Bret and Nirmal reunite for their traditional annual Holiday Special episode of breaking down the most significant developments in cloud native from 2024 and sharing predictions for 2025.

💥 This episode is brought to you by our valued sponsor and friends at Aikido!💥
Aikido is a no-nonse platform that helps developers get security done. It consolidates multiple scanning tools like code analysis, dependency analysis, and cloud security into a single platform. Aikido’s superpower is its ability to remove false positives, so you can focus on the real issues. Aikido not only helps you find true vulnerabilities but their new AI features auto triage and even fix issues for you.
Aikido is FREE for small teams or anyone wanting to simply explore so check it out today at aikido.dev

We touch on infrastructure evolution, exploring Kubernetes fleet management challenges and emerging solutions for simplified tool stacks, we cover essential cloud native trends of 2024, infrastructure automation breakthroughs, notable technical innovations, projects that aspire to be part of CNCF as well as predictions for cloud native in 2025.

There's also a video version of this show on YouTube.

★Topics★
Cloud Native End User Technical Advisory Board (TAB)
Adam Jacob's Talk: Reimagining OSS Licensing and Commercialization with Fair Source
kubevirt
Keda
Cloud Native Reference Architectures
Karpenter
eBPF ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wb_vD3XZYOA ebpf documentary) (Ebpf summit)
GitHub Copilot, now Free
Kubernetes transitioning into enterprise maturity (https://www.fairwinds.com/blog/10-years-kubernetes-innovation)
FinOps matters
Read the tea leaves sandbox issues 

Creators & Guests

• Cristi Cotovan - Editor
• Beth Fisher - Producer
• Bret Fisher - Host
• Nirmal Mehta - Host

• (00:00) - Intro
• (03:32) - Structure of the Show
• (03:58) - Kubernetes is 10 and CNCF Maturity
• (05:12) - What is a CNCF Graduated Project?
• (08:08) - IDPs
• (09:28) - Legacy Projects Aspiring for CNCF
• (19:17) - Favorite Tools of 2024
• (19:32) - Argo's Increasing Use
• (23:52) - GitHub Copilot
• (26:30) - KubeVirt
• (32:38) - Event-Driven Autoscaling with KEDA
• (34:22) - Cloud Native Reference Architectures
• (36:33) - Karpenter Workshop Highlights from KubeCon
• (37:45) - Kubernetes Stacks and AI Workloads
• (40:07) - Predictions for Kubernetes in 2025
• (40:13) - Kubernetes "LAMP" Stack
• (41:08) - AI in 2025
• (45:10) - Efficiency, Energy and Environmental Impact
• (47:32) - Fleet and Multi-Cluster Management
• (52:21) - Optimizing Inference
• (54:05) - Edge Hybrid
• (54:34) - Container-Optimized Linux Distros
• (01:00:31) - Open Source Licensing and Business Models
• (01:02:58) - Purely Open Source Kubernetes Stack
• (01:03:48) - The CNCF Sandbox
• (01:10:09) - Final Thoughts

You can also support my free material 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.
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Or watch the video version on YouTube. Bret is joined by Willem Delbare and Roeland Delrue to discuss Aikido, a security tool consolidation platform designed specifically for smaller teams and solo DevOps practitioners.
The discussion explores how Aikido addresses the growing challenges of software supply chain security by bringing together various security tools - from CVE scanning to cloud API analysis - under a single, manageable portal. Unlike enterprise-focused solutions, Aikido targets the needs of smaller teams and individual DevOps engineers who often juggle multiple responsibilities. During the episode, they demonstrate Aikido's capabilities using Bret's sample GitHub organization, and show how teams can implement comprehensive security measures without managing multiple separate tools.

There's also a video version on YouTube.

★Topics★
Aikido website
Aikido on Bluesky
Aikido on LinkedIn

Creators & Guests

• Cristi Cotovan - Editor
• Beth Fisher - Producer
• Bret Fisher - Host
• Willem Delbare - Guest
• Roeland Delrue - Guest

• (00:00) - Intro
• (06:20) - Aikido Origin Story
• (10:32) - What Does AutoFix Mean?
• (13:18) - Security Automation and Developers
• (21:32) - Lessons from Onboarding Customers
• (23:10) - Reducing Noise and Alert Fatigue with Aikido
• (27:30) - Aikido in the CI/CD Process
• (31:26) - AI Security Integration
• (32:24) - GitHub Actions and Dependencies as Attack Vector
• (39:20) - Dependencies in Programming Languages
• (41:30) - Infrastructure as Code and Cloud Security
• (48:17) - Runtime Protection with Aikido Zen
• (54:25) - Agent Involvement in Scanning
• (57:54) - Tools to Use Alongside Aikido
• (01:01:16) - Getting Started with Aikido

You can also support my free material 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 Box
Homepage bretfisher.com

Bret is joined by Mumshad Mannambeth and Vijin Palazhi of KodeKloud for Q&A on what we should be studying and certifying for in 2025.
 

💥 This episode is brought to you by our valued sponsor and friends at Aikido!💥
Aikido is a no-nonse platform that helps developers get security done. It consolidates multiple scanning tools like code analysis, dependency analysis, and cloud security into a single platform. Aikido’s superpower is its ability to remove false positives, so you can focus on the real issues. Aikido not only helps you find true vulnerabilities but their new AI features auto triage and even fix issues for you.
Aikido is FREE for small teams or anyone wanting to simply explore so check it out today at aikido.dev

This episode is chalked full of information. We talked about the CNCF Kubestronaut program and how GenAI has changed the cert prep game, and see what tools and techniques we should use to prepare for next year!

You've probably seen Mumshad's courses. He has been another person like myself who, for almost a decade, has been making container courses on Docker, Kubernetes, all the tooling. Now he's running a giant platform of learning and they're introducing AI into your learning and certification prep, courses, and skills labs. And we go through all of it.

We talk about all of the Linux Foundation certifications they cover. They've launched over 100 courses now on their platform and they cover a lot, if not all of the Linux certifications, especially around Kubernetes and the Cloud Native ecosystem. I'm a huge fan of that. I think this is great stuff for everyone, especially if you're early in your career and you're using certifications as a way to prove your expertise or you're like me, you've been around forever and you want to show that you're up to date. 

There's also a video version of this show on YouTube.

★Topics★
KodeKloud website

Creators & Guests

• Cristi Cotovan - Editor
• Beth Fisher - Producer
• Bret Fisher - Host
• Mumshad Mannambeth - Guest
• Vijin Palazhi - Guest

• (00:00) - DDT MAIN (Audio) Bret's NEW
• (04:32) - Community in Career Growth
• (05:48) - Intro
• (07:51) - Kubernetes Certifications: Kubestronaut
• (11:36) - The Kubernetes Learning Path
• (15:40) - Who is Kubestronaut For?
• (22:24) - Maintaining Kubernetes Certification
• (24:34) - Changes in Certification Requirements
• (25:12) - KodeKloud Course Updates
• (26:46) - Exploring BlueSky for Cloud Native Community
• (27:21) - AI in Certification and Teaching Assistance
• (39:21) - AI Tutor and Future of Learning
• (40:31) - Replacing Q&A with AI?
• (57:22) - Rapid Fire Q&A
• (57:32) - Pro vs AI Subscription with KodeKloud
• (57:53) - Starting with K8s
• (01:00:52) - Certifications for Software Engineers
• (01:04:12) - Course Updates and Future Plans
• (01:06:33) - Developer Courses Plans?
• (01:09:20) - No Labs for Azure DevOps Course
• (01:10:53) - MLOps Courses
• (01:12:23) - Conclusion and Final Thoughts

You can also support my free material 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 Box
Homepage bretfisher.com

Bret and Nirmal recorded this special offline episode at KubeCon North America in Salt Lake City. We hung out at the AWS booth to break down the major trends and developments from the conference. 
The event drew a record-breaking 10,000 attendees, with roughly half being first-timers to the Cloud Native ecosystem. 

Starting with Cloud Native Rejekts and moving through the pre-conference events, we noticed Platform Engineering emerged as the dominant theme, with its dedicated conference track drawing standing-room-only crowds.

The main conference showcased a notable surge in new vendors, particularly in AI and security sectors, representing about a quarter of all exhibitors. We dissect the key engineering trends, ongoing challenges in Cloud Native adoption, and insights gathered from various conferences including ArgoCon, BackstageCon, and Wasm Day. In our 40-minute discussion, we tried to capture the essence of what made this year's KubeCon significant. It's a great listen whether you couldn't attend or if you're a veteran of the Cloud Native community.

Watch the video on YouTube.

★Show Links★
Port
"VM-like container runtime": Microsoft's Hyperlight
Hyperlight Rejekts talk
Akcess, easy K8s RBAC CLI
Cloud Native Operational Excellence

Creators & Guests

• Cristi Cotovan - Editor
• Beth Fisher - Producer
• Bret Fisher - Host
• Nirmal Mehta - Host

• (00:00) - Intro
• (03:38) - KubeCon Rejekts
• (04:50) - Better Than Namespaces
• (07:17) - Day 0
• (08:32) - BackstageCon and Platform Interfaces
• (12:35) - Argo CD and Deployment Dashboards
• (13:57) - GitOps Bridge: Bridging Infrastructure and GitOps
• (14:49) - Kubernetes Resource Orchestrator (KRO)
• (16:23) - Fleet Management in Kubernetes
• (18:12) - Ford's Approach to Kubernetes Tooling
• (19:36) - CNOE: Community-Driven Kubernetes Reference Architectures
• (26:21) - AI Integration in Kubernetes Tools
• (34:03) - Managing Infrastructure at Scale with Karpenter
• (35:13) - KubeCon Highlights and Future Trends

You can also support my free material 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 Box
Homepage bretfisher.com

Bret and Nirmal Mehta are joined by Ken Collins to dig into using AI for more than coding, and if we can build an AI assistant that knows us.
They touch on a lot of tools and platforms. "We're bit all over the place on this one, from talking about AI features in our favorite note taking apps like Notion, to my journey of making an open AI assistant with all of my Q&A from my courses, thousands of questions and answers, to coding agents and more."

Ken is a local friend in Virginia Beach and was on the show last year talking about AWS Lambda, and we've both been trying to find value in all of these AI tools for our day to day work.

Watch the video version on YouTube.

★Topics★
The Lifestyle Copilot Blog Post
Serverless AI Inference with Gemma 2 Blog Post

Creators & Guests

• Cristi Cotovan - Editor
• Beth Fisher - Producer
• Bret Fisher - Host
• Ken Collins - Guest
• Nirmal Mehta - Host

• (00:00) - Intro
• (01:26) - AI in Recruitment at Torc
• (03:25) - AI for Day to Day Workflows
• (04:44) - Notion AI and RAG
• (07:20) - Creating Your Own AI Search Solution
• (13:59) - Choosing the Right LLM for the Job
• (20:55) - Personal AI and Long Context Windows
• (25:10) - Future of Personal Fine-Tuned Models
• (25:52) - AI Assistants in Meetings
• (27:34) - Temperature and AI Hallucinations
• (32:07) - Agents and Tool Integration
• (39:31) - Apple Intelligence and Personal AI
• (44:56) - AI Apps on Mobile
• (50:00) - LoRA

You can also support my free material 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 Box
Homepage bretfisher.com

Bret explores the spectrum of user interfaces and tools available for managing Kubernetes clusters as of Autumn 2024.
This solo episode touches on both paid and open-source options, looking at their features, benefits, and drawbacks. Key tools covered include Lens, Aptakube, K8Studio, Visual Studio Code's Kubernetes extension, K9S, Portainer, and Meshery.

Bret also discusses specialized tools like Headlamp and the Argo CD dashboard, and their specific use cases and advantages.

★Topics★

• Lens
• Aptakube
• K8Studio
• K9s
• Kubernetes Dashboard
• Portainer
• Meshery
• Headlamp

Creators & Guests

• Cristi Cotovan - Editor
• Beth Fisher - Producer
• Bret Fisher - Host

• (00:00) - Intro
• (01:43) - Paid UI Offerings
• (02:22) - Lens
• (03:42) - Aptakube and K8Studio
• (04:30) - Free and Open Apps
• (05:42) - K9s
• (06:45) - SaaS Offerings
• (07:32) - Web Dashboards
• (08:08) - Portainer
• (09:08) - Meshery
• (11:14) - Headlamp
• (13:28) - Argo CD's Web Dashboard

You can also support my free material 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 Box
Homepage bretfisher.com

Bret and Nirmal are joined by Chris Kühl and Jose Blanquicet, the maintainers of Inspektor Gadget, the new eBPF-focused multitool, to see what it's all about.
Inspektor Gadget, aims to solve some serious problems with managing Linux kernel-level tools via Kubernetes. Each security, troubleshooting, or observability utility is packaged in an OCI image and deployed to Kubernetes (and now Linux directly) via the Inspektor Gadget CLI and framework.

Watch the video version on YouTube.

★Topics★
Inspektor Gadget website
Inspektor Gadget Docs
GitHub Repository

Creators & Guests

• Cristi Cotovan - Editor
• Beth Fisher - Producer
• Bret Fisher - Host
• Nirmal Mehta - Host
• Chris Kühl - Guest
• Jose Blanquicet - Guest

• (00:00) - Intro
• (01:33) - Why Inspektor Gadget?
• (05:49) - Who is Inspektor Gadget For?
• (21:07) - Windows Nodes Support
• (22:15) - Stress Testing and OOM
• (26:50) - Ensuring Safe Use of eBPF Tools
• (32:42) - Future Roadmap and Platform Support
• (36:17) - Getting Started with Inspektor Gadget

You can also support my free material 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 Box
Homepage bretfisher.com

Bret and Nirmal are joined by Maria Vechtomova, a MLOps Tech Lead and co-founder of Marvelous MLOps, to discuss the obvious and not-so obvious differences between a MLOps Engineer and traditional DevOps jobs.
Maria is here to discuss how DevOps engineers can adopt and operate machine learning workloads, also known as MLOps. With her expertise, we'll explore the challenges and best practices for implementing ML in a DevOps environment, including some hot takes on using Kubernetes.

There's also a video version to watch on YouTube.

★Topics★
Marvelous MLOps on LinkedIn
Marvelous MLOps Substack
Marvelous MLOps YouTube Channel

Creators & Guests

• Cristi Cotovan - Editor
• Beth Fisher - Producer
• Bret Fisher - Host
• Maria Vechtomova - Guest
• Nirmal Mehta - Host

• (00:00) - Intro
• (02:04) - Maria's Content
• (03:22) - Tools and Technologies in MLOps
• (09:21) - DevOps vs MLOps: Key Differences
• (19:22) - Transitioning from DevOps to MLOps
• (22:52) - Model Accuracy vs Computational Efficiency
• (24:46) - MLOps with Sensitive Data
• (29:10) - MLOps Roadmap and Getting Started
• (32:36) - Tools and Platforms for MLOps
• (37:14) - Adapting MLOps Practices to Future Trends
• (44:08) - Is Golang an Option for CI/CD Automation?

You can also support my free material 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 Box
Homepage bretfisher.com

Bret and Nirmal were joined by Emile Vauge, CTO of Traefik Labs to talk all about Traefik 3.0.
We talk about what's new in Traefik 3, 2.x to 3.0 migrations, Kubernetes Gateway API, WebAssembly (Cloud Native Wasm), HTTP3, Tailscale, OpenTelemetry, and much more!

Watch the video version on YouTube.

★Topics★
Traefik Website
Traefik Labs Community Forum
Traefik's YouTube Channel
Gateway API helper CLI
ingress2gateway migration tool

Creators & Guests

• Cristi Cotovan - Editor
• Beth Fisher - Producer
• Bret Fisher - Host
• Nirmal Mehta - Host
• Emile Vauge - Guest

 

• (00:00) - Intro
• (02:20) - Origins of Traefik
• (05:01) - The Road to 3.0
• (06:20) - Balancing Stability and Innovation
• (08:25) - Migration to Traefik 3.0
• (14:58) - WebAssembly and Plugins in Traefik
• (21:43) - Gateway API and gRPC Support
• (30:32) - Gateway API Components and Configuration
• (33:35) - Tools for Gateway API Management
• (40:08) - OpenTelemetry Integration
• (47:21) - Future Plans and Community Contributions

You can also support my free material 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 Box
Homepage bretfisher.com

Bret is joined by DockerSlim (now mintoolkit) founder Kyle Quest, to show off how to slim down your existing images with various options.
The slimming down includes distroless images like Chainguard Images and Nix. We also look at using the new "mint debug" feature to exec into existing images and containers on Kubernetes, Docker, Podman, and containerd. Kyle joined us for a two-hour livestream to discuss mint’s evolution.

Watch a video version on YouTube.

★Topics★
Mint repository in GitHub

Creators & Guests

• Cristi Cotovan - Editor
• Beth Fisher - Producer
• Bret Fisher - Host
• Kyle Quest (aka Q) - Guest

• (00:00) - Intro
• (02:26) - The Evolution of Docker Slim
• (04:43) - Docker Slim's First Feature
• (10:04) - Forcing Change is Not Always Possible
• (13:29) - Docker Slim Name Change to Mintoolkit
• (15:13) - Dive vs Mint
• (18:45) - Mint and the Problem with Container Debugging
• (28:25) - AI-Assisted Debugging
• (34:46) - Hands-On Debugging Examples
• (41:27) - Debugging a Podman Image
• (49:00) - Kubernetes Debugging Example
• (59:00) - What is KoolKits?
• (01:05:48) - Future Plans for Mintoolkit
• (01:06:44) - cdebug: Dedicated Debugging Tool for Containers

You can also support my free material 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 Box
Homepage bretfisher.com

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 Channel
Groundcover Repository in GitHub
Groundcover YouTube Channel
Join the Groundcover Slack

Creators & 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 free material 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 Box
Homepage bretfisher.com