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Daniel Bryant @ #KubeCon Profile picture
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May 30 • 15 tweets • 14 min read
#KubeCon EU Takeaway 2: ➡️ Platforms and “golden paths” enable productivity and reduce developer friction

I saw several great talks, and also presented on why I think golden paths and platform engineering are the next big thing 🔥

Let's explore this in more detail: 🧵 👇
The first mention of "golden paths" was from @MercedesBenz in the opening keynote, where they talked about the K8s-based platform they had built over the past 7 years 🏎️

Lots of thought, effort, and iteration had been applied to the dev experience 🧰

@MercedesBenz Golden paths are all about making it easy for a developer to code, ship, and run applications; to go from biz idea, to code, to test, to running in prod, to collecting telemetry to enable iteration ⚡

There can be one golden path or many, depending on your use cases 🛣️
@MercedesBenz One of my personal highlights from KubeCon EU was getting on the stage again to present “From Kubernetes to PaaS to… err what’s next?”

And guess what, I was talking about golden paths 😁

@MercedesBenz I shared highlights and challenges from my software engineering career, both as a developer and a platform engineer 💻

My key lessons:
- Treat the platform as a product
- Good devx needs good ux
- Focus on workflow and tools interoperability

@MercedesBenz As a platform engineer, you have to talk to your customer in order to build effective platforms and golden paths

i.e. Platform engineers must talk to developers and collect requirements 👂

(May sound obvious, but trust me, I've seen many counter-examples when I was consulting)
@MercedesBenz Thanks to @PaulaLKennedy for capturing this sentiment 🙏

“Watch your customers actually using your platform and you’ll learn a lot!”

@MercedesBenz @PaulaLKennedy These aren't just my thoughts. I'm standing on the shoulders of giants here, particularly my awesome guests on the @ambassadorlabs podcasts 🎙️

@MercedesBenz @PaulaLKennedy @ambassadorlabs I also explored the role of a platform engineer in more detail. Check out my earlier thread about this 🧵:

@MercedesBenz @PaulaLKennedy @ambassadorlabs Having seen @kelseyhightower and @scottcjohnston present a great fireside chat at #DockerCon, I mused that the "someone that can come in and make 10 other developers more productive" that Kelsey was talking about in this quote is a platform engineer 🤯

@MercedesBenz @PaulaLKennedy @ambassadorlabs @kelseyhightower @scottcjohnston You can find the slides for my KubeCon talk "KubeCon EU 2022: From Kubernetes to PaaS to... err what's next" here:

slideshare.net/dbryant_uk/kub…
@MercedesBenz @PaulaLKennedy @ambassadorlabs @kelseyhightower @scottcjohnston Want to learn more? My top 5 #KubeConEU takeaways can be found here: 🏆

@MercedesBenz @PaulaLKennedy @ambassadorlabs @kelseyhightower @scottcjohnston And the accompanying blog post here 📝

blog.getambassador.io/kubecon-eu-202…
@MercedesBenz @PaulaLKennedy @ambassadorlabs @kelseyhightower @scottcjohnston Keen to learn more? The @ambassadorlabs team and I are also offering "lunch and learn" sessions, where we buy you lunch and dive deep into a topic of your choice.

Sign up for the Golden Path Pizza Party 🍕 :

getambassador.io/the-golden-pat…
@MercedesBenz @PaulaLKennedy @ambassadorlabs @kelseyhightower @scottcjohnston Thanks for reading this 🧵 Please reach out with any questions!

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More from @danielbryantuk

Daniel Bryant @ #KubeCon Profile picture
May 29
My top five takeaways from #KubeCon:

1. Cloud education is vitally important
2. Platforms and “golden paths” enable productivity
3. Developer experience is top of mind
4. Cloud networking is simplifying
5. Increasing focus on security

Let's explore 1 in more detail 🧵 👇
First, the complete #KubeConEU summary blog post that provides in-depth coverage can be found here:

blog.getambassador.io/kubecon-eu-202…
Takeaway 1 ➡️ The cloud native community continues to grow: Education is vitally important

@pritianka mentioned in her opening keynote that 65% of attendees were new to KubeCon. And a lot of these folks were new to the cloud native space

More, and new, education is needed
Read 12 tweets
Daniel Bryant @ #KubeCon Profile picture
Apr 29
My top Twitter threads on cloud, containers, and microservices for this year so far:

- Platform engineering
- API gateway vs service mesh
- @Kubernetesio debugging
- @Docker chaos testing
- Fast dev/test with Telepresence
- @buildpacks_io
- Microservice testing

A 🧵 of 🧵 s 👇
I'm predicting big things for the "platform engineering" space over the next year. Whether you ❤️ or 😡 the name, I think this is the new DevOps.

Watch this space for lots of knowledge sharing, innovation, and VC money 💰 !

A critical part of your platform is the communication infrastructure ☎️

I think there is a lot of innovation -- and potential confusion -- in the cloud native API gateway and service mesh spaces (and n/s vs e/w 🧭 )

Read 9 tweets
Daniel Bryant @ #KubeCon Profile picture
Apr 22
Testing microservice-based systems is hard 😢

With that said, software testing in general is challenging, but to paraphrase the late great B.I.G.: "mo' services, mo' problems" 💰

Here are some key references and thinking points 🧵 👇
I think a lot of testing challenges come with a misunderstanding about coupling and cohesion 🤔

As I wrote back in 2018, these two core architectural properties massively impact your ability to test: danielbryantuk.medium.com/microservice-t…
Think about coupling and cohesion when designing microservices (yeah, yeah, I know, but I mean seriously think about this, and even do some upfront design) 🎨

codingthearchitecture.com/2017/10/11/evo…
Read 12 tweets
Daniel Bryant @ #KubeCon Profile picture
Apr 14
Are you looking to perform simple chaos testing on your @Docker setup to check your system's and microservices' resilience and security?

For example, do you want to spike CPU, memory, i/o, in a container and see what happens?

My top three tools to get started with 🧵 👇
First, you'll need some basic visibility/observability into what's going on.

I've recently been using @bcicen_'s excellent "ctop" (shown in my first tweet): github.com/bcicen/ctop 📊

Once I've seen something obvious, then I run "docker container top 20fa446aebf..." 🔍
The CPU burning container I'm showing above is using hub.docker.com/r/jfusterm/str…

There are a bunch of options to mess with CPU, memory, i/o 😁

(Note that this is a very old image, and although it's an Alpine base running simple Linux commands, this could still be a security risk)
Read 9 tweets
Daniel Bryant @ #KubeCon Profile picture
Apr 8
Looking to get fast feedback when testing microservices, but can't run all the services on your local machine? 🤯

Are you using @kubernetesio and stuck in a slow build-push-test cycle? 🐢

Let me show you the power of the new (beta) @Docker Desktop Telepresence extension 🧵 👇 Image
At last week's @Docker community all-hands, @scottcjohnston announced the new beta Docker Desktop extension functionality 🥳

@gtardif followed this up with a great live demo 🙌

You can read more about this in my summary blog post: blog.getambassador.io/happy-birthday…
In a nutshell, @Docker desktop (DD) extensions enable partners (and in the future, you) to add exciting new functionality directly to the DD UI.

The @ambassadorlabs team was chosen as one of the first partners to try this out, and due to popular demand, we added Telepresence Image
Read 17 tweets
Daniel Bryant @ #KubeCon Profile picture
Mar 27
Currently thinking about how API gateways and service mesh can work together, now and in the future:

- North-south traffic
- API as a product
- Migrating to the cloud
- Zonal architecture vs zero trust

A thread 🧵 👇
Traditionally API gateways have handled north-south (ingress) traffic and service meshes have handled east-west (service-to-service) communication

We used to think external access and choose an API gateway. And recently we used to think internal access and choose a service mesh
Increasingly, with a focus on design thinking (and rapid product iteration), migration to the cloud, and enhanced security, the boundary between API gateway and service mesh is becoming less clear
Read 24 tweets

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