DevOps and Docker Talk: Cloud Native Interviews and Tooling

At KubeCon North America, the buzz was all about Platform Engineering, drawing crowds and discussions alike. New startups in AI and security took center stage among the myriad exhibitors. Conversations unfolded around innovative tools like Argo CD and GitOps, highlighting their necessity in managing diverse Kubernetes clusters. Attendees shared insights from engaging sessions including the intimate Cloud Native Rejekts event and the practical applications of Headlamp as a Kubernetes UI. It's a treasure trove of knowledge for both veterans and newcomers!

Ken Collins, an AWS Serverless Hero and AI application builder, shares his insights on the evolving landscape of personal AI. He discusses creating AI assistants that can revolutionize daily workflows, notably through tools like Notion. The conversation dives into the challenges of AI hallucinations and the concept of 'temperature' affecting AI responses. Ken also explores the future of autonomous AI agents and the potential for tailored models to assist in personal project management, making AI a true companion in our lives.

Explore the exciting world of Kubernetes management tools with insights into both paid and open-source user interfaces. Discover the strengths and weaknesses of popular options like Lens, K9S, and Portainer. Dive into specialized tools such as Headlamp and the Argo CD dashboard, highlighting their unique benefits for developers. Learn about the diverse preferences users have for management styles and get tips on selecting the right tools for your needs. This engaging discussion sheds light on the ever-evolving landscape of Kubernetes UIs.

Chris Kühl and Jose Blanquicet, the masterminds behind Inspektor Gadget, dive deep into their groundbreaking eBPF-focused multitool designed for Kubernetes. They discuss the tool's evolution for enhanced observability and troubleshooting, particularly in DNS and TCP monitoring. The duo also tackles the challenges of integrating with Windows nodes, and the importance of managing out-of-memory situations in containers. Listeners will learn about securing eBPF tools and the exciting roadmap ahead for Inspektor Gadget.

Maria Vechtomova, MLOps Tech Lead and co-founder of Marvelous MLOps, shares her insights on the essential differences between MLOps and traditional DevOps roles. She addresses the challenges DevOps engineers face when adopting machine learning workloads. Key discussions include best practices for model accuracy versus computational efficiency and navigating sensitive data in MLOps. Maria also delves into tools like Databricks and AWS SageMaker, and the potential of Golang for CI/CD automation, providing a roadmap for transitioning into MLOps.

Emile Vauge, CTO of Traefik Labs and a leader in cloud-native tech, dives into the exciting features of Traefik 3.0. He discusses the smooth migration from version 2.x, emphasizing security and flexibility. Listeners learn about the new WebAssembly plugin engine and the advantages of integrating the Gateway API and gRPC. Vauge highlights the significance of observability with OpenTelemetry for better network insights. He also celebrates the community's vital contributions, showcasing a 30% boost in performance.

Kyle Quest, the founder of Mintoolkit (formerly DockerSlim), dives into the art of optimizing container images. He discusses the evolution of Docker Slim and its name change to Mintoolkit, shedding light on the challenges of minimal image debugging. Kyle showcases innovative features like 'mint debug' for various container platforms and explores AI-assisted debugging. The conversation emphasizes community engagement and the need for user-friendly tools in DevOps, making complex infrastructures accessible to all!

Bret is joined by Shahar Azulay, Groundcover CEO and Co-Founder, to discuss their new approach to fully observe K8s and its workloads with a "hybrid observability architecture."Groundcover is a new, cloud-native, eBPF-based platform that designed a new model for how observability solutions are architected and priced. It is a product that can drastically reduce your monitoring, logging, and tracing costs and complexity, it stores all its data in your clusters and only needs one agent per host for full observability and APM. We dig into the deployment, architecture, and how it all works under the hood.Watch the video version on YouTube. Includes demos.★Topics★Groundcover Discord ChannelGroundcover Repository in GitHubGroundcover YouTube ChannelJoin the Groundcover SlackCreators & Guests Cristi Cotovan - Editor Beth Fisher - Producer Bret Fisher - Host Shahar Azulay - Guest (00:00) - Intro (03:16) - Shahar's Background and GroundCover's Origin (06:34) - Where Did the Hybrid Idea Come From? (12:11) - GroundCover's Deployment Model (18:21) - Monitoring More than Kubernetes (20:32) - eBPF from the Ground Up (23:58) - How Does Groundcover read eBPF Logs? (32:06) - GroundCover's Stack and Compatibility (36:18) - The Importance of PromQL (37:41) - Groundcover Also OnPrem and Managed (49:35) - Getting Started with Groundcover (52:15) - Groundcover Caretta (54:55) - What's Next for Groundcover? You can also support my content by subscribing to my YouTube channel and my weekly newsletter at bret.news!Grab the best coupons for my Docker and Kubernetes courses.Join my cloud native DevOps community on Discord.Grab some merch at Bret's Loot BoxHomepage bretfisher.com

Nate Sesti, Continue.dev co-founder, discusses their open source alternative to GitHub Copilot, allowing code assistance within IDEs like VSCode. They cover running multiple AI models simultaneously, optimal hardware for their tool, and its benefits over existing solutions. Nate shares insights on starting with Continue and its advantages for developers.

Bret and Nirmal are joined by Michael Fischer of AWS to discuss why we should use Graviton, their arm64 compute with AWS-designed CPUs.Graviton is AWS' term for their custom ARM-based EC2 instances. We now have all major clouds offering an ARM-based option for their server instances, but AWS was first, way back in 2018. Fast forward 6 years and AWS is releasing their 4th generation Graviton instances, and they deliver all the CPU, networking, memory and storage performance that you'd expect from their x86 instances and beyond.I'm a big fan of ARM-based servers and the price points that AWS gives us. They have been my default EC2 instance type for years now, and I recommend it for all projects I'm working on with companies.We get into the history of Graviton, how easy it is to build and deploy containers and Kubernetes clusters that have Graviton and even two different platform types in the same cluster. We also cover how to build multi-platform images using Docker BuildKit.Watch the video version on YouTube. Includes demos. ★Topics★Graviton + GitLab + EKSPorting Advisor for GravitonGraviton Getting StartedCreators & Guests Cristi Cotovan - Editor Beth Fisher - Producer Bret Fisher - Host Nirmal Mehta - Host Michael Fischer - Guest (00:00) - Intro (06:19) - AWS and ARM64: Evolution to Graviton 4 (07:55) - AWS EC2 Nitro: Why and How? (11:53) - Nitro and Graviton's Evolution (18:35) - What Can't Run on Graviton? (23:15) - Moving Your Workloads to Graviton (27:19) - K8s Tooling and Multi-Platform Images (37:07) - Tips for Getting Started with Graviton You can also support my content by subscribing to my YouTube channel and my weekly newsletter at bret.news!Grab the best coupons for my Docker and Kubernetes courses.Join my cloud native DevOps community on Discord.Grab some merch at Bret's Loot BoxHomepage bretfisher.com