Ambassador Labs: All-Things Cloud, DevEx, and APIs: Recent Episodes
Ambassador Labs
Software developers, platform engineers, and sysadmin/operators listen to the weekly Ambassador Labs podcasts in order to learn how to build cloud platforms and create an effective developer experience (DevEx) for deploying container-based applications to Kubernetes. We also discuss best practices for releasing functionality via continuous delivery pipelines, and we investigate the latest developer tooling, API gateway technology (e.g Envoy), and service mesh implementations. We interview practitioners and senior technical leaders from organisations such as HashiCorp, Lyft, TicketMaster, Headstart, and Buoyant.
We’re pleased to share that the "Livin’ on the Edge" podcast is back for Season 4 after our summer hiatus! We have a special episode for y’all ahead of our Blackbird, generally available release date on October 1, 2024, and with that we have a special guest host, myself (CEO Steve Rodda here).To kick off episode two, I sat down with James Higginbotham, founder of Launch Any, author of API Developer Weekly, well-known API consultant, and all-around great guy. James has been an instrumental tester and feedback producer for our new API development tool, Blackbird. He’s explored it through the lens of ADDR (align, define, design r ), and he also is one of the most well-known API experts in our industry. Needless to say, we had a riveting conversation about how the industry is evolving, his Blackbird experience, and advice for technology leaders looking to end the last quarter of 2024 on a high note. For more, visit getblackbird.io.
We’re pleased to share that the "Livin’ on the Edge" podcast is back for Season 4 after our summer hiatus! With it, we have one new host, Jacob Caddy, and myself (Kay James) will also return as a fellow host. This season, we’re still going to be highlighting all the best Kubernetes practices, but we’re also going to be diving deeper into the world of API development, ephemeral environments, developer tricks, and more. To kick off episode one, I chatted with developer relations manager at Civo, Kunal Khushwaha, for an in-depth interview on all things cloud computing and the main challenges that organizations are facing as it relates to cloud-native development.
On the latest Livin’ on the Edge podcast (and my last episode for Season 3), I interviewed Vasil Kaftandzhiev, a fellow Product Manager at Grafana. We explored the importance of observability in IT systems, particularly in the context of cloud infrastructure and Kubernetes management. Observability is the constant monitoring of the system and of business KPIs with the goal of understanding why something is happening. It goes beyond the here-and-now of just monitoring (which itself is key to observability) and extends to the analysis and understanding of broader problems or issues, the underlying system and root causes. Vasil’s team at Grafana has been focused on building opinionated observability solutions that are based on technology best practices and observability best practices. He shared a few of those best observations with us below. We also dove into the actual difference between plain monitoring and true observability, the role of AI and ML within observability, and, of course, the importance of resource utilization and cost management in Kubernetes.
On the latest Livin on the Edge Episode, Kay James sat down with Women in APIs and APIsFirst, Clare Barrett to discuss the following: - the Women in APIs program with APIDays- Trends and strategies in the API space- Tackling common challenges that women face in the industryFor more, visit getambassador.io/podcasts.
In our latest Livin’ on the Edge podcast, I chatted with Erik Wilde, well known OpenAPI Initiative ambassador and Principal Consultant at INNOQ, as well as the host of the popular YouTube channel, “Getting APIs to Work.” After both of us attended APIDays New York a few weeks ago, we realized that platform engineering continues to be the talk of the town in this industry. In our discussion, we zeroed in on the four main P’s for a successful platform engineering approach. Whether it’s the importance of treating platforms like products, identifying pain points, standardizing processes, and managing platforms actively to prevent fragmentation…. here are Erik’s TL/DR of it all for successfully managing a platform.
In our latest Livin’ On the Edge podcast episode, I interviewed Keith Casey, senior product manager at Pangea and one of the co-authors of API Developer Weekly. Pangea offers security services in a single platform of API-based security services that can be stacked onto an existing tech stack. We explored authentication and authorization as crucial aspects of building secure and reliable distributed systems, as well as some best auth practices to help make your auth process a breeze for your developer team.
Join us for a special bonus mini episode with host Kay James and VP of appCD/ Kubecrash Co-Founder, Danielle Cook, as we dive into what you can expect ahead of Kubecrash Spring 2024. The theme is Platform Engineering: Building the Ultimate Internal Developer Platform. Kay got the inside scoop with Danielle on what to look out for and some can't miss sessions of this open source focused conference. Register to attend Kubecrash (free + virtual) on April 24: https://www.kubecrash.io/.
In our latest episode we chatted with consultant Matthew Reinbold about the future of the API industry, how to stay sharp in this current economic climate, and the state of developer relations. For more, visit getambassador.io/podcasts. Resources: - matthewreinbold.com - netapinotes.com - APIFutures https://matthewreinbold.github.io/APIFutures- Matthew's mastodon microblogging - https://opinuendo.com
API Federation encompasses a collection of design principles, tools, and infrastructure that enable the exposure of services and event streams within a specific bounded context as a cohesive and standardized API for external customers. API Federation allows individual services within the bounded context to evolve and adapt without imposing additional limitations or constraints. The TL/DR of it all is that API Federation provides a unified and consistent interface for external users while promoting flexibility and agility within the internal service ecosystem.Ok, but what does that mean? Not to fear, our latest Livin' On the Edge podcast guest, Daniel Kocot of CodeCentric AG sat down with us to walk us through it all and the two major concepts that are impacting API Federation today, including shifting mindsets and the language style you choose to code in.
Explore the crucial role of the inner dev loop and quantitative metrics to enhance developer productivity and build a sustainable engineering culture with Guru Kamat, Co-Founder of Neurelo.With over 20 years of experience, Guru has seen it all. From scaling small startup teams to being an integral part of leading technology companies such as Palo Alto and Stripe–Guru has experienced a variety of environments to truly master the art of developer productivity.
As they say, the one thing in life you can count on is change. Our latest guest on Livin' On the Edge podcasts is Krishna Modi, a Cloud Engineer at Cisco. The discussion covered a range of topics, including Krishna's professional journey, Cisco’s evolution, Identity and Access Management (IAM), trends in API gateways, and the rise of platform engineering."Cisco has always been one of the best company cultures and has always felt like a family; that's why I came back," Krishna stated, noting that he is one of many "boomerangs" who left and then inevitably returned to the company. What Krishna shared included insights about how companies must evolve in a cloud-native world and how developer teams need to take platform engineering seriously.
On the latest Livin' On the Edge podcast episode, we interviewed Xavier Portilla Edo, Cloud and Infrastructure Team Lead from Voiceflow, a Canada-based company focused on a collaborative conversation design platform where conversational AI product teams design, test, and ship chat and voice assistants. Xavier is also an involved Community Advocate here at Ambassador Labs, so he’s quite familiar with our tools, particularly Telepresence. Our discussion revolved around how automation, their use of Telepresence, the role of platform engineering, and the importance of standardization all come together to create a developer-happy environment. For more, visit our podcast page: https://www.getambassador.io/podcasts
On the latest Livin' On the Edge podcast episode, I interviewed the CEO of Robusta, Natan Yellin, about the evolution of DevOps, throwing AI into the mix, and debunking the DevOps statement of "You Build it, You Run it." https://youtu.be/O3DRVTEgtyo The 'You Build It, You Run It' Dilemma When discussing the evolution of DevOps teams, we can't get into it without covering the typical dilemma that arises in the DevOps ecosystem. "You Build it, You Run it" is the traditional approach of separating development and operations. It has been challenged by the need for developers to take ownership of their code in production. This shift requires developers to build the software and be responsible for its smooth operation and maintenance."'You build it, you run it' is a lie. It's a cultural thing, let's talk about what you should do instead," shares Natan. "Imagine you have a mechanical engineer, for example, with a background in metalworking building the screws for planes. Someone takes those screws, and they assemble that into an airplane, and then they ask that same screw engineer to FLY the plane. You build part of this, right? So you can fly it?" Natan explains that although the engineer was responsible for building part of the plane, he is by no means a pilot capable of flying that same plane. The same thing can be said for cloud-native DevOps engineers who are asked to run, monitor, and maintain the same code they built. It's two different skill sets asking for chaos to unfold."These developers are building applications, and they know Java and have great application knowledge, but they aren't necessarily familiar with convoluted stacks that run in the cloud. They're now in charge of systems that break down, creating DevOps tension because they weren't empowered to run it in the first place," shares Natan.
On the latest Livin' On the Edge podcast episode, Product Manager Jake Beck interviewed Stoplight CTO and host of the API Intersection podcast, Jason Harmon. We get into all things API design, API development, design best practices, and more. Plus, we break down the 'design-first' approach to your API management strategy. Tune in!
On this episode of Livin' on the Edge we interview industry expert and CNCF member, Michael Levan. Michael takes us through all things platform engineering, what developers should actually be concerned with, and what's just marketing talk. Platform engineering is on the rise and here to stay, here's what you need to know to ensure your organization is doing it correctly.
On Season Three, Episode Three of the Livin’ on the Edge podcast, I spoke with Jose Carlos Chavez, who is a software engineer at Tetrate and heavily involved with Istio, an open-source service mesh, that has been making waves in the world of microservices and cloud-native applications. Istio offers a range of features for traffic management, security, and observability, making it a valuable tool for developers and DevOps teams. In this episode, Jose Carlos dove into his background in software and observability, including his experience with open tracing and open telemetry.Just like Ambassador Labs and our Emissary-Ingress tool, Istio is also a part of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). This reflects Istio's importance within the cloud-native ecosystem, emphasizing its role in modern application development. His alignment with the CNCF extends to considerations of security. Jose Carlos emphasized in our conversation that Istio's role in the CNCF landscape is leading to the implementation of even more security features.
In the ever-evolving landscape of cloud-native technology, APIs, Kubernetes, and service meshes, it's crucial to stay up-to-date with the latest developments and insights from experts in the field. That’s why, there’s no better time to revitalize our popular podcast, Livin’ on the Edge. We’re proud to say we’re back and better than ever!To kick off Season Three, we figured who better to bring on the show than Flynn, the Tech Evangelist from Buoyant. Flynn was one of the original creators of Emissary and a previous Ambassador Labs team member himself. As someone who’s been a part of the Emissary and Edge Stack story from the early days, his 40 year’s worth of knowledge and experience is something we can all learn from. Flynn’s day-to-day life revolves around dealing with the complexity of the cloud-native world and the rapid pace of change that comes with it. I sat down with him to discuss some of those complexities, as well as what he’s looking forward to right now in the cloud-native world.
Full transcript and summary -> https://www.getambassador.io/kubernetes-expert-interviews/self-service/
As discussion of developer platforms reaches a fever pitch, the industry still has not converged around a single definition of "platform".
To get a variety of viewpoints, Ambassador Labs invited a small group of practitioners in the cloud-native development space to join Ambassador's Head of Developer Relations, Daniel Bryant, to discuss what developer platforms actually are, why platforms are a hot topic now and where these platforms are heading. The group was made up of Humanitec's CEO, Kaspar von Grünberg, nesto's Director of DevOps, Mathieu Frenette, and Syntasso's Chief Operating Officer, Paula Kennedy, each bringing a very different experience to the discussion.
Summary and full transcript -> https://www.getambassador.io/developer-control-plane/developer-control-planes-a-community-practice-engineers-point-of-view/
Apostolis Apostolidis (better known as Toli) (@apostolis09), Principal Practice Engineer at UK-based car-purchasing platform, cinch, joined Ambassador Labs's Daniel Bryant in the latest Ambassador Labs podcast. Toli discussed the culture of software engineering, how best to engineer platforms to help teams achieve their goals, and how to set up and benefit from communities of practice.
Summary and full transcript -> https://www.getambassador.io/kubernetes-thought-leaders/http3/
With HTTP/3 being supported by 70%+ of browsers (including Chrome, Firefox, and Edge), and the official spec being finalized in June 2022, now is the time that organizations are beginning a widespread rollout of this protocol to gain performance and reliability. As leaders in the implementation of the HTTP/3 spec, Google and the Envoy Proxy teams have been working on rolling this out for quite some time, and they have learned many lessons.
Alyssa Wilk, Senior Staff Software Engineer at Google, recently spoke with Daniel Bryant, Head of DevRel at Ambassador Labs. In a wide-ranging discussion that covered how HTTP/3 has been implemented over QUIC and UDP, the benefits and challenges offered by the new protocol, and the experience of Google publicly rolling out support for this protocol, a number of key themes emerged
Summary and the full transcript is available at: https://www.getambassador.io/developer-control-plane/developer-control-planes-a-cloud-leaders-point-of-view/
(This podcast has been republished/updated to fix the broken Spotify episode)
Additional takeaways can be found here: https://www.getambassador.io/developer-control-plane/dcp-insights-kelsey-hightower/
Kelsey Hightower (@kelseyhightower), Principal Engineer and Staff Developer Advocate at Google, and a leading voice in the cloud native and Kubernetes space, talked with Ambassador Labs's Daniel Bryant about a range of subjects, including what shifting left and developer responsibility really means, promise theory and what developers really need to be successful, and developer empathy, or stopping the practice of "cart-before-horse" coding to get to the heart of what users want first.
Full transcript and summary https://www.getambassador.io/developer-control-plane/developer-control-planes-an-engineering-directors-point-of-view/
Crystal Hirschorn (@cfhirschorn), Director of Engineering - Infrastructure, SRE and Developer Experience at Snyk, shared some time with Ambassador Labs's Head of Developer Relations, Daniel Bryant, to talk about all things platform engineering and building control planes that “pave a path” for developers.
Summary and full transcript: https://www.getambassador.io/developer-control-plane/developer-control-planes-a-platform-engineers-point-of-view/
Summary and full transcript -> https://www.getambassador.io/developer-control-plane/developer-control-planes-a-platform-builders-point-of-view/
The unicorns of the tech world generate a lot of buzz in the cloud-native landscape. But the workhorse users who adopt cloud-native technologies slowly where it makes commercial sense don't get quite the same level of attention. Weaving cloud-native technology, not just into legacy systems that deliver on a business's core mission, but also into risk-averse commercial organizations is no easy feat.
Founded in 2002, Veterans United Home Loans, is a leader in helping US military families purchase homes using Veterans Affairs (VA) loan services. Technology shifts have been slow and steady, focusing on stability, automation and making the loan process as easy as possible for customers. Alan Barr (@alanmbarr), Internal Developer and Security Platform Product Owner at Veterans United Home Loans, spoke at length with Ambassador's Head of DevRel, Daniel Bryant, about the company's 20-year journey and their steps into the cloud-native landscape.
Among other subjects, they covered technology adoption and getting comfortable with cloud native when using legacy systems in commercial settings, building the business case for investing in a developer platform, and defining the developer experience.
Summary and the full transcript is available at: https://www.getambassador.io/developer-control-plane/developer-control-planes-a-cloud-leaders-point-of-view/
Additional takeaways can be found here: https://www.getambassador.io/developer-control-plane/dcp-insights-kelsey-hightower/
Kelsey Hightower (@kelseyhightower), Principal Engineer and Staff Developer Advocate at Google, and a leading voice in the cloud native and Kubernetes space, talked with Ambassador Labs's Daniel Bryant about a range of subjects, including what shifting left and developer responsibility really means, promise theory and what developers really need to be successful, and developer empathy, or stopping the practice of "cart-before-horse" coding to get to the heart of what users want first.
Summary and full transcript here: https://www.getambassador.io/developer-control-plane/developer-control-planes-an-ecosystem-leaders-point-of-view/
While cloud-native development has not been adopted into production environments everywhere, it is an increasingly visible force, bolstered by a robust community, several widely adopted emerging standards, and increasingly cohesive tooling and platforms.
Ambassador's Head of Developer Relations, Daniel Bryant, recently sat down with Katie Gamanji (@k_gamanji), Senior Kubernetes Field Engineer at Apple, and the CNCF's former Ecosystem Advocate, to discuss these points as well as real-world, cloud-native implementations driven by business goals and the importance of both education and community in achieving critical mass.
Summary and full transcript: https://www.getambassador.io/developer-control-plane/developer-control-planes-a-ctos-point-of-view/
Nicki Watt (@techiewatt) is the chief technology officer and CEO at OpenCredo, a software development consultancy with extensive experience in cloud-native development, and has been at the forefront of meeting these varied, cross-functional needs for a variety of companies across industries. Recently, she shared her experience with Ambassador's Head of Developer Relations, Daniel Bryant, to discuss everything from evolving cloud platforms to identifying opinionated ways to rein in the sprawl of an overwhelming number of ways to do things in a cloud-native environment.
S2E03: Cheryl Hung on Google DevEx, Cloud Native Development, and Infrastructure Challenges by Ambassador Labs
Full transcript: https://www.getambassador.io/developer-control-planes/developer-control-planes-a-platform-architects-point-of-view/
Summary and extended notes: https://www.getambassador.io/developer-control-plane/dcp-insights-kasper-nissen-from-lunar/
The concept of "shifting left" at scale in a fully cloud-native organization may sound futuristic to those just entering the cloud-native space. For cloud-native leaders, who have run Kubernetes in production for years, shifting left is well underway. Lunar, a startup challenger bank in the Nordics, is one such organization.
Kasper Nissen (@phennex), Lead Platform Architect from Lunar (@lunarbank), recently joined Ambassador's Director of DevRel, Daniel Bryant, to discuss Lunar's architecture, developer ownership of the life cycle, Lunar's approach to centralizing tooling, the build-versus-buy decision-making process, the developer control plane concept, and the challenges and benefits of being at the forefront of cloud-native fintech technology.
Mario Loria, Senior Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) from CartaX, an electronic marketplace for private securities recently spoke with Daniel Bryant, Director of DevRel at Ambassador Labs. In a wide-ranging discussion they covered ground from the changing developer experience to the ideal role of SREs in a modern, cloud-native environment.
Full transcript: https://www.getambassador.io/developer-control-plane/developer-control-planes-an-experienced-sres-point-of-view/
Summary and additional context: https://www.getambassador.io/developer-control-plane/dcp-insights-mario-loria-from-cartax/
Gareth Rushgrove, Director of Product Management at Snyk, discusses the state of Kubernetes tooling, the role of application platforms and how they should be designed and managed, and the importance of engineering security.
Summary and full transcript available at: https://www.getambassador.io/podcasts/gareth-rushgrove-on-kubernetes-tooling-platforms-and-engineering-security
Katie Gamanji, Cloud Platform Engineer at American Express and TOC member of the CNCF, discusses the building blocks of developer experience related to interacting with Kubernetes clusters. She covers the evolution of tooling from the kubectl that we all know and love, to UI-driven tooling like k9s and Octant, and ultimately to ApplicationOps and GitOps.
Summary and full transcript available at: https://www.getambassador.io/podcasts/katie-gamanji-on-kubernetes-tooling-dx-gitops-and-the-cluster-api
Dave Sudia , Senior DevOps Engineer at GoSpotCheck, discusses creating an effective local developer experience for Kubernetes, migrating away from Heroku and building a Kubernetes-based platform as a service (PaaS), and how his team developed an understanding of all of the personas involved with creating a platform.
Summary and full transcript available at: https://www.getambassador.io/podcasts/dave-sudia-on-kubernetes-local-development-building-a-paas-and-platform-personas
Daniel Mangum, software engineers at Upbound, introduces the Crossplane cloud control plane project, and talks about how engineers can build an internal platform-as-a-service (PaaS). He also shares his insights into the future of multi-cluster Kubernetes.
Summary and full transcript available at: https://www.getambassador.io/podcasts/daniel-mangum-on-crossplane-building-a-paas-and-multi-cluster-kubernetes
Charity Majors, CTO at Honeycomb and author of many great blog posts on observability and leadership, discusses the new approach needed when instrumenting microservices and distributed systems, the benefits of “observability-driven development (ODD)”, and how Honeycomb can help engineers with asking ad hoc questions about their production systems.
Show notes and full transcript available here: https://www.getambassador.io/podcasts/charity-majors-on-instrumenting-systems-observability-driven-development-and-honeycomb
Sam Newman, independent technology consultant and author of Building Microservices, discusses the concept of microservice ownership, explores how to best approach the local development of a microservice-based systems, and shares his opinions on the release trains model of deployment.
Show notes and full transcript available at: https://www.getambassador.io/podcasts/sam-newman-on-microservice-ownership-local-development-and-release-trains
Gene Kim, author of the The Phoenix Project and founder of the DevOps Enterprise Summit, discusses the importance of developer productivity within the larger context of DevOps, and explores the “five ideals” as presented in his latest book, The Unicorn Project. He also outlines how the platform that engineers deploy onto should codify operational best practices that promote flow when testing, deploying, and releasing functionality.
Show notes and full transcript can be found here: https://www.getambassador.io/podcasts/gene-kim-on-developer-productivity-the-five-ideals-and-platforms
Michael Hausenblas, Product Developer Advocate in the AWS Container Service Team, discusses the concept of customer focus (both end-users and internal engineering users), explores how platforms have evolved around Kubernetes, and dives into the use of RBAC and Open Policy Agent (OPA) for cluster access control.
Summary and show notes are available here: https://www.getambassador.io/podcasts/michael-hausenblas-on-customer-focus-building-app-platforms-and-kubernetes-access-control
Kelsey Hightower, technologist at Google, shares his thought on cloud developer experience, modern Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and explores the reality that every organisation is testing in production
Summary and full transcript available at: www.getambassador.io/podcasts/kelsey-hightower-on-developer-experience-paas-and-testing-in-production
Dana Lawson, VP of Engineering at GitHub, discusses the impact that Kubernetes has had on operations, how cloud has impacted the local development experience, and the benefits of constant learning.
Key takeaways and show notes can be found here: https://www.getambassador.io/podcasts/podcats-living-on-the-edge-podcast-6-dana-lawson-on-dana-lawson-on-kubernetes-local-development-loops-and-constant-learning/
Charles Pretzer, field engineer at Buoyant (stewards of Linkerd), discussed service meshes, the Service Mesh Interface (SMI) spec, and how to implement a function as a service (FaaS) experience with Knative, Linkerd, and Ambassador
Show notes can be found here: https://www.getambassador.io/podcasts/podcast-livin-on-the-edge-podcast-charles-pretzer-on-service-meshes-knative-and-interoperability-and-the-smi/
Alla Babkina, head of engineering at diversity recruitment platform Headstart, discusses building a cloud platforms as a product, what it means in 2020 to be called a "fullstack engineer", and why and how to bake-in observability to applications.
Show notes can be found here: https://www.getambassador.io/podcasts/podcast-alla-babkina-on-platforms-as-products-2020-fullstack-engineers-and-observability/
In the third episode of the Ambassador Livin’ on the Edge podcast, Matt Klein, creator of Envoy and a software engineer at Lyft, discusses his microservice testing strategies. and offers guidance on building effective platforms and deployment environments.
Show notes can be found here: https://www.getambassador.io/podcasts/podcast-livin-on-the-edge-podcast-3-matt-klein-on-testing-microservices-and-building-cloud-platforms/
Paris Apostolopoulos, Java Champion and cloud engineer, shares his experiences of the benefits of developers getting closer to production, the challenges of creating cloud platforms, and how he believes that all software engineer must continually learn and upskill when working with cloud technologies.
Show notes can be found here: https://www.getambassador.io/podcasts/podcast-lote-podcast-2-paris-apostolopoulos-on-developers-getting-closer-to-production-and-cloud-specialists/
In the inaugural episode of the Ambassador Livin’ on the Edge podcast, Nic Jackson, developer advocate at HashiCorp, discusses all things related to modern “cloud native” platforms and developer tooling.
Show notes can be found here: https://www.getambassador.io/podcasts/podcast-nic-jackson-discusses-cloud-native-platforms-and-developer-tooling/