
Cloud Commute
Cloud Commute is your weekly 25-30 minutes podcast, talking about all things cloud, technology, storage, security, Kubernetes, and more. Joined by veteran guests from the industry, host Chris Engelbert explores new tools, ecosystem developments and upcoming releases. If you’re a tech enthusiast, working in DevOps, SecOps, DevSecOps, or engineering, this is the podcast for you. Make your commute worthwhile and join us on the journey of technology.
Latest episodes

Jun 21, 2024 • 29min
How I designed PostgreSQL High Availability with Shaun Thomas from Tembo
Welcome to this week's episode of Simplyblock's Cloud Commute podcast! Host Chris Engelbert sits down with Shaun Thomas, affectionately known as "Mr. High Availability" in the Postgres community, to discuss his journey from a standard DBA to a leading expert in high availability solutions for Postgres databases.In this episode of Cloud Commute, Chris and Shaun discuss:The evolution of high availability (HA) in Postgres and the challenges of implementationThe rise of cloud-native Postgres and the role of Kubernetes in high availabilityTembo’s open-source contributions to Postgres, including PGXN and extensions like pg_vectorizeThe future of Postgres with AI and vectorized searches using pgvectorInterested to learn more about the cloud infrastructure stack like storage, security, and Kubernetes? Head to our website (www.simplyblock.io/cloud-commute-podcast) for more episodes, and follow us on LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com/company/simplyblock-io). You can also check out the detailed show notes on Youtube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYlJfG_1hbs).You can find Shaun Thomas on X @BonesMoses and Linkedin: /bonesmoses.About simplyblock:Simplyblock is an intelligent database storage orchestrator for IO-intensive workloads in Kubernetes, including databases and analytics solutions. It uses smart NVMe caching to speed up read I/O latency and queries. A single system connects local NVMe disks, GP3 volumes, and S3 making it easier to handle storage capacity and performance. With the benefits of thin provisioning, storage tiering, and volume pooling, your database workloads get better performance at lower cost without changes to existing AWS infrastructure.👉 Get started with simplyblock: https://www.simplyblock.io/buy-now🏪 simplyblock AWS Marketplace: https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/seller-profile?id=seller-fzdtuccq3edzm

Jun 14, 2024 • 25min
Simplify Developer Namespaces with Multi-tenant Kubernetes with Alessandro Vozza from Kubespaces
In this episode of simplyblock's Cloud Commute podcast, host Chris Engelbert welcomes Alessandro Vozza, a prominent figure in the Kubernetes and cloud-native community. Alessandro shares his journey from his early days in open-source advocacy to his pivotal role in organizing the DevOps and Kubernetes meetups in Amsterdam.In this episode of Cloud Commute, Chris and Alessandro discuss:Kubernetes community engagement and CNCF ambassador roleDeveloping namespace-as-a-service for Kubernetes platformsThe future of Kubernetes: WebAssembly, AI, and environmental sustainabilityBuilding flexible, cloud-agnostic infrastructure for developersInterested to learn more about the cloud infrastructure stack like storage, security, and Kubernetes? Head to our website (www.simplyblock.io/cloud-commute-podcast) for more episodes, and follow us on LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com/company/simplyblock-io). You can also check out the detailed show notes on Youtube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Y8XBTGSSig).You can find Alessandro Vozza on X @bongo and Linkedin: /alessandrovozza.About simplyblock:Simplyblock is an intelligent database storage orchestrator for IO-intensive workloads in Kubernetes, including databases and analytics solutions. It uses smart NVMe caching to speed up read I/O latency and queries. A single system connects local NVMe disks, GP3 volumes, and S3 making it easier to handle storage capacity and performance. With the benefits of thin provisioning, storage tiering, and volume pooling, your database workloads get better performance at lower cost without changes to existing AWS infrastructure.👉 Get started with simplyblock: https://www.simplyblock.io/buy-now🏪 simplyblock AWS Marketplace: https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/seller-profile?id=seller-fzdtuccq3edzm

Jun 7, 2024 • 25min
Access Policy Management at Cloud-Scale with Anders Eknert from Styra
The podcast episode of simplyblock's Cloud Commute features Chris Engelbert interviewing Anders Eknert. They discuss Anders' background and current role at Styra, the company behind the Open Policy Agent (OPA) project. Anders lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden, and has been involved with Styra for about three and a half years. He shares how his previous work led him to OPA due to a need for managing complex authorization requirements across diverse environments.Styra, founded by the creators of OPA, focuses entirely on the OPA ecosystem. They offer two main products: Styra DAS (Declarative Authorization Service) and an enterprise version of OPA. Styra DAS helps manage OPA at scale, providing a control plane for policy management, lifecycle, and auditing. The enterprise OPA offers enhanced performance, lower memory usage, and direct integrations with data sources.OPA itself is a policy engine that enables policies as code, allowing for decoupled and centralized policy management. Common use cases include authorization and infrastructure policies, where OPA acts as a layer between services to make policy decisions. The discussion highlights the importance of treating policy like any other code, allowing for testing, reviewing, and versioning.Chris and Anders also discuss the functionality of OPA from a developer's perspective, explaining how it integrates with services to enforce policies. They touch on the broader benefits of a unified policy management system and how OPA and Styra DAS facilitate this at scale, ensuring consistency and control across complex environments.If you have questions for Anders, you can find him here:Blog: https://www.eknert.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anderseknertX/Twitter: https://twitter.com/anderseknertMastodon: https://hachyderm.io/GitHub: https://github.com/anderseknert/Styra and the Open Policy Agent can be found here:Styra Website: https://www.styra.com/Styra LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/styra/Styra X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/styraincOPA Website: https://www.openpolicyagent.org/OPA X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/openpolicyagentOPA GitHub: https://github.com/open-policy-agent/opaThe Cloud Commute Podcast is presented by simplyblock (https://www.simplyblock.io)

May 31, 2024 • 29min
Your CI/CD Pipeline is a Production system with Stefan Prodan from ControlPlane
Using CI/CD pipelines to build and deploy your applications is common sense. Many use combined tools though. Stefan Prodan, from ControlPlane, talks about the importance of recognizing that a deployment pipeline is basically a cluster admin and needs to be handled securely as a production system.If you have questions to Stefan, you can reach her here:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefanprodan/X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/stefanprodanGithub: https://github.com/stefanprodanBlog: https://stefanprodan.com/If you want to try ControlPlane:ControlPlane Website: https://control-plane.io/Additional show notes:FluxCD website: https://fluxcd.io/CNCF website: https://www.cncf.io/The Cloud Commute Podcast is presented by simplyblock (https://www.simplyblock.io)

May 24, 2024 • 25min
Continuous vulnerability scanning in production - Oshrat Nir from ARMO
Running vulnerability scanners during development and in your build pipeline is great, but not enough. Newly emerging CVEs, and other application behavior anomalies need to be caught in production. Oshrat Nir, from ARMO, talks about the importance of runtime vulnerability scanning.If you have questions to Oshrat, you can reach her here:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oshratnX/Twitter: https://twitter.com/oshratn Github: https://github.com/Oshratn Medium: https://medium.com/@oshratn_61520 If you want to give ARMO or Kubescape:ARMO Website: https://www.armosec.io/ Kubescape Website: https://kubescape.io/Additional show notes:https://www.cncf.io/https://www.giantswarm.io/The Cloud Commute Podcast is presented by simplyblock (https://www.simplyblock.io)

May 17, 2024 • 25min
How Oracle transforms its operation into a cloud business - Gerald Venzl from Oracle
Gerald Venzl, lead product manager for Oracle databases, talks about the shift of focus away from on-premise databases towards the cloud. It's a big change for a company like Oracle, but a necessary one. Learn more about the challenges and why Oracle believes multi-cloud is the future.If you have questions to Gerald, you can reach him here:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geraldvenzl/X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GeraldVenzlGithub: https://github.com/gvenzlMedium: https://medium.com/@gvenzlYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/geraldonitMastodon: https://mastodon.social/@gvenzlBlog: https://geraldonit.com/You can find the Oracle Database team at:Website: https://www.oracle.com/database/technologies/X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/OracleDatabaseAdditional show notes:Oracle and Microsoft Partnership: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABTpRAU4HaAThe Cloud Commute Podcast is presented by simplyblock (https://www.simplyblock.io)

May 10, 2024 • 25min
Automated Vulnerability Detection throughout your Pipeline - Brian Vermeer from Synk
Brian Vermeer from Snyk, a cybersecurity company providing tooling to detect common code issues and vulnerabilities throughout your development and deployment pipeline, talks about the necessity of multi checks, the commonly found threads, and how important it is to rebuild images for every deployment, even if the code hasn’t changed.If you have questions to Brian, you can reach him here:Blog: https://brianvermeer.nlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianvermeer/X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrianVermGithub: https://github.com/bmvermeerIf you are interested in Decodable, you can find them here:Website: https://snyk.io/Additional show notes:Log4Shell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log4ShellXZ vulnerability: https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/04/what-we-know-about-the-xz-utils-backdoor-that-almost-infected-the-world/The Cloud Commute Podcast is presented by simplyblock (https://www.simplyblock.io)

May 3, 2024 • 22min
PostgreSQL mistakes and how to avoid them - Jimmy Angelakos
Jimmy Angelakos, a freelance consultant, talks about his experiences with customers running PostgreSQL on bare-metal, in the cloud, and on Kubernetes. He also talks about his new book "PostgreSQL Mistakes and How to Avoid Them" (discount link below).If you have questions to Jimmy, you can reach him here:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vyruss/X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/vyrussMastodon: https://fosstodon.org/@vyrussAdditional show notes:PostgreSQL Mistakes and How to Avoid Them: http://mng.bz/NVznPostgreSQL 16 Administration Cookbook: https://packt.link/DBjEWSimon Riggs' Keynote "The Next 20 Years": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8W-J36IxYv4The Cloud Commute Podcast is presented by simplyblock (https://www.simplyblock.io)

Apr 26, 2024 • 23min
Change Data Capture and Stream Processing in the Cloud - Gunnar Morling from Decodable
Gunnar Morling from Decodable shares insights on change data capture using Debezium and stream processing with Apache Flink. Topics cover real-time data analytics, seamless integration with data systems like Postgres and MySQL, and the importance of unified change event formats. Gunnar also discusses Java performance tests, Apache Flink for processing real-time data streams, and trends in database evolution and microservices.

Apr 19, 2024 • 27min
How API Gateways help to improve your security - Nicolas Fränkel from API7.ai
Nicolas Fränkel from API7.ai, the major company behind the Apache APISIX API gateway, talks about how APISIX helps you implement rate limiting, customer-specific behavior, and how API gateways in general help secure your APIs.Editor's note: Sorry for the bad audio quality. The recording got messed up.For questions, you can reach Nicolas at:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolasfrankelX/Twitter: https://twitter.com/nicolas_frankelMastodon: https://mastodon.top/@frankelBlog: https://blog.frankel.ch/If you are interested in Apache APISIX and want to learn more:Apache APISIX: https://apisix.apache.org/X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/ApacheAPISIXAPI7.ai: https://api7.ai/The Cloud Commute Podcast is presented by simplyblock (https://www.simplyblock.io)
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