DevOps and Docker Talk: Cloud Native Interviews and Tooling

Latest Episodes:

Is Docker Building the Best AI Stack? Aug 12, 2025

Show notes

Bret and Nirmal are joined by Michael Irwin to discuss Docker's comprehensive AI toolkit, covering everything from local model deployment to cloud-based container orchestration across multiple interconnected tools and services.

😇 My new GitHub Security workshop has launched! A free 2-hour workshop with hands-on labs to harden your repos and your workflows from common supply chain attacks. I'll cover how attackers are getting in, and then we'll lock down a sample repo so you know what needs to be done to protect your code. You'll leave with a deep understanding of risks and mitigations as well as a list of helpful tools to keep your repos safe, including my new "gasa" tool for scanning your repos and orgs.

We run through almost the entire Docker AI ecosystem, including the Model Runner for hosting open-source models locally or remotely, the Hub model catalog, Gordon AI chatbot integration within Docker Desktop and CLI, how MCP toolkit and catalog enable seamless tool integration with local AI systems, Docker's open-source MCP gateway for managing these connections, plus Docker's new Offload service for running containers and models entirely in Docker Cloud and much, much more!

★Show Links★
Docker Model Runner
Gordon AI Blog Post
Docker Offload
Docker Gen AI Catalog
Docker MCP Catalog and Toolkit
Docker MCP Gateway Repository

Check out the video podcast version here: https://youtu.be/dUmSsnc33O0

Creators & Guests

Cristi Cotovan - Editor
Bret Fisher - Host
Beth Fisher - Producer
Nirmal Mehta - Host
Michael Irwin 🇺🇦 🕊 - Guest

You can also support this podcast by subscribing to my YouTube channel and my monthly newsletter at bret.news!

Grab the best coupons for my GitHub, Agents, Docker, and Kubernetes courses.
Join my cloud native DevOps community on Discord.
Grab some merch at Bret's Loot Box
Homepage bretfisher.com

(00:00) - Intro
(04:32) - Gordon AI
(09:41) - Docker Model Runner
(19:34) - State of Free Models
(22:11) - MCP Toolkit
(24:39) - MCP Gateway
(33:45) - MCP Server Limits
(38:31) - MCP Gateway vs API Gateway
(46:11) - Model Support in Docker Compose
(51:00) - Docker Offload

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Could AI End Human QA? Jul 29, 2025

Show notes

Bret is joined by Andrew Tunall, the President and Chief Product Officer at Embrace, to discuss his prediction that we’ll all start shipping non-QA'd code (buggier code in production) and QA will need to be replaced with better observability.

If AI causes us to ship more code, we’ll need more testing and QA. It’s unlikely that orgs will want to add staff just so they can use AI, so what’s the solution? Would we start relying more on production observability to detect code issues that affect user experience?

Embrace is a mobile observability platform company that I first met at KubeCon London this year. Their pitch was that mobile apps were ready for the full observability stack and that we now have SDKs to let mobile dev teams integrate with the same tools that we platform engineers and DevOps people and operators have been building and enjoying for years now. I wanted to hear from observability experts on how they think this is all going to shake out.

★Show Links★
Embrace website
Embrace GitHub repository
Embrace docs

Check out the video podcast version here: https://youtu.be/HHpn3OqMrbU

Creators & Guests

Cristi Cotovan - Editor
Bret Fisher - Host
Beth Fisher - Producer
Andrew Tunall - Guest

You can also support this podcast by subscribing to my YouTube channel and my monthly newsletter at bret.news!

(00:00) - Intro
(03:00) - AI in QA and Software Development
(07:25) - Challenges and Cultural Shifts in AI-Driven Development
(17:50) - Real-World Examples and Observations
(24:24) - Future of AI in Software Engineering
(25:12) - Building Reliable Software
(26:02) - Tools and Strategies for Measuring Reliability
(27:02) - Importance of Observability
(34:15) - Enhancing Mobile App Observability
(41:04) - Changing Behaviors in Observability

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AI Agents Running Containers Jul 01, 2025

Show notes

The Daytona founders - Ivan Burazin and Vedran Jukic - discuss their pivot to an AI agent cloud.
We dig into the new infrastructure requirements of developing agents that need their own sandboxes to operate in.

A year ago, we had them on to talk about Daytona giving us remote development environments for humans, and they have now pivoted the company to focusing on providing cloud hosting environments for AI agents to operate.

I suspect this is something we're all gonna eventually need to tackle as we work to automate more of our software engineering. So we spend time breaking down the concepts and the real world needs of humans developing agents, and then the needs of AI that require places to run their own tools in code.

Check out the video podcast version here https://youtu.be/l8LBqDUwtV8

Creators & Guests

Cristi Cotovan - Editor
Bret Fisher - Host
Beth Fisher - Producer
Ivan Burazin - Guest
Vedran Jukic - Guest

You can also support this podcast by subscribing to my YouTube channel and my monthly newsletter at bret.news!

(00:00) - Intro
(06:08) - Daytona's Sandbox Technology
(12:57) - Practical Applications and Use Cases
(14:29) - Security and Isolation in AI Agents
(17:59) - Start Up Times for Sandboxing and Kubernetes
(22:51) - Daytona vs Lambda
(31:06) - Rogue Models and Isolation
(34:54) - Humanless Operations and the Future of DevOps
(47:17) - SDK vs MCP
(50:15) - Human in the Loop
(51:13) - Daytona: Open Source vs Product Offering

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Heroku + MCP = The Fastest Way to Run AI Agents in the Cloud Jun 06, 2025

Show notes

Julián Duque from Heroku joins me to explain and demo their new AI platform.

Check out the video podcast version here https://youtu.be/BGqlLZHdRDs

Creators & Guests

Cristi Cotovan - Editor
Bret Fisher - Host
Beth Fisher - Producer
Julián Duque - Guest

You can also support this podcast by subscribing to my YouTube channel and my monthly newsletter at bret.news!

(00:00) - Introduction
(05:12) - Deep Dive into Heroku's AI Capabilities
(14:23) - Heroku MCP server
(28:27) - Describing MCP Tool Interactions
(30:48) - DevOps Automation with Heroku MCP server
(37:02) - Heroku AI and Future Prospects

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Is AI ready for DevOps? Jun 04, 2025

Show notes

Launching our new Podcast: https://agenticdevops.fm
Bret and Nirmal are at KubeCon London and record their ideas about how AI Agents will change DevOps, platform engineering, SRE, automation, troubleshooting, and more.

Creators & Guests

Cristi Cotovan - Editor
Bret Fisher - Host
Beth Fisher - Producer
Nirmal Mehta - Host

You can also support this podcast by subscribing to my YouTube channel and my monthly newsletter at bret.news!

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What you missed at KubeCon May 24, 2025

Show notes

At KubeCon EU 2025 in London, Nirmal and I discussed the important (and not-so-important) things you might have missed.

There's also a video version of this show on YouTube.

Creators & Guests

Cristi Cotovan - Editor
Beth Fisher - Producer
Bret Fisher - Host
Nirmal Mehta - Host

(00:00) - DDT Audio Podcast Edited
(00:04) - Intro
(01:24) - KubeCon 2025 EU Overview
(03:24) - Platform Engineering and AI Trends
(07:03) - AI and Machine Learning in Kubernetes
(15:38) - Project Pavilions at KubeCon
(17:05) - FinOps and Cost Optimization
(20:39) - HAProxy and AI Gateways
(24:00) - Proxy Intelligence and Network Layer Optimization
(26:52) - Developer Experience and Organizational Challenges
(29:23) - Platform Engineering and Cognitive Load
(35:54) - End of Life for CNCF Projects

You can also support this podcast by subscribing to my YouTube channel and my monthly newsletter at bret.news!

★ Support this podcast ★

Docker Model Runner Apr 21, 2025

Show notes

Docker launched "Docker Model Runner" to run LLMs through llama.cpp with a single "docker model" command. In this episode Bret details examples and some useful use cases for using this way to run LLMs. He breaks down the internals. How it works, when you should use it or not use it; and, how to get started using Open WebUI for a private ChatGPT-like experience.

★Topics★
Model Runner Docs
Hub Models
OCI Artifacts
Open WebUI
My Open WebUI Compose file

Creators & Guests

Cristi Cotovan - Editor
Beth Fisher - Producer
Bret Fisher - Host

(00:00) - Intro
(00:46) - Model Runner Elevator Pitch
(01:28) - Enabling Docker Model Runner
(04:28) - Self Promotion! Is that an ad? For me?
(05:03) - Downloading Models
(07:11) - Architectrure of Model Runner
(10:49) - ORAS
(11:09) - What's next for Model Runner?
(12:13) - Troubleshooting

You can also support this podcast by subscribing to my YouTube channel and my monthly newsletter at bret.news!

★ Support this podcast ★

What's Coming in 2025? Mar 26, 2025

Show notes

This episode is about what I'm seeing and what I'm doing right now, and then for the rest of the year. There are three parts. First, I talk about what's about to happen for me for the next few weeks re going to London for KubeCon. Then what I'm planning to change in this podcast, as well as my other content on YouTube for the rest of the year. And lastly, I talk about some industry trends that I'm seeing that will force me, I think, to change the format of this show. I recorded the episode on March 22, 2025.

★Topics★
My work at KubeCon EU in London
What's next for this Podcast and my YouTube
What's up with AI for DevOps?

Creators & Guests

Beth Fisher - Producer
Bret Fisher - Host

(00:00) - What's Coming in 2025
(01:07) - Highlights I'm excited about re KubeCon
(04:35) - Changes to this Podcast
(05:58) - What's up with AI and "Agentic DevOps"?
(15:11) - Upcoming guests

You can also support this podcast by subscribing to my YouTube channel and my monthly newsletter at bret.news!

★ Support this podcast ★

Docker Build the best way with Docker Bake Mar 23, 2025

Show notes

The Docker Bake Build tool just went general availability, and I'm excited about what this means for creating reproducible builds and automation that can run anywhere. In this video I'm gonna break down some of the features, the benefits and walk through some examples.

In this episode I explain why docker buildx bake exists, what it can do, and I walk through multiple examples of Bake files and how it's better than docker build image and docker compose build. I also touch on BuildKit and Docker's GitHub Actions.

There's also a video version of this show on YouTube.

★Get started with Docker Bake★
Walkthough https://docs.docker.com/guides/bake/
Docs: https://docs.docker.com/build/bake/
GA Announcement: https://www.docker.com/blog/ga-launch-docker-bake/

Creators & Guests

Beth Fisher - Producer
Bret Fisher - Host

(00:00) - Intro
(00:04) - /
(00:41) - History Lesson
(01:29) - Bake Today
(02:43) - Ad for... Me!
(03:53) - List of Benefits
(10:29) - Use Bake Everywhere
(12:41) - Leaning into Bake, maybe?

You can also support this podcast by subscribing to my YouTube channel and my monthly newsletter at bret.news!

★ Support this podcast ★

Is Swarm at EOL? Feb 06, 2025

Show notes

I've been a big fan of Swarm since it was launched over a decade ago and I've made multiple courses on it that still sell. But, we recently got some news out of Mirantis that might be bad news. So I talked about it last week on my live stream.

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There's also a video version of this show on YouTube.

★Topics★
Blog post that sparked this discussion:
https://www.portainer.io/blog/portainer-the-essential-tool-for-docker-swarm-users-facing-a-kubernetes-future

Creators & Guests