Cloud2030 crew examines the real cost of complexity in the systems that we are building.  Most critically, we re-examine if there's a real limit to how complex the systems can become?

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels [ID 258173]

Jevons Paradox for Complexity?

How can GitOps and Infrastructure as Code scale your team's ability to write automation?  We answer how to take your DevOps to the next level.  We really dig into what the automation challenges are and how you can do better as you build an integrated infrastructure system. 

And of course, we did talk about Env0 and how Env0 solves the problem. And you will learn a lot about Env0 during this podcast.

Tim and I did discuss what it takes to build real infrastructure, automation pipelines,

Transcript: https://otter.ai/u/6ccxxk0MDmB67_xhlS3gohqM7gM

Let's automate GitOps and IaC! [1x1 w Tim Davis from Env0]

Good APIs are hard to design!  Making them long lasting and scalable is even harder.

We discussed two aspects of API design.  First, making about Event Bus for system integration and then RackN CTO, Greg Althaus, discusses what his team considers a good API design from Digital Rebar.

Transcript: https://otter.ai/u/2Pz3LwG4qPl58s3ewwGFCCFmg8w
Photo by Tsunami Green from Pexels [ID 5192790]

Challenges of API Design

Cloud provisioning is very difficult when you go beyond simple provisioning and start thinking about how to to stitch together infrastructure in a repeatable way!

Specifically, today's episode is a deep dive into Terraform usage patterns.

We get very hands on as we talk about how you manage state files and how you connect things together with Terraform.

We will spend a significant amount of time discussing in the fall because building infrastructure in a scalable automatable way, is a critical topic for the group.

This is an ongoing topic for us - stay tuned for more episodes!

Transcript: https://otter.ai/u/A-NgZOfa1xeIPA1uQOh8_bSStck
Photo by Artem Beliaikin from Pexels [ID 1079033]

Terraform Usage Patterns (Gitops, IaC, Templates)

When working with orchestration in automated systems, how do you find the right balance between things that are event driven and things that are workflow driven, or more linear? 

We go through some of the history of where we went from linear orchestration (Ansible) to timed orchestration (Chef or Puppet). We also discussed SaltStack, which had an event driven system into it, but didn't gain the traction that we might have expected as we look at the amount of orchestration systems that are now coming to light. 

In this conversation, we address the balance between when you orchestrate and when you want to do workflow and linear transactions, and how to find that sweet spot. 

One of the things that we've determined is, there aren't a lot of tools that hit that sweet spot. And I think if you listen carefully, you'll see why.

Transcript: https://otter.ai/u/ynb8KndfUhKsTvQG6965ktepv-Y
Image: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-choir-singing-while-holding-a-flower-7569413/

Orchestration Balancing Events And Flows

Our quarterly book club meeting we picked Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss. This book is about negotiation, which we found fascinating because we are all entrepreneurial in some way and handle sales. 

Next quarter, we'll talk about a related book that we brought up, which is The Two Butt Rule.

https://otter.ai/u/g1zFW444R5NseB8rsVe4StMYWEU?utm_source=copy_url

Chriss Voss: Never Split the Difference [Cloud2030 Book Club]

In this episode, we continue our TechOps series, diving deep into the topic of container management. As containers become increasingly mainstream, the need to effectively manage and orchestrate these lightweight, purpose-built environments is crucial. 

We'll explore the distinctions between container management and orchestration, discussing the different tools, techniques and trade-offs involved. We'll also hear insights from the RackN team on how they've approached container lifecycle management within their own infrastructure management platform, Digital Rebar.

This is a rich discussion that touches on everything from Kubernetes to system design trade-offs. So let's jump in and learn how to wrangle those containers!

Containers Manager [TechOps]

Is high availability always a good thing? Today our discussion takes an operations perspective. We look at places where you were over or under committing high availability, where you were confusing disaster recovery for high availability, and perhaps even securing the wrong service or looking at it the wrong way. We cover all of these scenarios with practical, hands-on examples that I know you will get a lot out of. 

This is good prep for talking about HA clusters, because the idea of coordinating and monitoring systems is core to HA and HA clusters. In our journey with RackN, a lot of customers who thought they needed very aggressive HA systems, once they are confronted with the overhead of maintaining an HA system, have to ask if you really need it. We started with an active/passive HA implementation using third party monitoring to monitor for when the system failed and spin up the second system, creating a live streaming back up to the failover system.

Transcript: https://otter.ai/u/vOVZadHvRTFCZGqcI2DC3nQzDgY?utm_source=copy_url

High Availability [TechOps Series]

This podcast episode explores the challenges of process improvement in IT operations, using examples from data centers, automotive, and cybersecurity. 

The discussion covers the slow evolution of secure boot, the difficulties cloud providers face in translating their processes to the broader market, and the emergence of vehicle-to-anything ecosystems. The group delves into the need for standardization and security in vehicle ecosystems, as well as the policy management and automation challenges enterprises face.

The conversation also examines the balance of trust in technology versus human expertise, particularly around the use of AI and the risks of generative AI. The CrowdStrike incident is analyzed, with debate around the responsibility of CrowdStrike, Microsoft, and Delta's operational controls. The impact on cyber insurance and the need for broader risk management approaches are also discussed, highlighting the interconnectedness of process improvement and risk management, and the call for greater industry collaboration to address these challenges.

Transcript: https://otter.ai/u/93JhNjmekqf0ttX21gsupz4OeBY?utm_source=copy_url

Process: Good, Bad And Ugly

This TechOps episode explores the challenges of processing events and logs in technical operations. 

The discussion covers the importance of understanding the intent and purpose of building systems downstream from eventing and logging systems. Key topics include the trade-offs between real-time and delayed event processing, the principle of least privilege, and strategies for handling event buffering and dropping. The conversation also touches on security concerns related to event and log data.

The episode concludes with plans for future discussions on adding events and logging to scripts to make them more useful.

Reading Logs And Events [Techops]

This episode explores the challenges of processing events and logs in technical operations. The discussion covers the importance of understanding the intent and purpose of building systems downstream from eventing and logging systems. Key topics include the trade-offs between real-time and delayed event processing, the principle of least privilege, and strategies for handling event buffering and dropping. The conversation also touches on security concerns related to event and log data. The episode concludes with plans for future discussions on adding events and logging to scripts to make them more useful.

Reading Logs And Events [TechOps Series]

We dive deep into logging, tracing, metrics, observability, with a specific filter for automation and systems and infrastructure. 

There's a real challenge here of how you capture information from a running system in a way that provides the right information at the right time. That fundamentally is the question that we are working to answer throughout this really fascinating discussion about logging.

Transcript: https://otter.ai/u/msNO2gn1b0FP2lK7rSfplQrCrPQ?utm_source=copy_url

Logging [TechOps Series]

We dive deep into the technical details of BootC - a Red Hat-led technology that uses container-like definitions to describe machine boot processes. BootC is an important development, especially as companies embrace containers and seek a unified approach to machine configuration. 

RackN CTO, Greg Althaus, provides an in-depth overview of how BootC works, its key capabilities, and the potential benefits and challenges for operations teams. They explore topics like BootC's relationship to containers, the concept of immutability, different deployment methods, and the operational considerations around managing BootC at scale.

This conversation offers a balanced, non-Red Hat perspective on BootC, highlighting both its technical merits and the significant operational work required to successfully adopt and integrate it. Listeners will come away with a nuanced understanding of this emerging technology and the factors organizations should weigh as they evaluate BootC for their infrastructure.

BootC created Bare Metal Containers [TechOps]

We dive deep into the current state of the venture capital (VC) market, exploring the significant shifts and challenges faced by entrepreneurs and investors alike in the post-COVID landscape.
Key topics discussed include:

The decline in the allure of VC funding and the impact of "pump and flip" models

The market volatility and caution among venture firms due to economic factors

The changing focus of VCs towards sectors like healthcare, fintech, and deep tech

The challenges in building sustainable, billion-dollar companies

The rise of corporate venture capital and strategic investments

The potential for rational valuation adjustments and market consolidation

The importance of clearly articulating the problem being solved and achieving product-market fit

The conversation provides valuable insights for founders navigating the evolving VC ecosystem, as well as investors seeking to adapt their strategies to the changing market dynamics. Join Rob and Rich as they explore the future of VC and the strategies needed to succeed in this dynamic landscape.

State Of VCs

Today we go back to our book club and talk about Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg. It's really foundational work that has elements pulled into a lot of other books that we've already discussed, and I think it’s essential for people who are looking to be better leaders. It’s also great to learn how to communicate with more empathy, to frame and phrase questions and engagement that explains your feelings, needs and intents, and hear other people's needs. 

If that sounds a little bit too foo-foo for you, bear with me. This is a really, really, really powerful communication technique.

Transcript: https://otter.ai/u/2p1NpJOZbuLxixQVOKETzFZWk8A?utm_source=copy_url

Nonviolent Communication [Book Club]

We explore the certificate issue in which secure boot is potentially compromised because of certificates that have been compromised in ways they could be easily used as for an attack vector. This is a very significant flaw and something that should be on your purview and radar to fix. 

We're going to talk about what the issue is, why it's important, how secure boot works, and what you can do to mitigate this problem in your own infrastructure. This is a really important episode for anybody running or managing desktops, data centers or infrastructure of any type.

Transcript: https://otter.ai/u/59uYpJpra5SutJOpEB_bPZ2CUqI?utm_source=copy_url

UEFI Secure Boot Issue Discussion

We revisit edge infrastructure and the motivations behind building and managing edge infrastructure with an unusual take. In this case, we ask ourselves if all of these edge devices are becoming more software defined or becoming more standardized, off the shelf component tree. And will that change how we look at managing and running edge infrastructure? Will we shift compute and operations processes into these ever smarter devices? The answer is going to surprise you.

Transcript: https://otter.ai/u/tGIcIC1bijvaW4OkJNm9YCEBdOE?utm_source=copy_url

Software Defined Edge

We discuss Symbolic AI via LLMs for advanced reasoning in manufacturing and real-time analytics. Key points included leveraging symbolic representations and algebraic equations, utilizing knowledge graphs to improve model accuracy, and exploring agentic AI frameworks with specialized agents working together using swarm intelligence principles to tackle complex problems like anomaly detection and process optimization. The group also discussed the challenges of building trust in AI systems and the importance of capturing and storing questions and answers to build a knowledge base.

Symbolic AI

In this episode, we dive deeper into the new architectural trends for infrastructure designers in this coming decade, which is a transition from virtualization platforms first like VMware into containerized platforms first. But this time, we talk through the use of virtualization in containerized systems - keeping VMs but with what changes are necessary to make a containerized virtualization platform dominant instead of a virtualized virtualization platform.

Reference: 
https://kubevirt.io/user-guide/architecture/
https://www.redhat.com/en/technologies/cloud-computing/openshift/virtualization 

Virtualization in Containers (KubeVirt, OpenShift Virtualization)

The cloud2030 Tech Ops series is an ongoing discussion for us to create what I think of as 200 level content for tech and operations leaders, exploring really complex, deep topics in a thoughtful way to really extend your knowledge base and capabilities in the data center and infrastructure space. 

Today's episode talks about gitops and immutability, and what we're doing here is connecting together the operational concepts between controls and desired state communications and how that gets executed in infrastructure in an operations sense. Rather than a developer approach, this takes an operations approach. So if you are interested in how to manage immutability and what that means in infrastructure, this discussion is for you.

Gitops and Immutability

We talk about current events, the acquisition of data stacks and the closing of the HashiCorp acquisition by IBM. Later, we dive into the productivity of AI and what's going on - are companies really getting the benefits that they expect from AI chat bot integrations and what the challenges are? 

We touch base on a little bit of something more infrastructure focused, where I give a preview of work I've been doing on separating Kubernetes virtualization from Kubernetes development use cases, which is something that we will be talking about more in the future.


References:
https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/microsoft-just-put-this-controversial-notepad-feature-behind-a-paywall
https://www.ibm.com/new/announcements/ibm-to-acquire-datastax-helping-clients-bring-the-power-of-unstructured-data-to-enterprise-ai-applications
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ioc3r70HNLM
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dhinchcliffe_major-agentic-ai-news-for-cios-this-week-activity-7303122989498138624-jR2R/ 
20250227


Why is adding LLM into an App so hard?

This is one of those fun conversations where we're really diving not just into the tech but the enterprise consumption of the tech and how people are thinking about it. How does technology like Kubernetes evolve and get used in ways that the community is not thinking about and find a whole new path for adoption and commercialization?

If this is going on in your organization, we want to hear from you. We want you to be part of the conversation, because this is a really important transition point for the industry, for people questioning their VMware consumption, and for people looking to expand their Kubernetes footprints. 

Transcript: https://otter.ai/u/nEzH4t1JDEa51fvQFcWcFzMXmkE?utm_source=copy_url


KubeVirt in the Enterprise

Today we dive into RackN high availability technology and what we did to build consensus based raft HA capabilities directly into Digital Rebar. This is one of those episodes where we are talking specifically and only about Digital Rebar, so it is a vendored conversation from that perspective.

If you are building HA systems, or are interested in how HA systems work, this is a great session to learn firsthand from our experience!

Transcript: https://otter.ai/u/9lA9djczp5GkJbj12k0EzFUXw4g?utm_source=copy_url


HA in DRP [TechOps]

We deep dive into something seemingly very small, but with a lot of repercussions for how you manage and run a data center, and that is test scripts for servers. 

As you're going through a production cycle or a provisioning cycle, how do you test? What do you test? This topic was from a Reddit thread that we answered and then had a whole hour conversation about just how important and impactful this type of script is.

Transcript: https://otter.ai/u/Cb3yac8JHvlM2yqh72bA_CBPWgs?utm_source=copy_url


Writing Great Test Scripts [TechOps]

We springboard from DeepThinking AI and have a robust conversation about what impact DeepThink is having on the industry. We also discuss where we see things going into the dilemma of people building AI infrastructure and working to do that quickly, robustly and with strong governance. This is necessary to ensure that they can quickly update and manage that AI infrastructure that they're spending so much money to build, and this leads into a broader conversation about virtualization, containers and open shift.

Recorded Jan 30, 2025

Transcript: https://otter.ai/u/79JxdYOiXUoSS44pYP9bnZc4xN0?utm_source=copy_url

Reference: https://www.perplexity.ai/search/provide-an-extensive-and-detai-HmRlePfiTQ6LJG_X0SlB5g#8


DeepThink AI and Kubernetes

We step back in this episode of our Tech Ops series and talk about cloud self managed infrastructure and how you balance the competing concerns. We started from a report that RackN had commissioned talking about on premises Kubernetes, and mixing that into your IT infrastructure. 

Can you have a cloud broker? Can you do multi cloud, some sort of tried and true topics for cloud consideration, but through a new filter and through this repatriation idea of mixing and matching your IT Infrastructure? 

Transcript: https://otter.ai/u/FKGuQpV-5bQFVASAYDhNQJtuoKM?utm_source=copy_url

Resources:
https://store.repebble.com/
https://rackn.com/2025/03/18/ready-for-kubernetes-on-bare-metal/
https://www.reuters.com/technology/cybersecurity/google-agrees-buy-cybersecurity-startup-wiz-32-bln-ft-reports-2025-03-18/
https://gabrielsimmer.com/blog/kubernetes-plus-oneplus


Kubernetes on Prem vs Cloud

In this episode, we dive into all things quantum computing, starting from the idea that Microsoft managed to put a new quantum silicon chip together. We go all over quantum from compute to entanglement and everything in between.

Transcript: https://otter.ai/u/Tt282iKZEkt5nL3C3zCDf_-pEIE?utm_source=copy_url
References:
https://naumanahmad86.medium.com/is-the-mac-mini-m4-cluster-the-ultimate-machine-for-running-large-ai-models-0b6c6a2d9a18 
https://news.microsoft.com/source/features/innovation/microsofts-majorana-1-chip-carves-new-path-for-quantum-computing/
https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.19118


The Many Bits of Quantum State

The RackN teams provides an in-depth overview of how DHCP and PXE boot work along with highlights in their remote booting on a Raspberry Pi

Super Deep Dive into DHCP, PXE Boot, and Remote Installation

Joining us this week is Andrew Wertkin, Chief Strategy Officer at BlueCat. 
 
About BlueCat
BlueCat is the Adaptive DNS™ company. The company's mission is to help the world's largest organizations thrive on network complexity, from the edge to the core. To do this, BlueCat re-imagined DNS. The result – Adaptive DNS™ – is a dynamic, open, secure, scalable, and automated resource that supports the most challenging digital transformation initiatives, like adoption of hybrid cloud and rapid application development.

Andrew Wertkin from BlueCat talks DNS at the Edge

Carl Perry provides an in depth look at the history of Linux networking configuration leading up to IP Tables and NF Tables. 

BONUS Space Geeking at the end.

Network Security NFTables Vs IPTables : Distance DevOps #15

An excellent source for industry thought leadership in Edge Computing, Cloud Computing, DevOps, Open Source base on discussions at.the2030.cloud

the2030.cloud Podcast

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