Today we are talking with Maikel Vlasman, technical lead for a large Dutch machine construction company, and a cloud engineer by heart. We cover self-updating GitLab & ArgoCD, Maikel’s thinking behind dev environment setup and a Kubernetes workshop that he is preparing for his team. The goal is to function as a true DevOps team with shared responsibilities.

This conversation started as a thread in our community Slack - link in the show notes. Thank you Maikel for being a long-time Changelog listener and for reaching out to us - we enjoyed telling this story.

Join the discussion

Changelog++ members save 7 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today!

Sponsors:

Akuity – Akuity is a new platform (founded by Argo co-creators) that brings fully-managed Argo CD and enterprise services to the cloud or on premise. They’re inviting our listeners to join the closed beta at akuity.io/changelog. The platform is a versatile Kubernetes operator for handling cluster deployments the GitOps way. Deploy your apps instantly and monitor their state — get minimum overhead, maximum impact, and enterprise readiness from day one.
Raygun – Never miss another mission-critical issue again — Raygun Alerting is now available for Crash Reporting and Real User Monitoring, to make sure you are quickly notified of the errors, crashes, and front-end performance issues that matter most to you and your business. Set thresholds for your alert based on an increase in error count, a spike in load time, or new issues introduced in the latest deployment. Start your free 14-day trial at Raygun.com
Sentry – Working code means happy customers. That’s exactly why teams choose Sentry. From error tracking to performance monitoring, Sentry helps teams see what actually matters, resolve problems quicker, and learn continuously about their applications - from the frontend to the backend. Use the code SHIPIT and get the team plan free for three months.
Chronosphere – Chronosphere is the observability platform for cloud-native teams operating at scale. When it comes to observability, teams need a reliable, scalable, and efficient solution so they can know about issues well before their customers do. Teams choose Chronosphere to help them move faster than the competition. Learn more and get a demo at chronosphere.io.

Featuring:

Maikel – Website, GitHub, Mastodon, X
Gerhard Lazu – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X

Show Notes:

2 months ago, Maikel reached out via our Slack
🎬 Introduction to Docker - the video that introduced Maikel to cloud engineering
Terraform Argo CD - set up Argo CD in K8s & then maintain everything (including Argo CD) using Argo CD GitOps pull functionality

Maikel's infra setup bootstrap — Maikel's infra bootstrap

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Ep. 116 "NPF Research Initiatives: Advancing Science, Improving Lives with Psoriatic Disease"