DevOps Roundup: Databricks Runtime 5.5, Docker Partner Program, AWS Chatbot, Azure Pipelines, and GitLab 12.1.1

Several significant releases and announcements landed in the DevOps ecosystem around late July 2019. This roundup covers Databricks Runtime 5.5 with Conda, Docker’s new Technology Partner Program, the AWS Chatbot beta, public previews in Azure Pipelines, and a GitLab patch release.

Databricks Runtime 5.5 with Conda (Beta)

The second beta release of Databricks Runtime with Conda arrived as version 5.5, bringing upgraded packages alongside several usability improvements for data engineering and data science teams working in Python.

• YAML support: Databricks Library Utilities now accepts YAML files for customising Python environments, giving teams a more readable and portable way to define dependencies.
• Better environment isolation: Environments scoped to individual notebook sessions are more reliably isolated from one another, reducing dependency conflicts between concurrent users.
• Simplified installation: The installation process received UX improvements to reduce the number of steps required to get a Conda-backed environment running.
• Faster startup commands: Commands executed immediately after starting a cluster are reported to run significantly faster in this release.

Docker Launches Three-Tier Technology Partner Program

To formalise its ecosystem relationships and give customers clearer visibility into the depth of each vendor’s integration, Docker introduced a structured Technology Partner Program with three tiers:

• Verified: Partners that have engaged directly with Docker and publish their container images through a verified publisher account on Docker Hub.
• Professional: Partners whose products have passed the standard Docker Enterprise certification process.
• Premier: The highest tier, representing the deepest level of integration with Docker Enterprise. Premier partners must pass a category-specific technology review in addition to standard certification.

The tiered structure is intended to help enterprise customers quickly assess how tightly a third-party product integrates with the Docker platform before making procurement or architectural decisions.

AWS Chatbot Beta Brings Notifications and Commands to Slack and Chime

AWS introduced a public beta of AWS Chatbot, a service that bridges AWS operational events with collaboration tools. In its initial preview, AWS Chatbot supports two chat platforms:

• Slack
• Amazon Chime

Once configured, teams can receive automated notifications from a range of AWS services directly in their chat channels, including:

• Amazon CloudWatch (alarms and metrics)
• Amazon GuardDuty (security findings)
• AWS Health (service health events)
• AWS Budgets (cost threshold alerts)
• AWS Security Hub (aggregated security findings)
• AWS CloudFormation (stack events)

Beyond passive notifications, the beta also allows team members to execute AWS commands directly from a chat message, reducing the need to switch contexts to the AWS Console for common operational tasks.

Azure Pipelines Previews Pipeline Caching and Pipeline Artifacts

Microsoft made two performance-focused features available as public previews in Azure Pipelines, both aimed at reducing the time developers spend waiting for CI/CD stages to complete.

Pipeline Caching

Pipeline caching allows the results of expensive, repeatable operations—such as package restoration or compilation—to be stored and reused across pipeline runs and stages. When the inputs to a cacheable step have not changed, the cached output is restored instead of re-executing the step, cutting down build times considerably for large dependency trees.

Pipeline Artifacts

Pipeline artifacts improve the speed of transferring build outputs between jobs and stages within a pipeline. The feature uses a deduplication strategy so that only net-new content is uploaded to the artifact store on each run, reducing both upload time and storage consumption compared to uploading full artifact sets on every execution.

GitLab 12.1.1 Bugfix Release

Shortly after the GitLab 12.1 release, users running self-managed instances reported a false-positive issue: valid CI pipelines were triggering incorrect quota violation notifications after upgrading. GitLab responded quickly with version 12.1.1, a targeted patch release that resolves the erroneous alerts.

GitLab stated that upgrading from 12.1 to 12.1.1 is straightforward and does not require any downtime, making it a low-risk update for teams affected by the spurious notifications.

Summary