Exciting times! I’ve had a lot to share lately, and here’s another update. Shelley Benhoff‘s new book, “Lead Developer Career Guide“, has officially gone to print—huge congratulations to Shelley! 🎉
Published by Manning Publications Co., this book is a comprehensive resource for anyone aspiring to excel as a Lead Developer.
I’m incredibly honored to have written the foreword for this fantastic book!
In the Lead Developer Career Guide you’ll discover:
The key responsibilities of a lead developer
Techniques for writing effective technical documentation
Strategies for improving development processes
Best practices for communicating with non-technical clients
Methods for mentoring and inspiring a team
Approaches for delivering negative feedback constructively
The Lead Developer Career Guide is filled with interviews and real-world case studies from industry professionals and esteemed tech experts. You’ll learn how to become the public face for your development team, gathering feedback from your coworkers and communicating with clients and stakeholders. Plus, you’ll find proven techniques to reliably calculate project estimates, plan a project from scratch, and mentor junior developers and peers alike.
It consists of: 9 modules of 4 hours of content, many demos, 7 practice quizes, and 1 final quiz.
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) Essentials is a comprehensive video course designed to take IT professionals and developers from beginner level to proficiency in utilizing Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).
Here are the: Module Learning Objectives:
Module 1: Understand the core concepts and benefits of Azure Kubernetes Service.
Module 2: Learn how to set up and configure Azure AKS.
Module 3: Gain proficiency in deploying containerized applications on Azure AKS using popular tools such as Docker, Kubernetes manifests, and kubectl.
Module 4: Explore monitoring and logging capabilities on Azure AKS, leveraging Azure Monitor, Container Insights, and Log Analytics for efficient application management.
Module 5: Understand and be able to configure networking components and manage network policies, as well as implement load balancing, Ingress Controllers, and service mesh for microservice architectures on Azure AKS.
Module 6: Implement robust security measures, including Azure AD integration, RBAC, network security groups, and secrets management, to protect applications and data within AKS.
Module 7: Learn to automate application deployment and updates through continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) pipelines using GitHub Actions and GitOps.
Module 8: Discover high availability and disaster recovery strategies for AKS, including multi-region deployments, backups, and restoration techniques.
Module 9: Explore best practices and advanced topics, such as autoscaling, cluster management, and service mesh integration with AKS.
This AKS course is for you if:
You’re an IT professional who wants to learn how to effectively deploy and manage containerized applications using AKS.
You’re a Cloud Architect who designs and implements cloud-based solutions and are interested in incorporating AKS as part of your application deployment strategies.
You’re a Kubernetes enthusiast with a basic understanding who wants to explore AKS specifically and deepen your knowledge of managing containerized applications in the Azure ecosystem.
You’re a DevOps Engineer who wants to enhance your skills in managing containerized workloads using AKS and integrating CI/CD pipelines for seamless application deployment.
You’re a Software Developer or Engineer who is responsible for building and deploying applications and you want to harness the power of AKS for container orchestration, scalability, and automation.
I’m thrilled to be returning to Experts Live Europe this year! 🎉 In September 2024, I’ll be back presenting once again—this time with even more to share around Azure and AKS. I’ll be co-leading one of the pre-conference sessions with Jonah Andersson, and I’m also excited to deliver a session during the main conference schedule. 🌍🎤”
I will be presenting a pre-con session on building a SaaS solution on Azure 🚀 and a session on how to use Chaos Studio with AKS to boost the resiliency of your AKS clusters 🔧. I hope you can make it to the conference 🙌! Here is more info about my sessions:
Join Steve and Jonah for this pre-conference session where they unravel the mysteries of building a SaaS on Azure. They will start with the basics of running a SaaS in the cloud through the foundations of SaaS, then dive deep into the nitty-gritty of tech side of SaaS on Azure through tech foundations of SaaS. In this session we will take a journey together exploring best practices, patterns, and anti-patterns, along with strategies for managing multi-tenancy, tenant isolation, data isolation, identity in multi-tenancy, and more. Plus, we’ll show you how to turbocharge your SaaS architecture and build with the Azure SaaS Development Kit. Don’t miss out!
Join us at the Speakers Booth in the Expo Hall to find your favorite speakers hanging out here during conference breaks and ask your questions. Take this opportunity to get the answers you are looking for!
Dive into the world of Azure Kubernetes Resiliency in this comprehensive session that delves into crucial aspects of safeguarding your deployments. From robust backup strategies to effective disaster recovery plans and the strategic chaos engineering approach, this session has it all. Join us for a deep exploration of the tools and techniques that ensure your Kubernetes environment remains resilient in the face of challenges. Walk away empowered with the knowledge to fortify your applications and infrastructure against unforeseen circumstances.
I was recently a guest on the RunAsRadio podcast. This was the second time being on the show. The last time was 4 years ago. You can catch the old episode here: Terraform vs Bicep/ARM with Steve Buchanan.
This new episode is #924 and is titled: “From SysAdmin to Platform Engineer with Steve Buchanan“. On this new episode we talked about Platform Engineering and a bunch of other stuff.
Here is the description from the episode:
“Aren’t we all platform engineers? Steve Buchanan says yes!
But there’s more to it. Steve talks about the mindset of looking beyond individual products that we might have skills with and owning the entire problem of providing platforms for your organization to get work done.
The conversation dives into the many products that can help our applications function better and the challenge of making them secure and fast. Are containers the solution? Possibly!
It’s your platform; focus on the fundamentals and go further!“
I had a great time chatting with Richard and we didn’t even mention AI until 40 minutes in. haha
I will be co-presenting an AKS Learn Live this month with Microsoft Principal Cloud Advocate Steven Murawski on “Taking Your Intelligent App Global with AKS”!. It will be moderating by Principal Product Manager Brian Redmond!
We will touch on using Azure Front Door and Fleet Manager. Description of the session:
“Once we have our intelligent application running, it’s time to make it scale. Using globally-scalable services like Azure CosmosDB and Azure Front Door, along with AKS Fleet Manager, we can take bring our intelligent apps closer to their consumers, while providing a consistent operating experience for the developers and operations personnel responsible for the service.”
I am excited to be on another panel for the Come Cloud With Us folks!
This time this panel is focused on Platform Engineering. It will be at the end of February. You wont want to miss this panel! Here is more info about the panel:
When:
Thursday, February 29, 2024 at 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM CST
Where:
Online event
ThePanel: Steve Buchanan – Principal Program Manager at Microsoft Kaslin Fields – Developer Advocate at Google Marino Wijay – Cloud Native Solutions Engineering and Advocacy at Solo Michael Levan – Chief Engineer/Consultant, Content Creator, and Trainer Saim Safdar – Technical Leader and CNCF Ambassador Kat Morgan – Developer Advocate at Pulumi Whitney Lee – Staff Technical Advocate at VMware Robin Smorenburg – Lead Cloud Architect – Azure MVP & CNCF Ambassador
What to Expect: A comprehensive exploration of Kubernetes, including architecture, best practices, practical demonstrations of AKS deployment and management, insights into optimizing containerized applications, and valuable networking opportunities with industry professionals.
Who should attend: Whether you’re a developer, IT professional, Azure enthusiast, student, or learner, this event is designed for you.
Mark your calendars and RSVP now! See you there! 🚀
💡 Starting the new year with another event! We kicked things off with a “Career in Cloud Panel” hosted by the Azure Community Enthusiasts (ACE) user group. Based in the UK, ACE brings together passionate individuals diving into the world of Azure.
This user group aims to create a community of enthusiasts and professionals passionate about learning Microsoft Azure. Their meetups are both online AND in-person (London or Birmingham). ACE can be found on Twitter here:
I had a blast being part of this Career in Cloud Panel with fellow panelist and long time friend Sam Ernskine (@samerskine) from the UK! Big shoutout to the hosts, friend and Microsoft MVP Kevin Greene (@kgreeneit) from Ireland, and the up and coming Nicholas Chang(@nick_cloudops), also an MVP from the UK. 👩💻👩🏿💻 It felt like a tech reunion! 🎉
We dove into some cool topics such as: what got us hooked on tech, the building blocks of tech skills throughout our careers, staying flexible by not tying the knot with one technology, whether cloud certifications are the golden ticket to landing a job, and more. Being on this panel was a total blast – a mix of fun and insightful vibes! 🌐
For those who missed it, you can catch the recording here:
To kick off the new year I am trying something new. For the 1st time I will be speaking on a Twitter space. This Twitter space is about Platform Engineering. It was hosted by cloud native and open source champion SAIM SAFDAR (@cloudnativeboy).
On this twitter space we talked about how to prepare your journey of learning and navigating the Platform Engineering (PE) landscape, my latest PE course, the PE guide from Microsoft and emerging best practices, and taking question’s from folks on the space.
We even had special guest Kubernetes and Platform Engineering expert Michael Levan (@TheNJDevOpsGuy) show up on the space! He shared some great insight on PE as well.
If you missed the space you can watch a recording of the space here:
For a while, I have been hearing chatter around “What is Microsoft doing in the Platform Engineering space?” and “What is Microsoft’s stance on Platform Engineering?”. Well, today is the first day of Microsoft Ignite 2024 and I am happy to say Microsoft has officially released a Platform engineering guide. It can be found here: https://aka.ms/plat-eng-learn
It is broken down into the following sections: Overview, Concept, How-To Guide, and Architecture!
Working through this guide will help you discover how platform engineering teams can leverage technologies from Microsoft and other vendors/providers to craft highly personalized, optimized, and secure developer experiences.
This guide essentially gives you the scoop on Microsoft’s perspective when it comes to Platform Engineering. It can be used to help you along your Platform Engineering journey!
Shout out to the core team that built this! DevDiv: Mark Weitzel, Chuck Lantz, Russell Conard and AKS Engineering: Daniel Sol.
Another cool thing launched today is Microsoft’s Platform Engineering Interest Group.
At Microsoft, we want to hear about your challenges with Platform Engineering and provide opportunities to connect with other teams, at Microsoft and at other companies, who are working together to build solutions in the Platform Engineering space. Joining this group will let you get exclusive early access to new tools and services from Microsoft. Sign up here:
The last thing I want to mention in this post is a new open-source product from Microsoft named Radius. Radius is a single tool to describe, deploy, and manage your entire application. Radius is dedicated to addressing the platform engineering challenges associated with facilitating application deployments across on-premises infrastructure and major cloud providers such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.
Radius is not an IDP. It’s an optional part of an IDP focused on the applications that provides infrastructure Recipes, simplifying the platform configurations like permissions, connection strings, and more to manage the application and its resources.
Radius empowers developers to comprehend their applications, recognizing that an application extends beyond Kubernetes alone. Radius assists developers in visualizing all the components that form their application. More about Radius here: radapp.io
