Kubernetes Unpacked

All good things must come to an end, and in this case that means saying farewell to Kubernetes Unpacked. In this final episode, Michael and Kristina pack up the Kubernetes Unpacked podcast. They look back on covering issues including sustainability, security, open source projects, and certifications. They thank the professionals who joined the show as... Read more »

Kubernetes turns ten years old this summer. We take the opportunity to look at where it's been and where it's going. While many other open source projects folded over time, Kubernetes took the world by storm with the support of diverse entities including CNCF, Microsoft, AWS, Google, RedHat, and individual contributors. Moving forward, we predict... Read more »

Kristina attended KubeCon EU in March and she's still trying to process it all. In today's episode, Michael interviews her about what stood out most to her. They dive into the conference's heavy emphasis on AI, particularly how Kubernetes can help with more efficient GPU utilization. Kristina also reports back on the United Nations hackathon... Read more »

Observability is foundational to application and infrastructure performance. That's why it's fitting that OpenTelemetry is the second most active project in the CNCF after Kubernetes. Today CNCF ambassador Dotan Horovits tells us about the project: OpenTelemetry is a uniform, vendor-agnostic observability framework for generating and collecting telemetry data across both infrastructure and application, across different... Read more »

Whether you want to migrate legacy applications to Kubernetes in order to save the whales or for any other reason, Konveyor is here to help. Savitha Raghunathan joins us today to walk us through the open source tool. The basics: You input the application's source code (any language that has a language server) and Konveyor... Read more »

Is WebAssembly (Wasm) here to replace containers? Not really, says guest Matt Butcher. Instead, Wasm is here for a specific kind of workload: One that needs to start super fast (under a millisecond), handle something, and then shutdown. Containers are still best for running very long, I/O intensive multithreaded workloads. Matt, Michael, and Kristina discuss... Read more »

In this episode of the Kubernetes Unpacked Podcast, Kristina and Michael catch up with Mark from Yellowbrick to talk about all things underlying architecture. Very rarely do we get a vendor to chat about what's going on underneath the hood and how a particular application stack/tool is running, so this was an awesome episode! Mark... Read more »

CI/CD is not a villain. GitOps is not some kind of Kubernetes way of sneaking around it. In fact, GitOps falls under the CI/CD umbrella. Marcus Noble joins the show today to talk about how he uses a Kubernetes-native, open-source CI/CD framework called Tekton to test Kubernetes cluster creation, configuration, and deletion based on changes... Read more »

Kubernetes is designed to be highly scalable and highly dynamic… a perfect habitat for cryptominers to terminal shell into and then exploit your workload's resources to the max. And that's just one example of security threats Kubernetes users need to prepare against. Nigel Douglas from Sysdig joins Michael Levan and Kristina Devochko to give you... Read more »

What are we talking about when we are all talking about private clouds? On-prem? Hybrid? Virtualization? Where does hardware fit into it all– and would younger engineers even know what to do with a physical piece of hardware? Driven by Broadcom's acquisition of VMare and the anticipated rising costs of VMare licenses, enterprises are exploring... Read more »

Network engineering is foundational to platform engineering. Michael and Kristina chat with Marino Wijay about tinkering with their home labs to brush up on networking skills and get hands-on practice. The three talk about how in a cloud-based world, it can be easy to forget about the networking nuts and bolts that connect workloads and... Read more »

Technical trainer Benjamin Muschko joins hosts Kristina Devochko and Michael Levan to discuss the gap between Kubernetes certifications and real-world production skills. All three critique the focus on command-line proficiency in certifications, advocating for a practical approach that tests real-life scenarios. Muschko proposes a “capture the flag” style exam with hands-on projects, while the hosts... Read more »

Mark Cusack from Yellowbrick joins us to talk about all things database and data warehouse on Kubernetes. Yellowbrick is a data warehousing solution that runs 100% on Kubernetes. Mark details the company's history, the transition from hardware to a software-only model, and the adoption of Kubernetes to improve scalability and flexibility. He addresses misconceptions about... Read more »

Can clouds be green? Today we discuss sustainability in the tech industry, focusing on running Kubernetes and workloads in more efficient and environmentally friendly ways. Co-hosts Kristina Devochko and Michael Levan explore current tools, the reuse of resources like excess heat from data centers, and the challenges of sustainable energy infrastructure, such as electric cars... Read more »

Cloud engineer Leonard Pahlke talks about his experience over six terms on the Kubernetes release team. He discusses his journey from discovering Kubernetes during his bachelor’s program to joining the release team and moving through various roles. He emphasizes the importance of community involvement, the welcoming nature of open source and cloud native fields, and... Read more »

As Kubernetes becomes more mainstream and “stable,” organizations need a way to get enterprise support and proper upgrade paths. Brendan Burns, co-founder of Kubernetes, joins the show to discuss Kubernetes LTS—long-term support. Brendan shares how he and his team are bringing this to life at Microsoft with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), and what you can... Read more »

In this episode, Michael, Kristina, and Adriana Villela discuss the challenges and benefits of running Kubernetes on Nomad. Adriana shares her experience of using Nomad in a data center, highlighting its simplicity and ease of deployment compared to Kubernetes. The speakers also discuss the differences between the two platforms, the concept of vendor lock-in, and... Read more »

In this sponsored episode of the Kubernetes Unpacked Podcast, we dive into the importance of cost and resource optimization with CAST AI. The truth is, it's not just about saving money. The goal is ensuring that your apps are performing the way they should be. This not only saves customer frustration, but engineering frustration. We... Read more »

The KubeCon excitement is catching as Michael Levan gets ready to attend for the first time. Grab a rundown of what to expect at the North American event this year as he and Kristina Devochko review sessions and provide advice on how to tackle the massive amount of content that's on the schedule. A strong... Read more »

On today's Kubernetes Unpacked podcast, Michael and Kristina catch up with Arsh Sharma, Developer Experience Engineer at Okteto. Arsh dives into the key aspects to consider for incorporating a proper developer experience for Kubernetes and the overall cloud-native ecosystem.

In this sponsored episode of the Kubernetes Unpacked podcast, Kristina and Michael are joined by Adam Frank, SVP of Product and Marketing at Armory, to discuss the role of continuous deployment in the software development lifecycle. They highlight the challenges organizations face in implementing effective continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) processes and the importance of prioritizing the developer experience.

There are a lot of moving parts to Kubernetes. In today's Kubernetes Unpacked, we get into Ingress with guest Whitney Lee. Whitney breaks down her thoughts on Ingress, how she learned it, and how you can gain more knowledge around Ingress and the open-source CNCF projects around Ingress.

In today's Kubernetes Unpacked, Michael and Kristina catch up with Prithvi Raj and Sayan Mondal to talk about all things Chaos Engineering in the Kubernetes space! We chat about the open source and CNCF incubating project, Litmus, and various other topics  including why Chaos Engineering is important, how it can help all organizations, how every engineer can use it, and more.

On today's Kubernetes Unpacked, Michael and Kristina catch up with Roberth Strand, Principal Cloud Engineer at Amesto Fortytwo to talk about all things Internal Developer Platform (IDP) on Kubernetes and beyond. Roberth dives into what an IDP is, what it isn't, and how all engineers should be thinking about IDPs. If you're interested in diving into platform engineering, this is the perfect episode for you.

In today's episode, Michael and Kristina catch up with Saim Safdar to chat about a recent white paper on platform engineering from the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). Saim dives into not only the CNCF whitepaper, but how Platform Engineering should be thought about from a Kubernetes perspective in 2023 and beyond.

On today's Kubernetes Unpacked we speak with Evis Drenova about whether AI has a role to play in the Kubernetes ecosystem. We discuss everything from using chat-based generative AI tools to interact with Kubernetes to data models and data sets on Kubernetes to Machine Learning with Kubernetes.

In today's Kubernetes Unpacked, Kristina and Michael talk about whether Kubernetes is getting boring, and how elements such as service mesh, security-centric CNIs, and movements such as GitOps, can keep Kubernetes moving forward.

In this episode of Kubernetes Unpacked, Michael and Kristina catch up with with Nigel Poulton, an independent consultant, trainer, and content creator to discuss what Web Assembly (WASM) is, why it's gaining popularity, and whether it can be the future of programming and development.

In this episode, Michael catches up with Anton Smith, Head Of Product at Spectro Cloud. This episode goes outside of the standard engineering conversation and into a conversation of why it makes sense for Technical Product Managers (TPMs) to not only get a certification like the Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA), but why staying technical as a TPM in the Kubernetes space helps you with your job.

In this episode of the Kubernetes Unpacked podcast, co-hosts Michael Levan and Kristina Devochko interview David Flanagan, a Kubernetes consultant, about his experience running his own consultancy and specializing in a specific technology or platform. David shares his career journey and emphasizes the importance of authenticity, credibility, and long-term thinking in the world of technology consulting. The conversation also touches on the use of AI in Kubernetes, the challenges and rewards of being an independent consultant, and the importance of setting personal boundaries and constraints early on to prevent burnout. David also shares his insights into some of the quirks of Kubernetes.

In today's Kubernetes Unpacked podcast, Michael and Kristina chat about KubeCon EU, which took place in April 2023 in Amsterdam. They explore the latest and greatest technologies that are coming, the value of in-person gatherings, and why conference codes of conduct matter. They also share their top 3 KubeCon takeaways.

On today's Kubernetes Unpacked podcast, Michael and Kristina catch up with with Geoff Burke, Senior Cloud Solutions Architect, to talk about running backups for Kubernetes, how to recover those backups, and which tools to use for backup and disaster recovery. We're also pleased to welcome Kristina Devochko as full-time co-host of the podcast!

Michael Levan and Calvin Hendryx-Parker talk about their experience using Kubernetes, the pros and cons of the orchestration platform, and its impact on infrastructure engineers and developers. Calvin offers great tips on how to make the developer experience better and what platform engineering teams can do to make everyone's job flow properly.

In this episode, Michael catches up with Kristina Devochko, a Senior Software Architect to talk about Day Zero Kubernetes. Originally, Michael thought that it would be similar to Day One and Day Two Ops, but Day Zero is drastically different. Kristina and Michael discuss what engineers need to know to get the job done, how to think about planning Kubernetes architecture, and overall security best practices for what's needed in Day Zero.

Today's Kubernetes Unpacked discusses essential requirements to secure a Kubernetes environment.

In this episode, Michael catches up with Stephane Karagulmez, Senior Solution Architect at Isovalent (founded by the creators of Cilium). Michael spent a lot of time working with Cilium, which is open-source software that provides networking and observability capabilities for Kubernetes workloads. Cilium is based on another open-source project, eBFP. It's important to understand the details and performance changes when implementing eBPF and removing kube-proxy.

On today's Kubernetes Unpacked, Michael and guests explore Windows containers. A few years ago there was a lot of hype around Nano, which then morphed into Nano Server. We look at the current state of containerized Windows, using Windows containers with Kubernetes, customer scenarios for container adoption, and Microsoft's approach to the container space.

The edge is one of those terms that can be shaped to fit almost any use case. On today's Kubernetes Unpacked episode, host Michael Levan talks with Alan Hohn, Director of Software Strategy at Lockheed Martin, about what the defense industry means by the edge, and getting a working definition of the edge we can all live with.

In today's Kubernetes Unpacked podcast, we explore the concept of a service mesh and why you might want to run one in a Kubernetes cluster. While there are many service meshes to choose from we focus on Linkerd. Linkerd is available under an Apache 2.0 license and hosted by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).

In today's Kubernetes Unpacked episode, host Michael Levan and guest Michael Chenetz examine the complexity that comes with Kubernetes and its broader ecosystem, what engineers should expect when diving into it, and why organizations should invest in people not just tech.

On today's Kubernetes Unpacked podcast, host Michael Levan discusses six big ideas to consider as you build your Kubernetes foundation in 2023. Topics include abstractions, the need to understand what's beneath those abstractions, Kubernetes security, and more.

On today's Kubernetes Unpacked podcast we talk about taking on Kubernetes as a young engineer. As all IT pros know, learning Kubernetes isn't the easiest thing, especially when you're first entering the field. Guest Alero Awani, a college student, talks about her transition from Data Engineering to cloud and DevOps, and how and why she came to learn Kubernetes.

In this episode of the Kubernetes Unpacked podcast, Michael explores the concept of Financial Operations, or FinOps, with guest Chris Love. As CTOs get their cloud bills, they want to know why and how so much money is being spent. Chris introduces Michael to the concept of FinOps for tracking cloud spend, why it's important, and how it can help engineers keep their jobs.

In today's episode of Kubernetes Unpacked, Michael catches up with Steve Buchanan, Principal Program Manager at Microsoft, to talk about using GitOps and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) to automate the building and deployment of applications. Microsoft has been working incredibly hard on AKS, including integrating different tools and platforms to make the lives of DevOps and Platform Engineers easier.

In this episode, Michael Levan catches up Richard Hooper, Microsoft Azure MVP and Azure Architect, to chat about Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) in production. Richard spends the majority of his time working with organizations that are either using AKS, or are migrating to AKS, so he has a ton of experience in how to actually use AKS in the real-world.

In this episode, Michael catches up with Chad Crowell to talk about the Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) exam. They talk about why the certification is important, its hands-on emphasis, how you can study for the cert, and what you should know when going in to sit for the exam.

On today's Kubernetes Unpacked podcast, Michael catches up with Eric Wright to discuss the current and future of containers and Kubernetes, as well as a look into how the world of containers has evolved. They dive into virtualization, how orchestration actually works, and how to think about ephemeral workloads.

In this episode, Michael catches up with Natan Yellin, CEO of Robusta.dev. Michael and Ned chat about how logging and troubleshooting works in Kubernetes today. They discuss three stages of troubleshooting evolution - manual playbooks, automatic playbooks, and the third stage, which is what you do with logs and how automatic remediation can come into play for any Kubernetes environment.

In this episode, host Michael Levan talks with Ned Bellavance about why orchestration is important in today's world, how the HashiCorp stack (primarily Terraform and Vault) fit into Kubernetes, and more.

In this episode, Michael catches up with Josh Duffney, Cloud Developer Advocate at Microsoft to talk about Go (golang). Kubernetes, Docker, and Terraform are all written in Go. Josh and Michael talk about their journey into Kubernetes and Go, some fun projects to play with, how to learn Go, and why understanding certain programming languages is crucial for breaking into Kubernetes.

Learning Kubernetes isn't easy. In fact, there are so many places to start that people literally don't know where to begin. Do they learn Kubernetes security? Networking? Infrastructure? Development? Michael Levan catches up with Kevin Evans and Robin Smorenburg to talk about their journeys into Kubernetes, how each of them started, links to learning resources, and where they're at now.