Infrastructure & Ops Superstream: Platform Automation and Infrastructure as Code

Schedule

The time frames are only estimates and may vary according to how the class is progressing.

Sam Newman: Introduction (5 minutes) - 8:00am PT | 11:00am ET | 4:00pm UTC/GMT

• Sam Newman welcomes you to the Infrastructure & Ops Superstream.

Rosemary Wang: Can You Test Your Infrastructure as Code? (35 minutes) - 8:05am PT | 11:05am ET | 4:05pm UTC/GMT

• When you update your infrastructure as code modules and configurations and quickly push production changes, how do you know that your changes didn't break the system? Rosemary Wang discusses how to think about your infrastructure as code testing strategy and shows how some types of tests can flag potential misconfigurations to infrastructure as code before pushing to production. You'll learn about what kinds of tests are most effective for infrastructure as code and when it's worth the time to write them.
• Rosemary Wang, author of Infrastructure as Code, Patterns and Practices, works to bridge the technical and cultural barriers between infrastructure, security, and application development. She has a fascination for solving intractable problems as a contributor, public speaker, writer, and advocate of infrastructure automation tools.

Abby Bangser: Managing Your Internal Developer Platform as a Service (35 minutes) - 8:40am PT | 11:40am ET | 4:40pm UTC/GMT

• It’s becoming more common to view internal developer platforms as, well, any other software platform. This realization brings with it a set of expectations such as better user experience through discoverability of capabilities, self-serve and on-demand access, and low maintenance on the consumer side. These expectations also come with many patterns and techniques that can be leveraged, such as API-driven development, atomic changes, domain-driven design, and more. As an engineer you’ll need to evaluate several vendors for specific needs and to evaluate how to stitch these together into the developer experience that supports your organizational requirements. Abby Bangser looks at what it means to throw away the build-versus-buy idea and how combining the best of both may be the right solution for you.
• Abby Bangser is a principal engineer at Syntasso, delivering Kratix, an open source, cloud native framework for building internal platforms on Kubernetes. Her keen interest in supporting internal development comes from over a decade of experience in consulting and product delivery roles in platform, site reliability, and quality engineering. She’s also an international keynote speaker, cohost of the #CoffeeOps London meetup, and a supporter of SLOConf as a global captain. Outside of work, Abby spoils her pup, Zino, and enjoys playing team sports.
• Break (5 minutes)

Raju Gandhi: Terraform in Production (35 minutes) - 9:20am PT | 12:20pm ET | 5:20pm UTC/GMT

• Learning Terraform's syntax (the HashiCorp Configuration Language) is easy. It takes, at most, a few days of practice toget up to speed. Like most infrastructure as code (IaC) tools, Terraform allows you to codify your infrastructure and leverage all the benefits of GitOps—branching, versioning, and release engineering included—but productionizing Terraform is far from simple. Raju Gandhi shares some tips and tricks around code organization, development workflows, state file and module management, and gives you a glimpse into the open source ecosystem around Terraform that can make productionizing Terraform easier.
• Raju Gandhi is the founder of DefMacro Software as well as a software architect, author, teacher, and regularly invited speaker at conferences around the world. As someone with over two decades of experience in software development, DevOps, and developer experience as well as teaching, he believes in keeping things simple, preferring to understand and explain the “why” as opposed to the “how.” Raju blogs at LooselyTyped.com and lives in Columbus, Ohio, with his wonderful wife, Michelle, their sons, Mason and Micah, daughter, Delphine, and three furry family members, Buddy, Skye, and Princess Zara. You can find his contact information at Rajugandhi.com. He’s always looking to make new friends.

Anaïs Urlichs: GitOps—The Magic Key to Cloud Native Security (35 minutes) - 9:55am PT | 12:55pm ET | 5:55pm UTC/GMT

• GitOps—defining all resources in Git—has become hugely popular, and following GitOps best practices gives you better insights into services and deployments. One aspect of this tech that has not been discussed as much, though, is the value that GitOps brings to cloud native security for nonsecurity professionals. Anaïs Urlichs showcases how implementing GitOps across your development lifecycle can drastically increase the scan coverage of your resources. Using ArgoCD for GitOps and Trivy for security scanning, she discusses different aspects of a GitOps-based workflow and the benefits it brings to security scans, all with less effort.
• Anaïs Urlichs is a developer advocate at Aqua Security, where she contributes to Aqua’s cloud native open source projects. When she is not advocating DevOps best practices, she runs her own YouTube channel centered on cloud native technologies. Previously, she worked as an SRE at Civo, a cloud native service provider, where she contributed to the infrastructure for hundreds of tenant clusters. Anaïs’s passion lies in making tools and platforms more accessible to developers and community members.
• Break (5 minutes)

Dolis Sharma: Automate Production-Ready Cluster Using Crossplane Compositions and Kyverno (35 minutes) - 10:35am PT | 1:35pm ET | 6:35pm UTC/GMT

• Creating a production-ready environment in today's dynamic landscape entails orchestrating multiple workflows that demand composite resources and role-based constraints. A production-ready cluster encompasses more than just its creation—it involves deploying add-ons, defining cluster management processes, and ensuring that robust security measures are in place. A production-ready Kubernetes environment requires meticulous configuration, order-based resource allocation, event-driven dependencies, and adherence to industry best practices. Crossplane and Kyverno deliver comprehensive automation, enabling the effortless creation of resilient, secure, and operationally efficient production environments. Dolis Sharma explores the seamless integration of Crossplane and Kyverno, showcasing their combined capabilities in automating cluster creation, resource configuration, compliance enforcement, add-on deployment, and security checks.
• Dolis Sharma is a senior customer success engineer at Nirmata, where she manages production Kubernetes clusters, ensuring the uptime of mission-critical systems. She has a passion for helping customers succeed, working closely with those who are experiencing issues with their Kubernetes deployments. In addition to extensive knowledge of cloud-based and on-premises infrastructures, Dolis has experience with DevOps practices and automation tools.

Sam Newman: Closing Remarks (5 minutes) - 11:10am PT | 2:10pm ET | 7:10pm UTC/GMT

• Sam Newman closes out today’s event.

Upcoming Infrastructure & Ops Superstream events:

• Generative AI Tooling and InfraOps - May 29, 2024
• Platform Engineering - November 13, 2024