simplyblock's Cloud Commute simplyblock

Welcome to this week's episode of Simplyblock's Cloud Commute podcast! Host Chris Engelbert sits down with Shaun Thomas, affectionately known as "Mr. High Availability" in the Postgres community, to discuss his journey from a standard DBA to a leading expert in high availability solutions for Postgres databases. Shaun shares his experiences working in financial services, where he redefined high availability using tools like Pacemaker and DRBD, and the path that led him to authoring a comprehensive book on the subject. Shaun also talks about his current work at Tembo, an organization dedicated to advancing open-source Postgres, and their innovative approaches to high availability, including the use of Kubernetes and containerized deployments.
In this insightful interview, Shaun explains the complexities and necessities of high availability for Postgres, especially in the context of cloud deployments. He highlights the evolution of container orchestration tools and their impact on simplifying high availability setups. The conversation also delves into the future of Postgres, with a particular focus on the burgeoning role of AI and vector databases like pgvector. Shaun's expertise and passion for Postgres shine through as he discusses the transformative potential of these technologies and their implications for database management. Don't miss this engaging episode packed with practical insights and forward-looking perspectives!
If you have questions to Shaun, you'll find him here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bonesmoses/X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/BonesMosesBlog: https://bonesmoses.org/
If you're looking for Tembo and their Postgres experts, see:
Tembo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tembo-inc/Tembo on X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/tembo_ioTembo: https://tembo.io/
Additional show notes:
Presentation “High Availability with PostgreSQL and Pacemaker”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxKcEUclhZwBook “PostgreSQL 12 High Availability Cookbook”: https://www.packtpub.com/product/postgresql-12-high-availability-cookbook-third-edition/9781838984854
More show notes on Youtube: https://youtu.be/UYlJfG_1hbs

The Cloud Commute podcast is presented by https://www.simplyblock.io

In this episode of simplyblock's Cloud Commute podcast, host Chris Engelbert welcomes Alessandro Vozza, a prominent figure in the Kubernetes and cloud-native community. Alessandro shares his journey from his early days in open-source advocacy to his pivotal role in organizing the DevOps and Kubernetes meetups in Amsterdam. He discusses his current endeavors as a CNCF Ambassador and his passion for fostering community engagement and knowledge sharing within the tech ecosystem. Alessandro draws an interesting analogy between his love for playing the bass in a band and his natural inclination to support and elevate others in the community.
Alessandro also introduces his new project, Kubespaces, which aims to simplify Kubernetes deployment by offering a namespace-as-a-service. This innovative approach seeks to provide developers with the flexibility and ease of deploying applications without the operational burden of managing Kubernetes clusters. He highlights the importance of maintaining the full feature set of Kubernetes while ensuring security and isolation for multi-tenant environments. Alessandro’s vision includes leveraging the Kubernetes API to create a seamless, cloud-agnostic deployment experience, ultimately aiming to fulfill the promises of platform engineering and serverless computing. The episode concludes with a discussion on the future trends in Kubernetes and the significance of environmental sustainability in technology.
If you want to reach Alessandro for questions or discussion:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alessandrovozza/X/Twitter: https://x.com/bongoMastodon: https://hachyderm.io/@ams0Github: https://github.com/ams0
If you're looking for Kubespaces:
Kubespaces: https://kubespaces.io/
Additional show notes:
Cloud Native Computing Foundation: https://www.cncf.io/CNCF Ambassador: https://www.cncf.io/people/ambassadors/Amsterdam DevOps Meetup: https://www.meetup.com/devopsamsterdam/Cloud Commute podcast episode with Rich Kenny from Interact: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKMhpTuDma0
The Cloud Commute podcast is presented by simplyblock (https://www.simplyblock.io)

The podcast episode of simplyblock's Cloud Commute features Chris Engelbert interviewing Anders Eknert. They discuss Anders' background and current role at Styra, the company behind the Open Policy Agent (OPA) project. Anders lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden, and has been involved with Styra for about three and a half years. He shares how his previous work led him to OPA due to a need for managing complex authorization requirements across diverse environments.
Styra, founded by the creators of OPA, focuses entirely on the OPA ecosystem. They offer two main products: Styra DAS (Declarative Authorization Service) and an enterprise version of OPA. Styra DAS helps manage OPA at scale, providing a control plane for policy management, lifecycle, and auditing. The enterprise OPA offers enhanced performance, lower memory usage, and direct integrations with data sources.
OPA itself is a policy engine that enables policies as code, allowing for decoupled and centralized policy management. Common use cases include authorization and infrastructure policies, where OPA acts as a layer between services to make policy decisions. The discussion highlights the importance of treating policy like any other code, allowing for testing, reviewing, and versioning.
Chris and Anders also discuss the functionality of OPA from a developer's perspective, explaining how it integrates with services to enforce policies. They touch on the broader benefits of a unified policy management system and how OPA and Styra DAS facilitate this at scale, ensuring consistency and control across complex environments.
If you have questions for Anders, you can find him here:
Blog: https://www.eknert.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anderseknertX/Twitter: https://twitter.com/anderseknertMastodon: https://hachyderm.io/GitHub: https://github.com/anderseknert/
Styra and the Open Policy Agent can be found here:
Styra Website: https://www.styra.com/Styra LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/styra/Styra X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/styraincOPA Website: https://www.openpolicyagent.org/OPA X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/openpolicyagentOPA GitHub: https://github.com/open-policy-agent/opa
The Cloud Commute Podcast is presented by simplyblock (https://www.simplyblock.io)

Using CI/CD pipelines to build and deploy your applications is common sense. Many use combined tools though. Stefan Prodan, from ControlPlane, talks about the importance of recognizing that a deployment pipeline is basically a cluster admin and needs to be handled securely as a production system.
If you have questions to Stefan, you can reach her here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefanprodan/X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/stefanprodanGithub: https://github.com/stefanprodanBlog: https://stefanprodan.com/If you want to try ControlPlane:
ControlPlane Website: https://control-plane.io/
Additional show notes:
FluxCD website: https://fluxcd.io/CNCF website: https://www.cncf.io/
The Cloud Commute Podcast is presented by simplyblock (https://www.simplyblock.io)

Running vulnerability scanners during development and in your build pipeline is great, but not enough. Newly emerging CVEs, and other application behavior anomalies need to be caught in production. Oshrat Nir, from ARMO, talks about the importance of runtime vulnerability scanning.
If you have questions to Oshrat, you can reach her here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oshratnX/Twitter: https://twitter.com/oshratn Github: https://github.com/Oshratn Medium: https://medium.com/@oshratn_61520 If you want to give ARMO or Kubescape:
ARMO Website: https://www.armosec.io/ Kubescape Website: https://kubescape.io/
Additional show notes:
https://www.cncf.io/https://www.giantswarm.io/
The Cloud Commute Podcast is presented by simplyblock (https://www.simplyblock.io)

Gerald Venzl, lead product manager for Oracle databases, talks about the shift of focus away from on-premise databases towards the cloud. It's a big change for a company like Oracle, but a necessary one. Learn more about the challenges and why Oracle believes multi-cloud is the future.
If you have questions to Gerald, you can reach him here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geraldvenzl/X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GeraldVenzlGithub: https://github.com/gvenzlMedium: https://medium.com/@gvenzlYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/geraldonitMastodon: https://mastodon.social/@gvenzlBlog: https://geraldonit.com/You can find the Oracle Database team at:
Website: https://www.oracle.com/database/technologies/X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/OracleDatabase
Additional show notes:
Oracle and Microsoft Partnership: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABTpRAU4HaA
The Cloud Commute Podcast is presented by simplyblock (https://www.simplyblock.io)