Joining Scott for episode 59 of the Full Stack Journey podcast is Mark Hinkle, CEO and co-founder of TriggerMesh. The topic of Scott and Mark’s discussion is, of course, TriggerMesh, a cloud native integration platform. Trigger Mesh combines APIs and an integration language to “programmatically connect data and services into event-driven applications.” Scott and Mark explore exactly what that means. Mark is on Twitter (@mrhinkle) and is a co-host of the Cloud Native AF podcast—the AF stands...

Is it possible to extrapolate general career lessons from a specific situation? In episode 58, Scott talks to Nick Korte (@Networknerd_ on Twitter, also blogging at The NetworkNerd Blog) about a somewhat recent change that happened with his podcast, The Nerd Journey podcast. What lessons did Nick learn from this change, and how can those lessons be applied to careers in general? Topics include: * What was the (somewhat) recent change that happened with your podcast? * What lessons were...

What is Open Policy Agent (OPA)? And what can someone do with it? These are some of the questions that episode 57 of the Full Stack Journey podcast tackles. In this episode, Scott is joined by Diego Comas (@diegocomas on Twitter), a user/consumer of OPA, to discuss his direct experience in using OPA in real production environments. (Diego also has a blog focused on cloud-native security, but he freely admits that it needs to be updated.) Additionally, Scott and Diego discussed things...

What’s the latest with network automation? Where is the industry getting things right, and where is there more work to be done? How is public cloud influencing network automation? For an update on the “state of network automation,” Scott Lowe welcomes Ethan Banks, fellow podcast host and Packet Pushers co-founder. You can hear Ethan on the Heavy Networking and Day Two Cloud podcasts. Ethan shares his experience and insight as he and Scott discuss a range of topics, including: * Where is...

Are application migrations still a thing in the cloud-native world? In this episode of the Full Stack Journey podcast, host Scott Lowe is joined by Nicholas Lane, Staff Engineer on the Kubernetes platform team at Wayfair, to discuss application migrations in a Kubernetes environment. Scott and Nick discuss: * Whether application migrations are still a consideration in a Kubernetes environment * Reasons for migrating applications between or among Kubernetes clusters * Why Kubernetes...

Today’s Full Stack Journey podcast gets a little personal. Instead of having a guest, Scott Lowe spends some time on a solo episode to provide some personal updates, including leaving VMware for a startup called Kong, selling a house and moving, and buying and using an M1-based MacBook Pro. Scott shares his reflections on: * Getting back to his professional roots * The benefits of going smaller * The intersection of open source and business * The pros and cons of being at a startup *...

In this episode of the Full Stack Journey podcast, host Scott Lowe dives into the world of developer relations/developer advocacy. Scott explores these areas with four amazing guests: * Jacquie Grindrod, a developer advocate at HashiCorp * Jeremy Meiss, working in developer relations and community at CircleCI * Josh Wulf, a developer advocate at Camunda * Ted Neward, who is the Director of Technology Culture at Quicken Loans/Rocket Mortgage They answer common questions about...

Infrastructure-as-code is not a new topic for the Full Stack Journey podcast—we’ve discussed it in episode 27 (understanding Terraform and using “defensive Terraform”), episode 30 (focused on Pulumi and using general-purpose programming languages for infrastructure-as-code), episode 32 (talking about Lyra), and episode 35 (testing and validation for infrastructure-as-code). Surely this topic has been fully explored, right? Nope! In today’s show, Scott is joined by Tim Davis (@vtimd on...

Episode 51 of the Full Stack Journey podcast is a “return to our roots,” so to speak, as Scott is joined by a guest to talk about career transitions and career growth. My guest is Massimo Re Ferre (Twitter, blog), currently a Solutions Architect at AWS. Massimo is well-known in the VMware circles, having specialized in VMware technologies for over ten years before transitioning to AWS in 2017. Topics we explore include: * Big career transitions we’ve made * Knowing when it’s time to...

Serverless is all the rage these days, but what is “serverless,” exactly? What does that term mean and what should the technology be used for? Is it the same as Functions-as-a-Service (FaaS)? Alex Ellis weighs in on these and many other questions in today’s Full Stack Journey podcast. Alex consults on cloud application development, business, and marketing. You can follow him on Twitter @alexellisuk or visit his website). Scott and Alex talk serverless, FaaS, using serverless/FaaS in...

Do you run Kubernetes? Have you developed a backup/restore strategy for your clusters? In this Full Stack Journey episode, we discuss why Kubernetes operators should be planning for backup/restore functionality, and debunk some myths that say you don’t need backup/restore in Kubernetes. My guests are Carlisia Thompson (@carlisia on Twitter) and Nolan Brubaker (@palendae on Twitter), both from the open-source Velero project. In addition to myth-busting, Carlisia, and Nolan also spend some...

On today’s episode of the Full Stack Journey podcast, host Scott Lowe is joined by fellow Packet Pusher podcast host Drew Conry-Murray for a lively discussion on the trends they see emerging in the industry, and how IT professionals can prepare themselves for those trends. Drew and Scott discuss: * The status of network automation and whitebox * How public cloud is affecting the industry, and what can IT professionals do about it * Apple’s move to ARM * Whether certifications have...

Today’s Full Stack Journey episode explores how users can leverage Kubernetes to control other parts of your technology stack, including cloud-native services and resources. In the last episode, we talked about the AWS Controllers for Kubernetes. In this episode, we’re talking about Crossplane! Crossplane uses APIs in Kubernetes and public cloud providers to allow you to provision and manage cloud services and infrastructure from Kubernetes. My guest is Daniel Mangum (@hasheddan on Twitter...

Today’s Full Stack Journey podcast focuses on a recent AWS announcement on the AWS Controllers for Kubernetes (ACK). Currently available as a developer preview, ACK is a project to let customers manage their AWS services directly from Kubernetes. Joining Scott on the podcast to talk about ACK is Justin Garrison (@rothgar on Twitter), co-author of Cloud Native Infrastructure, long-time member of the Kubernetes community, and currently working as a container advocate at AWS. Over the course...

Ready, set, Go! In today’s episode, Scott and three guests—Lee Briggs of Pulumi (also see his personal blog), Jeremy Rickard of VMware, and Adam Simpson of Sparkbox—discuss learning the Go programming language. Go is very popular for today’s cloud-native projects, and so learning Go could be a valuable addition if you spend lots of time in the cloud-native space. Scott and his guests discuss: * Why learn Go? * How the guests got started learning Go * Resources they found helpful *...

Patrick Kelso returns to the Full Stack Journey podcast to revisit topics including skills development, being an individual contributor versus a manager/leader, and how life has changed him and his perspectives over the last three years. Patrick (@patrickkelso on Twitter) first joined me on episode 5. We discuss: * The serendipity that sometimes comes from working in an office * Adjusting to remote teams and remote collaboration * Balancing the “need for the immediate” versus “where you...

Is it a container, or is it a VM? Michael Hausenblas of AWS joins Scott to talk about Firecracker, an open-source project launched by AWS and leveraged by a number of their commercial services. Firecracker creates micro-VMs that start up quickly and have a minimal footprint. Serverless computing is a key use case for the software. Along the way, Scott and Michael also touch on things like EKS, Fargate, and Lambda, and how Firecracker was built to support those types of services at...

The Full Stack Journey podcast was born, in part, out of an interest in exploring how knowing multiple layers of today’s technology stack can be beneficial to IT professionals. In episode 42, I’m joined by David Klee of Heraflux to discuss that very topic–how exploring “adjacent areas” has helped him in his database specialization. Scott and David explore how this idea could be used by other IT professionals. Over the course of the discussion, we touch on topics including: * IT...

On episode 41 of the Full Stack Journey podcast, we go back to basics to talk about Linux and purpose-built Linux distributions with Tim Gerla and Andrew Rynhard of Talos Systems. In particular, the discussion focuses on the Talos open source project, which is aimed at building a fit-for-purpose OS designed expressly for running Kubernetes. We cover topics including: * What is Talos? * Why a new OS? Why not build on top of previous open-source efforts? * How would someone new to the...

And now for something a bit different! In today’s episode of Full Stack Journey, Scott talks to four  guests about the challenges and rewards of working from home. Joining Scott to talk about remote work are: * Puja Abbassi of Giantswarm (@puja108 on Twitter) * Lisa Caywood (@reallisac on Twitter) of Juniper * Simon Crosby of SWIM.ai (Simon can be found as @simoncrosby on Twitter) * John Teresick (found as @terescik on Twitter) Scott and his guests cover a range of questions,...

Episode 39 of the Full Stack Journey podcast features Lauren Malhoit. Lauren came up in the tech industry as a systems engineer. She’s now in technical product marking at Juniper Networks. Lauren joins Scott to talk about career transitions, leadership vs. management, and “finding a gap where you can be an expert.” Some of the topics Scott and Lauren toss around on this episode include: * Lessons learned in transitioning between virtualization, networking, and marketing * The difference...

Today’s Full Stack Journey episode explores Contour, an an Envoy-based Kubernetes Ingress controller developed by Heptio/VMware. My guest is Steve Sloka (Twitter, GitHub). We discuss Steve’s journey into Docker, containers, and Kubernetes as a developer, and their impact on his career. Then, we spend some time chatting about Contour, its benefits, and how it compares to other Ingress controllers. Over the course of these two topics, Scott and Steve address questions like: * How did...

Today’s episode is the story of a career journey, and the influence of open source on that career. Scott is joined by Matt Broberg (@mbbroberg on Twitter, GitHub, and just about everywhere else), currently a technical editor and open source advocate at opensource.com. Scott and Matt hit on topics such as: * The importance of doing something you love * Why it’s necessary for technologists to understand business fundamentals * The “pull” of open source on Matt’s career * How to stay...

On episode 36 of the Full Stack Journey, Scott talks with a guest who is just beginning their professional IT career. Kori Younger (@sdndaughter on Twitter, @cyberkori on Instagram) joins Scott to discuss the career-long journey of learning that lies ahead of this talented new IT professional, as well as discussing some of the challenges that new IT professionals and recent college graduates face in starting their careers. Scott and Kori discuss things like: * How Kori prepared for a...

Gareth Rushgrove joins Scott Lowe on the Full Stack Journey podcast. Today’s episode examines Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC). IaC is not a new topic on the podcast; we’ve talked about Terraform  (Episode 27), Pulumi (Episode 30), and Lyra (Episode 32). This time around, Scott and Gareth’s conversation focuses on the value of testing and validation for IaC environments. The episode explores topics such as: * The importance of IaC to IT professionals, even those working in smaller...