The Podlets - A Cloud Native Podcast

Due to its vast array of capabilities and applications, it can be challenging to pinpoint the exact essence of what Kubernetes does. Today we are asking questions about orchestration and runtimes and trying to see if we can agree on whether Kubernetes primarily does one or the other, or even something else. Kubernetes may rather be described as a platform for instance! In order to answer these questions, we look at what constitutes an orchestrator, thinking about management, workflow, and security across a network of machines. We also get into the nitty-gritty of runtimes and how Kubernetes can fit into this model too. The short answer to our initial question is that defining a platform, orchestrator or a runtime depends on your perspective and tasks and Kubernetes can fulfill any one of these buckets. We also look at other platforms, either past or present that might be compared to Kubernetes in certain areas and see what this might tell us about the definitions. Ultimately, we come away with the message that the exact way you slice what Kubernetes does, is not all-important. Rigid definitions might not serve us so well and rather our focus should be on an evolving understanding of these terms and the broadening horizon of what Kubernetes can achieve. For a really interesting meditation on how far we can take the Kube, be sure to join us today! Follow us: https://twitter.com/thepodlets Website: https://thepodlets.io Feeback: info@thepodlets.io https://www.notion.so/thepodlets/The-Podlets-Guest-Central-9cec18726e924863b559ef278cf695c9 Hosts: https://twitter.com/mauilion https://twitter.com/joshrosso https://twitter.com/embano1 https://twitter.com/opowero Key Points From This Episode: Quotes: “Obviously, orchestrator is a very big word, it means lots of things but as we’ve already described, it’s hard to fully encapsulate what orchestration means at a lower level.” — @mauilion [0:16:30] “I wonder if there is any guidance or experiences we have with determining when you might need an orchestrator.” — @joshrosso [0:28:32] “Sometimes there is an elemental over-automation some people don’t want all of these automation happening in the background.” — @opowero [0:29:19] Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: Apache Airflow — https://airflow.apache.org/ SSCM — https://www.lynda.com/Microsoft-365-tutorials/SSCM-Office-Deployment-Tool/5030992/2805770-4.html Ansible — https://www.ansible.com/ Docker — https://www.docker.com/ Joe Beda — https://www.vmware.com/latam/company/leadership/joe-beda.html Jazz Improvisation over Orchestration — https://blog.heptio.com/core-kubernetes-jazz-improv-over-orchestration-a7903ea92ca?gi=5c729e924f6c containerd — https://containerd.io/ AWS — https://aws.amazon.com/ Fleet — https://coreos.com/fleet/docs/latest/launching-containers-fleet.html Puppet — https://puppet.com/ HashiCorp Nomad — https://nomadproject.io/ Mesos — http://mesos.apache.org/ Swarm — https://docs.docker.com/get-started/swarm-deploy/ Red Hat — https://www.redhat.com/en Zalando — https://zalando.com/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We are joined by Ellen Körbes for this episode, where we focus on Kubernetes and its tooling. Ellen has a position at Tilt where they work in developer relations. Before Tilt, they were doing closely related kinds of work at Garden, a similar company! Both companies are directly related to working with Kubernetes and Ellen is here to talk to us about why Kubernetes does not have to be the difficult thing that it is made out to be. According to her, this mostly comes down to tooling. Ellen believes that with the right set of tools at your disposal it is not actually necessary to completely understand all of Kubernetes or even be familiar with a lot of its functions. You do not have to start from the bottom every time you start a new project and developers who are new to Kubernetes need not becomes experts in it in order to take advantage of its benefits. The major goal for Ellen and Tilt is to get developers code up, running and live in as quick a time as possible. When the system is standing in the way this process can take much longer, whereas, with Tilt, Ellen believes the process should be around two seconds! Ellen comments on who should be using Kubernetes and who it would most benefit. We also discuss where Kubernetes should be run, either locally or externally, for best results and Tilt's part in the process of unit testing and feedback. We finish off peering into the future of Kubernetes, so make sure to join us for this highly informative and empowering chat! Follow us: https://twitter.com/thepodlets Website: https://thepodlets.io Feeback: info@thepodlets.io https://www.notion.so/thepodlets/The-Podlets-Guest-Central-9cec18726e924863b559ef278cf695c9 Guest: https://twitter.com/ellenkorbes Hosts: Carlisia CamposBryan LilesOlive Power Key Points From This Episode: Quotes: “You're not meant to edit Kubernetes YAML by hand.” — @ellenkorbes [0:07:43] “I think from the point of view of a developer, you should try and stay away from Kubernetes for as long as you can.” — @ellenkorbes [0:11:50] “I've heard from many companies that the main reason they decided to use Kubernetes in development is that they wanted to mimic production as closely as possible.” — @ellenkorbes [0:13:21] Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: Ellen Körbes — http://ellenkorbes.com/ Ellen Körbes on Twitter — https://twitter.com/ellenkorbes?lang=en Tilt — https://tilt.dev/ Garden — https://garden.io/ Cluster API — https://cluster-api.sigs.k8s.io/ Lyft — https://www.lyft.com/ KubeCon — https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/events/kubecon-cloudnativecon-europe-2019/ Unu Motors — https://unumotors.com/en Mindspace — https://www.mindspace.me/ Docker — https://www.docker.com/ Netflix — https://www.netflix.com/ GCP — https://cloud.google.com/ Azure — https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/ AWS — https://aws.amazon.com/ ksonnet — https://ksonnet.io/ Ruby on Rails — https://rubyonrails.org/ Lambda – https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/ DynamoDB — https://aws.amazon.com/dynamodb/ Telepresence — https://www.telepresence.io/ Skaffold Google — https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/application-development/kubernetes-development-simplified-skaffold-is-now-ga Python — https://www.python.org/ REPL — https://repl.it/ Spring — https://spring.io/community Go — https://golang.org/ Helm — https://helm.sh/ Pulumi — https://www.pulumi.com/ Starlark — https://github.com/bazelbuild/starlark Transcript: EPISODE 22 [ANNOUNCER] Welcome to The Podlets Podcast, a weekly show that explores cloud native one buzzword at a time. Each week, experts in the field will discuss and contrast distributed systems concepts, practices, tradeoffs and lessons learned to help you on your cloud native journey. This space moves fast and we shouldn’t reinvent the wheel. If you’re an engineer, operator or technically minded decision-maker, this podcast is for you. [EPISODE] [0:00:41.8] CC: Hi, everybody. This is The Podlets. We are back this week with a special guest, Ellen...

Running Kubernetes on conventional operating systems is time-consuming and labor-intensive. Today’s guests Andrew Rynhard and Timothy Gerla have engineered a product that attempts to provide a solution to this problem. They call it Talos, and it is a modern OS designed specifically to host Kubernetes clusters, managed by a flexible and powerful API. Talos is completely stripped down to the bare components required to run Kubernetes and get information from the system. It stays updated by keeping time with Kubernetes, but also provides the user with a large degree of control in the event that they might need to update a flag. In this episode, Andrew and Timothy get into some of the mechanics and thought processes behind Talos, telling us why they went with a read-only API, how they handle security concerns on the OS, and how a system like theirs might get adopted by the Kubernetes community and layperson more broadly. They get into the advantages provided by a stripped-down solution for systematizing the use of Kubernetes across communities and running new components through clusters rather than on the OS itself. In a space where most participants are largely operating in the dark, it is a pleasure to see innovations like this display such lasting power so make sure you check out this episode. Follow us: https://twitter.com/thepodlets Website: https://thepodlets.io Feeback: info@thepodlets.io https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/thepodlets/issues Guests: Hosts: Carlisia CamposBryan LilesOlive Power Key Points From This Episode: Quotes: “To me, it’s just about abstracting away the operating system and not even having to worry about it anymore, and looking at Kubernetes and the entire cluster as an operating system.” — Andrew Rynhard [0:05:00] “As rapid as the technology is changing, you need an operating system that is going to evolve with it or at least the operations intelligence to evolve with Kubernetes right alongside it.” — Andrew Rynhard [0:13:08] “The challenge I think for us and for anybody changing the way that operating systems work is is it better enough than what I have today or what I had before?” — @tybstar [0:26:50] “There’s a lot of companies out there who got us at this point in tech that don’t exist anymore, but if they didn’t do what they did, we would not be here right now.” — @bryanl [0:33:41] Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: Talos — https://www.talos-systems.com/ Timothy Gerla — http://www.gerla.net/ Timothy Gerla on Twitter — https://twitter.com/tybstar Andrew Ryndhard on LinkedIn —https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewrynhard/ Andrew Ryndhard on GitHub — https://github.com/andrewrynhard Jed Salazar on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/jedsalazar/ Bryan Liles on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryanliles/ Carlisia Campos on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlisia/ Red Hat — https://www.redhat.com/en/technologies/linux-platforms/enterprise-linux Arch — https://www.archlinux.org/ Debian — https://www.debian.org/ Linux — https://www.linux.org/ Bell Labs — http://www.bell-labs.com/ AT&T — https://www.att.com/ Transcript: EPISODE 20 [INTRODUCTION] [0:00:08.7] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Podlets Podcast, a weekly show that explores Cloud Native one buzzword at a time. Each week, experts in the field will discuss and contrast distributed systems concepts, practices, tradeoffs and lessons learned to help you on your Cloud Native journey. This space moves fast and we shouldn’t reinvent the wheel. If you’re an engineer, operator or technically minded decision maker, this podcast is for you. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:41] CC: Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the Podlets. Today we have a special episode, and on the show, we have a special guest, Andrew Ryndhard. Say hi, Andrew. [00:00:53] AR: Hello, how are you? [00:00:55] CC: We also have Timothy Gerla. Say hi, Tim. [00:00:58] TG: Hi. Thanks for having me. [00:01:00] CC: Yeah. Andrew and Timothy are from Talos. Andrew dropped...

Today on the show we are very lucky to be joined by Chris Umbel and Shaun Anderson from Pivotal to talk about app transformation and modernization! Our guests help companies to update their systems and move into more up-to-date setups through the Swift methodology and our conversation focusses on this journey from legacy code to a more manageable solution. We lay the groundwork for the conversation, defining a few of the key terms and concerns that arise for typical clients and then Shaun and Chris share a bit about their approach to moving things forward. From there, we move into the Swift methodology and how it plays out on a project before considering the benefits of further modernization that can occur after the initial project. Chris and Shaun share their thoughts on measuring success, advantages of their system and how to avoid roll back towards legacy code. For all this and more, join us on The Podlets Podcast, today! Follow us: https://twitter.com/thepodlets Website: https://thepodlets.io Feeback: info@thepodlets.io https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/thepodlets/issues Hosts: Carlisia CamposJosh RossoDuffie CooleyOlive Power Key Points From This Episode: Quotes: “App transformation, to me, is the bucket of things that you need to do to move your product down the line.” — Shaun Anderson [0:04:54] “The pioneering teams set a lot of the guidelines for how the following teams can be doing their modernization work and it just keeps rolling down the track that way.” — Shaun Anderson [0:17:26] “Swift is a series of exercises that we use to go from a business problem into what we call a notional architecture for an application.” — Chris Umbel [0:24:16] “I think what's interesting about a lot of large organizations is that they've been so used to doing big bang releases in general. This goes from software to even process changes in their organizations.” — Chris Umbel [0:30:58] Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: Chris Umbel — https://github.com/chrisumbel Shaun Anderson — https://www.crunchbase.com/person/shaun-anderson Pivotal — https://pivotal.io/ VMware — https://www.vmware.com/ Michael Feathers — https://michaelfeathers.silvrback.com/ Steeltoe — https://steeltoe.io/ Alberto Brandolini — https://leanpub.com/u/ziobrando Swiftbird — https://www.swiftbird.us/ EventStorming — https://www.eventstorming.com/book/ Stephen Hawking — http://www.hawking.org.uk/ Istio — https://istio.io/ Stateful and Stateless Workload Episode — https://thepodlets.io/episodes/009-stateful-and-stateless/ Pivotal Presentation on Application Transformation: https://content.pivotal.io/slides/application-transformation-workshop Transcript: EPISODE 19 [INTRODUCTION] [0:00:08.7] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Podlets Podcast, a weekly show that explores Cloud Native one buzzword at a time. Each week, experts in the field will discuss and contrast distributed systems concepts, practices, tradeoffs and lessons learned to help you on your cloud native journey. This space moves fast and we shouldn’t reinvent the wheel. If you’re an engineer, operator or technically minded decision maker, this podcast is for you. [EPISODE] [0:00:41.0] CC: Hi, everybody. Welcome back to The Podlets. Today, we have an exciting show. It's myself on, Carlisia Campos. We have our usual guest hosts, Duffie Cooley, Olive Power and Josh Rosso. We also have two special guests, Chris Umbel. Did I say that right, Chris? [0:01:03.3] CU: Close enough. [0:01:03.9] CC: I should have checked before. [0:01:05.7] CU: Umbel is good. [0:01:07.1] CC: Umbel. Yeah. I'm not even the native English speaker, so you have to bear with me. Shaun Anderson. Hi. [0:01:15.6] SA: You said my name perfectly. Thank you. [0:01:18.5] CC: Yours is more standard American. Let's see, the topic of today is application modernization. Oh, I just found out word I cannot pronounce. That's my non-pronounceable words list. Also known as application transformation, I think those two terms correctly...

The question of diving into Kubernetes is something that faces us all in different ways. Whether you are already on the platform, are considering transitioning, or are thinking about what is best for your team moving forward, the possibilities and the learning-curve make it a somewhat difficult question to answer. In this episode, we discuss the topic and ultimately believe that an individual is the only one who can answer that question well. That being said, the capabilities of Kubernetes can be quite persuasive and if you are tempted then it is most definitely worth considering very seriously, at least. In our discussion, we cover some of the problems that Kubernetes solves, as well as some of the issues that might arise when moving into the Kubernetes space. The panel shares their thoughts on learning a new platform and compare it with other tricky installations and adoption periods. From there, we look at platforms and how Kubernetes fits and does not fit into a traditional definition of what a platform constitutes. The last part of this episode is spent considering the future of Kubernetes and how fast that future just might arrive. So for all this and a bunch more, join us on The Podlets Podcast, today! Follow us: https://twitter.com/thepodlets Website: https://thepodlets.io Feeback: info@thepodlets.io https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/thepodlets/issues Hosts: Carlisia CamposJosh RossoDuffie CooleyBryan Liles Key Points From This Episode: Quotes: “I can use different tools and it might look different and they will have different commands but what I’m actually doing, it doesn’t change and my understanding of what I’m doing doesn’t change.” — @carlisia [0:04:31] “Kubernetes is a distributed system, we need people with expertise across that field, across that whole grouping of technologies.” — @mauilion [0:10:09] “Kubernetes is not just a platform. Kubernetes is a platform for building platforms.” — @bryanl [0:18:12] Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: Weave — https://www.weave.works/docs/net/latest/overview/ AWS — https://aws.amazon.com/ DigitalOcean — https://www.digitalocean.com/ Heroku — https://www.heroku.com/ Red Hat — https://www.redhat.com/en Debian — https://www.debian.org/ Canonical — https://canonical.com/ Kelsey Hightower — https://github.com/kelseyhightower Joe Beda — https://www.vmware.com/latam/company/leadership/joe-beda.html Azure — https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/ CloudFoundry — https://www.cloudfoundry.org/ JAY Z — https://lifeandtimes.com/ OpenStack — https://www.openstack.org/ OpenShift — https://www.openshift.com/ KubeVirt — https://kubevirt.io/ VMware — https://www.vmware.com/ Chef and Puppet — https://www.chef.io/puppet/ tgik.io — https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7bmigfV0EqQzxcNpmcdTJ9eFRPBe-iZa Matthias Endler: Maybe You Don't Need Kubernetes - https://endler.dev/2019/maybe-you-dont-need-kubernetes Martin Tournoij: You (probably) don’t need Kubernetes - https://www.arp242.net/dont-need-k8s.html Scalar Software: Why most companies don't need Kubernetes - https://scalarsoftware.com/blog/why-most-companies-dont-need-kubernetes GitHub: Kubernetes at GitHub - https://github.blog/2017-08-16-kubernetes-at-github Debugging network stalls on Kubernetes - https://github.blog/2019-11-21-debugging-network-stalls-on-kubernetes/ One year using Kubernetes in production: Lessons learned - https://techbeacon.com/devops/one-year-using-kubernetes-production-lessons-learned Kelsey Hightower Tweet: Kubernetes is a platform for building platforms. It's a better place to start; not the endgame - https://twitter.com/kelseyhightower/status/935252923721793536?s=2 Transcript: EPISODE 18 [INTRODUCTION] [0:00:08.7] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Podlets Podcast, a weekly show that explores Cloud Native one buzzword at a time. Each week, experts in the field will discuss and contrast distributed systems concepts, practices, tradeoffs and lessons learned to help you on your cloud native...

If you work in Kubernetes, cloud native, or any other fast-moving ecosystem, you might have found that keeping up to date with new developments can be incredibly challenging. We think this as well, and so we decided to make today’s episode a tribute to that challenge, as well as a space for sharing the best resources and practices we can think of to help manage it. Of course, there are audiences in this space who require information at various levels of depth, and fortunately the resources to suit each one exist. We get into the many different places we go in order to receive information at each part of the spectrum, such as SIG meetings on YouTube, our favorite Twitter authorities, the KubeWeekly blog, and the most helpful books out there. Another big talking point is the idea of habits or practices that can be helpful in consuming all this information, whether it be waiting for the release notes of a new version, tapping into different TLDR summaries of a topic, streaming videos, or actively writing posts as a way of clarifying and integrating newly learned concepts. In the end, there is no easy way, and passionate as you may be about staying in tune, burnout is a real possibility. So whether you’re just scratching the cloud native surface or up to your eyeballs in base code, join us for today’s conversation because you’re bound to find some use in the resources we share. Follow us: https://twitter.com/thepodlets Website: https://thepodlets.io Feeback: info@thepodlets.io https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/thepodlets/issues Hosts: Carlisia CamposJosh RossoDuffie CooleyOlive PowerMichael Gasch Key Points From This Episode: Programming Kubernetes;Managing Kubernetes; Kubernetes Best Practices. Quotes: “An audience I haven’t mentioned is the audience that basically just throws up their hands and walks away because there’s just too much to keep track of, right?” — @mauilion [0:05:15] “Maybe it’s because I’m lazy, I don’t know? But I wait until 1.17 drops, then I go to the release notes and really kind of ingest it because I’ve just struggled so much to kind of keep up with the day to day, ‘We merged this, we didn’t merge this,’ and so on.” — @joshrosso [0:10:18] “If you find value in being up to date with these things, just figure out – there are so many resources out there that address these different audiences and figure out what the right measure for you is. You don’t have to go deep on the code on everything.” — @mauilion [0:27:57] “Actually putting the right content in the right channel, at least from a higher level, helps me decide whether I want to like look at that channel today, and stuff that should be in the channel is not kind of in a conversation channel.” — @opowero [0:32:21] “When I see something that is going to give me the fundamentals, like I have other priorities now, I sort of always want to consume that to learn the fundamentals, because I think in the long term phase of, but then I neglect physically what I need to know to do in the moment.” — @carlisia [0:33:39] “Just do nothing, because our brain needs that. We need to not be listening, not be reading, just nothing. Just sit and look at the ceiling. Our brain needs that. Ideally, look at nature, like look outside, look at the air, go for a walk. We need that, because that recharges the brain.” — @carlisia [0:42:38] “Just consuming and keeping up, that doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t give back.” — @embano1 [0:49:32] Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: Chris Short — https://chrisshort.net/ Last Week in Kubernetes Development — http://lwkd.info/ 1.17 Release Notes — https://kubernetes.io/docs/setup/release/notes/ Release Notes Filter Page — https://relnotes.k8s.io/ Cindy Sridharan on Twitter — https://twitter.com/copyconstruct InfoSec on Twitter — https://twitter.com/infosec?lang=en Programming Kubernetes on Amazon —https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Kubernetes-Developing-Cloud-Native-Applications/dp/1492047104 Managing Kubernetes on...

Do you know what cloud native apps are? Well, we don’t really either, but today we’re on a mission to find out! This episode is an exciting one, where we bring all of our different understandings of what cloud native apps are to the table. The topic is so interesting and diverse and can be interpreted in a myriad of ways. The term ‘cloud native app’ is not very concrete, which allows for this open interpretation. We begin by discussing what we understand cloud native apps to be. We see that while we all have similar definitions, there are still many differences in how we interpret this term. These different interpretations unlock some other important questions that we also delve into. Tied into cloud native apps is another topic we cover today – monoliths. This is a term that is used frequently but not very well understood and defined. We unpack some of the pros and cons of monoliths as well as the differences between monoliths and microservices. Finally, we discuss some principles of cloud native apps and how having these umbrella terms can be useful in defining whether an app is a cloud native one or not. These are complex ideas and we are only at the tip of the iceberg. We hope you join us on this journey as we dive into cloud native apps! Follow us: https://twitter.com/thepodlets Website: https://thepodlets.io Feeback: info@thepodlets.io https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/thepodlets/issues Hosts: Carlisia CamposBryan LilesJosh RossoNicholas Lane Key Points From This Episode: Quotes: “An application could be made up of multiple processes.” — @joshrosso [0:14:43] “A monolith is simply an application or a single process that is running both the UI, the front-end code and the code that fetches the state from a data store, whether that be disk or database.” — @joshrosso [0:16:36] “Separating your app is actually smarter than the long run because what it gives you is the flexibility to mix and match.” — @bryanl [0:22:10] “A cloud native application isn’t a thing. It is a set of principles that you can use to guide yourself to running apps in cloud environments.” — @bryanl [0:26:13] “All of these things that we are talking about sound daunting. But it is better that we can have these conversations and talk about things that don’t work rather than not knowing what to talk about in general.” — @bryanl [0:39:30] Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: Red Hat — https://www.redhat.com/en IBM — https://www.ibm.com/ VWware — https://www.vmware.com/ The New Stack — https://thenewstack.io/ 10 Key Attributes of Cloud-Native Applications — https://thenewstack.io/10-key-attributes-of-cloud- native-applications/ Kubernetes — https://kubernetes.io/ Linux — https://www.linux.org/ Transcript: EPISODE 16 [INTRODUCTION] [0:00:08.7] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Podlets Podcast, a weekly show that explores Cloud Native one buzzword at a time. Each week, experts in the field will discuss and contrast distributed systems concepts, practices, tradeoffs and lessons learned to help you on your cloud native journey. This space moves fast and we shouldn’t reinvent the wheel. If you’re an engineer, operator or technically minded decision maker, this podcast is for you. [EPISODE] [0:00:41.4] NL: Hello and welcome back, my name is Nicholas Lane. This time, we’ll be diving into what it’s all about. Cloud native applications. Joining me this week are Brian Liles. [0:00:53.2] BL: Hi. [0:00:54.3] NL: Carlisia Campos. [0:00:55.6] CC: Hi everybody, glad to be here. [0:00:57.6] NL: And Josh Rosso. [0:00:58.6] JR: Hey everyone. [0:01:00.0] NL: How’s it going everyone? [0:01:01.3] JR: It’s been a great week so far. I’m just happy that I have a good job and able to do things that make me feel whole. [0:01:08.8] NL: That’s awesome, wow. [0:01:10.0] BL: Yeah, I’ve been having a good week as well in doing a bit of some fun stuff after work. Like my soon to be in-laws are in town so I’ve been visiting with them and that’s been really fun. Cloud...

There are two words that get the blame more often than not when a problem cannot be rooted: the network! Today, along with special guest, Scott Lowe, we try to dig into what the network actually means. We discover, through our discussion that the network is, in fact, a distributed system. This means that each component of the network has a degree of independence and the complexity of them makes it difficult to understand the true state of the network. We also look at some of the fascinating parallels between networks and other systems, such as the configuration patterns for distributed systems. A large portion of the show deals with infrastructure and networks, but we also look at how developers understand networks. In a changing space, despite self-service becoming more common, there is still generally a poor understanding of networks from the developers’ vantage point. We also cover other network-related topics, such as the future of the network engineer’s role, transferability of their skills and other similarities between network problem-solving and development problem-solving. Tune in today! Follow us: https://twitter.com/thepodlets Website: https://thepodlets.io Feeback: info@thepodlets.io https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/thepodlets/issues Hosts: Duffie CooleyNicholas LaneJosh Rosso Key Points From This Episode: • The network is often confused with the server or other elements when there is a problem. • People forget that the network is a distributed system, which has independent routers. • The distributed pieces that make up a network could be standalone computers. • The parallels between routing protocols and configuration patterns for distributed systems. • There is not a model for eventually achieving consistent networks, particularly if they are old. • Most routing patterns have a time-sensitive mechanism where traffic can be re-dispersed. • Understanding a network is a distributed system gives insights into other ones, like Kubernetes. • Even from a developers’ perspective, there is a limited understanding of the network. • There are many overlaps between developers and infrastructural thinking about systems. • How can network engineers apply their skills across different systems? • As the future changes, understanding the systems and theories is crucial for network engineers. • There is a chasm between networking and development. • The same ‘primitive’ tools are still being used for software application layers. • An explanation of CSMACD, collisions and their applicability. • Examples of cloud native applications where the network does not work at all. • How Spanning Tree works and the problems that it solves. • The relationship between software-defined networking and the adoption of cloud native technologies. • Software-defined networking increases the ability to self-service. • With self-service on-prem solutions, there is still not a great deal of self-service. Quotes: “In reality, what we have are 10 or hundreds of devices with the state of the network as a system, distributed in little bitty pieces across all of these devices.” — @scott_lowe [0:03:11] “If you understand how a network is a distributed system and how these theories apply to a network, then you can extrapolate those concepts and apply them to something like Kubernetes or other distributed systems.” — @scott_lowe [0:14:05] “A lot of these software defined networking concepts are still seeing use in the modern clouds these days” — @scott_lowe [0:44:38] “The problems that we are trying to solve in networking are not different than the problems that you are trying to solve in applications.” — @mauilion [0:51:55] Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: Scott Lowe on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottslowe/ Scott Lowe’s blog — https://blog.scottlowe.org/ Kafka — https://kafka.apache.org/ Redis — https://redis.io/ Raft — https://raft.github.io/ Packet Pushers — https://packetpushers.net/ AWS —...

Our topic in today's great episode is how we think jobs in software engineering have changed since the advent of cloud native computing. We begin by giving our listeners an idea of our jobs and speak more to what a job in cloud native would look like as well as how Kubernetes fits into the whole picture. Next up we cover some old challenges and how advances in the field have made those go away while simultaneously opening the gateway to even more abstract problems. We talk about some of the specific new developments and how they have changed certain jobs. For example, QA has not disappeared but rather evolved toward becoming ever more automated, and language evolution has left more space for actual development instead of debugging. Our conversation shifts toward some tips for what to know to get into cloud native and where to find this information. We wrap up our conversation with some thoughts on the future of this exciting space, predicting how it might change but also how it should change. Software engineering is still in a place where it is continuously breaking new ground, so tune in to hear why you should be learning as much as you can about development right now. Follow us: https://twitter.com/thepodlets Website: https://thepodlets.io Feeback: info@thepodlets.io https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/thepodlets/issues Hosts: Carlisia CamposBryan LilesNicholas Lane Key Points From This Episode: • The work descriptions of our hosts who merge development, sysadmin, and consulting. • What a cloud native related job looks like. • Conceptualizing cloud native in relation to development, sysadmin, and DevOps. • A cloud native job is anything related to building software for other people’s computers. • Kubernetes is just one way of helping software run easily on a cloud. • Differences between cloud native today and 10 years ago: added ease through more support. • How cloud native developing is the new full stack due to the wide skillset required. • An argument that old challenges are gone but have introduced more abstract ones. • Advances making transitioning from testing to production more problem-free. • How QA has turned into SDE, meaning engineers now write software that tests. • Why jobs have matured after the invention of cloud native. • Whether the changes in jobs have been one of titles or function. • How languages like Rust, Go, and Swift have changed developer jobs by being less buggy. • What good support equates to, beyond names like CRE and company size. • The many things people who want to get into cloud native should know. • Prospective cloud native workers should understand OSs, networking, and more. • Different training programs for learning Kubernetes such as CKA and CKAD. • Resources for learning such as books, YouTube videos, and podcasts. • Predictions and recommendations for the future of cloud native. • Tips for recruiters such as knowing the software they are hiring for. Quotes: “What is the cloud? The cloud is other people’s computers. It's LPC, and what is Kubernetes? Well, basically, it’s a way that we can run our software on other people’s computers, AKA the cloud.” — @bryanl [0:07:35] “What we have now is we know what we can do with distributed computing and now we have a great set of software for multiple vendors who allow us to do what we want to do.” — @bryanl [0:10:03] “There are certain challenges now in cloud native that are gone, so the things that were hard before like spinning up a server or getting the database are gone and that frees us to worry about more complicated or more abstract ideas.” — @apinick [0:12:58] “The biggest problem with what we are doing is that we are trailblazing. So a lot of the things that are happening, like the way that Kubernetes advances every few months is new, new, new, new.” — @bryanl [0:36:11] “Now is the literal best time to get into writing software and specifically for cloud native applications.” — @bryanl [0:42:22] Links...

Today on The Podlets Podcast, we are joined by VMware's Vice President of Research and Development, Craig McLuckie! Craig is also a founder of Heptio, who were acquired by VMware and during his time at Google he was part of bringing Kubernetes into being. Craig has loads of expertise and shareable experience in the cloud native space and we have a fascinating chat with him, asking about his work, Heptio and of course, Kubernetes! Craig shares some insider perspective on the space, the rise of Kubernetes and how the increase in Kubernetes' popularity can be managed. We talk a lot about who can use Kubernetes and the prerequisites for implementation; Craig insists it is not a one-size-fits-all scenario. We also get into the lack of significantly qualified minds and how this is impacting competition in the hiring pool. Craig comments on taking part in the open source community and the buy-in that is required to meaningfully contribute as well as sharing his thoughts on the need to ship new products and services regularly. We finish off the episode with some of Craig's perspectives on the future of Kubernetes, dangers it poses to code if neglected and the next phase of its lifespan. For this amazing chat with a true expert in his field, make sure to join us on for this episode! Follow us: https://twitter.com/thepodlets Website: https://thepodlets.io Feeback: info@thepodlets.io https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/thepodlets/issues Special guest: Craig McLuckie Hosts: Carlisia CamposDuffie CooleyJosh Rosso Key Points From This Episode: • A brief introduction to Craig's history and his work in the cloud native space. • The questions that Craig believes more people should be asking about Kubernetes. • Weighing the explosion of the Kubernetes space; fragmentation versus progress. • The three pieces of enterprise software and aiming to enlarge the 'crystalline core'. • Craig's thoughts on specialized Kubernetes operating systems and their tradeoffs. • Quantifying the readiness of an organization to implement Kubernetes. • Craig's reflections on Heptio and the lessons he feels he learned in the process. • The skills shortage for Kubernetes and how companies are approaching this issue. • Balancing the needs and level of the community and shipping products regularly. • Involvement in the open source community and the leap of faith that is inherent in the process. • The question of microliths; making monoliths more complex and harder to manage. • Masking problems with Kubernetes and how detrimental this can be to your code. • Craig's thoughts on the future of the Kubernetes space and possible changes. • The two duty cycles of any technology; the readiness phase that follows the hype. Quotes: “I think Kubernetes has opened it up, not just in terms of the world of applications that can run Kubernetes, but also this burgeoning ecosystem of supporting technologies that can create value.” — @cmcluck [0:06:20] “You're not a cool mainstream enterprise software provider if you don’t have a Kubernetes story today. I think we’ll start to see continued focus and consolidation around a set of the larger organizations that are operating in this space.” — @cmcluck [0:06:39] “We are so much better served as a software company if we can preserve consistency from environment to environment.” — @cmcluck [0:09:12] “I’m a fan of rendered down, container-optimized operating system distributions. There’s a lot of utility there, but I think we also need to be practical and recognize that enterprises have gotten comfortable with the OS landscape that they have.” — @cmcluck [0:14:54] Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: Craig McLuckie on LinkedIn Craig McLuckie on Twitter The Podlets on Twitter Kubernetes VMware Brendan Burns Cloud Native Computing Foundation Heptio Mesos Valero vSphere Red Hat IBM Microsoft Amazon KubeCon Transcript: EPISODE 13 [INTRODUCTION] [0:00:08.7] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Podlets Podcast, a...

In this episode of The Podlets Podcast, we welcome Michael Gasch from VMware to join our discussion on the necessity (or not) of formal education in working in the realm of distributed systems. There is a common belief that studying computer science is a must if you want to enter this field, but today we talk about the various ways in which individuals can teach themselves everything they need to know. What we establish, however, is that you need a good dose of curiosity and craziness to find your feet in this world, and we discuss the many different pathways you can take to fully equip yourself. Long gone are the days when you needed a degree from a prestigious school: we give you our hit-list of top resources that will go a long way in helping you succeed in this industry. Whether you are someone who prefers learning by reading, attending Meetups or listening to podcasts, this episode will provide you with lots of new perspectives on learning about distributed systems. Follow us: https://twitter.com/thepodlets Website: https://thepodlets.io Feeback: info@thepodlets.io https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/thepodlets/issues Hosts: Carlisia CamposDuffie CooleyMichael Gasch Key Points From This Episode: • Introducing our new host, Michael Gasch, and a brief overview of his role at VMware. • Duffie and Carlisia’s educational backgrounds and the value of hands-on work experience. • How they first got introduced to distributed systems and the confusion around what it involves. • Why distributed systems are about more than simply streamlining communication and making things work. • The importance and benefit of educating oneself on the fundamentals of this topic. • Our top recommended resources for learning about distributed systems and their concepts. • The practical downside of not having a formal education in software development. • The different ways in which people learn, index and approach problem-solving. • Ensuring that you balance reading with implementation and practical experience. • Why it’s important to expose yourself to discussions on the topic you want to learn about. • The value of getting different perspectives around ideas that you think you understand. • How systems thinking is applicable to things outside of computer science. • The various factors that influence how we build systems. Quotes: “When people are interacting with distributed systems today, or if I were to ask like 50 people what a distributed system is, I would probably get 50 different answers.” — @mauilion [0:14:43] “Try to expose yourself to the words, because our brains are amazing. Once you get exposure, it’s like your brain works in the background. All of a sudden, you go, ‘Oh, yeah! I know this word.’” — @carlisia [0:14:43] “If you’re just curious a little bit and maybe a little bit crazy, you can totally get down the rabbit hole in distributed systems and get totally excited about it. There’s no need for having formal education and the degree to enter this world.” — @embano1 [0:44:08] Learning resources suggested by the hosts: Designing Data-Intensive Applications, M. KleppmannDistributed Systems, M. van Steen and A.S. TanenbaumThesis on Raft, D. Ongaro. - Consensus - Bridging Theory and PracticeEnterprise Integration Patterns, B.Woolf, G. HohpeDesigning Distributed Systems, B. BurnsDistributed SystemsArchitecting Distributed Cloud ApplicationsDistributed AlgorithmsOperating System - IIT LecturesIntro to Database Systems (Fall 2018)Advanced Database Systems (Spring 2018)Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed SystemNotes on Distributed Systems for Young BloodsPost, Distributed Systems for Fun and ProfitOn TimeDistributed Systems @The Morning PaperDistributed Systems @Brave New GeekAphyr’s Class materials for a distributed systems lecture seriesThe Log - What every software engineer should know about real-time data’s unifying abstractionPost, Github - awesome-distributed-systemsYour Coffee Shop Doesn’t...

A warm welcome to John Harris who will be joining us for his first time on the show today to discuss our exciting topic, CI and CD in cloud native! CI and CD are two terms that usually get spoken about together but are actually two different things entirely if you think about them. We begin by getting into exactly what these differences are, highlighting the regulatory aspects of CD in contrast to the future-focussed nature of CI. We then move on to a deep exploration of their benefits in optimizing processes in cloud native space through automation and surveillance from development to production environments. You’ll hear about the benefits of automatic building in container orchestration, the value of make files and local test commands, and the evolution of CI from its ‘rubber chicken’ days with Martin Fowler and Jez Humble. We take a deep dive into the many ways that containers differ from regular binary as far as deployment methods, build speed, automation, run targets, realtime reflections of changes, and regulation. Moreover, we talk to the challenges of transitioning between testing and production environments, getting past human error through automation, and using sealed secrets to manage clusters. We also discuss the benefits and drawbacks of different CI tools such as Kubebuilder, Argo, Jenkins X, and Tekton. Our conversation gets wrapped up by looking at some of the exciting developments on the horizon of CI and CD, so make sure to tune in! Follow us: https://twitter.com/thepodlets Website: https://thepodlets.io Feeback: info@thepodlets.io https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/thepodlets/issues Hosts: Bryan LilesNicholas Lane Key Points From This Episode: • The difference between CI and CD. • Understanding the meaning of CD: ‘continuous delivery’ and ‘continuous deployment’. • Building an artifact that can be deployed in the future is termed ‘continuous integration’. • The benefits of continuous integration for container orchestration: automatic building. • What to do before starting a project regarding make files and local test commands. • Kubebuilder is a tool that scaffolds out the creation of controllers and web hooks. • Where CI has got to as far as location since its ‘rubber chicken’ co-located days. • The prescience of Martin Fowler and Jez Humble regarding continuous integration. • The value of running tests in a CI process for quality maintenance purposes. • What makes containers great as far as architecture, output, deployment, and speed. • The benefits of CD regarding deployment automation, reflection, and regulation. • Transitioning between testing and production environments using targets, clusters, pipelines. • Getting past human error through automation via continuous deployment. • What containers mean for the traditional idea of environments. • How labeling factors into the simplicity of transitioning from development to production. • What GitOps means for keeping track of changes in environments using tags. • How sealed secrets stop the need to change an app when managing clusters. • The tools around CD and what a good CD system should look like. • Using Argo and Spinnaker to take better advantage of hardware. • How JenkinsX helps mediate YAML when installing into clusters. • Why the customizable nature of CI tools can be seen as negative. • The benefits of using cloud native-built tools like Tekton. • Perspectives on what is missing in the cloud native space. • A definition of blue-green deployments and how they operate in service meshes. • The business abstraction elements of CI tools that are lacking. • Testing and data storage-related aspects of CI/CD that need to be developed. Quotes: “With the advent of containers, now it’s as simple as identifying the images you want and basically running that image in that environment.” — @bryanl [0:18:32] “The whole goal whenever you’re thinking about continuous delivery or continuous deployment is that any human intervention...

Security is inherently dichotomous because it involves hardening an application to protect it from external threats, while at the same time ensuring agility and the ability to iterate as fast as possible. This in-built tension is the major focal point of today’s show, where we talk about all things security. From our discussion, we discover that there are several reasons for this tension. The overarching problem with security is that the starting point is often rules and parameters, rather than understanding what the system is used for. This results in security being heavily constraining. For this to change, a culture shift is necessary, where security people and developers come around the same table and define what optimizing to each of them means. This, however, is much easier said than done as security is usually only brought in at the later stages of development. We also discuss why the problem of security needs to be reframed, the importance of defining what normal functionality is and issues around response and detection, along with many other security insights. The intersection of cloud native and security is an interesting one, so tune in today! Follow us: https://twitter.com/thepodlets Website: https://thepodlets.io Feeback: info@thepodlets.io https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/thepodlets/issues Hosts: Carlisia CamposDuffie CooleyBryan LilesNicholas Lane Key Points From This Episode: Quotes: “You’re not able to actually make use of the platform as it was designed to be made use of, when those constraints are too tight.” — @mauilion [0:02:21] “The reason that people are scared of security is because security is opaque and security is opaque because a lot of people like to keep it opaque but it doesn’t have to be that way.” — @bryanl [0:04:15] “Defining what that normal access looks like is critical to us to our ability to constrain it.” — @mauilion [0:08:21] “Understanding all the avenues that you could be impacted is a daunting task.” — @apinick [0:18:44] “There has to be a place where you can go play and learn what normal is and then you can move into a world in which you can actually enforce what that normal looks like with reasonable constraints.” — @mauilion [0:33:04] “You don’t learn to ride a motorcycle on the street. You’d learn to ride a motorcycle on the dirt.” — @apinick [0:33:57] Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: AWS — https://aws.amazon.com/ Kubernetes https://kubernetes.io/ IAM https://aws.amazon.com/iam/ Securing a Cluster — https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/administer-cluster/securing-a-cluster/ TGI Kubernetes 065 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uy2V2kYl4U&list=PL7bmigfV0EqQzxcNpmcdTJ9eFRPBe-iZa&index=33&t=0s TGI Kubernetes 066 —https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-vRlW7VYio&list=PL7bmigfV0EqQzxcNpmcdTJ9eFRPBe-iZa&index=32&t=0s Bitnami — https://bitnami.com/ Target — https://www.target.com/ Netflix — https://www.netflix.com/ HashiCorp — https://www.hashicorp.com/ Aqua Sec — https://www.aquasec.com/ CyberArk — https://www.cyberark.com/ Jeff Bezos — https://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/#4c3104291b23 Istio — https://istio.io/ Linkerd — https://linkerd.io/ Transcript: EPISODE 10 [INTRODUCTION] [0:00:08.7] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Podlets Podcast, a weekly show that explores cloud native one buzzword at a time. Each week, experts in the field will discuss and contrast distributed systems concepts, practices, tradeoffs and lessons learned to help you on your cloud native journey. This space moves fast and we shouldn’t reinvent the wheel. If you’re an engineer, operator or technically minded decision maker, this podcast is for you. [EPISODE] [0:00:41.2] NL: Hello and welcome back to The Kubelets Podcast. My name is Nicholas Lane and this time, we’re going to be talking about the dichotomy of security. And to talk about such an interesting topic, joining me are Duffie Coolie. [0:00:54.3] DC: Hey, everybody. [0:00:55.6] NL: Bryan Liles. [0:00:57.0] BM:...

This week on The Podlets Cloud Native Podcast we have Josh, Carlisia, Duffie, and Nick on the show, and are also happy to be joined by a newcomer, Brian Liles, who is a senior staff engineer at VMWare! The purpose of today’s show is coming to a deeper understanding of the meaning of ‘stateful’ versus ‘stateless’ apps, and how they relate to the cloud native environment. We cover some definitions of ‘state’ initially and then move to consider how ideas of data persistence and co-ordination across apps complicate or elucidate understandings of ‘stateful’ and ‘stateless’. We then think about the challenging practice of running databases within Kubernetes clusters, which effectively results in an ephemeral system becoming stateful. You’ll then hear some clarifications of the meaning of operators and controllers, the role they play in mediating and regulating states, and also how important they are in a rapidly evolving but skills-scarce environment. Another important theme in this conversation is the CAP theorem or the impossibility of consistency, availability and partition tolerance all at once, but the way different databases allow for different combinations of two out of the three. We then move on to chat about the fundamental connection between workloads and state and then end off with a quick consideration about how ideas of stateful and stateless play out in the context of networks. Today’s show is a real deep dive offering perspectives from some the most knowledgeable in the cloud native space so make sure to tune in! Follow us: https://twitter.com/thepodlets Website: https://thepodlets.io Feeback: info@thepodlets.io https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/thepodlets/issues Hosts: Carlisia CamposDuffie CooleyBryan LilesJosh RossoNicholas Lane Key Points From This Episode: • What ‘stateful’ means in comparison to ‘stateless’. • Understanding ‘state’ as a term referring to data which must persist. • Examples of stateful apps such as databases or apps that revolve around databases. • The idea that ‘persistence’ is debatable, which then problematizes the definition of ‘state’. • Considerations of the push for cloud native to run stateless apps. • How inter-app coordination relates to definitions of stateful and stateless applications. • Considering stateful data as data outside of a stateless cloud native environment. • Why it is challenging to run databases in Kubernetes clusters. • The role of operators in running stateful databases in clusters. • Understanding CRDs and controllers, and how they relate to operators. • Controllers mediate between actual and desired states. • Operators are codified system administrators. • The importance of operators as app number grows in a skill-scarce environment. • Mechanisms around stateful apps are important because they ensure data integrity. • The CAP theorem: the impossibility of consistency, availability, and tolerance. • Why different databases allow for different iterations of the CAP theorem. • When partition tolerance can and can’t get sacrificed. • Recommendations on when to run stateful or stateless apps through Kubernetes. • The importance of considering models when thinking about how to run a stateful app. • Varying definitions of workloads. • Pods can run multiple workloads • Workloads create states, so you can’t have one without the other. • The term ‘workloads’ can refer to multiple processes running at once. • Why the ephemerality of Kubernetes systems makes it hard to run stateful applications. • Ideas of stateful and stateless concerning networks. • The shift from server to browser in hosting stateful sessions. Quotes: “When I started envisioning this world of stateless apps, to me it was like, ‘Why do we even call them apps? Why don’t we just call them a process?’” — @carlisia [0:02:60] “‘State’ really is just that data which must persist.” — @joshrosso [0:04:26] “From the best that I can surmise, the operator pattern is the combination of...

In this episode of The Podlets Podcast, we are talking about the very important topic of recovery from a disaster! A disaster can take many forms, from errors in software and hardware to natural disasters and acts of God. That being said that are better and worse ways of preparing for and preventing the inevitable problems that arise with your data. The message here is that issues will arise but through careful precaution and the right kind of infrastructure, the damage to your business can be minimal. We discuss some of the different ways that people are backing things up to suit their individual needs, recovery time objectives and recovery point objectives, what high availability can offer your system and more! The team offers a bunch of great safety tips to keep things from falling through the cracks and we get into keeping things simple avoiding too much mutation of infrastructure and why testing your backups can make all the difference. We naturally look at this question with an added focus on Kubernetes and go through a few tools that are currently available. So for anyone wanting to ensure safe data and a safe business, this episode is for you! Follow us: https://twitter.com/thepodlets Website: https://thepodlets.io Feeback: info@thepodlets.io https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/thepodlets/issues Hosts: https://twitter.com/carlisia https://twitter.com/bryanl https://twitter.com/joshrosso https://twitter.com/opowero Key Points From This Episode: • A little introduction to Olive and her background in engineering, architecture, and science. • Disaster recovery strategies and the portion of customers who are prepared. • What is a disaster? What is recovery? The fundamentals of the terms we are using. • The physicality of disasters; replication of storage for recovery. • The simplicity of recovery and keeping things manageable for safety. • What high availability offers in terms of failsafes and disaster avoidance. • Disaster recovery for Kubernetes; safety on declarative systems. • The state of the infrastructure and its interaction with good and bad code. • Mutating infrastructure and the complications in terms of recovery and recreation. • Plug-ins and tools for Kubertnetes such as Velero. • Fire drills, testing backups and validating your data before a disaster! • The future of backups and considering what disasters might look like. Quotes: “It is an exciting space, to see how different people are figuring out how to back up distributed systems in a reliable manner.” — @opowero [0:06:01] “I can assure you, careers and fortunes have been made on helping people get this right!” — @bryanl [0:07:31] “Things break all the time, it is how that affects you and how quickly you can recover.” — @opowero [0:23:57] “We do everything through the Kubernetes API, that's one reason why we can do selective backups and restores.” — @carlisia [0:32:41] Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: The Podlets — https://thepodlets.io/ The Podlets on Twitter — https://twitter.com/thepodlets VMware — https://www.vmware.com/ Olive Power — https://uk.linkedin.com/in/olive-power-488870138 Kubernetes — https://kubernetes.io/ PostgreSQL — https://www.postgresql.org/ AWS — https://aws.amazon.com/ Azure — https://azure.microsoft.com/ Google Cloud — https://cloud.google.com/ Digital Ocean — https://www.digitalocean.com/ SoftLayer — https://www.ibm.com/cloud Oracle — https://www.oracle.com/ HackIT — https://hackit.org.uk/ Red Hat — https://www.redhat.com/ Velero — https://blog.kubernauts.io/backup-and-restore-of-kubernetes-applications-using- heptios-velero-with-restic-and-rook-ceph-as-2e8df15b1487 CockroachDB — https://www.cockroachlabs.com/ Cloud Spanner — https://cloud.google.com/spanner/ Transcript: EPISODE 08[INTRODUCTION] [0:00:08.7] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Podlets Podcast, a weekly show that explores Cloud Native one buzzword at a time. Each week, experts in the field will discuss and contrast distributed...

Today on the show we have esteemed Kubernetes thought-leader, Kelsey Hightower, with us. We did not prepare a topic as we know that Kelsey presents talks and features on podcasts regularly, so we thought it best to pick his brain and see where the conversation takes us. We end up covering a mixed bag of super interesting Kubernetes related topics. Kelsey begins by telling us what he has been doing and shares with us his passion for learning in public and why he has chosen to follow this path. From there, we then talk about the issue of how difficult many people still think Kubernetes is. We discover that while there is no doubting that it is complicated, at one point, Linux was the most complicated thing out there. Now, we install Linux servers without even batting an eyelid and we think we can reach the same place with Kubernetes in the future if we shift our thinking! We also cover other topics such as APIs and the debates around them, common questions Kelsey gets before finally ending with a brief discussion on KubeCon. From the attendance and excitement, we saw that this burgeoning community is simply growing and growing. Kelsey encourages us all to enjoy this spirited community and what the innovation happening in this space before it simply becomes boring again. Tune in today! Follow us: https://twitter.com/thepodlets Website: https://thepodlets.io Feeback: info@thepodlets.io https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/thepodlets/issues Hosts: Carlisia CamposDuffie CooleyBryan LilesMichael Gasch Key Points From This Episode: Quotes: “The real question to come to mind: there is so much of that work that how are so few of us going to accomplish it unless we radically rethink how it will be done?” — @mauilion [0:06:49] “If ops were to put more skin in the game earlier on, they would definitely be capable of building these systems. And maybe they even end up more mature as more operations people put ops-minded thinking into these problems.” — @kelseyhightower [0:04:37] “If you’re in operations, you should have been trying to abstract away all of this stuff for the last 10 to 15 years.” — @kelseyhightower [0:12:03] “What are you backing up and what do you hope to restore?” — @kelseyhightower [0:20:07] “Istio is a protocol for thinking about service mesh, whereas Kubernetes provides the API for building such a protocol.” — @kelseyhightower [0:41:57] “Go to sessions you know nothing about. Be confused on purpose.” — @kelseyhightower [0:51:58] “Pay attention to the fundamentals. That’s the people stuff. Fundamentally, we’re just some people working on some stuff.” — @kelseyhightower [0:54:49] Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: The Podlets on Twitter — https://twitter.com/thepodlets Kelsey Hightower — https://twitter.com/kelseyhightower Kelsey Hightower on GitHub — https://github.com/kelseyhightower Interaction Protocols: It's All about Good Manners — https://www.infoq.com/presentations/history-protocols-distributed-systems Akihiro Suda — https://twitter.com/_AkihiroSuda_ Carlisia Campos on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlisia/ Kubernetes — https://kubernetes.io/ Duffie Cooley on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/mauilion/ Bryan Liles on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryanliles/ KubeCon North America — https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/events/kubecon-cloudnativecon-north-america-2019/ Linux — https://www.linux.org/ Amazon Fargate — https://aws.amazon.com/fargate/ Go — https://golang.org/ Docker — https://www.docker.com/ Vagrant — https://www.vagrantup.com/ Prometheus — https://prometheus.io/ Kafka — https://kafka.apache.org/ OpenStack — https://www.openstack.org/ Verizon — https://www.verizonwireless.com/ Spotify — https://www.spotify.com/ Transcript: EPISODE 7 [INTRODUCTION] [0:00:08.7] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Podlets Podcast, a weekly show that explores Cloud Native one buzzword at a time. Each week, experts in the field will discuss and contrast distributed systems...

For this special episode, we are joined by Joe Beda who is currently Principal Engineer at VMware. He is also one of the founders of Kubernetes from his days at Google! We use this open table discussion to look at a bunch of exciting topics from Joe's past, present, and future. He shares some of the invaluable lessons he has learned and offers some great tips and concepts from his vast experience building platforms over the years. We also talk about personal things like stress management, avoiding burnout and what is keeping him up at night with excitement and confusion! Large portions of the show are obviously spent discussion different aspects and questions about Kubernetes, including its relationship with etcd and Docker, its reputation as a very complex platform and Joe's thoughts for investing in the space. Joe opens up on some interesting new developments in the tech world and his wide-ranging knowledge is so insightful and measured, you are not going to want to miss this! Join us today, for this great episode! Follow us: https://twitter.com/thepodlets Website: https://thepodlets.io Feeback: info@thepodlets.io https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/thepodlets/issues Special guest: Joe Beda Hosts: Carlisia CamposBryan LilesMichael Gasch Key Points From This Episode: Quotes: “These things are all interrelated. At a certain point, the technology and the business and career and work-life – all those things really impact each other.” — @jbeda [0:03:41] “I think one of the things that I enjoy is actually to be able to look at things from all those various different angles and try and find a good path forward.” — @jbeda [0:04:19] “It turns out that as you bounced around the industry a little bit, there's actually probably more alike than there is different.” — @jbeda [0:06:16] “What are the things that people can do now that they couldn't do pre-Kubernetes? Those are the things where we're going to see the explosion of growth.” — @jbeda [0:32:40] “You can have the most beautiful technology, if you can't tell the human story about it, about what it does for folks, then nobody will care.” — @jbeda [0:33:27] Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: The Podlets on Twitter — https://twitter.com/thepodlets Kubernetes — https://kubernetes.io/ Joe Beda — https://www.linkedin.com/in/jbeda Eighty Percent — https://www.eightypercent.net/ Heptio — https://heptio.cloud.vmware.com/ Craig McLuckie — https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/11/kubernetes-co-founder-craig-mcluckie-is-as-tired-of-talking-about-kubernetes-as-you-are/ Brendan Burns — https://thenewstack.io/kubernetes-co-creator-brendan-burns-on-what-comes-next/ Microsoft — https://www.microsoft.com KubeCon — https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/events/kubecon-cloudnativecon-europe-2019/ re:Invent — https://reinvent.awsevents.com/ etcd — https://etcd.io/ CosmosDB — https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cosmos-db/introduction Rancher — https://rancher.com/ PostgresSQL — https://www.postgresql.org/ Linux — https://www.linux.org/ Babel — https://babeljs.io/ React — https://reactjs.org/ Hacker News — https://news.ycombinator.com/ BigTable — https://cloud.google.com/bigtable/ Cassandra — http://cassandra.apache.org/ MapReduce — https://www.ibm.com/analytics/hadoop/mapreduce Hadoop — https://hadoop.apache.org/ Borg — https://kubernetes.io/blog/2015/04/borg-predecessor-to-kubernetes/ Tesla — https://www.tesla.com/ Thomas Edison — https://www.biography.com/inventor/thomas-edison Netscape — https://isp.netscape.com/ Internet Explorer — https://internet-explorer-9-vista-32.en.softonic.com/ Microsoft Office — https://www.office.com VB — https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/get-started/visual-basic/tutorial-console?view=vs-2019 Docker — https://www.docker.com/ Uber — https://www.uber.com Lyft — https://www.lyft.com/ Airbnb — https://www.airbnb.com/ Chromebook — https://www.google.com/chromebook/ Harbour — https://harbour.github.io/ Demoscene —...

This week on The Podlets Podcast, we talk about cloud native infrastructure. We were interested in discussing this because we’ve spent some time talking about the different ways that people can use cloud native tooling, but we wanted to get to the root of it, such as where code lives and runs and what it means to create cloud native infrastructure. We also have a conversation about the future of administrative roles in the cloud native space, and explain why there will always be a demand for people in this industry. We dive into the expense for companies when developers run their own scripts and use cloud services as required, and provide some pointers on how to keep costs at a minimum. Joining in, you’ll also learn what a well-constructed cloud native environment should look like, which resources to consult, and what infrastructure as code (IaC) really means. We compare containers to virtual machines and then weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of bare metal data centers versus using the cloud. Note: our show changed name to The Podlets. Follow us: https://twitter.com/thepodlets Website: https://thepodlets.io Feeback: info@thepodlets.io https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/thepodlets/issues Hosts: Carlisia CamposDuffie CooleyNicholas Lane Key Points From This Episode: • A few perspectives on what cloud native infrastructure means. • Thoughts about the future of admin roles in the cloud native space. • The increasing volume of internet users and the development of new apps daily. • Why people in the infrastructure space will continue to become more valuable. • The cost implications for companies if every developer uses cloud services individually. • The relationships between IaC for cloud native and IaC for the could in general. • Features of a well-constructed cloud native environment. • Being aware that not all clouds are created equal and the problem with certain APIs. • A helpful resource for learning more on this topic: Cloud Native Infrastructure. • Unpacking what IaC is not and how Kubernetes really works. • Reflecting how it was before cloud native infrastructure, including using tools like vSphere. • An explanation of what containers are and how they compare to virtual machines. • Is it worth running bare metal in the clouds age? Weighing up the pros and cons. • Returning to the mainframe and how the cloud almost mimics that idea. • A list of the cloud native infrastructures we use daily. • How you can have your own “private” cloud within your bare metal data center. Quotes: “This isn’t about whether we will have jobs, it’s about how, when we are so outnumbered, do we as this relatively small force in the world handle the demand that is coming, that is already here.” — Duffie Coolie @mauilion [0:07:22] “Not every cloud that you’re going to run into is made the same. There are some clouds that exist of which the API is people. You send a request and a human being interprets your request and makes the changes. That is a big no-no.” — Nicholas Lane @apinick [0:16:19] “If you are in the cloud native workspace you may need 1% of your workforce dedicated to infrastructure, but if you are in the bare metal world, you might need 10 to 20% of your workforce dedicated just to running infrastructure.” — Nicholas Lane @apinick [0:41:03] Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: VMware RADIO — https://www.vmware.com/radius/vmware-radio-amplifying-ideas-innovation/CoreOS — https://coreos.com/ Brandon Phillips on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonphilips Kubernetes — https://kubernetes.io/ Apache Mesos — http://mesos.apache.org Ansible — https://www.ansible.com Terraform — https://www.terraform.io XenServer (Citrix Hypervisor) — https://xenserver.org OpenStack — https://www.openstack.org Red Hat — https://www.redhat.com/ Kris Nova on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/kris-nova Cloud native Infrastructure —...

Welcome to the fourth episode of The Podlets podcast! Today we speak to the topic of observability: what the term means, how it relates to the process of software development, and the importance of investing in a culture of observability. Each of us has a slightly different take on what exactly observability is, but roughly we agree that it is a set of tools that you can use to observe the interactions and behavior of distributed systems. Kris gives some handy analogies to help understand the growing need for observability due to rising scale and complexity. We then look at the three pillars of observability, and what each of these pillars look like in the process of testing and running a program. We also think more about how observability applies to the external problems that might arise in a system. Next up, we cover how implementing observability in teams is a cultural process, and how it is important to have a culture that accepts the necessity of failure and extensive time spend problem-solving in coding. Finally, the conversation shifts to how having a higher culture of observability can do away with the old problem of calling the dinosaur in a team who knows the code backward every time an error crops up. Note: our show changed name to The Podlets. Follow us: https://twitter.com/thepodlets Website: https://thepodlets.io Feeback: info@thepodlets.io https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/thepodlets/issues Hosts: Carlisia CamposKris NóvaDuffie Cooley Key Points from This Episode: • Duffy and Kris’s different interpretations of observability. • Why we should bake observability into applications before a catastrophic failure. • Observability is becoming more necessary due to scale and complexity. • New infrastructures require new security systems. • Observability is a term for new ways of observing code to catch failures as they happen. • The three pillars of observability: events, metrics, and traceability. • How events, metrics, and traceability play out in an example of a WordPress blog. • Why metrics and events are necessary for observing patterns in problems. • Measuring time series data and how it is managed in a similar way to git deltas. • Why the ephemerality of events in cloud-native architectures urges a new way of thinking. • Countering exterior application issues such as a hard drive getting bumped. • The role of tracing in correlating internal and external issues with a system. • Tracing is about understanding all the bits that are being touched in a problem. • Kubernetes can be broken down into three things: compute, network and storage. • How human experience is a major factor in good observability. • The fact that embracing observability and chaos engineering is a cultural practice. • Understanding observability and chaos testing through the laser metaphor. • The more valuable the application, the higher the need for observability. • The necessity for a cultural turn toward seeing the importance of observability. • Seeming bad at debugging vs convincing teams to implement observability. • The value of having empathy for how the difficulty of software engineering. • Developing more intuition by spending time debugging. • The way automated observability tools can possibly help with developing intuition. • How observability and having common tools removes or normalizes the problem of ‘the guy’ Quotes: “Building software is very hard and complex, so if you are not making mistakes, you either are not human or you are not making enough changes.” — @carlisia [0:33:37] “Observability is just a fancy word for all of the tools to help us solve a problem.” — @krisnova [0:23:09] “You’ll be a better engineer for distributed systems if you are in a culture that is blameless, that gives you tools to experiment, and gives you tools to validate those experiments and come up with new ones.” – @mauilion [0:36:08] Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: Velero — https://www.velero.io Cloud Native...

In this episode of The Podlets Podcast, we are diving into contracts and some of the building blocks of the Cloud-Native application. The focus is on the importance of contracts and how API's help us and fit into the cloud native space. We start off by considering the role of the API at the center of a project and some definitions of what we consider to be an API in this sense. This question of API-first development sheds some light onto Kubernetes and what necessitated its birth. We also get into picking appropriate architecture according to the work at hand, Kubernetes' declarative nature and how micro-services aid the problems often experienced in more monolithic work. The conversation also covers some of these particular issues, while considering possible benefits of the monolith development structure. We talk about company structures, Conway's Law and best practices for avoiding the pitfalls of these, so for all this and a whole lot more on the subject of API's and contracts, listen in with us, today! Note: our show changed name to The Podlets. Follow us: https://twitter.com/thepodlets Website: https://thepodlets.io Feeback and episode suggestions: info@thepodlets.io https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/thepodlets/issues Hosts: Carlisia CamposJosh RossoDuffie CooleyPatrick Barker Key Points From This Episode: • Reasons that it is critical to start with APIs at the center. • Building out the user interface and how the steps in the process fit together. • Picking the way to approach your design based on the specifics of that job. • A discussion of what we consider to qualify as an API in the cloud-native space. • The benefit of public APIs and more transparent understanding. • Comparing the declarative nature of Kubernetes with more imperative models. • Creating and accepting pods, querying APIs and the cycle of Kubernetes. • The huge impact of the declarative model and correlation to other steps forward. • The power of the list and watch pattern in Kubernetes. • Discipline and making sure things are not misplaced with monoliths. • How micro-services goes a long way to eradicate some of the confusion that arises in monoliths. • Counteracting issues that arise out of a company's own architecture. • The care that is needed as soon as there is any networking between services. • Considering the handling of an API's lifecycle through its changes. • Independently deploying outside of the monolith model and the dangers to a system. • Making a service a consumer of a centralized API and flipping the model. Quotes: “Whether that contract is represented by an API or whether that contract is represented by a data model, it’s critical that you have some way of actually defining exactly what that is.” — @mauilion [0:05:27] “When you just look at the data model and the concepts, you focus on those first, you have a tendency to decompose the problem.” — @pbarkerco [0:05:48] “It takes a lot of discipline to really build an API first and to focus on those pieces first. It’s so tempting to go right to the UI. Because you get these immediate results.” — @pbarkerco [0:06:57] “What I’m saying is, you shouldn’t do one just because you don’t know how to do the others, you should really look into what will serve you better.” — @carlisia [0:07:19] Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: The Podlets on Twitter — https://twitter.com/thepodlets Nicera — https://www.nicera.co.jp/ Swagger — https://swagger.io/tools/swagger-ui/ Jeff Bezos — https://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/ AWS — https://aws.amazon.com/ Kubernetes — https://kubernetes.io/ Go Language — https://golang.org/ Hacker Noon — https://hackernoon.com/ Kafka — https://kafka.apache.org/ etcd — https://etcd.io/ Conway’s Law — https://medium.com/better-practices/how-to-dissolve-communication-barriers-in-your-api-development-organization-3347179b4ecc Java — https://www.java.com/ Transcript: EPISODE 03 [INTRODUCTION] [0:00:08.7] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The...