Cloud Native Overview
The global pandemic has accelerated digital transformation throughout all industries over the last 18 months, and cloud-native technologies will have been a core element of the move to cloud and software-driven processes. Although the last couple of years has seen a push that “Kubernetes is boring”, we are now starting to see this acceleration of digital transformation manifested in what are considered to be the current “hot topics” of cloud-native at the moment: Security, edge computing and IoT, and improving how we manage the workflows for development and maintaining infrastructure through GitOps.
KubeCon Europe 2021 officially starts next week, in what looks to be the last virtual KubeCon (with KubeCon North America 2021 currently planned to return to being in-person in Los Angeles in October 2021), the shift to running as a virtual conference and enabling wider global access means a wider range of content is potentially available for colleagues to consume. So, to help you get more out of your KubeCon experience, we have combed through the KubeCon virtual schedule and selected some talks that should frame where the current buzz is within cloud-native.
Cloud Native Security
Cloud Native Security Day | CNCF
Tuesday 4th May: 09:00 - 16:00 BST
This co-hosted event promises to deep dive into related cloud native security projects in the areas of architecture and policy, secure software development, supply chain security, identity and access, and forensics.
The Art of Hiding Yourself | Lorenzo Fontana @ Sysdig
Thursday 6th May: 10:35 - 11:10 BST
This talk seems to walk through the steps a potential hacker could take to bypass intrusion detection while breaking into a Kubernetes cluster.
Uncovering a Sophisticated Kubernetes Attack in Real-Time | Jed Salazar & Natália Réka Ivánkó @ Isovalent
Thursday 6th May: 12:30 - 13:05 BST
eBFP is topic of discussion on the Cloud Native Security Day schedule, but it also makes an appearance on the main Kubecon schedule. This talk will demonstrate how we can potential use eBFP-compatible tooling such as the CNI cilium to detect live security events on a cluster,
Cert-Manager Beyond Ingress – Exploring the Variety of Use Cases | Matthew Bates @ Jetstack
Friday 7th May: 11:40 - 12:15 BST
The standard use case for cert-manager should be well known, which is the automated provision of x509 TLS certificates for Kubernetes ingress allowing for ingress security hardening through short-lived credentials. This talk will demonstrate how this concept can be expanded to additional use cases, such as control plane certs and service mesh workload certs.
Edge & IoT
Kubernetes on Edge Day | CNCF
Tuesday 4th May 4: 09:00 - 16:00 BST
This co-hosted event promises to deep dive into Kubernetes projects that can greater facilitate the rise of edge computing. K3s and KubeEdge, I imagine, should feature prominently.
[Akri: Making IoT Devices Accessible to Your Edge Kubernetes Clusters]((https://kccnceu2021.sched.com/event/iE2E/akri-making-iot-devices-accessible-to-your-edge-kubernetes-clusters-kate-goldenring-microsoft-jiri-appl-microsoft) | Kate Goldenring & Jiří Appl @ Microsoft
Thursday 6th May: 11:25 - 12:00 BST
This talk looks like it is intended to showcase a project which uses the kubernetes device plugin framework to enable advertisement of IoT related devices (sensors, cameras, etc) in Kubernetes clusters
Intro to KubeEdge: Kubernetes Native Edge Computing Framework | Kevin (Zefeng) Wang @ Huawei Technologies
Thursday 6th May: 13:20 - 13:55 BST
With the KubeEdge project seemingly integral to building edge-computing-compatible Kubernetes platforms, this talk seems worth a mention for those looking to get a foundational understanding of the operational quirks required to run Kubernetes for edge.
GitOps
GitOps Con Europe | CNCF GitOps Working Group
Monday 3rd May: 16:00 - 21:00 BST
Another co-hosted event, with this one promising to deep dive into an area which has only recently started to get a lot of traction within the community. As such, this event should provide a lot of information to foundational knowledge of the theory behind and projects involved in GitOps.
The New Stack Makers Virtual Pancake Breakfast + Podcast: Securing GitOps: Self-Healing Through Open Source | The New Stack
Tuesday 4th May: 08:00 - 08:35 BST
A round table GitOps talk which should attract some burning questions about the theory and implementation of the workflow process.
Helm Users! What Flux 2 Can Do For You | Scott Rigby & Kingdon Barrett @ Weaveworks
Wednesday 5th May: 12:10 - 12:45 BST
With Flux taking its place as one of the two major options in GitOps-enabled Continuous Delivery, this talk should provide a good introduction to Flux, as well as a showcase of the new features in the newly released Flux v2.
Putting Chaos Into Continuous Delivery to Increase Application Resiliency
| Juergen Etzlstorfer @ Dynatrace & Karthik Satchitanand @ Mayadata
Thursday 6th May: 10:35 - 11:10 BST
Related to our previous CNCF sandbox blog post LitmusChaos: Chaos Engineering with Helm Chart Test Suite about integrating LitmusChaos into e2e testing pipelines, this talk looks like it should provide a good introduction to the justification for chaos testing in pipelines, and how the Keptn tool can help integrate chaos testing evaluation into GitOps-style processes.
These are just a few selections from current “hot topics”, but KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2021 should as always promise to deliver such a wide variety of talks, sessions (as well as the huge amount of fellow attendees) that everyone working in the cloud-native space should take away something from the experience.
But what do you think? How are you going to spend your time during the potentially last virtual Kubecon? Let us know!