Day Two DevOps

Multi-cloud services are an emerging category of software designed to make your Dev and Ops teams' multi-cloud reality easier to cope with. Sponsor VMware stops by the Day Two Cloud podcast to talk about how the operational challenges of running workloads in a mix of public and private clouds and how its multi-cloud services initiative can help.

On today's Day Two Cloud we dive into Istio with Kevin Davin, a senior back end engineer who works deeply with Istio. We discuss Istio's promises, balancing its complexity with the capabilities it enables, understanding when and when not to use it, and more.

Today on the Day Two Cloud podcast, we talk DevSecOps and how it's more than just a marketing term. We also discuss Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and IT as Code and what that actually means for operations folks. It doesn't mean you have to write code all day, but we make an effort to put some specifics around what an Ops person should know when it comes to code.

Today on the Day Two Cloud podcast we have a frank discussion about tech marketing. Why? Because engineers are a target of marketing, so it's helpful to know how marketing works, what's trying to be communicated, and how it could be better. We also discuss whether the tech industry has over-committed on chasing developers while ignoring operations and sysadmins, why ops and sysadmins shouldn't be ignored, and more. Our guest is Gina Rosenthal, founder of Digital Sunshine Solutions.

In this Day Two Cloud episode, Ned and Ethan discuss the tradeoffs of mental health and professional achievement. Maybe you spend a lot of extra hours at work for your employer. Perhaps you focus on certifications after work and on the weekends. Maybe you say “yes” to more than you should, because you’re scared you’ll lose it all if you don’t. The tradeoffs are in your personal relationships. Your mental health. You suffer from burnout, anxiety, and stress. Is it all worth it? Ned and Ethan don't have all the answers, but they share their experiences and perspectives.

Tech marketing is often terrible. The problem is that marketers tend to develop material aimed at "C-level" or executive audiences, which doesn't resonate with developers and engineers who influence buying decisions and actually use products. Today's Day Two Cloud podcast examines how to improve tech marketing, and why communication is a good skill for technologists themselves.

Today on the Day Two Cloud podcast we go deep on the Cilium service mesh, including a packet walk that takes us from packet ingestion all the way through a Kubernetes cluster. We also talk about how Cilium eBPF differs from other sidecar proxies and the potential performance and observability gains. Strap on your propeller beanie as we try to keep up with guest is Thomas Graf, a co-creator of Cilium and CTO of Isovalent.

DevOps originated as a cultural movement to try and get developers and infrastructure operators to better work together to support applications in production. According to our guest Lee Briggs, that movement has failed. We discuss this premise on today's Day Two Cloud podcast.

According to Chris Wahl, everyone in an organization can lead--not just those with "chief" or "manager" in their job title. Leadership isn't about telling everyone else what to do. Not at all. Have a listen as Chris explains what it is to lead, and how you can do so yourself while enabling others around you to do the same.

Today's Day Two Cloud podcast brings you highlights from Cloud Field Day 14, where Day Two Cloud's Ned Bellavance was a delegate. The Field Day event brings together cloud vendors and tech bloggers for in-depth presentations. Ned will share highlights and impressions from presentations from companies including Weka, Alkira, and Morpheus Data.

It's hard to guarantee quality of experience for users accessing cloud applications. The users are connected via networks we don’t own, and the apps are hosted on networks we don’t own. So what can a network operations team do about quality of experience in a world of cloud-hosted apps and cloud-connected users? Sponsor Broadcom Software is here to help us answer this question.

Today on Day Two Cloud, we talk about why Terraform stinks. OK, maybe it doesn't stink, but just because everyone seems to love a particular tool doesn't make it right for you. We talk with Dan Moore, a developer advocate at FusionAuth, who tried to use Terraform and just couldn't get behind it. This episode is based on a presentation Dan gave at Gluecon in May 2022.

Today's Day Two Cloud turns the nerd knob to eleven as we delve into kernels, eBPF, sidecar proxies, and service meshes. If you're an old-school engineer used to working with load balancers and proxies, this show looks at new ways to do application delivery in the Kubernetes world.

On Day Two Cloud we’ve had a lot of conversations about using infrastructure as code. We’ve looked at solutions like Ansible, Terraform, the AWS CDK, and Pulumi. Which begs the question, which IaC solution should you learn? A Domain Specific Language (DSL)? A General Purpose Programming Language (GPPL)? Something else? We discuss.

Welcome to Day Two Cloud. In this episode we take on the problem of over-provisioning access to resources. Sponsor strongDM joins the conversation to share how to properly manage roles and access in our IT systems, focusing heavily on the process of discovery. Who has access to what, and why do they have that access? Our guest from strongDM is Britt Crawford, Director of Product.

Today's Day Two Cloud podcast gets into Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and how to evaluate it so that IaC practices fit your organization, your processes, the infrastructure you're trying to support, and so on. Our guest lays out some guideposts to help you understand if IaC is working for you.

Sponsor and startup Augtera Networks joins Day Two Cloud to discuss Augtera's proactive network analysis and operations product, which is meant to make you aware of problems before they become…problems. Augtera brings together traditional network sources such as flows and SNMP, plus telemetry and metadata to provide actionable information across networks you own and networks you don't.

Today's Day Two Cloud sponsor Netris promises to deliver a cloud-like experience for running your physical network. Netris software lets you build a private cloud on premises, and integrates with Terraform and Kubernetes. Our guest is Alex Saroyan, Netris CEO and founder.

If you're a security or network professional wondering if your skills aren't as applicable or useful when it comes to public cloud, don't worry: they are very, very useful. On today's Day Two Cloud podcast we talk with Brandon Carroll on how to properly map traditional infrastructure and network security to public cloud deployments.

Today on Day Two Cloud we peel back the curtains on Google Cloud with a GCP insider to find out how Google Cloud differentiates itself, its embrace of a multi-cloud approach, and more. Our guest is Richard Seroter, Director of Outbound Product Management at Google Cloud. This is not a sponsored episode.

Today's Day Two Cloud digs into an Infrastructure as Code (IaC) platform called Pulumi. Pulumi can be used to build, deploy, and manage cloud applications using familiar languages such as .Net and Java, as well as well-known tools and practices.

Today's Day Two Cloud explores the Open Policy Agent (OPA), an open-source project that serves as a policy engine for cloud-native environments. According to the OPA Web site, you can use OPA to "enforce policies in microservices, Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, API gateways, and more." Guest Anders Eknert walks through how it works, use cases, and more.

Today's Day Two Cloud explores the vastness of IPv6 and public cloud. IPv6 provides so much address space that you can use an address once for one connection and never use it again, and it isn't wasteful. The abundance of IPv6 may influence how you approach cloud applications and networks.

Today's Day Two Cloud gets into application security and working with developers to make sure code is sanitized and tested. Writing secure code at the outset can dramatically reduce risk and help simplify operations and security. Our guest is Tanya Janca, founder of We Hack Purple. We Hack Purple offers free training courses for people who want to get into security.

Today's Day Two Cloud episode bites into OpenZiti, an open-source project that brings zero trust principles to networks and applications. OpenZiti builds an overlay network to enforce zero trust. It has several moving parts including edge routers, a controller, and SDKs. OpenZiti was created by NetFoundry, our sponsor for this episode. Guest Clint Dovholuk takes us through the nitty-gritty of how it works.

Today's Day Two Cloud is a discussion about how to build your multicloud fluency. That is, having knowledge of, and competence in, more than one cloud. The short answer? Learn to code. That's the position of our guest Forrest Brazeal, and he brings his justifications.

On today’s sponsored Day Two Cloud episode with Cisco ThousandEyes, we discuss how to monitor what’s broken in public cloud services. With the right information, you can offer a nuanced, knowledgeable answer when executives want to know when the company’s crucial customer-facing app hosted on a bunch of cloud services is coming back online.

Today's Day Two Cloud podcast gets into Azure Bicep, a language that IT teams can use to deploy Azure resources in a consistent manner. While Bicep is Azure-specific, it can be useful as part of an Infrastructure-as-Code initiative. Guests Ben Weissman and Rob Sewell explore how Bicep works, discuss use cases, compare it to Terraform, and more.

VMware is our sponsor today for a Day Two Cloud episode about logging. Specifically, we're talking about vRealize Log Insight Cloud. It’s not just about collecting logs and events, and it's not just for VMware products. What do you get out of the data being logged? That’s what’s interesting. This is much more than a pile of syslogs with a search engine dropped on top.

Today's Day Two Cloud gets into the weeds of a real-world project build around Windows containers. Windows containers? Yes, the goal was to run a particular job and deploy it on Kubernetes using Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS). Our guest is Sai Gunaranjan, Principal Architect for a large healthcare company.

Today on the Day Two Cloud podcast we examine the role and responsibilities of Kubernetes operators; that is, the humans in charge of running Kubernetes. Kubernetes operators have to support application and security teams, handle capacity planning, keep an eye on versioning, and more. This episode is sponsored by F5's NGINX team. Our guests are Jenn Gile, Sr Manager of Product Marketing; and Brian Ehlert, Sr Product Manager.

On today's Day Two Cloud we examine why Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is about more than the just the tools that enable it. Guest Rob Hirschfeld puts forth the notion that while the tools are there for a reason, those tools have to serve a purpose: supporting collaboration, re-use, and efficient operations.

Today's Day Two Cloud is a sponsored episode with StrongDM, which helps engineers and IT professionals get access to databases, servers, Kubernetes clusters, switches, Web apps, and more from a desktop or laptop. We dive into StrongDM's proxy model, integrations with directories and ID stores, audit features, and more.

Today on the Day Two Cloud podcast we offer tips and advice for those on the job market, from finding new opportunities, building a professional network, prepping for interviews, handling curve-ball interview questions, managing nerves, and more.

Web3 is the term for an emerging technology movement that aims to create a more decentralized Internet and put more ownership in the hands of individual users and consumers. At present Web3 is associated with cryptocurrencies and NFTs, but it's worth understanding the technological underpinnings of Web3, particularly blockchain and its broader applications. Our guide to Web3 infrastructure is Josh Neuroth.

Today's Day Two Cloud podcast delves into issues about monitoring all the things, including the notion of monitoring the cloud...from the cloud. Ned Bellavance and Ethan Banks discuss the pros and cons of DIY vs. using a service, differences between monitoring infrastructure stacks and applications, what to monitor and why, how to deal with all that data, the necessity of alerting, constructing meaningful dashboards, and more.

On today's Day Two Cloud we have a career conversation with Angela Andrews, a Solution Architect at Red Hat. Angela provides an introduction to OpenShift, a cloud-based offering for running and orchestrating Kubernetes containers in public clouds and on premises from Red Hat. We also discuss how to integrate communication skills with technical knowledge, the role of a Solution Architect, how to stay on top of new and changing technologies, and more.

Optimizing cloud costs means more than looking at your bill and hunting down unused instances. It's about understanding the full lifecycle of cloud workloads, dealing with management that wants predictable spending even as your actual usage varies, and setting up repeatable processes. Guests Fred Chagnon and Jeremy Roberts, both at Info-Tech Research Group, offer practical advice for optimizing your cloud spending.

Today is a deeply technical episode on DevOps, Azure, Docker, Terraform, and more. Our guest is Kyler Middleton, Principal DevOps Network Architect. Kyler is also a Pluralsight author and blogger.

There are a lot of good things you can do with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) for automation, repeatability, and ease of operations and development. But there are also code and infrastructure pitfalls where you can tumble into a hole, break your leg, and get eaten by spiders. OK, maybe not that bad, but on today's episode we talk about potential IaC pitfalls and how to avoid them with guest Tim Davis.

On today's Day Two Cloud, we dig into Azure Arc and the construction of hybrid clouds with guest Ben Weissman, a consultant, author, and Pluralsight creator.

It's always better to catch misconfigurations and security issues earlier in your pipeline rather than later. That's especially true for cloud services where a simple configuration error can expose sensitive assets to the entire Internet. On today's Day Two Cloud podcast we discuss how to incorporate security checks into your Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) workflows. Our guest is Christophe Tafani-Dereeper, a cloud security engineer.

Today on Day Two Cloud, we talk about new ways of thinking about security for cloud. As organizations adopt cloud services, they're applying on-prem security designs. Our guest Adeel Ahmad is here to argue that this doesn't work, and that you need a different approach.

Welcome to Day Two Cloud, where the topic is visibility. Hybrid cloud visibility with a side of Kubernetes, to be specific. VMware has come alongside as today’s sponsor for a discussion about vRealize Operations Cloud to give you that visibility into applications and infrastructure running in complex, multi-cloud environments.

Ethan Banks and Ned Bellavance hosted a panel discussion at VMworld 2021 with two VMware customers using VMware Cloud---the University of Miami and Sterling National Bank. This discussion looks at what works, where the customers ran into issues, and how their cloud journeys are progressing.

Today's Day Two Cloud is a nerdy show on GraphQL and AWS AppSync and what you can do with these tools. Our guest is Amrut Patil, a senior software engineer using these tools.

On today's Day Two Cloud we talk trends and predictions in cloud computing, including emerging technologies such as Web assembly, rivals to Kubernetes, and the role of GitOps in infrastructure as code. Our guest is Adrian Mouat, Chief Scientist at Container Solutions. His blog post "10 Predictions for the Future of Computing or; the Inane Ramblings of our Chief Scientist" inspired this episode.

Ethan Banks & Ned Bellavance have a tech discussion with CEO Doug Murray and CTO Vishal Jain about multi-cloud security startup Valtix. Along the way, we find out that Valtix is a cloud-delivered security control-plane paired with a data-plane of enforcement points (sort of firewalls, but not exactly) delivered between any two points in the cloud you need them. Engineers should walk away from this chat with a solid idea of Valtix architecture and how it fits into their cloud design.

How does a company building a product from an open-source project get off the ground? How does it communicate its value, attract contributors, and develop a user base? And how does it spread the word without turning off engineers with typical tech marketing? Guest Emily Omier is a positioning consultant who helps companies and projects get it right.

Today on the Day Two Cloud podcast we have a sponsored show with Akamai and a customer, IBM Cloud. When IBM rebuilt its Cloud Console from a monolithic application to microservices, the company turned to Akamai to help improve application performance while also supporting routing, failover, and availability across six global data centers. We get details from Pavel Despot, Sr. Product Marketing Manager at Akamai; and Tony Erwin, Senior Technical Staff Member/Architect at IBM.