Kubernetes simplified? Andreas Grabner and Kelsey Hightower talk about the future of cloud-native technologies.

Kubernetes made simple? Kelsey Hightower and Andreas Grabner discuss the future of cloud-native technologies

The art—and science—of simplicity

“It’s necessary to simplify complex things,” Grabner says, stressing that simplicity is a driving philosophy. “Anyone who works in an organization and wants to make a difference needs to persuade people to try something new by breaking it down into simple terms.”

Hightower’s capacity to express things in simple terms is a journey toward his understanding. He continues, “I’m one of those men who takes a long time to understand some of these difficult problems, so I try to learn in public.” “I’ll create some assumptions, read a few blog entries, then run it a couple of times myself.” I make an effort to ensure that I fully comprehend everything in basic terms. So when others listen to me describe things, it’s a process of convincing myself that I understand what I’m saying.”

How does Kubernetes work?

Kelsey Hightower uses a familiar example to explain Kubernetes. “Let’s invent the post office,” says the narrator.

Hightower describes how administering containerized environments is like sending a box through the post office in a clip from the Honeypot video Kubernetes: The Documentary (Part 1). You provide the parcel, address, and postage; the post office takes care of the rest and ensures on-time delivery. The in-between touchpoints are abstracted, and the result is reliable.

Kubernetes, on the other hand, does not live in a vacuum; it is part of a broader ecosystem that is constantly changing.

Kubernetes: A place to start, not the endgame

A tweet from Hightower three or four years ago hit Grabner: “Kubernetes is a platform for constructing platforms.” It’s a more fantastic place to begin than at the end. While Kubernetes has changed the way companies build and deploy software, it is only one element of a more comprehensive picture.

“Kubernetes is just one puzzle element,” adds Hightower. For example, throughout the process, there are stakeholders, dependencies, and end-users. “There’s a big picture here, and since Kubernetes is only one piece, you have to consider what’s missing.”

Observability is what’s missing. “You need some kind of indication that you can utilize to make modifications,” Hightower adds. “As a user, I wonder if my workload is running?” Kubernetes isn’t something you can just set up. It’s an excellent starting point, but you’ll need to add more tools to make it usable.”

To be clear, Grabner points out that Kubernetes already gives specific data. You’ll need a mechanism to make sense of all the data in context if you utilize other tools, such as Prometheus, an open-source systems monitoring toolset.

What’s at stake: the real people behind the dots on dashboards

Kelsey Hightower remembered how his teams met in war rooms to debug malfunctioning systems earlier in his career. “Everyone was taking their sweet time,” says Hightower. “There were no automated tools available to us.” We didn’t have a sense of urgency, so people monitored logs and did ad-hoc troubleshooting.”

Then their CTO went in and put it into action. He said, “He explained that one of our clients was in the grocery store with his family and a cart full of groceries.” The consumer received government aid via their electronic benefits transfer (EBT) card, but the system was down. Most EBT recipients do not have any other means of payment. “Others in line are staring at someone who can’t afford to pay for their groceries,” he explains. “One of those dots on the graph could represent a customer who cannot purchase food.”

“When we talk about SLOs and SLAs, we’re talking about promises we make to our customers, and it’s our responsibility to keep them,” explains Hightower. “You should have a story in mind for why you’re setting up all these alerts and collecting all these metrics if you’re going to have an SLO.” They should explain why you should do what you’re doing.”

Infrastructure as code vs infrastructure as data

Developers can now easily include software intelligence features such as observability, AIOps, and application security data into their apps, thanks to this upgrade. As a result, additional tasks in the software development lifecycle can be automated.

Hightower prefers to conceive of it as data infrastructure. He claims that “not everyone knows how to write code.” “As a developer, I can say that these are the metrics that matter to me and hand them over to you.” When we use the term ‘declarative,’ we mean ‘tell us what you want, and we’ll take care of the rest.'”

To hear the whole conversation and Andi’s lightning-round Q&A with Kelsey Hightower, tune in to Kelsey Hightower exploring the future of infrastructure.

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