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At Red Hat Summit this year, I had the task of explaining Kubernetes Operators with Ansible in two, fifteen-minute talks, separated by three hours, in the middle of the busy Red Hat booth to anyone that walked up. I had to explain Kubernetes, the difference stateful and stateless apps, what a Kubernetes Operator is, how to write an operator with Ansible, and then demonstrate this capability. Use of video and sound was discouraged. Also, there wasn’t going to be an ethernet cable available, meaning only conference show floor WiFi was available for a demo. ...

I was working on things for work (as one does) when it dawned on me. Very few folks understand the difference between upstream and downstream as it relates to open source software. I used Red Hat projects as a pointer. Here is the output of that effort (which was scratching the surface). Upstream vs. Downstream Upstream vs. Downstream is confusing at times. But, for the bigger Red Hat projects this holds true: ...

I made an innocent comment on Twitter last week that led to WAY more feedback than I was expecting. The Kubernetes community showed me there are a lot of options when creating Kubernetes Secrets. I made the statement: Every single time I have to create a secret, I have to read the docs. I should have this figured out by now." Years ago, a colleague asked Albert Einstein if he knew his phone number. The rebuttal was short and rather Einsteinian, “Never memorize something that you can look up.” So when a reminder of how “Memorization is an anti-pattern.” came up during the conversation about Kubernetes Secrets, I was quite relieved. ...

The last week of November 2018, I made a trip to the Red Hat office in Westford, MA. I was enrolled in Automation with Ansible I (DO407) with exam (EX407) class. One of my co-workers scoffed when I told him I was going. He didn’t seem to quite understand why I wanted a certification I don’t need (I do work for Ansible now after all). I hope to address that and why Product and Marketing people should get certified (not only Ops). ...

A former co-worker and now friend used to have a tagline, “Everyday is a school day.” I remind myself of this fact nearly every time I learn something new. Overall, 2018 was great for me professionally. I’d like to share some things I picked up on this most recent journey around the sun we call 2018. I’ll make some predictions about 2019 in the process too. Kubernetes Will Get Easier Last year, I mentioned that Kubernetes Will Find Its Way in 2018. I do believe that came to fruition this year. Pretty much every major IT company has a range of ways to consume Kubernetes. They’re all Cloud Native Computing Foundation members at the very least. Operationalizing Kubernetes is getting easier as more people gain experience with Kubernetes. Even lab or cloud-only experience might be enough to get a job at the moment. ...