GKE Turns Five with Alex Zakonov and Drew Bradstock

This week on the podcast, we’re celebrating GKE’s fifth birthday! Mark Mirchandani is joined by special guest host Carter Morgan to talk all things Kubernetes and GKE with fellow Googlers and GKE experts Alex and Drew.

Drew starts the show with a thorough explanation of Kubernetes, telling our hosts that its a great way to manage containers as you scale. Because it is an open source offering, Kubernetes has grown and adapted quickly. Alex elaborates, pointing out that Kubernetes has helped redefine how people create cloud native applications. A year after Kubernetes was born, Google introduced Google Kubernetes Engine to help simplify things for developers while optimizing scalability and efficiency.

Our guests talk about the progression of GKE over its short life, what’s new with the latest version, and why reliability and scalability have become the focus for year six. Later, we hear examples of companies taking advantage of everything GKE has to offer and how the symbiotic relationship between Google and its customers has helped GKE grow. In the world of gaming, GKE’s global scaling capabilities have been vital. Drew talks about Anthos, explaining that it helps businesses run Kubernetes in their controlled on-prem system while leaving the option for an easy cloud migration in the future.

We wrap up the show with a look into the Kubernetes crystal ball where Drew sees a more adaptive Kubernetes and GKE. Alex hopes to continue to simplify GKE, making it easier and easier to use anywhere in the world.

Alex Zakonov

Alex Zakonov leads Google Kubernetes Engine team being responsible for operations of Google K8S fleet and for driving innovation in the K8S management. Prior to Google, Alex led a portfolio of products for Azure Monitoring at Microsoft enabling Azure customers to reliably operate and scale their applications. Alex has co-founded two successful start-ups, one of which, AVIcode, was acquired by Microsoft. Alex brings experience and passion in building and operating large scale systems and enabling engineering teams to deliver innovation at scale.

Drew Bradstock

Drew Bradstock leads product management for Google Kubernetes Engine. He previously worked on Google Ad Exchange and is based in Waterloo, Ontario in the Great White North of Canada.

Cool things of the week

• New GKE Dataplane V2 increases security and visibility for containers blog
• Week 8 of Cloud Next: Cloud AI site
  • Interpreting ML Models with Explainable AI site
• How I Launched This: A SaaS Story podcast

Interview

• Kubernetes site
• GKE site
• Bare Metal Solution site
• Optimize cost to performance on Google Kubernetes Engine video
• Best practices for running cost-optimized Kubernetes applications on GKE docs
• Anthos site
• Start your K8s learning journey with hands-on training at no cost site
• Kubernetes Podcast podcast

Tip of the week

Anthony gives us a GKE tip on NodeLocal DNSCache this week!

What’s something cool you’re working on?

Carter is working on the SaaS podcast. Mark and Carter are working on a Kubernetes series!

Sound Effect Attribution

A wonky midi version of the Superman Theme was used comedically at the end of this episode. The powerful and moving original symphonic music composed by John Williams can be found here.