Infrastructure monitoring company Icinga released version 2.9 of its monitoring web interface and framework Icinga Web. Aside from two security-related fixes, the update comes with support for PHP 8, a datetime picker widget, and a “remember me” feature, so that users don’t have to log in on every visit anymore. The promised new themes haven’t landed yet, since the Icinga team is still working on a smoother upgrade path for modules, which will hopefully be done in time for v2.10.

Microsoft gets Spark connector v3.0-ready

The preview phase is over and Microsoft’s Spark 3.0 connector for SQL Server is generally available. For those not familiar with the project, the connector allows users to set SQL Server or Azure SQL as an input data source or output sink for Apache Spark jobs, while providing authentication, speedup, and support for several language bindings. Since the last release the project gained a test app and a framework for spark mssql connector E2E tests and profiles for Spark 2.4 and 3.0 builds. Before jumping on the new version, devs should be aware that the update isn’t compatible with JDBC 7.0.1.

Platform9 adds managed KubeVirt to its portfolio

Managed service provider Platform9 launched Platform9 Managed KubeVirt this week. The offer is advertised as a way of bringing VMs to Kubernetes and have old and new applications run alongside each other on one platform. It utilises Platform9 Managed Kubernetes clusters as a place for creating VMs, which apparently can be controlled through the same SaaS interface used for the container offering. Managed KubeVirt capabilities include cloud-managed updates, automated monitoring, RBAC, multi-tenancy, snapshot management, and SR-IOV and OVS-DPDK support.

Google puts finishing touches to Cloud CAS

After being announced last October, Google Cloud’s Certificate Authority Service has reached general availability. The product for deploying and managing private certificate authorities has lately acquired features like a CA pool to simplify rotation, and policy enhancements for defining per-user group policies. 

Other improvements available as part of the GA release include a way of defining templates to apply to all issued certificates, a Terraform provider, integration with cert-manager, and a plugin for HashiCorp’s secret management tool Vault.

Go and Kubernetes are nearing next release

Go 1.17 is soon to be released and the Go team has called upon the dev community to try their production load and unit tests with the first release candidate. Amongst the changes in v1.17 are a way to convert slices to array pointers and some enhancements to the unsafe package. The final version is planned to be available in August.

The same goes for Kubernetes 1.22. And since the update will remove quite a few APIs and features, there’s an extensive blog post fleshing out what teams have to do to keep their systems running.

And some security acquisitions to round things off

Cloud native security company Aqua Security this week announced the acquisition of tfsec, a project offering security scans for Terraform templates. It will be integrated into Aqua’s Trivy and become part of the company’s tool suite, but is also promised to remain a standalone project. Financial details haven’t been disclosed, but tfsec’s founders are meant to join Aqua.

Meanwhile Microsoft entered a definitive agreement to buy threat intelligence outfit RiskIQ. The acquisition is hoped to help Microsoft fit its security portfolio with additional capabilities to understand vulnerable internet-facing assets and assess an enterprise’s attack surface better. RiskIQ sees the move as a way to extend its reach, but also says it looks to keep working with its partners and customers as they integrate their tech into Microsoft’s.