Kubernetes for Humans

#045 - Beyond Cluster Creation: Mastering Multi-Cluster Kubernetes with Gianluca Mardente (Cisco)

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/ 

#044 - Scaling Platforms and Pioneering AI Agents with Hasith Kalpage (Outshift by Cisco)

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/ 

#043 - Gaming on K8s: Stateful Servers, Low Latency, and an Incredible Infra Journey with Siddharth Dhulipalla (Hathora.dev)

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  

#042 - Cloud-Native Evolution: Simplifying K8s for Developers with Maxime Veroone (Decathlon)

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.

#041 - Virtualizing Kubernetes with Lukas Gentele (Loft Labs)

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/

#040 - Beyond Mere Penguins: Crafting Engaging Developer Communities with Jono Bacon (Stateshift)

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.

#039 - Banking on Kubernetes: From Fintech Frontier to Regulatory Reality with Kasper Nissen (Dash0)

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.

#038 - Kubernetes Supercharging Particle Physics with Ricardo Rocha (CERN)

Ricardo from CERN, who leads the platform infrastructure teams, discusses CERN's significant role in particle physics research with the Large Hadron Collider. The conversation covers how CERN manages the massive amounts of data generated from experiments using a worldwide computing grid. Ricardo shares CERN's journey with adopting Kubernetes for various applications, including critical systems controlling detectors and accelerators. He also touches upon CERN's involvement with the CNCF and the Kubernetes community. The discussion includes their strategy for managing large-scale deployments and their perspective on the future of Kubernetes in scientific computing, including the potential impact of GenAI and specialized hardware.

#037 - Problem First, Kubernetes Second: Insights from Ahmed Bebars (New York Times | CNCF)

In this episode of Kubernetes for Humans, we speak with Ahmed Bebars, a Principal Engineer at the New York Times and a CNCF Ambassador, who offers a unique perspective on cloud native technologies. Ahmed recounts his professional journey in accounting before transitioning into the technology sector, leading to his current deep involvement with the Kubernetes ecosystem. He shares his initial introduction to Kubernetes almost a decade ago, recognizing its capabilities in container orchestration.
Ahmed provided his insights on the appropriate use cases for Kubernetes, emphasizing the importance of identifying the problem before selecting a solution. The discussion also covers service mesh technologies such as Istio, along with Ahmed's perspective on their complexities and benefits. Looking ahead, he shares his thoughts on the evolution of the Kubernetes ecosystem, including the potential impact of GenAI.
Follow Ahmed on Linkedin and Youtube
Don't miss Ahmed's upcoming KubeCon talk!  

#036 - Beyond Kubernetes: A Radical Vision for the Future of Infrastructure with Adam Jacob (System Initiative)

Adam Jacob, CEO of System Initiative and original author of Chef, discusses the evolution of infrastructure automation and his career-long passion for infrastructure. Jacob reflects on the history and context of Chef, its emergence alongside EC2, and its role in configuration management. He shares insights into the competitive landscape of configuration management tools like Chef, Puppet, and Ansible, and touches upon the transition of Chef to Progress. Jacob also introduces System Initiative, explaining its ambitious goal to revolutionize infrastructure automation by building digital twins of digital things, moving away from treating infrastructure as code. He also predicts more attempts to rethink infrastructure automation and encourages "wild swings" to improve upon the status quo.
 
** Follow Adam on Linkedin, X, and BlueSky.
** Check out System Initiative: https://www.systeminit.com/