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The Cloud Show with Magnus Mårtensson ft. Annie Talvasto - Ep. 19
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Jan 29, 2024
Join this live session with Magnus Mårtensson ft. Annie Talvasto for the next episode of The Cloud Show with Magnus Mårtensson on January 24, at 01:05 PM (EST). The show is about cloud leadership and all the important questions relating to cloud projects. Certainly, many matters when a company is going to and wants to be successful in the cloud, are about technology. However, there are many additional matters, adjacent to technology, that we also need to tend to regarding business strategy, human resources, organizational change, planning for a technical cloud approach, and many more questions. These conversations are critical for a healthy cloud and for a swift and accurate cloud approach. GUEST SPEAKER Annie Talvasto is an award-winning international technology speaker and leader. She has been recognized with the CNCF Ambassador and Azure MVP awards. Annie has co-organized the Kubernetes & CNCF Finland meetup since 2017. She has spoken at technology conferences worldwide, including KubeCon + CloudNativeCon, Microsoft Build & Ignite, Future Tech, and NDC. In the past, she has also served as a track chair for KubeCon + CloudNativeCon and has been hosting Cloud Native Live, a weekly livestream by CNCF, since 2021. Annie is an experienced technology project & marketing leader, specializing in project management, developer & tech marketing, events, and leading cross-organizational virtual teams. Skilled in managing complex and changing projects & teams and creating value in the sales pipeline through marketing and product. 📺 CSharp TV - Dev Streaming Destination http://csharp.tv 🔗 C# Corner - Community of Software and Data Developers https://www.c-sharpcorner.com
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0:00
Hello again, everyone
0:02
Welcome back to another episode of the Cloud Show. As usual, we always have a good guest
0:09
and today we have a great one. We have Anita Lasto with us today
0:12
She is a CNCF Ambassador, that means Cloud Native Computing Foundation. She is a Microsoft MVP and she is the CMO of VSHN
0:22
I do not know what that is. We'll ask her. Today, the topic is going to be Cloud Compute Hosting Options
0:29
and when to use Kubernetes. Ani is really good with Kubernetes. When to use it and when to not
0:35
when do you use a PaaS service instead. Thank you for joining us today on the Cloud Show
0:40
Hello, Ani
0:52
Hi. Glad to be here. Yeah. Good to see you. You are all over the place
0:59
You are from Finland, but you live in Switzerland and various things. What's going on
1:05
Yeah. I live in Zurich, Switzerland for two years now, so relatively fresh facing these corners
1:12
But I do speak a lot around the world. During 2022, for example
1:17
I did 30 conferences all the way from America to Australia, to Japan and whatnot
1:23
so it's a bit of travel. That's great. You keep yourself busy with CNCF
1:30
with being an MVP, being in the community, speaking all those things
1:34
but you also have a day job. What's VSHN? Yeah. It's pronounced vision
1:39
so just like all in one go. It's one of the leading companies in Switzerland for DevOps
1:46
We have both services and products around DevOps, Kubernetes, containers, OpenShift, all of these things
1:52
I am the CMO there, so I handle marketing, but I am very much a coder and technical person at heart
1:57
which I think you have to be if you're working with DevOps topics full-time
2:03
I agree with that. I know that you can deal with all the things
2:07
DevOps obviously, and plenty with Kubernetes, which is the reason actually that I wanted to talk to you
2:14
When I said I want to talk to Annie, what should we talk about? It was like Kubernetes was the first thing that came up
2:19
You're happy to go with that? Yeah, of course. Kubernetes is one of
2:23
my favorite topics in the world. Point of question to start off, of course
2:28
I see a lot of companies start to use containerized applications and setting up
2:34
clusters and running their clusters, maybe running them in the Cloud and so forth
2:37
and then finding that they are very challenged with actually maintaining that
2:42
securing it, updating it, keeping it, just keeping it, the upkeep, the operations
2:47
Is it true that a lot of companies are going to containers because they should be going to containers
2:55
not because they actually know what they're doing? I think that's a good and a challenging question
3:00
I think the answer is, well, it's yes and no at the same time
3:05
Because I think Kubernetes and containers, particularly Kubernetes in particular, and containers as well
3:10
is one of those technologies that you can essentially use them for any use case
3:15
and it wouldn't technically be wrong. But at the same time, do you need it
3:20
Might be more of a relevant question in some cases. Kubernetes, for example, really is built for scale
3:27
It's really built for all of those scaling cases. It is container orchestration because it is about
3:34
managing bunch of containers very efficiently at the same go. Then usually, the first question that you can ask yourself
3:43
do I need Kubernetes for this case, is that do you have the scale that warrants this
3:48
If you want to do a practice round, of course, go ahead, host your personal block there
3:53
Maybe wouldn't recommend it, but you can go crazy. You can do that
3:56
Yeah, exactly. But obviously, after you answer the question of, do I use Kubernetes
4:01
If the answer is yes, then you have to go to the question of, how do I use Kubernetes
4:06
Which I think it's even more of a bigger question in some cases because it is a bit of a tricky thing to do
4:12
tricky to use, and there's so many things that you can do with it
4:16
A lot of questions there. I know. With something as technically capable and rather advanced
4:25
such as Kubernetes, running your own clusters and all those things, with that comes quite a bit of responsibility
4:31
You want a lot of power, then you have a lot of responsibility, as the expression goes
4:37
I've been saying that for the application developer who builds an application and hosts it somewhere
4:46
Kubernetes and containers and all that good stuff, it's like a platform service for the application developer
4:53
They just put their application somewhere and it runs. But that is still not really the case for
4:59
the IT operations team that take care of that environment. It's more than that for them
5:05
It's more of an, for me, that becomes more of an infrastructure service
5:10
We're taking care of a cluster. Does that make sense? It does make sense in a lot of ways
5:16
I think particularly it's interesting that you bring up the platform word or concept as a whole
5:22
because that is very much a trend word in the world of Cloud Native and Kubernetes
5:28
Because it is actually, I think, it's not even just a trend word
5:33
it is the next iteration of how we think about how you
5:37
enroll your company or how you use Kubernetes in an efficient way, for example
5:41
The platform engineering as a whole, and thinking about your Kubernetes infrastructure
5:46
or your DevOps infrastructure and all of these things as a internal development or developer platform
5:53
is taking the world by the storm. It is still relatively not early phases per se
5:59
There's a lot of material, a lot of discussion around this. But let's say that I think the most traditional companies
6:05
might not be thinking in these terms yet as of right now
6:09
So I think that is a very good take, in my opinion as well, because you're thinking about it holistically
6:14
and you're thinking about, okay, we have these people who are managing this and that's really important
6:18
But then for the end user, which would be the developers in the company, for example
6:22
it should be as easy to use and no brainer as possible
6:27
Like any platform. Yeah. Because I work with some public sector customers right now
6:33
and they come from a non-Cloud world. And that world is and has always been in a place where
6:39
oh, we're going to run a new application, we have to order a new server, right
6:44
A virtual machine in these days, but sometimes you actually have to get new hardware
6:48
because it's specific hardware and so on. So that's sort of that mindset
6:52
And on the other end of the scale is the mindset that I don't care where it runs, just run the thing
6:58
I'm expecting it to run, I'm expecting it to have a certain capacity
7:02
and that's just dealt with, thank you very much. So on that spectrum
7:08
where Kubernetes, is that in the middle? Is it a little bit of both because you manage more
7:15
but it's still a platform service and making weird gestures. It's not fun, little sock puppets
7:24
Yeah, and I think that's an interesting question. And to be frank, I think it's in the way that, okay
7:30
Kubernetes itself is very tricky to use and to expect your end users always use Kubernetes as it is
7:36
it's just not going to happen. I nowadays, in addition to the traditional
7:41
software engineering DevOps and whatnot, I talk a lot about MLOps as well
7:45
And in particularly in those kinds of cases, expecting for data scientists, for example
7:51
who are developing AI models to have knowledge of Kubernetes they probably need some, but you have to pick your battles
7:59
and so forth, so you have to choose it. But at the same time for a fully fledged
8:07
like internal developer platform, development platform, cloud native platform, or one of these
8:12
you would usually have a bit more than Kubernetes as well in the mix. So you would have Kubernetes likely as the base of it
8:18
in some ways, and then you would have a lot of the, for example, CNCF add-ons from there
8:23
So you would likely use, if you need auto scaling, you would use KEDA
8:28
If you need GitOps and you have Flux, Argo, CD, all of these different options
8:32
So that's why also I think the platform term is getting so much widespread attention
8:37
because it actually encompasses the fact that it's just not just Kubernetes
8:41
there's a host of other things there, which can also use productivity tooling as well
8:45
And all of these kinds of things, in addition to, more traditionally viewed CNCF projects
8:50
that are like Kubernetes add-ons as well. Yeah, yeah, good point. And so a couple of things spring to mind here
8:58
One is that Microsoft is, for example, not telling us exactly how they are building
9:03
the higher level services that I like to call them, the services that we are seeing now in AI and ML
9:10
All of those are built with a lot of building blocks. You have storage, you have messaging
9:15
you have all kinds of things, data ingestion, pipelines and things, and of course compute
9:21
So I'm sure that Microsoft are running a bunch of automated scalable clusters
9:26
and containerizing the execution of various algorithms that you want to run as an ML, as a data scientist, right
9:34
I'm sure they're doing that. I'm sure they're using it a lot, but they're not telling us exactly how they're doing it
9:40
But that's the thing to achieve this massive scale. Exactly, and it is true
9:44
Like JTP, the open AI, there is a KubeCon keynote a few years back as well
9:49
where they've talked about how they use Kubernetes and how they utilize these platforms
9:53
So that is an interesting point to start digging into. And there's CNCF project additions there
10:00
So ML, like Kubeflow, for example, for managing all of those things where you'd need to have a self-service way
10:06
for data scientists, for example, using these. But there's so many of them
10:09
There's over like 150 or something, you know, from CNCF that you can tap into
10:14
So there's so many things that you can select. But obviously keeping in mind always
10:18
that not just run into random projects, just because they're cool, even though I love cool projects
10:24
and I'm the one who's always like, this is cool, this is cool, this is cool. But at the same time, think about what your application
10:31
what your infrastructure, what they actually need, what is truly needed for you
10:34
because you don't also want to add complexity just because, because that's never gonna end really well either
10:40
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Very, very good point. So the other thing that I thought about
10:45
from what you said before is you said that there are some parts of running Kubernetes
10:51
that are highly advanced and you can do very good things with it
10:55
So don't get me wrong. I mean, it's great, except that you have to be able
10:58
to be on top of these things. What would you say are the biggest challenges
11:03
for a company that wants to, are considering running something like Kubernetes
11:08
Oh, the technical people are coming to the manager saying, we're gonna use Kubernetes
11:12
we're gonna run our clusters. Managers don't know what that is. So what are the biggest concerns that they should be
11:18
or the company should be focusing on now? What's gonna be the hardest
11:23
Yeah, and there's actually, I think there's a, well, it depends on the maturity level of your company
11:27
and like as far as cloud native and cloud use to begin with goes
11:30
as well as the technical knowledge within your teams. But I think for me as a kind of Kubernetes
11:36
and cloud native CNCF enthusiast, I'm very deep in Kubernetes topics constantly
11:42
but it always surprises me. And I think it shouldn't really surprise me
11:46
that how much actually people still need sometimes relatively quote unquote, basic information and law knowledge on Kubernetes
11:54
But so CNCF does a survey every year where they look into what are the trends
11:59
around these usages around Kubernetes, cloud native projects and whatnot. And what are the, to me, the most interesting part
12:06
what are the challenges that people are actually facing using these products? And for years now, there's essentially been two
12:12
I think in the really like high up, either the number one and two are like relatively there
12:18
has been knowledge and tooling, like knowledge, essentially education on how to use Kubernetes in the right way
12:24
because it is complex as you said. And then the second one, which is rising
12:28
I think every year, security. So that's another side that I think is very much becoming
12:34
as well as has become a big topic. And I think will rise in popularity
12:39
and importance as we go on. But I do wanna give a shout out. They actually, I think released one of the new state
12:46
of CNCF and Kubernetes surveys like today. I haven't had the time to check it yet
12:50
So I have no hot off the press news, but like as a tip for everyone that if you're interested
12:56
these are kind of being published all the time. Well, once a year, but there's different areas
13:00
that you can check into their spin-offs, their security and whatnot. So highly recommend checking these out
13:05
if you're looking for, I think, peer support on, are you alone with your struggles, for example
13:11
Okay, cool. So that's great. Now, the sweet spot of using Kubernetes
13:19
I'm assuming you're gonna go with something like when it's automated, when you use DevOps and things
13:23
and that's okay. You can go with your baby. Like you can go with what your company does
13:28
and so forth, right? So when you really are in the flow, when you're in the zone, how good is it
13:33
What is it that you're doing right when you're doing it the right way
13:37
Like, ooh, sweet spot. Well, I think for me, at least with technology
13:42
with any technology, both with these and as well as anything, if things work, I'm happy. Yeah
13:50
Like that's kind of the minimum requirement and also the best case scenario, which is funny to kind of say
13:57
but I think that's kind of what it is. And obviously, like we can go into making things super optimized
14:02
and I do actually talk about that as well. And I think that should be considered for, you know
14:08
sustainability and cost optimization is a topic as well. But I think if those are hardwired into your requirements
14:14
on what your platform and your Kubernetes usage should be like, so cost-effective or sustainability
14:20
then that should be included in the, it works, you know, requirement
14:24
That is the requirement. And I think no one who uses Kubernetes is no stranger
14:29
to, you know, battling some weird error codes here and there and, but trying to figure out bugs and everything
14:35
But it's, you know, as I said, if it works, it works and I'm happy then, so that's it for me, at least
14:41
That's it for you. Okay, so you don't have, I mean, I guess that's a movable goalpost, right
14:46
Once you have figured some things out, there's always something new to optimize
14:51
or change and so forth, I guess. Yeah, and I think it's because I am a big proponent
14:55
for essentially like what makes sense for your infrastructure, your company and your situation
15:00
Like people, if I, so for example, I speak a lot about KEDA, which is auto-scaling
15:05
which I think it makes sense, like just from a very like logical standpoint, auto-scaling
15:11
So like, you know, you're saving money, you're saving environment, like resources as well
15:15
You're saving time, you don't have to do things manually. It all makes sense, but a lot of times
15:20
after I speak about it, people might come up to me after the conferences and talk about, you know
15:24
oh, for these and these reasons, we couldn't use it and they look a bit sad and I'm like, well, it's fine
15:31
Like you had your reasons, it makes sense. I think it's fine
15:35
No one has to force themselves to use it if it doesn't make sense for their use case for a variety of reasons
15:40
So, and I think that you just have to kind of, you know, deal with that as well
15:45
So it is very much a movable goalpost so you can figure out what works for you
15:49
in terms of what actually means it works for me. Yeah, yeah, definitely
15:54
So I guess I don't wanna, you know, end on a note
15:59
that says that you shouldn't use Kubernetes, but you know, what are some cases where people are just
16:05
they're getting in over their head. I mean, they shouldn't really be doing this
16:10
You were saying the scale thing initially, right? Yeah. If you don't have that scale
16:14
then why are you using Kubernetes? You should be using a web app, right
16:21
Is that like the only reason to not, you know, go for this, you know
16:25
highly capable and advanced machinery? I do honestly think the scale is often the root cause
16:31
for these scenarios. Yeah. Because particularly from the level of like, you know
16:36
Kubernetes is built for scale. If you're not managing that scale, it's gonna be a bit complex for you to use
16:43
But again, if you want to learn it, if you want to use it, I'm not gonna stop you
16:48
But at the same time, you know, if like, it's the same as like, okay
16:52
if you're, you know, sweeping with the broom, like you're sweeping with the broom, it's working
16:57
Do you need to have a hundred brooms at the same time, you know, working
17:01
If you just need one broom to sweep your house, no, you don't
17:06
So, you know, yeah. So these are one of the reasons. And obviously that, because that brings all the scale
17:11
like the scale means that it brings the complexity and it means a lot of different managing issues
17:16
and everything. So then you're kind of creating more issues for yourself than you're solving necessarily
17:21
But then you have obviously levels to it. So you can start using Kubernetes relatively nowadays
17:27
quite easily with AKS, EKS, you know, one of these. But at the same time, there's a lot of people who I talk to
17:34
who use Kubernetes, but then they might say that, oh, Kubeflow itself was a bit too, like added a bit
17:39
too much complexity to our, you know, ML, AI scenario. But Kubernetes is a good backend and infrastructure
17:45
that they can use. And I think that's also like the other level, like, yes
17:49
sure you can use Kubernetes for the scale that you have, which might be the threshold that you might meet
17:54
quite easily. But then we're thinking about, you know, Kubeflow or any of these like add-ons on from, you know
18:01
Argo CD, GitOps, whatnot, or any of these sides, you know, some people need multiple different type of service meshes
18:07
Would I recommend it? Not necessarily, but if you do, then you might need to plug in Measury
18:13
which is a service mesh management plane. So then you get into these situations where to solve
18:19
for the scale or complexities that your application brings, you're essentially adding more complexity
18:24
which makes sense. But also if you don't fundamentally need these services
18:28
you're just adding complexity for the sake of complexity and will probably run into some issues down the road
18:34
Yeah, definitely. So you're an Azure gal, same as I'm an Azure guy
18:39
We have that in common. So what would you be calling out in terms of other services
18:47
that are like your favorite services to use together with your clusters and stuff like, you know
18:52
application insights and what else commonly goes with a Kubernetes deployment? Well, I think there's too many to mention
19:01
And as an Azure MVP, this is honestly the most stressful. Exactly, this is the most stressful question for me
19:07
because I feel like I want to mention everything, but then I'm like, I don't know. Yeah, but it depends on your use case
19:14
Like I am nowadays playing around a lot with Azure AI services as well
19:18
and open AI connections there and everything, mostly because that's kind of where my demos are
19:23
for example, at the moment, but there's so many. And to be frank, like I think, and Vision as well
19:30
we offer a lot of cost optimization services. So from that side, actually just, you know
19:34
basic billing help and, you know, advising services, you know, are actually really useful
19:41
that I think people overlook quite often for basic management. And to be also honest
19:47
policies are a big one that people quite often overlook, both for security and for costs as well
19:53
and for like sustainability. So I do like a lot of these that are in-built
19:57
in Azure as well. So you have to measure, same as with everything else
20:01
You need to measure your cost. You need to measure, well, I mean, to monitor if you are secure
20:07
and you need to measure how much usage you have in your cluster and so forth
20:12
All right, that makes a lot of sense. Well, I think that's it for time for this episode
20:18
And I think it was a really, really good one. I think it's a strong, you know
20:21
a walkthrough of how does this even work? What should you be thinking about
20:27
And I guess security and automation and scaling. Yeah. Like the big ones
20:35
These are big ones, yeah. And I think it's always depends on the, I keep saying it depends on the scenario
20:40
but it really does. So it's the point. It depends. It is, it is. It's the favorite answer from any consultant
20:46
Yeah, it is. But I do think you can really see, for example
20:51
the need for auto-scaling from how fast KEDA has moved. Well, it's always relative
20:57
but KEDA has gone from like a sandbox to graduated project, for example
21:01
And you can see the people are really using it, loving it and so forth
21:05
Or to be honest, there's obviously the cluster auto-scaler and all of these things as well
21:09
But these are a lot of use, like user-scale scenarios for Kubernetes
21:14
because it's built for scale. But then auto-scaling really helps with a lot of the cases
21:18
And I think, yeah, security is a big one as well. And we really do have to pay attention to it
21:22
And so the trend is to work towards getting to a place
21:26
where your Kubernetes scenario feels like a platform service scenario. That's what you want to get to
21:34
You shouldn't be thinking about that other stuff so much. Exactly. That is the trend currently
21:40
and it is gaining traction constantly. And you can see it in KubeCon programs
21:45
You can see in the way people talk about these things. There's so many good resources around that as well
21:51
and so forth. So there's a lot to dive deeper into there as well
21:55
if anyone's interested. All right. Well, thank you so much, Annie, for being on the show today
22:01
And thank you everyone who was watching the Cloud Show, and I'll see you again next week
22:06
Thank you for having me. ♪♪�
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