Cloud Native Testing Podcast

Testkube
  • 5.0 (2)
  • TECHNOLOGY

The Cloud Native Testing Podcast, sponsored by Testkube, brings you insights from engineers navigating testing in cloud-native environments. Hosted by Ole Lensmar, it explores test automation, CI/CD, Kubernetes, shifting left, scaling right, and reliability at scale through conversations with testing and cloud native experts. Learn more about Testkube at http://testkube.io

  1. Cloud Native Testing and AI - Why Tests provide the Context

    NOV 14

    Cloud Native Testing and AI - Why Tests provide the Context

    In this episode, Ole Lensmar joins Richard Li, founder of Polar Sky, to explore how testing strategies must evolve for the age of AI. They discuss the journey of cloud-native tools like Telepresence and Richard's key insight for agentic coding: using automated tests as the "context" to guide AI behavior, rather than relying on complex prompts to describe system rules. The conversation also digs into the mechanics of building AI-driven software, emphasizing why "evals" are critical for measuring success. Richard shares practical strategies for treating evaluations as data management problems and explains how his team uses simple AI agents to "babysit" CI pipelines and automatically resolve flaky tests. Topics discussed: The Evolution of Telepresence: Moving from local debugging to headless execution in CI pipelines.Tests as Context: Why running a test suite is more effective than complex prompting for AI agents.Agentic Coding Strategy: Shifting focus from unit tests to integration and behavioral verification.AI Evals: Why evaluation is the most critical aspect of building reliable AI products.Babysitting CI: Using simple AI agents to identify and retry flaky tests automatically.

    20 min
  2. Modernizing CI/CD: Integrating Automated Testing with Cargo, Tilt, and Playwright

    SEP 17

    Modernizing CI/CD: Integrating Automated Testing with Cargo, Tilt, and Playwright

    On this episode of the Cloud Native Testing podcast, Ole Lensmar welcomes Matt McLane from Doc Network to discuss how they completely transformed their development and testing lifecycle. Matt details their journey away from a slow, manual deployment process—which involved risky ad-hoc testing on a staging environment connected to production—to a modern, automated workflow built for quality and speed. By implementing tools like GitHub Actions, Argo CD, and Cargo, they built a pipeline where testing is a core component, not an afterthought. The conversation dives deep into their cloud-native testing strategy. Matt explains how integrating Playwright for end-to-end tests created automated quality gates, giving them confidence with every deployment. He also shares their approach to non-functional testing with k6 to ensure their application can handle high-traffic events. A key highlight is their use of Tilt to spin up ephemeral environments for every pull request, enabling developers and QA to test features in isolation early in the process. This episode is a practical guide for anyone looking to build a robust testing culture supported by a modern CI/CD pipeline.

    23 min
  3. Kubernetes Rightsizing and Performance Testing

    SEP 10

    Kubernetes Rightsizing and Performance Testing

    What's the connection between your performance tests and your monthly cloud bill? As it turns out, a lot. While many teams struggle with ever-growing Kubernetes costs, the solution isn't just about cutting expenses—it's about improving reliability. In this episode, Ole is joined by Yasmine, COO of CloudBolt, to explore the complex world of Kubernetes rightsizing. Drawing from her experience at Stormforge, Yasmine unpacks the evolution from using performance testing to generate optimization data to the sophisticated machine learning models used today. This conversation goes beyond the tools to address the core challenges every organization faces when trying to tame its cloud-native environment. Tune in to learn: The People Problem: Why there's natural friction between platform teams and developers on resource management, and how to bridge that gap.Reliability First: The crucial mindset shift of viewing rightsizing as a tool for reliability and performance, with cost savings as the byproduct.The Scale Challenge: Why manual scripts and "setting an average" are bound to fail when managing thousands of dynamic workloads.Testing for Confidence: How robust performance and functional testing can validate automated resource changes and give teams the confidence to deploy them.

    24 min
  4. Scaling Testing for the Age of AI-Generated Code

    AUG 25

    Scaling Testing for the Age of AI-Generated Code

    In this episode, the main conversation is between host Ole Lensmar and guest Atul, who are joined by special guest Dmitry, the CEO of Testkube. Together, they dive deep into the evolving landscape of software testing, framed by Atul's fascinating journey from manual QA to a cloud native developer advocate. The conversation kicks off with Atul sharing his unique career path, highlighting how starting in manual testing gave him a foundational understanding of system failure points—an invaluable edge in the world of development and cloud native technologies. The core of the discussion explores the profound impact of AI on testing and development workflows. Atul points out a critical challenge: while AI can generate code at 10x the previous velocity, our CI/CD pipelines often become a bottleneck, as they weren't designed to handle such a high volume of pull requests. This leads to a crucial conversation about the need to not only scale testing efforts to ensure proper coverage for AI-generated code but also to scale the underlying CI/CD infrastructure itself. They also touch upon the significant software supply chain security concerns that arise when integrating AI agents into the development lifecycle. Shifting focus to the broader ecosystem, the episode examines why testing often feels like an afterthought in the cloud native community, particularly at events like KubeCon. Atul argues that teams are often so focused on application functionality that they're "blinded" to the complexities of testing the entire infrastructure stack—from service meshes to container orchestration—until something breaks. The conversation also covers the nuanced practice of testing in production, balancing its benefits with the inherent risks.

    24 min
  5. How Cloudflare Tests in Production for Unbreakable Performance

    JUL 28

    How Cloudflare Tests in Production for Unbreakable Performance

    In this illuminating episode, we pull back the curtain on Cloudflare's intricate approach to testing at a truly global scale. Join us as Sachin from Cloudflare's team shares invaluable insights into how they leverage their vast, distributed network to push the boundaries of reliability and performance. We'll explore the critical role of SLOs (Service Level Objectives) and SLIs (Service Level Indicators) in measuring Cloudflare's service reliability, and why error budgeting is essential for managing risk across their massive infrastructure. Discover how Cloudflare embraces the often-debated, yet crucial, practice of testing in production to validate real-world performance. Learn how observability becomes their indispensable guide to understanding complex system behavior under immense load. We'll also discuss the power of automated monitoring in catching anomalies, the importance of collaborating with SLO teams within Cloudflare, and how continuous improvement is fueled by accurate metrics and data analysis gleaned from their unique testing environment. Whether you're a DevOps engineer, SRE, or simply curious about how an internet giant ensures its services stand strong, this episode offers actionable strategies and a fascinating look into Cloudflare's blueprint for resilience.

    32 min
  6. Breaking Things on Purpose: The Real Power of Chaos Engineering with Benjamin Wilms

    JUL 16

    Breaking Things on Purpose: The Real Power of Chaos Engineering with Benjamin Wilms

    In this episode of the Cloud Native Testing Podcast, Ole Lensmar sits down with Benjamin Wilms, founder and CEO of Steadybit, to explore the role of chaos engineering in building resilient cloud-native systems—from early-stage startups to global enterprises. Benjamin shares how his journey from consulting to founding Steadybit was shaped by one key lesson: the best learning happens when systems fail. He explains how chaos engineering can shift from a manual, reactive effort to a repeatable practice that empowers teams to uncover weaknesses before they cause real-world outages. They also dig into the cultural side of resilience engineering—how game days can bring teams together, why you don’t need massive scale to get started, and what it takes to build an organization where failure leads to progress, not blame. --- This podcast is proudly sponsored by Testkube, the cloud-native, vendor-agnostic test execution and orchestration platform that enables teams to run any type of test automation directly within their Kubernetes infrastructure. Learn more at www.testkube.io.

    24 min
  7. The Swagger Revolution: How API Specs Became a Testing Superpower with Tony Tam

    JUL 2

    The Swagger Revolution: How API Specs Became a Testing Superpower with Tony Tam

    In this episode of the Cloud Native Testing Podcast, Ole Lensmar sits down with Tony Tam, creator of Swagger API (now known as the OpenAPI specification) and a pioneer in API specification standards, to explore the unexpected ways Swagger transformed software testing. Tony shares the origin story of Swagger: from its roots in solving REST client generation to how it became a foundational tool for testing, documentation, and collaboration across teams. He explains how OpenAPI specs gave rise to a new generation of spec-driven testing, enabling everything from automated validation to smarter negative test cases. Whether you're maintaining legacy services, scaling microservices, or figuring out how to test AI-powered workloads in distributed environments, Tony’s insights into API resilience, tooling, and testing culture are not to be missed. -- This podcast is proudly sponsored by Testkube, the cloud-native, vendor-agnostic test execution and orchestration platform built for modern infrastructure. Run any test, at any stage, from right inside your Kubernetes cluster.

    25 min
  8. Testing Cloud-Native Applications in Regulated Environments with Cherif Sahraoui

    JUN 20

    Testing Cloud-Native Applications in Regulated Environments with Cherif Sahraoui

    In this episode of the Cloud Native Testing Podcast, Ole Lensmar sits down with In this episode of the Cloud Native Testing Podcast, Ole Lensmar sits down with Cherif Sahraoui, QA Lead & Consultant working with 50Hertz Transmission—one of Germany’s four major electricity transmission system operators, responsible for delivering power across northern and eastern Germany—to explore the complexities of testing cloud-native applications in highly regulated industries like energy. Cherif shares how his team manages application testing across both cloud and on-prem environments, why manual and exploratory testing still play a crucial role, and how tools like Testkube, Terraform, and ArgoCD help automate quality at scale. They also dig into the cultural side of QA: how to foster shared responsibility for testing across dev and QA teams and why testing in production doesn’t deserve its bad reputation. If you’re working in a regulated space or looking to improve your cloud-native testing strategy, this conversation offers practical takeaways you can apply right away. --- This podcast is proudly sponsored by Testkube, the cloud-native, vendor-agnostic test execution and orchestration platform that enables teams to run any type of test automation directly within their Kubernetes infrastructure. Learn more at www.testkube.io

    26 min
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The Cloud Native Testing Podcast, sponsored by Testkube, brings you insights from engineers navigating testing in cloud-native environments. Hosted by Ole Lensmar, it explores test automation, CI/CD, Kubernetes, shifting left, scaling right, and reliability at scale through conversations with testing and cloud native experts. Learn more about Testkube at http://testkube.io

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