed Kubernetes clusters. I detail the complexities of this in a [previous blog
+I wrote](http://nickorlow.com/blog/ssl-in-nws-cds). In order to implement auto-renewing, automatic SSL, I implemented the below solution:
+
+![Diagram of NWS SSL Architecture](/blog-images/NWS_SSL_Diagram.png)
+
+First, a user creates a request to add SSL to their NWS CDS service through the web UI which calls the NWS API (Not pictured)
+
+Then, the NWS API calls SSLiason (in-house written software) which adds the domain to Caddy's list of domains. Caddy will then attempt to create
+an SSL certificate from an ACME server (not pictured).
+
+The ACME server will query NWS for the challenge response by requesting a file at `/.well-known/acme-challenge` on the
+domain to be verified (this is the green arrows). 
+
+HAProxy will re-route these requests to NWS Hill Country, which is where the NWS Management Engine (NWSME) lives (this is 
+the orange arrows). 
+
+HAProxy in NWS Hill Country will then route this request to Caddy, which will solve the challenge, and then get the certificate
+from the ACME server. Once it does this, it will write the certificate to a directory that is bind-mounted to both Caddy
+and SSLiason. 
+
+SSLiason will detect this new file, parse it into a k8s manifest file, and then add it to our GitOps repo which is
+hosted in GitHub.
+
+From here, the certificate will be added to all of the clusters via Rancher Fleet.
+
+--- 
+
+For next steps, I'd like to revise this solution such that it doesn't have a single point of failure. 
+Currently, if NWS Hill Country is down (which it is about %0.025 of the time), then SSL certificates
+won't be able to be created or renewed. 
+
+To do this, I will have SSLiason implement the ACME client specification so that it can create and respond do ACME HTTP challenges. 
+SSLiason will run on NWS CDS (so that it's running on all of our k8s clusters and is HA) instead of running as a standalond docker container.
+I'll have SSLiason use some distributed database (probably CockroachDB) to store the HTTP challenges so that it doesn't matter
+which k8s cluster the challenge request from the ACME server is routed to.
+
+## Next Steps for NWS
+
+- **HA NWS Management Engine:** Currently (as somewhat discussed above), the NWSME will go down when NWS Hill Country goes down. I'd like to
+make it so that this isn't the case. This would likely just require that each NWS cluster runs its own instance of Rancher Fleet instead
+of one central Rancher Fleet that manages all the clusters. It would also require the HA SSLiason.
+
+
+- **IaC for Everything:** Currently, all NWS CDS services are defined in yaml files in a git repo, however the underlying infrastructure that
+it runs on is not. Ideally, I'd like every NWS machine to run Proxmox and then have Terraform & Ansible configs to define how to set up
+vms on proxmox that will run the k8s clusters that support CDS services. This should eliminate my headaches of sshing into each machine
+to apply config changes and make sure everything is standardized. It should also make the process of setting up new servers easy.
+
+
+- **Monitoring:** I've been working on setting up monitoring on a lot of our services at my current internship using the TIG stack (Telegraf,
+InfluxDB, and Grafana). Now that I've been exposed to the usefulness of having a bunch of metrics on hand, I think it would be nice to have
+some dashboards setup for NWS to monitor speed, resource usage, uptime, and traffic. Doing this would also make it possible to expose resource usage in the 
+NWS dashboard.
+
+
+- **Enhanced Infrastructure:** This is kind of a blanket one for things I want to do that don't fit into other categories. It includes making 
+hardware upgrades (mostly adding more storage), make management more accessible (such as Dell IDRAC's WebSerial), some load testing to
+identify painpoints, run an NWS machine in a cloud VM so I can say it's cross cloud (although my friends have told me this is cheating at creating 
+my own cloud), and trying to figure out how to set up an Anycast network. I don't think I can setup an Anycast network without selling 
+a kidney first. Renting a /24 CIDR alone would be more than I want to spend on a side project. I may look into setting it up with ipv6 only, 
+however I'd still have to jump through hoops to get an Autonomous System number from an RIR. I'll probably write a whole blog about Anycast
+in the coming weeks.
+
+## Olney
+
+`Rust, ActixWeb, PostgreSQL`
+
+Olney is a new project I am starting with my friend [Sridhar Nandigam](https://sridharnandigam.com/). It aims to make
+tracking your job applications easier. Most of my friends either use spreadsheets or Trello to track their job applications, I
+think that we can make something that's a bit better for the job. Some features I'd like to have are: resume version attached to
+your application, job posting notifications from job boards such as [pittcsc](github.com/pittcsc/summer2024-internships), and watching 
+your email for emails from recruiters. Currently, I have part of the backend setup with basic CRUD operations. Now that I'm done with
+the latest batch of NWS work, this is next on my list to work on.
+
+---
+
+**These projects had minimal/no work done on them:** RingGold, SQUIRREL
+