Breaking Changes, Zero Drama: Big Bang 3.0 with SmoothGlue

Building software for high-stakes, highly regulated environments, adopting the latest advancements, all while maintaining reliability and security is a challenge. That’s why our latest update is built for teams that refuse to compromise: SmoothGlue now integrates seamlessly with Big Bang 3.0, a significant leap forward in DevSecOps for those operating at mission-critical scale.

Embracing Big Bang: A Foundation for Success #

We chose Big Bang as a core component of the SmoothGlue platform for a reason: it's a broadly adopted, integrated, and battle-tested implementation of the DevSecOps reference design. Its robust framework lays down a proven foundation for secure, compliant, and high-velocity software delivery. By building on Big Bang, SmoothGlue brings customers the stability of a trusted supply chain, plus the momentum of a continuously evolving DevSecOps ecosystem.

Change the Box: SmoothGlue Solves Your Day 2 Challenges #

While Big Bang provides a powerful starting point, we know that a "big bang" approach to your entire DevSecOps journey leaves a lot of concerns unanswered. That's where SmoothGlue shines. We go beyond the foundational elements to tackle the complexities of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and the messy, high-stakes realities of Day 2 operations.

Think of SmoothGlue as the hardened layer that connects and powers your entire delivery stack, filling the seams between Dev, Sec, and Ops so your systems actually run the way you designed them to.

SmoothGlue tackles:

• Automated IaC: Provision and manage infrastructure with repeatable precision—no more snowflake environments, no more manual drift.
• Streamlined Operations: Built-in automations and smart defaults reduce operator overhead, making routine tasks effortless.
• Enhanced Observability: Rich telemetry gives you visibility where it matters, so you can detect, debug, and deploy with confidence.

Smooth Sailing Through Disruptive Changes: Navigating Big Bang 3.0 #

The transition to Big Bang 3.0 brings several powerful enhancements, but it also introduces disruptive, breaking changes, particularly with the deprecation of the Istio Operator and the shift to Grafana Alloy for telemetry. But where others leave you wrestling with upstream disruption, SmoothGlue absorbs the complexity so you don’t have to.

We know platform operators already carry the weight of keeping everything running. That's why we've focused on:

• Minimizing Operator Work: Through thoughtful automation and intelligent migration paths, we've significantly reduced the manual effort required from your team. For example, the default transition from Promtail to Grafana Alloy is automated within SmoothGlue. While custom logging configurations still require some attention, we provide clear guidance and leverage upstream tooling to make it as straightforward as possible.
• Minimizing Downtime: We know that downtime means lost productivity and potential revenue. Our engineering teams have designed the upgrade process to minimize service interruptions, ensuring your users are not significantly affected. For example, while the Istio migration in Big Bang 3.0 inherently involves some gateway recreation and brief downtime, we provided clear pre-migration steps and guidance to help you prepare and mitigate impact.
• Incremental Adoption: We're rolling out these significant updates incrementally, starting with SmoothGlue 6.16 and culminating in 6.18, scheduled for release on June 25. This allows you to test and validate changes in your staging environments before they become default behavior, providing you with greater control and confidence.

Key highlights of how SmoothGlue eases your Big Bang 3.0 journey: #

• Operator-less Istio Migration: The Istio service mesh provides mutual TLS encryption, policy enforcement, and observability of network traffic, making it a critical security and operations tool. With the deprecation of the Istio Operator, the way that this system is orchestrated will change, and manually performing this migration could incur lengthy downtime and frustration. SmoothGlue automates the core migration, and provides clear guidance for any necessary custom application adjustments. You can even test this beta feature in SmoothGlue 6.16 before its full adoption in 6.18.
• Grafana Alloy Integration: Logging and observability are other critical components of a software delivery platform. We're proactively transitioning from Promtail to Grafana Alloy for telemetry, aligning with future upstream development and providing a more unified observability solution. SmoothGlue leads the transition, automating the switch for most setups and giving you a cleaner, more unified telemetry pipeline out of the box.

At BrainGu, we don’t think adopting the latest tech should feel like open-heart surgery. That’s why we built SmoothGlue on top of Big Bang, fortifying its core with automation, observability, and operational guardrails that go beyond the standard playbook. The result? You ship faster, and safer.

Ready to experience a smoother DevSecOps journey? Explore the latest SmoothGlue release today!

Already a SmoothGlue customer?

Dig into the Big Bang 3.0 migration guide for all the technical details.