Kubernetes for Humans

Have you ever considered making a massive career pivot after two decades in the exact same field? In this episode, Itiel sits down with Dan Hicks, a Platform Engineer at Boomi, to explore his fascinating transition from a 20-year career as an enterprise Java developer to the fast-paced, ever-evolving world of Kubernetes and infrastructure. Dan breaks down the fundamental similarities and stark differences between application development and platform engineering. He shares the unexpected hurdles he faced during his transition, from complex networking and CoreDNS latency to the harsh realities exposed by chaos testing in cloud environments. Also, get a unique look at how Dan leverages AI in his daily workflow. Discover how he uses tools like Claude, complete with voice control, to map out architectural visions and reduce toil, all while emphasizing that AI is a powerful assistant, not a replacement for human critical thinking. Finally, the episode wraps up with Dan's predictions for the future of Kubernetes, the game-changing impact of the Karpenter autoscaler, and how infrastructure must adapt to support specialized AI workloads and new chipsets.

In this episode of the Kubernetes for Humans podcast, we are joined by infrastructure and FinOps expert Josh Schlanger. Drawing on over 15 years of experience across Martech, e-commerce, and health tech, Josh shares why solving core business problems should always take priority over chasing new, "shiny object" technologies. The conversation dives deep into the evolution of cloud spending, exploring how the shift from data center CAPEX to cloud OPEX created a "Wild West" of unchecked spending that can severely impact SaaS margins. Josh discusses the expanding scope of FinOps, highlighting how the costs of data storage, observability tools, and newly adopted AI technologies (like LLM tokens and coding assistants) are rapidly catching up to traditional cloud spend. Tune in to hear Josh's insights on why R&D engineers must own cost optimization execution, why true Platform Engineering is about enabling developers rather than just rebranding sysadmins, and his practical, hands-on tips for identifying and eliminating cloud waste today. Follow Josh and CloudXray AI on Linkedin

This episode features Matt Butcher, CEO of Fermyon and creator of Helm, and Ari Weil from Akamai, as they discuss the evolution of the cloud-native ecosystem. They share their professional origins, highlighting how Kubernetes transitioned from a complex tool for experts to a foundational technology for global enterprises. Part of the conversation focuses on the history of Helm, explaining its growth from a simple hackathon project into a standard package manager. Another part takes on the future of distributed computing, specifically how Akamai is integrating infrastructure as a service to support modern workloads. Lastly, a prediction that the next major industry phase will involve the operationalization of AI, where SREs focus on managing intelligence at the edge rather than in centralized regions.

In this episode, Itiel joins forces with Shemer, Director of Platform Solutions at the gaming giant Playtika, and Scott Rosenberg, Lead Architect at TeraSky, to discuss the realities of platform engineering at a massive scale. The trio dissects Playtika’s multi-year journey from a legacy, homegrown Kubespray infrastructure to a modern, holistic platform built on Spectro Cloud, all while running strictly on-premise to support 25+ games and high-volume traffic. The conversation focuses heavily on the art of abstraction, specifically how using tools like Crossplane allowed Playtika to modernize their backend without disrupting the developer experience - a philosophy Scott describes as taking the "long path" to ultimately achieve the "short path" of seamless adoption. Learn about the challenges of overcoming "people and culture" hurdles during migration, the concept of using Kubernetes as a control plane rather than just a runtime, and realistic predictions for the role of AI agents and RAG in future DevOps workflows. Follow Scott and Shemer on LinkedIn.

From the early days of "neural nets" and WebSphere to the modern complexities of Kubernetes, Hayato Shimizu has seen the evolution of infrastructure firsthand. In this episode of Kubernetes for Humans, the co-founder of Digitalis joins the show to discuss the harsh realities of enterprise platform engineering and his personal journey from corporate employee to consultancy owner. Hayato recounts his career path starting in the late 1990s, highlighting how early application delivery methods at companies like Citrix served as precursors to modern containerization. He provides expert insights into the challenges of Kubernetes migration, emphasizing the transition from traditional, stateful systems to scalable, cloud-native architectures. The conversation explores the complexities of day-two operations, such as managing unpredictable traffic loads and prioritizing production firefighting over development backlogs. Finally, he touches upon the future of the industry, specifically how AI-driven root cause analysis can streamline incident resolution in high-pressure enterprise environments. Follow Hayato on LinkedIn, and check out Digitalis & AxonOps to learn more about his work in the DevOps ecosystem.

In this episode Itiel hosts Veeam experts Julia and Michael, to share their distinct paths into cloud-native technology. Julia discusses her transition from a background in law and marketing to becoming a CNCF ambassador and AWS container hero. Michael, a veteran who has been with Veeam for over 10 years, details his traditional CIS admin background (virtualization, storage) and the evolution of this role into platform engineering. We explore the critical need for backup and data resilience, which is often the last thing companies consider in cloud-native application deployment. The discussion covers why backup serves as the essential insurance policy against modern threats like ransomware, emphasizing the importance of application consistency and data portability across multiple platforms, including Kubernetes, SaaS, and public cloud services.

In this episode, Itiel Shwartz kicks off a series on MLOps, LLM, and GenAI in Kubernetes. Starting with Alexei Ledenev, who has over two decades in software development and deep experience in cloud architecture and distributed systems. He shares his journey from CoreOS Fleet to his current role on the Platform Team at Doit. The conversation focuses on tackling the complexity of Kubernetes, which Alexei notes can be overwhelming even for experienced DevOps engineers. He discusses how he developed the idea to leverage AI assistants and the Model Context Protocol (MCP) to access and execute tools like kubectl. This concept creates a "translator between AI and the Kubernetes environment", allowing users to troubleshoot complex cluster issues or quickly create ad hoc testing environments using natural language. They also explore the challenges of implementation, such as hallucination, and how providing context helps the AI self-correct. Looking ahead, Alexei predicts that infrastructure is moving towards self-aware and self-healing platforms that integrate AI deeply.

Meet Idan Gazit from GitHub Next, a team responsible for projects like GitHub Copilot. Gazit, despite jokingly claiming to be "the least knowledgeable about Kubernetes," shares his diverse career journey, spanning from early web development with Perl and Django to his time at Heroku and eventually GitHub. He discusses his team's role in prototyping future software development solutions, emphasizing the importance of identifying and nurturing risky, impactful ideas for developers, even if it means "killing projects" that don't gain traction. Gazit also provides insights into GitHub's evolving focus on AI to enhance developer experiences and envisions a future where software creation becomes more accessible to a broader audience, with professional developers empowered by advanced tools, fostering a more integrated approach to the entire software development lifecycle. Connect with Idan on social: https://gazit.me/

Meet Dustin Kirkland, VP of Engineering at Chainguard. Dustin shares his fascinating 26-year journey in the tech industry, from IBM and two stints at Canonical to roles at Google (working on GKE), Apex, and Goldman Sachs, eventually leading him back to engineering at Chainguard. Discover how Chainguard is helping secure the software supply chain, focusing on building secure containers primarily for Kubernetes. Learn about the critical problem of software vulnerabilities (CVEs) and how Chainguard's products, including their hardened container images with a zero CVE goal and accelerated patching SLAs, address this challenge. Dustin also introduces their newer initiatives, like Chainguard Libraries, which secures open source dependencies and builds hardened virtual machines (kernels) for Kubernetes worker nodes. He explains Chainguard's automation-driven approach, which allows them to monitor upstream fixes and rapidly rebuild and retest images and libraries.

In this episode, Itiel has an insightful conversation with Dr. David Morrison, a research scientist and founder specializing in Kubernetes scheduling and autoscaling. David shares his journey from operations research to leading distributed systems efforts at tech giants like Yelp and Airbnb. Learn about the transition from Apache Mesos to Kubernetes at Yelp, including the role of their open-source API layer, Pasta. Discover why David started his own venture, Applied Computing Research Labs, to help companies tackle the challenges of Kubernetes cost optimization and reliability. Get an inside look at SimCube, his fascinating project that simulates production Kubernetes clusters for debugging, troubleshooting, and capacity planning. David also offers insights into the common pitfalls of low cluster utilization, the complexities of saving costs beyond low-hanging fruit, and the potential future of distributed systems.

Join Itiel as he chats with Gianluca Mardente, a Principal Engineer at Cisco Systems. Gianluca shares his path to tech and Kubernetes, including his work history and the inspiration behind his open-source project, Sveltos. They dive into the significant challenges of managing a large fleet of Kubernetes clusters – ensuring consistency, handling upgrades, and coordinating resources across different clusters. Learn how Gianluca's project tackles these 'Day-2 Operations', offering solutions that go beyond simple cluster creation and enable seamless integration of various open-source tools like Crossplane. Check out Sveltos: https://projectsveltos.github.io/sveltos/

Join us as Hasith Kalpag, Head of Platform Engineering at Outshift by Cisco, shares his fascinating journey. Hear about his experience leading the massive WebEx transformation to cloud-native using Kubernetes, including the intense push during the COVID-19 response, where they went from zero to over 50 production clusters in just three months. Learn about the challenges and lessons learned from migrating a large enterprise product, like navigating aggressive timelines and overcoming unexpected issues. Hasith also discusses his current role at Outshift, Cisco's incubation engine focused on innovating new ventures, and how they are building a common foundation for diverse teams. Discover his vision for the future of platform engineering, highlighting the critical role of AI in managing complexity and enabling self-service, including Outshift's internal "Jarvis" project focused on agentic platform engineering. Learn more about the AGNTCY initiative: https://agntcy.org/

In this episode, Sid, CEO of Hathora, discusses building game infrastructure, specifically for hosting dedicated servers. He shares how Hathora tackles the challenges of running stateful, low-latency, high-throughput workloads that reconcile player actions up to 60 times per second. Sid explains their approach using Kubernetes to manage compute across bare metal and cloud VMs, leveraging technologies like Talos and Civo's Omni. He also details the technical hurdles they face with Kubernetes networking (like hostport issues), achieving sub-3-second pod startup times, and optimizing container image pulls, offering insights into the unique demands of the gaming industry and Hathora's growth. Sid is the CEO and co-founder of Hathora, the premier tool for studios to globally scale dedicated servers for their multiplayer video games. Sid comes from a deeply technical background, having led infra teams responsible for $100m+ annual cloud budgets. His team at Hathora is working with some of the most anticipated games of '25 and beyond, including Frost Giant’s Stormgate, Omeda’s Predecessor, and 1047 Games’ Splitgate 2. Follow Sid on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dsiddharth/ Learn more about Hathora at hathora.dev

Live from KubeCon London, this episode of Kubernetes for Humans features Maxime Veroone, Staff Engineer at Decathlon's e-commerce division, sharing the company’s cloud-native transformation story. From their early days running a container platform with Rancher 1 to their strategic move to Kubernetes, Decathlon has embraced modern infrastructure to enable scalability and resilience. But with over 5,000 digital team members, Kubernetes introduced a new challenge: developer experience. As engineers were increasingly expected to navigate complex YAML configurations and act as operators, the need for simplification became critical. Maxime discusses how his role focuses on bridging the gap between platform and application teams, working to abstract Kubernetes complexity without locking developers into rigid workflows. His approach is rooted in empathy, actively listening to developers and shaping solutions around their needs. The conversation also dives into Decathlon’s infrastructure practices using Terraform and CI/CD pipelines, and Maxim’s enthusiasm for tools like Flagger and Flux, which are helping ensure safe, progressive deployments in their high-stakes e-commerce environment.

In this special KubeCon edition episode of the Kubernetes for Humans podcast, Itiel meets with Lukas Gentele, CEO and co-founder of Loft Labs. Discover why Lukas believes multi-tenancy is a major obstacle in Kubernetes adoption and how Loft Labs is tackling this challenge through innovative projects like vCluster, a "super famous project" for running virtual Kubernetes clusters. Learn about the journey that led to vCluster's creation, stemming from the challenges of running a multi-tenant PaaS offering. Lukas also shares insights into the adoption of vCluster, including surprising stories of users running thousands of virtual clusters. The episode further explores Loft Labs' philosophy on balancing open source and commercial offerings. The highlight? The announcement of vNode, a brand new commercial product for virtualizing nodes and achieving node-level security to separate vClusters even further. Understand the limitations of existing solutions like micro-VMs and GVisor and how VNode offers a lightweight alternative using Linux kernel magic. Finally, Lukas shares his prediction on the future of virtualization, suggesting a shift away from traditional VMs towards lighter-weight solutions like VNode. Check out Loft Labs: https://www.loft.sh/ Learn more about vNode: https://www.vnode.com/

In this special KubeCon episode, Itiel sits down with Jono Bacon of CNCF fame to talk about his career in building developer and user engagement for open-source technologies. Jono shared his early experiences with Linux and how it sparked a passion for community building. They discuss their current coaching company, Stateshift, which helps various tech companies, including those in the CNCF ecosystem, improve their community outreach, brand building, and user adoption. Examples of successful community building, like GitLab and Dagger, are mentioned. Jono concludes with advice on how companies can stand out at events and in their broader engagement strategies by being unique and fostering genuine interactions.

In this episode, Itiel sits down with Kasper, a Developer Advocate at Dash0. Kasper discusses his background, including his extensive experience building platforms on Kubernetes at Lunar, a Nordic challenger bank. He shares insights into the challenges and successes of using cutting-edge cloud-native technologies in a regulated banking environment. Kasper also touches upon his involvement in the CNCF community as an ambassador and co-chair for KubeCon. The discussion explores Lunar's philosophy of leveraging open-source projects and their journey of adopting Kubernetes and other cloud-native tools. Kasper also explains his move to Dash0, emphasizing his passion for observability and the potential of Open Telemetry.