On September 30th I will be speaking at the Jamaica Azure User Group giving an intro to GitOps and AKS!
Here is a breakdown of what I will be covering in this session:
CI/CD with Kubernetes on top of management of Kubernetes configuration management can be complex and intimidating. Application definitions, configurations, management, and continuous delivery for Kubernetes can be simplified, automated, and declarative. This can be achieved via GitOps.
Microsoft simplifies running Kubernetes with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) but it can still be complex when it comes to the management you are responsible for and application deployment.
In this session we will take a look at:
-An intro into AKS -An intro into GitOps -How you can utilize GitOps and git-based techniques with AKS to drive easier application deployment -How to use GitOps for configuration management of Kubernetes from your source control system
I have been attended DevOpsDays Minneapolis for 4 years. Its always a great event with rockstar speakers and great content. I also always meet some great folks in the DevOps space.
This year I will be speaking at DevOpsDays Minneapolis! This is a huge honor for me as I have a lot of respect for the event organizers and its always world-class event! I will be speaking about Kubernetes and GitOps. My session can be found here: https://devopsdays.org/events/2021-minneapolis/speakers/steve-buchanan
The event is July 20th-21st. It will be a hybrid event (in-person & virtual). I will be speaking in person on the 20th.
Here is my session info:
GitOps and Kubernetes: a Winning Combo
GitOps is an emerging pattern for cloud-native applications. This operating model simplifies Kubernetes ops while simultaneously improving the developer experience. GitOps enables continuous delivery of configuration updates and application deployments to Kubernetes.
Through the lens of GitHub, Argo CD, and Azure Kubernetes Service, we’ll explore use cases and benefits, principles and practices, architecture and tooling, and what GitOps changes in our day-to-day.
Today I delivered my session on GitOps and Kubernetes: a Winning Combo. This was my first in-person event since the pandemic in the US started. I went on stage right after Ian Coldwater gave the keynote. Ian had an amazing keynote talking about community, how the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd impacted Minneapolis last year along with how the community came together. I presented to a crowd of a few hundred as well as another couple hundred online.
The online reach of this event was amazing. I even received a message that my session was watched by some folks in Japan!
In my session, we went on a journey through how companies should focus on being software businesses moving to digital, how the pandemic accelerated companies and consumers going digital as well as companies using Kubernetes and GitOps as a way to help power digital transformation.
The conference organizers did a great job pulling off another excellent event while ensuring everyone followed safety guidelines.
I was recently a guest on Microsoft’s Azure Arc Jumpstart Lighting show. In the episode of Jumpstart Lightning, I shared with Lior my thoughts around Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes, industry trends, GitOps, and my new Azure Arc enabled Kubernetes Getting Started course on Pluralsight.
I was recently a guest on New Relic‘s Developer Relations team podcast “Observy McObservface” with Jonan Scheffler.
Jonan Scheffler and I talk about Microsoft’s Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Linux on Azure, how Microsoft’s been successful at working in enterprise and open source, where I believe GitOps & Kubernetes is eventually going to go, and my excitement in regards to AI and blockchain as well as how they’re going to impact the world. You can listen to the podcast and read the article links below.
I will be speaking on Azure Arc enabled Kubernetes and GitOps. My session is titled: “Push Code, Not Containers with Azure Arc enabled Kubernetes and GitOps“. The description is:
Use Azure Arc enabled Kubernetes to manage Kubernetes clusters across Google Cloud Platform and Azure without running a single Kubectl command! In this session, Steve Buchanan will take you into the world of GitOps. He will show you how to deploy applications and configuration to GKE clusters and AKS clusters from a GitHub repository. Explore how we can use this new operating model for Kubernetes and cloud-native apps to declaratively describe and ensure the state of our applications and Kubernetes environments.
After 6 books with many authors from Packt, APress, & Sams/Pearson I finally had the chance to author a book with O’Reilly. This is an ebook so it can be found and read on the O’Reilly online platform.
It is a great platform that I use personally for my own learning. On their platform, you can find ebooks, books across many publishers (most of my books are on there), video training, and even live training.
This book brings together 4 exciting technologies/topics including Azure, Kubernetes, GitOps, and multi-cloud. The book is shorter than my typical books since it is an ebook. It is only 35 pages and is designed for fast & easy consumption to get an overview of the technology and get an early start.
In this book, we take a journey into one of Microsoft’s newest cloud services Azure Arc enabled Kubernetes (Arc K8s). We explore what Azure Arc K8s is, how it extends the Azure control plane to Kubernetes clusters to manage, secure, and govern them, as well as how GitOps sits are the core of application deployment to Kubernetes clusters and a driver of consistent configuration management for Kubernetes clusters.
Azure Arc is a Microsoft product that promises to extend the Azure control plane for Kubernetes across multiple clouds and on-premises, but how does it do this? In this ebook we will dissect Azure Arc K8s and how it becomes a secret weapon for managing Kubernetes clusters across on-premises, multiple clouds, and regardless of your own rolled Kubernetes clusters or managed services based Kubernetes clusters such as GKE, EKS, etc. I also want to give a shout-out to Michael Levan for reviewing this ebook!
Key Areas from the ebook include:
-Understand the new management challenges that multicloud brings -Learn how Azure Arc drives consistent governance, security, and management across multicloud -Gain valuable insights into Microsoft’s Azure ARM control plane for Kubernetes -Learn how Azure Arc manages Kubernetes clusters across on-premises and multiple cloud deployments -Explore the GitOps technology pattern and operating model for cloud native applications and Kubernetes -Use Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes and GitOps to deploy configurations and applications to Kubernetes clusters
Recently I had the honor to be a guest on my friend and fellow Microsoft MVP Mike Pfeiffer’s Cloudskills.fm podcast again! This was episode is “106: Steve Buchanan on Cloud Native, DevOps, GitOps, Kubernetes, and Azure“. I was excited to be a guest again on the CloudSkills podcast and catch up with Mike.
On this new episode, we had a chance to talk about a variety of topics like leveling up your career, what I have been up to, diversity and inclusion in the tech, of course Azure, Azure Arc, DevOps, Kubernetes, GitOps, we even touched on SAP on Azure, among other insights.
You can listen to the podcast episode 106 right here on my blog:
Back in 2019 I was a guest on the Cloudskills.fm podcast on episode # 15. The past episode was a lot of fun with more of a focus on your career in the world of IT. If you want to check that out here.
There is another wave coming. This wave is GitOps. GitOps is a technology pattern and operational framework. It is often used for Kubernetes however is really for cloud-native applications in general. Being that a large amount of cloud-native applications these days are designed and built to run on Kubernetes it is no surprise that GitOps is commonly adopted in Kubernetes environments. If you are running Kubernetes or looking at it chances are you may have heard of GitOps. This is how I define GitOps:
“GitOps is an operating model pattern for cloud native applications storing application & declarative infrastructure code in Git as the source of truth used for automated continuous delivery.”
Well, that sums up with GitOps is but it still is a mouthful and can take a bit to wrap ones head around it. In a nutshell GitOps is shifting everything to code, storing everything in Git, making Git the source of truth, and using an operator deploy what is described in Git in your environment including the application and the configuration. With GitOps you describe the desired state of your entire system and GitOps makes it so. It simplifies operations and makes the experience for developers much better allowing them to work out of a tool they are familiar with (Git). Here is a basic sample diagram to give you a visual idea about what GitOps is and how it works:
So in the case of Kubernetes you would have your app code in Git, your container images in Git, and your Kubernetes manifest files. Now there is more to it and how it works but we will not get into all of that in this blog post. This is a good Segway to purpose of this blog post.
The purpose of this blog post is that I just dropped my 7th Pluralsight course GitOps: The Big Picture! This was a fun course to build as I am passionate about and like working with Containers, Kubernetes, and cloud.
A quick shoutout to both Fellow Microsoft MVP/Pluralsight Author Tim Warner and Jason Alba for amplifying my new course!
This course teaches the fundamentals of GitOps, the need for GitOps, GitOps architecture, GitOps workflow, GitOps principles, practices, & tooling such as Flux, Argo CD, AND Jenkins X. Also in this course, GitOps: The Big Picture, you’ll learn what it takes to adopt GitOps. First, you’ll explore what GitOps is and its benefits. Next, you’ll discover GitOps Tooling NS Architecture. Finally, you’ll learn how to use GitOps Workflows. When you’re finished with this course, you’ll have the skills & knowledge of the GitOps framework needed to take the next steps with GitOps.
In the course I give a couple of demos so you can see GitOps in action. The first demo is on “deploying an application using Argo CD” and the second demo is on “GitOps in Action with Azure Arc Enabled Kubernetes using Flux”. Another interesting fact about GitOps is we are starting to see the major cloud providers bring GitOps into their offerings such as Azure Arc and or couple GitOps with their services like with GCP GKE as well as create content on using GitOps with their managed Kubernetes services like with AWS EKS.
GitOps is going to continue to grow right along with the continued growth of Containers, Kubernetes, and Cloud. I am all in and you will see blogs, books, courses, speaking at events, and more from me around GitOps as I continue on my personal journey with it.
Be sure to follow my profile on Pluralsight so you will be notified as I release new courses! I will be releasing more courses soon on topics around Azure, GitOps, SAP on Azure, & Kubernetes courses soon!
I am excited to announce that I am one of the experts in several Ask the Expert sessions during Microsoft Ignite 2020 this week.
I will be a part of a variety of sessions with topics ranging from Linux and PowerShell on Azure, Kubernetes on Azure, Azure Migration, and Transforming Windows Server workloads in Azure.
Here is the link to the Ignite home page myignite.microsoft.com. I hope to see you on the digital Ignite event and in one of the Ask the Expert Sessions!
Update 9/30/2020
Being a part of several Ask the Expert sessions was really fun! My most memorable session was the Ask the Expert: Linux and PowerShell on Azure session.
This session was packed full of superstars from Microsoft product groups and fellow MVPs including; Jeffery Snover, Jason Helmick, Janaka Rangama, and Alexander Nikolić. Here is a screenshot from the session:
After the session, I tweeted about the session and shared some wisdom about PowerShell, and both Jeffery Snover and Jason Helmick retweet my tweet!
2020 is not all bad. It’s pretty cool when the inventor of PowerShell and the PowerShell Program Manager retweet you!
Microsoft has been making some amazing enhancements to AKS and in the open-source space in general. This effort has been making it easier to use Kubernetes and easier for folks who are getting started with Kubernetes.
Recently Microsoft has added more functionally called “Kubernetes resource view“.
Kubernetes resource view in Azure Portal
This allows you to see and work with some Kubernetes resources directly in the Azure portal. As you can see in the previous screenshot it includes Namespaces, Workloads, and Services. When you deploy a new AKS cluster this is enabled by default.
If you have deployed an AKS cluster before this functionality was release you will need to enable the Kubernetes resource view. You can choose what namespace to enable this on. It will look like this:
Enable Kubernetes resource view button
The three main areas of resources are:
Namespaces
Workloads
Deployments
Pods
Replica Sets
Daemon sets
Services and ingresses
In these resource areas, you can view the resources, add, delete, and show labels.
You can click on a resource to see the properties of it under Overview. The overview tab has valuable information for example for a pod you can see the pod status, the containers that belong to it, its conditions, and more. Here are some screenshots:
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You can see any events around the resource and you can even view or edit the resources Yaml. Here is what it looks like when editing a resource:
Well, this was a quick blog post to give an early look at the new Kubernetes resource view in AKS. I recommend you check out it! Remember this is a preview and it’s going to get better and better.
I can imagine in the future we will be able to access more Kubernetes resources and API Objects in the Azure portal. For example, it will be cool to be able to work with Secrets, and Configmaps right in the Azure portal! I don’t know about you, but I am very excited about what Microsoft has been doing with AKS!
