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Latest Episodes:

The Making of Flux: The Origin, a KubeFM Original Series Sep 15, 2025

Show notes

This episode unpacks the technical and governance milestones that secured Flux's place in the cloud-native ecosystem, from a 45-minute production outage that led to the birth of GitOps to the CNCF process that defines project maturity and the handover of stewardship after Weaveworks' closure.

You will learn:

How a single incident pushed Weaveworks to adopt Git as the source of truth, creating the foundation of GitOps.
How Flux sustained continuity after Weaveworks shut down through community governance.
Where Flux is heading next with security guidance, Flux v2, and an enterprise-ready roadmap.

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Join the Flux maintainers and community at FluxCon, November 11th in Atlanta—register here

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Find all the links and info for this episode here: https://ku.bz/5Sf5wpd8y
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Predictive vs Reactive: A Journey to Smarter Kubernetes Scaling, with Jorrick Stempher Sep 09, 2025

Show notes

Jorrick Stempher shares how his team of eight students built a complete predictive scaling system for Kubernetes clusters using machine learning.

Rather than waiting for nodes to become overloaded, their system uses the Prophet forecasting model to proactively anticipate load patterns and scale infrastructure, giving them the 8-9 minutes needed to provision new nodes on Vultr.

You will learn:

How to implement predictive scaling using Prophet ML model, Prometheus metrics, and custom APIs to forecast Kubernetes workload patterns
The Node Ranking Index (NRI) - a unified metric that combines CPU, RAM, and request data into a single comparable number for efficient scaling decisions
Real-world implementation challenges, including data validation, node startup timing constraints, load testing strategies, and the importance of proper research before building complex scaling solutions

Sponsor

This episode is brought to you by Testkube—the ultimate Continuous Testing Platform for Cloud Native applications. Scale fast, test continuously, and ship confidently. Check it out at testkube.io

More info

Find all the links and info for this episode here: https://ku.bz/clbDWqPYp
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Solving Cold Starts: Uses Istio to Warm Up Java Pods, with Frédéric Gaudet Sep 02, 2025

Show notes

If you're running Java applications in Kubernetes, you've likely experienced the pain of slow pod startups affecting user experience during deployments and scaling events.

Frédéric Gaudet, Senior SRE at BlaBlaCar, shares how his team solved the cold start problem for their 1,500 Java microservices using Istio's warm-up capabilities.

You will learn:

Why Java applications struggle with cold starts and how JIT compilation affects initial request latency in Kubernetes environments
How Istio's warm-up feature works to gradually ramp up traffic to new pods
Why other common solutions fail, including resource over-provisioning, init containers, and tools like GraalVM
Real production impact from implementing this solution, including dramatic improvements in message moderation SLOs at BlaBlaCar's scale of 4,000 pods

Sponsor

This episode is brought to you by Testkube—the ultimate Continuous Testing Platform for Cloud Native applications. Scale fast, test continuously, and ship confidently. Check it out at testkube.io

More info

Find all the links and info for this episode here: https://ku.bz/grxcypt9j
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Teaching Kubernetes to Scale with a MacBook Screen Lock, with Brian Donelan Aug 26, 2025

Show notes

Brian Donelan, VP Cloud Platform Engineering at JPMorgan Chase, shares his ingenious side project that automatically scales Kubernetes workloads based on whether his MacBook is open or closed.

By connecting macOS screen lock events to CloudWatch, KEDA, and Karpenter, he built a system that achieves 80% cost savings by scaling pods and nodes to zero when he's away from his laptop.

You will learn:

How KEDA differs from traditional Kubernetes HPA - including its scale-to-zero capabilities, event-driven scaling, and extensive ecosystem of 60+ built-in scalers
The technical architecture connecting macOS notifications through CloudWatch to trigger Kubernetes autoscaling using Swift, AWS SDKs, and custom metrics
Cost optimization strategies including how to calculate actual savings, account for API costs, and identify leading indicators of compute demand
Creative approaches to autoscaling signals beyond CPU and memory, including examples from financial services and e-commerce that could revolutionize workload management

Sponsor

This episode is brought to you by Testkube—the ultimate Continuous Testing Platform for Cloud Native applications. Scale fast, test continuously, and ship confidently. Check it out at testkube.io

More info

Find all the links and info for this episode here: https://ku.bz/sFd8TL1cS
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Building a Carbon and Price-Aware Kubernetes Scheduler, with Dave Masselink Aug 19, 2025

Show notes

Data centers consume over 4% of global electricity and this number is projected to triple in the next few years due to AI workloads.

Dave Masselink, founder of Compute Gardener, discusses how he built a Kubernetes scheduler that makes scheduling decisions based on real-time carbon intensity data from power grids.

You will learn:

How carbon-aware scheduling works - Using real-time grid data to shift workloads to periods when electricity generation has lower carbon intensity, without changing energy consumption
Technical implementation details - Building custom Kubernetes schedulers using the scheduler plugin framework, including pre-filter and filter stages for carbon and time-of-use pricing optimization
Energy measurement strategies - Approaches for tracking power consumption across CPUs, memory, and GPUs

Sponsor

This episode is brought to you by Testkube—the ultimate Continuous Testing Platform for Cloud Native applications. Scale fast, test continuously, and ship confidently. Check it out at testkube.io

More info

Find all the links and info for this episode here: https://ku.bz/zk2xM1lfW
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How Policies Saved us a Thousand Headaches, with Alessandro Pomponio Aug 12, 2025

Show notes

Alessandro Pomponio from IBM Research explains how his team transformed their chaotic bare-metal clusters into a well-governed, self-service platform for AI and scientific workloads. He walks through their journey from manual cluster interventions to a fully automated GitOps-first architecture using ArgoCD, Kyverno, and Kueue to handle everything from policy enforcement to GPU scheduling.

You will learn:

How to implement GitOps workflows that reduce administrative burden while maintaining governance and visibility across multi-tenant research environments
Practical policy enforcement strategies using Kyverno to prevent GPU monopolization, block interactive pod usage, and automatically inject scheduling constraints
Fair resource sharing techniques with Kueue to manage scarce GPU resources across different hardware types while supporting both specific and flexible allocation requests
Organizational change management approaches for gaining stakeholder buy-in, upskilling admin teams, and communicating policy changes to research users

Sponsor

This episode is brought to you by Testkube—the ultimate Continuous Testing Platform for Cloud Native applications. Scale fast, test continuously, and ship confidently. Check it out at testkube.io

More info

Find all the links and info for this episode here: https://ku.bz/5sK7BFZ-8
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Dear friend, you have built a Kubernetes, with Mac Chaffee Jun 24, 2025

Show notes

Mac Chaffee, a platform engineer and security champion, examines why developers often underestimate the complexity of running modern applications and how overconfidence leads to expensive technical mistakes.

You will learn:

Why teams reject Kubernetes then rebuild it piece by piece - understanding the psychological factors, like overconfidence, that drive initial rejection of complex but proven tools
How to identify the tipping point when DIY solutions become more complex than adopting established orchestration tools, especially around scaling and high availability challenges
The right approach to abstracting Kubernetes complexity - why hiding the Kubernetes API often backfires and how to build effective guardrails instead of reinventing interfaces
Why mentorship gaps lead to poor technical decisions - how the lack of proper apprenticeship programs in tech results in teams making expensive mistakes when building infrastructure

Sponsor

This episode is sponsored by LearnKube — get started on your Kubernetes journey through comprehensive online, in-person or remote training.

More info

Find all the links and info for this episode here: https://ku.bz/9nFPmG85f
Interested in sponsoring an episode? Learn more.

Beyond Kubernetes: Serverless Execution Models for Variable Workloads, with Marc Campora Jun 17, 2025

Show notes

Marc Campora, a systems consultant with experience in high-throughput platforms, shares his analysis of a real customer deployment with 500+ microservices. He breaks down the cost implications, technical constraints, and operational trade-offs between Kubernetes containers and AWS Lambda functions based on actual production data and migration assessments.

You will learn:

Cost analysis frameworks for comparing Lambda vs Kubernetes across different traffic patterns, including specific examples of 3x savings potential and the 80/20 rule for service utilization
Migration complexity factors when moving existing microservices to Lambda, including cold start issues, runtime model changes, and why it's often a complete rewrite rather than a simple port
Decision criteria for choosing between platforms based on traffic consistency, computational requirements, and operational overhead tolerance

Sponsor

This episode is sponsored by LearnKube — get started on your Kubernetes journey through comprehensive online, in-person or remote training.

More info

Find all the links and info for this episode here: https://ku.bz/5gMTkzLhV
Interested in sponsoring an episode? Learn more.

Shared Nothing, Shared Everything: The Truth About Kubernetes Multi-Tenancy, with Molly Sheets Jun 10, 2025

Show notes

Molly Sheets, Director of Engineering for Kubernetes at Zynga, discusses her team's approach to platform engineering. She explains why their initial one-cluster-per-team model became unsustainable and how they're transitioning to multi-tenant architectures.

You will learn:

Why slowing down deployments actually increases risk and how manual approval gates can make systems less resilient than faster, smaller deployments
The operational reality of cluster proliferation - why managing hundreds of clusters becomes unsustainable and when multi-tenancy becomes necessary
Practical multi-tenancy implementation strategies including resource quotas, priority classes, and namespace organization patterns that work in production
Better metrics for multi-tenant environments - why control plane uptime doesn't matter and how to build meaningful SLOs for distributed platform health

Sponsor

This episode is sponsored by LearnKube — get started on your Kubernetes journey through comprehensive online, in-person or remote training.

More info

Find all the links and info for this episode here: https://ku.bz/Rmpl8948_
Interested in sponsoring an episode? Learn more.

My pipelines from GitLab Commit to ArgoCD got beaten by FTP, with David Pech Jun 03, 2025

Show notes

A sophisticated GitLab CI/CD pipeline integrated with Argo CD was ultimately rejected in favour of simple FTP deployment, offering crucial insights into the real barriers facing cloud-native adoption in traditional organisations.

David Pech, Staff Cloud Ops Engineer at Wrike and holder of all CNCF certifications, shares his experience supporting a PHP team after a company merger. He details how he built a complete cloud-native platform with Kubernetes, Helm charts, and GitOps workflows, only to see it fail against cultural and organizational resistance despite its technical superiority.

You will learn:

The hidden costs of sophisticated tooling - How GitOps pipelines with multiple moving parts can create trust issues when developers lose local control and must rely on remote processes they don't understand
Cultural factors that trump technical benefits - Why customer expectations, existing Windows-based infrastructure, and team readiness matter more than the elegance of your Kubernetes solution
Practical strategies for incremental adoption - The importance of starting small, building in-house operational expertise, and ensuring management advocacy at all levels before attempting cloud-native transformations

Sponsor

This episode is sponsored by LearnKube — get started on your Kubernetes journey through comprehensive online, in-person or remote training.

More info

Find all the links and info for this episode here: https://ku.bz/_MWX5m6G_
Interested in sponsoring an episode? Learn more.

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