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Kubernetes Community Corner with Michael O’Leary: Exploring the Intersection of Learning and Collaboration
1.4k Plays1 year ago
In this episode of Kubernetes Bytes. Ryan Wallner talks with community organizer and solutions architect Michael O'Leary. Ryan and Michael tackle what it means to build and be part of a community as well as how to participate in meetups. Michael also spends some time talking about his Certified Kubernetes Admin study group and how he's been helping others get their CKA and expanding it to public members of the Kubernetes community, All this and more on this weeks episode!
Are you ready to earn extra income from sharing your expert opinion? Head over to userinterviews.com/hello to sign up and participate today!
Show Links
https://community.f5.com https://github.com/kelseyhightower/kubernetes-the-hard-way https://www.meetup.com/boston-kubernetes-meetup/ https://kubebyexample.com/
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Transcript
Introduction to Kubernetes Bites Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
You are listening to Kubernetes Bites, a podcast bringing you the latest from the world of cloud native data management. My name is Ryan Walner and I'm joined by Bob and Shaw coming to you from Boston, Massachusetts. We'll be sharing our thoughts on recent cloud native news and talking to industry experts about their experiences and challenges managing the wealth of data in today's cloud native ecosystem.
00:00:28
Speaker
Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening wherever you are. We're coming to you from Boston, Massachusetts. Today is April 7th, 2023. Hope everyone is doing well and staying safe. Let's dive into it. As you might notice, I'm here by myself this
00:00:45
Speaker
episode.
Host Update and KubeCon Preparation
00:00:46
Speaker
Bhavan is traveling seeing family who he hasn't seen in a very long time so I wish him safe travels and I hope you're having a blast out there visiting family and we're excited to have you back when you do come back well rested and ready to go.
00:01:01
Speaker
You know, I think this week is for a lot of people who are attending KubeCon, sort of that prep week, getting everything in the last minute, ready to go for the show if you're attending KubeCon in Amsterdam.
00:01:16
Speaker
I will be there and happy to chat with anyone who's going to be at the show. So please reach out on Twitter, email, whatever it may be. I'm happy to grab a coffee or meet up on the show or that kind of thing to chat all things.
00:01:33
Speaker
Um, you know, I was, uh, really sick early this, this week and over the weekend. So, uh, I'm, I'm recovering. My voice is mostly here. I had to push off recording this episode till later this week. Um, but I'm feeling pretty good. I've got some, some horse bill antibiotics that seem to be doing its job and, um, welcoming, uh, the spring. And for those who are golf fans, it's master's week. So, um, always happy.
00:02:00
Speaker
to watch that and really get me in the mood for spring. So Easter's around the corner. And if you celebrate Easter, happy Easter in advance.
Guest Introduction: Michael O'Leary from F5
00:02:09
Speaker
We have a really great guest on the show today, Michael O'Leary from F5. He's one of the Susan's architects there. We're going to be talking about all things community and Kubernetes. And we have a lot to talk about there and kind of what he's up to. But before we do, I do have a bit of news to jump into.
Kubernetes Storage Complexities and Improvements
00:02:29
Speaker
Um, the first article I have here on the list is, uh, Kubernetes storage is getting better. Um, I actually really liked this article because, um, you know, obviously we cover a lot of things around data and Kubernetes here on the show, uh, both given Bob and I's background at storage based companies and sort of our history. Um, Michael Cade, who's been on the show, wrote a great blog post, um, posted on the 28th of March.
00:02:58
Speaker
That is titled Kubernetes Storage is Complex, but it's getting better. I really like this approach to it because it is one of the more complex topics when getting into running applications on Kubernetes. What do you do with your data? Do you run it on Kubernetes? How do you manage it? How do you protect it? Those kinds of things. Along with security, networking, all those other ones.
00:03:22
Speaker
And he kind of lays it out in kind of a short and sweet blog post here in terms of what is it, what are the challenges, and kind of where we're going. So go take a read of that. He's a friend of the show, and I think it's a great article.
00:03:37
Speaker
I want to make sure Bob inside here, but he always covers funding rounds and I think he'd be proud that I remember to try to include and find funding rounds.
Observability and Honeycomb's Funding
00:03:48
Speaker
The one I'm going to be talking about is honeycomb the sort of observability.
00:03:56
Speaker
a company announced $50 million in Series D funding. So in today's VC funding climate, getting funding and good funding is definitely hard when it comes to where we are as an economy in this year alone. So really congrats to Honeycomb if you haven't heard of them.
00:04:20
Speaker
really in the sort of observability space and sort of one of the more interesting topics when it comes to what people are starting to care about now that we're seeing mainstream deployments of Kubernetes and what we need to do on top of our platforms that we've built. Observability is a big one, right? Having sort of insight into everything that's going on in terms of awareness and validation and those kind of concepts.
00:04:47
Speaker
go take a look at them and congrats again on their Series D funding.
CNCF Case Study on CubeFS
00:04:52
Speaker
Another one related to the data use case, I think there's a CubeFS case study that the CNCF put out on the website. I'll put a link in here as well. Really is around how CubeFS and some of the caching optimizations that it has was able to basically
00:05:17
Speaker
improve a AI training sort of use case for the data that goes into training the models, being cached and those kind of things. So AI is definitely a hot topic right now with, you know, Bard and ChatTPT and sort of even the segment we've put in our own show with ChatTPT. So it's definitely something that kind of hits a couple of great topics for me is what's going on in AI and how kind of
00:05:44
Speaker
the pipelines look for developing and training those models along with a data sort of management product and or solution like QFS. So go check that out. I think it's an interesting story to read if you're keeping up with things here. The next article I have here
Creating Developer-focused Kubernetes Platforms
00:06:06
Speaker
Um, is written by Daniel Bryant. Um, I haven't met him, don't know him. He's a developer relations employee at Master Labs, but I really like his blog post here. It's called, why create a developer focused Kubernetes platform and how. So, um, the article really drives into sort of, um, what it means to.
00:06:27
Speaker
put the developer first in a Kubernetes platform. It talks about platform engineering, what it doesn't mean to overcome some of the complexities with Kubernetes, those kind of things. So I definitely want to put his article out there. I think it's a great read for those who are interested and maybe are listeners of this community. So go check out his article. And shout out to him for that article as well.
Challenges in Kubernetes: 'Kubernetes is Hard' Thread
00:06:53
Speaker
The, uh, I always like putting, um, hacker news threads on the show here is links. Cause I find them really insightful. Uh, not just for, you know, how to troll appropriately. Cause there's plenty of that on the, on the platform, but some of the topics that drive a lot of interest. Um, and this one is an article that's just labeled Kubernetes is hard and there's a lot of people.
00:07:18
Speaker
that are chiming in sort of, you know, here's, here's how it went in my organization, here's when it went in my organization really well, or what didn't go really well, and introduce all this complexity. And, you know, this article itself kind of goes into, you know, there are really good things about it, there are complex things about it, there's ways to use it, and there's ways
00:07:36
Speaker
is not to use it, there's times to use it, and there's times not to. These are topics we've covered on the show because this is the reality of it is that you can't just throw technology at a problem. It comes organizationally first. Also, you have to evaluate whether Kubernetes is right for your application. So definitely go check out this thread. Mind you, you have to read between the lines with some of the responses. Read through who's just there to hate or troll. But I think it's a really good article.
00:08:04
Speaker
or thread, I should say, on sort of the topics of thinking Kubernetes is hard.
Introducing QUOC: A Learning Tool for Kubernetes
00:08:11
Speaker
Another tool that was just introduced by the Kubernetes community earlier in March, I missed it though, is called QUOC. I'm probably butchering the name of that, K-W-O-K, but it stands for Kubernetes Without Qublet.
00:08:29
Speaker
And it's basically a learning tool for understanding the main services and loops and life cycles of Kubernetes without having to actually run infrastructure. So it basically mocks the kubelet so you can spin up thousands and thousands of nodes and see those interactions with some of the main services and such as a learning tool. So go check it out. I think it's a really interesting tool if you're looking to
00:08:58
Speaker
get things going on your laptop and kind of understand the functionality of Kubernetes and some of the things like that. Obviously, it's limited. It doesn't actually run compute nodes. It doesn't run worker nodes. It fakes them. It mocks them. But go check it out. I think it's a really interesting tool if you are sort of in that concept.
Sponsor Highlight: User Interviews
00:09:17
Speaker
And in terms of learning and kind of getting your hands on things, it's appropriate for today's topic, which
00:09:25
Speaker
leads me into getting Michael on the show today. So without further ado, let's get him on. We would like to thank our very first sponsors for the Kubernetes Bytes podcast, User Interviews. You might be thinking, who or what is User Interviews? User Interviews connects researchers with high-quality participants to provide real feedback on real products.
00:09:48
Speaker
Participants can earn some extra bucks for their feedback, which allows them to have an impact on how the products are actually being built.
00:09:56
Speaker
User interviews is free to sign up and most studies are less than an hour and pay over $60. Some studies pay several hundred dollars for a one-on-one interview. And as we all know, who doesn't want some extra beer money for the weekend? You can share your opinions with relevant companies who are building products like Adobe, Spotify, Amazon, and many more.
00:10:19
Speaker
Are you ready to earn some extra income for sharing your expert opinion? Head over to userinterviews.com slash hello to sign up and participate today. That's userinterviews.com slash hello and tell them the Kubernetes Bites podcast sent you by using the promo code kubernetesbites.
F5's Use of Kubernetes and Community Involvement
00:10:36
Speaker
All right, Michael, it's so good to have you here on Kubernetes Bites. We're a week out from KubeCon, so hopefully this will be informative for a lot of people and dive right in. But before we do, why don't you give yourself a little introduction for our listeners and who you are and what you do.
00:10:53
Speaker
Oh, thanks for having me on, Ryan. So my name's Michael O'Leary, and I am the host of the Boston Kubernetes Meetup. And my day job is a solution architect at F5. In my day job, I spend a lot of time talking to customers about Kubernetes and how they can deploy Kubernetes and integrate it with existing sort of workloads. And that's what keeps me busy.
00:11:16
Speaker
Nice. Yeah, I know you just had an event last night, right? So how'd that go for you in Boston? It was great. Yeah. So Google have an office in Cambridge, right near Boston. And they offered to host us. And that was a fantastic venue. Google always has great offices. We've got a good turnout and some great speakers. So all in all, everyone was happy.
00:11:39
Speaker
Great. Yeah. Well, it's nice to have someone else from Boston on this Boston local show. I know we always say we're from Boston, although I'm fibbing a little bit because I'm a little outside of Boston. Bob and my other co-host who's normally here, he's traveling to see family, is probably more truly from Boston. So it's good to have you here. So why don't we dive into a little bit of like, where does your day job and Kubernetes intersect? Like, what do you do day to day with Kubernetes?
00:12:08
Speaker
Yeah, sure. So my day job, like I said, I work at F5 and Kubernetes is really growing in the industry, including at F5. So there's a couple of ways that we use Kubernetes at F5. Firstly, we have a multi-cloud global platform that can run Kubernetes or integrate with existing Kubernetes. So it can stitch together multiple cloud environments. It's pretty advanced, but that's sort of my favorite topic to talk about.
00:12:36
Speaker
Also, Nginx is part of the F5 family and Nginx is of course ubiquitous. Anyone who knows containers knows about Nginx.
00:12:45
Speaker
So we spend a lot of time talking to Kubernetes customers about Nginx, as well as some more sort of everyday things. So when it comes to service mesh or how to integrate with existing service meshes, even the new hardware that we run runs Kubernetes under the covers. So you don't always need to know kubectl commands and that sort of thing to be using Kubernetes at F5.
00:13:09
Speaker
Great. Yeah. That's a funny point about Nginx because I feel like even if you're new to Kubernetes in this ecosystem, you've probably seen an example that starts up Nginx as pretty much a hello world of a lot of people maybe getting into Kubernetes, but also those topics that are a little more advanced like Ingress controllers and things like that, which also involve Nginx.
00:13:32
Speaker
So that's a good one there. So you mentioned F5 runs Kubernetes, but do you run Kubernetes for your customers or are you sort of helping your customers out with their own environments as well? That's a great question. We can run Kubernetes for our customers. So I talked about a global platform, it's called F5 Distributed Cloud, that can run a managed version of Kubernetes.
00:13:55
Speaker
But very commonly in my day job, I'm helping customers with their existing Kubernetes clusters. So they'll have, you know, OpenShift or Rancher or some other deployment of Kubernetes running in their environment. And they're looking to take legacy or traditional applications and sort of integrate them. So often there's firewall or network security type conversations I get involved in with network guys and then platform or Kubernetes guys dealing with each other.
00:14:23
Speaker
That's interesting too, because I bet because of this, right, either both the global sort of way you run managed Kubernetes across clouds, assuming those are the sort of major offerings, aka CKS those kind of things that true to say, or
00:14:38
Speaker
You're saying AKS, EKS, and then F5 has something similar? Or are those the versions of managed Kubernetes that you run, or do you have your own built? Sure. We have our own build, so we have a compliant distribution of Kubernetes, as well as a virtual Kubernetes, so sort of a namespace as a service offering. Oh, nice. But yeah, I could talk all day about that.
00:15:04
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, I know we're here to talk a lot about sort of the community and what you've been involved in and how people can get involved and give back so we can switch gears to that. And I think let's start with
00:15:19
Speaker
really a general topic about how you're involved in both Kubernetes Boston. I know you have some ties to some other CNCF groups as well. What's it like, I guess, getting involved in the community? And can you kind of talk about your journey from getting involved to now running a group like Kubernetes Boston?
00:15:40
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I can talk about my journey. So it was around 2020, I'd say. So fairly recently that I sort of began my Kubernetes journey and I started talking to customers usually trying to integrate F5 big IP appliances as Ingress
00:15:58
Speaker
solution for existing Kubernetes clusters. So I got to know Kubernetes networking fairly well. And then somebody suggested that I become CKA certified. And my first gut reaction was, I don't need that. And of course, I was wrong. I took CKA certification. And I learned a whole ton of things about Kubernetes that I had no idea about. And it really gave me a lot of confidence in talking to customers and people in the community about Kubernetes.
00:16:28
Speaker
And so I decided to run a study group to help some peers of mine also pass the CKA exam. And it was a big success. And one of the peers decided to do the same thing and went on to host his own study group internally at F5. And together, we started to get a bunch of engineers
00:16:50
Speaker
certified in Kubernetes. And at around the same time, we thought we could do this for the community. So I looked online and went to meetup.com and looked for a Kubernetes group. And I noticed that there was one in Boston that hadn't met since the pandemic. And that's very true for many meetup groups. A lot of meetup groups went dormant over the pandemic. So I emailed the
00:17:16
Speaker
the leader of the group and said, is it okay if I take over your group? And he said, sure. And I became the leader of the Boston Kubernetes meetup. And that's really the most community facing or sort of public role that I think I have today as the leader of the Boston Kubernetes meetup.
00:17:33
Speaker
Yeah, that's a fun and interesting, I guess, path into it. Maybe easier than some others. Hey, can I have this? It's like, yeah, sure, good. What did that sort of mean to you once you kind of were green lighted for this community?
Benefits of Smaller Meetup Groups
00:17:51
Speaker
Have you run one before? What were some of the challenges kind of bringing this back to life after we've been dormant, as you said, with the pandemic?
00:18:01
Speaker
Yeah, it was a really interesting journey and I'd love to share some tips and what I've learned. So I took over a dormant meetup group, but it turns out that I didn't have many contacts in the industry and I wasn't really as hooked in as to the community as I am now. So the first couple of months were a lot of emails and phone calls from me asking people to present at a meetup or to host a meetup.
00:18:25
Speaker
when you're getting any sort of initiative off the ground, there's usually a lot of work you have to put in upfront. And so there was a little bit of that took a bit of personal follow through, I guess, or a bit of get outside of your comfort zone, in my case, to sort of ask people to sponsor or, you know, these sorts of questions that most engineers don't normally have to do. Sure.
00:18:44
Speaker
After a couple of months, we had a couple of meetings. The first one was small, and then we got some moderate group sizes. The last meeting we had, there were 56 people in attendance, which is pretty good for a meetup in the post-COVID era. We've grown the group, and I think we've got fantastic momentum now. We've got some really good speakers.
00:19:08
Speaker
And I think the best is yet to come. Yeah, I know prior to the pandemic, there was a lot of interest in meetup groups. I know at a couple different startups, I was participating in them in several cities. And they're always a lot of fun because they're not huge events. I'd say, like you said, 50 something is a great size. But the intimate kind of setting is actually one of the benefits.
00:19:34
Speaker
because it gives you a chance to really meet and build relationships. And that's kind of, at least personally, how I see sort of meetup culture and the benefits of it. Obviously, we want to be able to spread any jobs and those kind of things and kind of interest. But I think the smaller bit of how these things usually grow,
00:19:56
Speaker
is great. Although it sounds like Kubernetes Boston is coming back to life. What's next, I guess, in your mind for this community? Yeah, that's a great question. Well, first I'll respond to the part about community and what people get out of a meetup. I agree that networking and just who's hiring, who's looking for a job, that's something that I always make an effort to pause in the middle of a meetup and ask
00:20:25
Speaker
the audience. Hey, look, who's hiring? Who is open to looking for a job? And I remember as a young engineer in Boston myself, I was able to do some networking at these sorts of meetup groups. So I really appreciated the host's ability to give that opportunity to someone that might not feel like speaking up or may not be able to get around the room and introduce themselves to every single person there. It's also great for employers that are looking to hire engineers. You can meet them at these meetup groups.
00:20:56
Speaker
And then to the second part of your question, what's to come? We've been meeting every two months, but I think I'm going to make that a little more frequently. I'm going to make that every six weeks or maybe even every month in the future. I don't need someone to come to a meetup every single month, but there's so many topics in the world of Kubernetes that if I just have two or three speakers at every meetup event,
00:21:19
Speaker
That's only a couple of slots per year really compared to the number of topics that there are to exploring Kubernetes and how often those change. So I think I'll have slightly bigger meetups perhaps and more frequent meetups. And then there's a couple of areas that I think we could, we could probably do more to reach the community. I'd love to see some underrepresented groups presenting that would be really
00:21:45
Speaker
That'd be really nice to see. And I know that there's a lot of support in the community for finding people that are minorities and having them present if they so choose. And then there's a couple of conferences that are coming up. And apart from KubeCon, of course, which is very large, I don't know of too many smaller or medium-sized conferences. So I'd love to see some sort of other events outside of just a meetup in the future.
00:22:11
Speaker
Yeah, that can take advantage of existing communities out there. And I know Boston also is a big educational sort of city, you know, when you think about Northeastern and Harvard, I wonder if there's an opportunity for students to come. I know there often is students who attend just to learn, which is actually great to see, right? I know it's a resource that I kind of wish I knew about when I was doing
00:22:35
Speaker
going to school back then and being able to see what a potential future path would look like. I think that's super valuable. So definitely something worth getting into.
CKA Study Group Initiatives
00:22:47
Speaker
Now, you mentioned the CKA study group. I know the Certified Kubernetes Admin is one of many certifications that
00:22:57
Speaker
folks are after in the Kubernetes space. And it is often, especially if you're new to Kubernetes, quite daunting of a task when you start reading into it. There are several resources out there that are paid for, right, which can help. But I really like this idea of a sort of community study group because A, when you're kind of
00:23:22
Speaker
building something off an existing community like a local meetup or a local group, that means probably those people are nearby physically where you could potentially get together, although it doesn't necessarily have to be in this day and age. So tell me more about sort of
00:23:40
Speaker
what this study group is, what it means to you, where it's held, and how it works, and where it's going, I guess. Everything else, sure. So like I said, I became a certified Kubernetes administrator about two years ago. And
00:23:56
Speaker
I decided to kick off a study group at first internally at F5. So I trained or rather led and the attendees sort of trained themselves on all the skills that are needed to pass the CKA exam.
00:24:11
Speaker
We in practice have met usually once per week over Zoom and we'll meet for between six and 12 weeks, depending on how long we want to spread out the study. If we meet every, if we meet twice a week, then we can probably cover all the material in five or six weeks. But if we meet once a week, we might take longer, something like 12 weeks to pass the CKA exam.
00:24:36
Speaker
Of course, everybody has different strengths. Some people come in already knowing 50% of the knowledge, and some people like me start with a pretty blank slate when it comes to Kubernetes knowledge. So people tend to take the exam at different times. But to your question about public facing and how the community gets involved, after one or two iterations of this study group internally within F5, we trained a bunch of engineers
00:25:05
Speaker
And I thought I could start training customers and members of the general public. So I opened up the invitation to first the Boston Kubernetes meetup and just recently just to the general public and actually have some help from a colleague named Jason Rahm.
00:25:21
Speaker
who is leading a study group after being an attendee at a study group just recently and passing the exam himself. He decided he'd like to do this too. So he does a couple of things that are public facing. So if you go to community.f5.com, you can often see articles and podcasts and videos and live streams done by Jason Rahm and his colleagues. And he's going to be running the next study group for the community, solely for the community. So it's pretty cool.
00:25:51
Speaker
That is cool. I like that whole aspect of sort of taking something that you're passionate about in your day job and making it something that other people can get involved in. Now, I'm curious, as part of the study group, is there a general content sort of guide you follow
00:26:08
Speaker
what's out there publicly in terms of this key K, how do you go about, you know, finding the content because it's it is changing, you know, with every release, it seems like and I know the CK does kind of come out with, you know, different versions behind the releases, but I'm curious how that works.
00:26:26
Speaker
Yeah, sure. So for those that don't know, there's this organization called the Linux Foundation, and they are the parent of the CNCF, or the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. And the CNCF are the group that administer the certified Kubernetes exam. So that's sort of when I use these terms to give you some context.
00:26:46
Speaker
The CKA exam is pretty tough. So there are some easier certifications that you can get if you are a beginner. And of course, there's much more you can do after becoming CKA certified.
00:26:59
Speaker
So how do we find the material to study? The CNCF website does provide a template for what will be in the exam. So they give you some categories and some rough weightings. They tell you security will be X percent of the exam and roles and RBAC will be Y percent of the exam, so forth.
00:27:18
Speaker
So it would be possible in theory to study for the exam completely alone. However, it's unlikely someone would do that. You can purchase, when you purchase your exam, which costs usually a couple hundred dollars from the CNCF, you get the option to also purchase a course from the CNCF, so that's one option.
00:27:41
Speaker
However, there's multiple private online university type sites. So I used A Cloud Guru, which I think used to be called Linux Academy. And most recently we've started using Udemy. They have a really great CAA prep course.
00:28:01
Speaker
And that's one that we found has a great depth of knowledge. And then if you take the Udemy course and you pass the sort of mock practice exams that they give you, you should be in great shape for the real exam. So usually I encourage students to sign up for that course. And then the last thing I'll say is when you do sign up for
00:28:24
Speaker
the CKA exam, you get two attempts at the exam itself. Plus, you get two practice exams at this site called killer.sh. So with two practice exams and two attempts at the real exam, you're in pretty good shape by the time you have your last attempt if you need it at the real exam.
00:28:43
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And I think there's something about, you know, you will have a certain amount of time to retake the second, right? Uh, you can't just like wait another year or something, at least the last time I looked into it since, since doing it. But, um, yeah, and, and killer is, I believe, uh, one of the ways you can try hands-on, right?
Hands-on Learning with Tools like killer.sh
00:29:02
Speaker
It used to be catechoda or something like that. Um,
00:29:05
Speaker
which is a really nice kind of tool. If you don't have access to a Kubernetes cluster and you kind of need something like that, it is a really nice way to get into it.
00:29:16
Speaker
Um, you know, there's, there's the concept of both these communities that you've been a part of both are generally, I guess, in, in perspective new to you. Um, and you seem pretty passionate about this. It seems like there's a good sort of opportunity for mentorship. And I'm wondering if, you know, there's folks out there looking for mentorship or if you've done or provided that kind of, um, you know, feedback for folks. What does that mean to you?
00:29:46
Speaker
Oh, it's really important. So just today, we had a study group meeting. And there's this one member of the study group who started out not really knowing too much about Kubernetes. And at the last minute, I had to lean on him to say, Hey, can you present this topic on storage? And to see him
00:30:04
Speaker
take the reins and show and explain to the rest of the group how storage works was really nice to see how far he's come. So it means a lot to me to see someone develop their Kubernetes skills in the same way that I've been taught or mentored in my own career.
00:30:23
Speaker
Also, I've spoken to other people about how I might be able to scale this more. And I don't know that I can have bigger study groups. The small sort of intimacy of a small study group really helps hold people accountable. And in a large group, people tend to zone out a little bit, especially when we're meeting over Zoom. So I think that if you were to scale this out, what you would need to do is train some people and then have those train
00:30:50
Speaker
others. And we have that now. So I mentioned a colleague of mine, Tony Marfield, who was the first to sort of take, he was part of my first study group. And then he has led multiple study groups since then. And Jason Rum is another colleague who has now taken it upon himself to run some study groups. So it's a nice sort of movement. And of course, when you lead a study group,
00:31:16
Speaker
don't want to admit it, but you end up learning a lot yourself. And sometimes you end up becoming that expert that you were kind of pretending to be to begin with. So it's kind of a nice loop and it all comes back. Yeah, everybody I feel learns a little differently, right? We all have sort of individual ways in which we pick things up. And when you're
00:31:38
Speaker
teaching or explaining, you know, it's like, can you explain cloud to your grandmother or five year old, that kind of question, everybody kind of you think about it a different way. And so the more people you interact with and stuff, I imagine it's, it's sort of enlightening to yourself, as you as you said, and the accountability, I think is a big part of it, right?
Mentorship and Growth in Study Groups
00:31:58
Speaker
I think
00:31:58
Speaker
Back when I started this sort of journey myself, I think I used something called CodeCloud. I don't know if you've heard of them. They have another CK kind of course. Mumshad Menebeth does a really great job, I believe, is a little plug for him, I guess. A little plug for him. He's so fantastic that his CodeCloud course sort of makes up the content of the Udemy course that we study. OK, yeah.
00:32:26
Speaker
It's just a fantastic site, and his mock exams are also a really helpful resource when you're practicing. That's also the Udemy course, then. Is it taught by him? Yeah, I didn't know that. That's funny. I always really enjoyed his style of teaching. It's very clear, crisp, and concepts come across really well. So that's funny. Small world there.
00:32:51
Speaker
So I guess if someone's looking at a... We'll take this in two parts. If someone's looking at joining a study group or interested in their CK, where does someone start? It may not be your study group specifically, but given that you've worked with various people, where could they start look to? Is there other groups or ways they can find their own study group, so to speak, if it's not yours?
00:33:20
Speaker
Sure. Um, so I take it that's part one. Yeah. So what I did, um, I was suggested by somebody to become CKA certified. So I did exactly that. I sort of googled around until I found how to become certified. Um, I actually took a couple of courses. I did the, uh, Linux Academy or cloud guru course.
00:33:45
Speaker
And I also sort of scoured the internet looking for practice exams and sort of free little labs here and there. And I found, you know, maybe a question here and four or five questions there. But I settled on the Udemy course that we study. So I would recommend that. I would also recommend reaching out to people that you know.
00:34:08
Speaker
and asking them for advice. And one thing that in practice really, really helped me is one day I sat down and I thought, I've got to be able to build a cluster from scratch with no help. So instead of using any courseware, I deployed
00:34:24
Speaker
Ubuntu, three Ubuntu machines in AWS, and then read a blog. I just Googled how to build a Kubernetes cluster and followed everything that I read in some random blog and learned a ton of stuff along the way. I went down some rabbit holes, learned about Linux, little things about Docker that I didn't know, but building your own, getting hands-on
00:34:46
Speaker
building a project, even if it's just a silly Hello World project that you show your grandma, that will go a long way to helping your Kubernetes skills as well as, of course, your general skills. I'm curious, does Kelsey Hightower's Kubernetes the Hard Way come up in your class? Do you ever use that resource? We haven't actually used it, but it does come up, of course. Yeah, he's a super popular guy.
00:35:09
Speaker
Yeah, I think back in. Wow. I must've been like 2015 or something like that early days. I know his resources has been around a long time. And if you are looking to really get down in the nitty gritty and understand everything that is a great resource and it does apply.
00:35:24
Speaker
very well to the CKA specifically, less so to the other certifications. And this is not part two. I'm going to insert one in another here. But is the study group just for the CKA or is it targeting other certifications like the security focus one or the application developer one? Yeah. So like you said, there's a CKS exam and a CKAD exam.
00:35:50
Speaker
one's security and one is for developers and to date we have not
00:35:56
Speaker
been aiming at either of those two. There's also an associate level CNCF certification you can get. But to date, we've just focused on the certified Kubernetes administrator. But I'd be happy to run a study group looking at some of these other certifications. I think once you get people on their way, they can then decide if they want to specialise, if they want to take it further, and so forth. So a couple of
00:36:21
Speaker
people that have been part of study groups that I've run have gone on to achieve CKAD certification, but that's been on their own. Yeah. And it's not like CK is a prerequisite to any of those, right? But it's a great place to start, I feel like, because it's the OG cert, right? I guess you could say. Yes, that makes me a gangster.
00:36:44
Speaker
That's right, that's right.
Advice for Community Group Initiatives
00:36:46
Speaker
And it does cover a lot of I think what might be applicable in the others. So that's good to know. Well, okay, part two, I'm gonna come back finally to this one is, you know, we talked a lot about your involvement in some of the communities in Boston. And there may be someone out there listening and saying, you know, I really wanted to either start my own community, or I want to be involved in there doesn't seem many around there. Now,
00:37:11
Speaker
What are some of the things I think that you picked up on that someone really needs to understand if they want to start a meetup? Maybe there isn't one that exists, right? What would you say are some of the sort of challenges and or things they could go about doing to get something going themselves?
00:37:31
Speaker
Yeah, sure. So I remember that it's easy to start something, it's really hard to follow through and keep doing it consistently. So think a lot about if you're ready to start a meetup group and keep it running. But if you are, I wholeheartedly encourage you to do so. What I did is reached out to people I started with people that I knew from work, who put me in touch with other people that had spoken at conferences or that had run meetups before or were maybe they were involved with the CNCF.
00:37:57
Speaker
And I more or less reached out to everyone that I could and most of them I didn't know before. So it took some amount of stepping outside of my comfort zone to do that. And I asked for advice from people that ran meetup groups or conferences in Philadelphia or Montreal or Toronto, places that are physically close to me because I figured that
00:38:19
Speaker
If I wanted to, I could drive to one of these cities and attend one of their meetups and then just copy what they did. So you're welcome to just copy what I do. If you want to start a meetup in your city, you can always reach out to me. When I started, I thought that maybe I could also copy the content. I could just have a speaker that spoke at a different meetup group speak at mine. But in reality, our speakers have tended to be the local folks. So that didn't really happen as much as I thought it might.
00:38:45
Speaker
But yeah, if you're looking to start something, I would say start small. If you want to become an organizer on meetup.com, it's a monthly fee, but it's probably not going to break the bank. You might even be able to get your workplace to pay for it. So you become an organizer on meetup.com. Or you can reach out to the CNCF. They have community chapters that you can join, or you can put your hand up and offer to lead a community chapter.
00:39:10
Speaker
So there's a couple of ways you can go, but it all starts with some initiative to sort of get outside of your comfort zone and be an organiser.
00:39:18
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. That's good advice. And maybe before we start to wrap things up here, I'd love to hear your pointers for perspective on what community means to you, both being a part of it and maybe what it does for you and your employer in your
Reflections on Community Involvement
00:39:37
Speaker
day job. Is there benefits there as well as just generally being a part of it? Yeah, sure. So I'll start with what community means to me.
00:39:46
Speaker
I think back to when I was younger in my working years, I would attend this community. It was the Boston Security Meetup and it was really popular. And there were a couple of people that I saw present and I thought, that's a fantastic topic. And I would take it away and I'd read about it the next day at work and maybe I'd dive into the topic myself. So community to me is helping younger or engineers that are in the
00:40:11
Speaker
in the community that might be looking for a job or might be just starting out. Of course, they don't have to be young. They can be, you know, towards the end of their career and looking to make a career change. But helping out someone that wants to take it take a different direction in their career is really important to me. And then, you know, I alluded to this before, but also people that might not have a natural opportunity to do so otherwise. So if typically a fairly male dominated
00:40:41
Speaker
industry that we work in and a couple of times I've seen some young women that really really are smart and I love to see them present and I love to see them being recognized by other people so that's really important to me. And then your second part of your question, what do I get out of it? That's a great question.
00:41:04
Speaker
So everything that I do is free or unpaid, so to speak. But that doesn't mean I don't benefit. So there is no sort of charge if you were to join a study group or come along to a meetup event. In fact, usually we put on free food and free drinks. So you get something out of it. But there is some benefit to me. Mostly it comes in the form of
00:41:28
Speaker
You know, learning by osmosis, it turns out that I have to think about the topics that are going to be presented by other presenters. I enjoy reading a ton about these topics and sort of getting to know a lot. There's of course the networking benefit.
00:41:41
Speaker
I work at F5, which is a fantastic place to work, and they support me in these community efforts. Sometimes some of our customers do show up to our meetup groups, so that's always nice. We get this sort of benefit of a better connection and a personal relationship with some of our customers. So there is a little bit of karma, I hope, coming back. And more or less, that's the sum of it.
00:42:06
Speaker
Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. I think, you know, we all are part of a community and we all have for the most part, hopefully day jobs that everything sort of interacts, but I feel like there's every community that you're a part of, even if you're involved in Kubernetes or CNCF,
00:42:23
Speaker
Most people you meet are representative of some company, right? So we're all kind of collectively in it together, so to speak. And on that, I do want to give a chance for people to find you. So wherever you are easily found, give folks listening a way for them to get a hold of you or read more about what you're doing. Cool. Thanks. Well, it's funny because I think we spoke about this, but with a three and a four year old, I don't care.
00:42:54
Speaker
for a social media. So probably LinkedIn is the best way to find me. My name is Michael O'Leary. I work at F5. So you should be able to find me on LinkedIn. If you go to meetup.com slash Boston dash Kubernetes dash meetup, you'll be able to find our meetup. You can actually message me over that platform as well. Otherwise reach out through the grapevine, however you, however you'd like.
00:43:18
Speaker
Yeah, and if you want to get a hold of Michael and you haven't found, we'll put all the links in the show notes. You can always reach out to us as well and we'll connect to you. And I think it goes without saying to all of our listeners, maybe if you are somewhat near the New England area and you want to come present on a topic, whatever that may be, connection to Kubernetes, probably a good place to start is to reach out to Michael.
00:43:41
Speaker
because I think going forward, we'll probably be looking for a lot of new types of speakers and maybe something you haven't thought of yet. Alright, so this brings us to the chat GPT question. Now, I know I sent this ahead to you, so you can choose to answer this or not, but this week's chat GPT question related to the topic we're talking about here is the
00:44:05
Speaker
We asked it to come up with a question related to Kubernetes and kind of learning and community. And the question it came up with was, if Kubernetes and a group of learners went on a road trip, what kind of adventures would they have and what lessons would they learn along the way? Would you like to hear its answer?
00:44:22
Speaker
I have one yourself. So we asked Chad GPT to answer this itself. This is kind of the whole concept here. And it goes, if Kubernetes and a group of learners went on a road trip, they would have a lot of exciting adventures and learn some valuable lessons along the way. And here are a few possibilities. The cluster breakdown, in quotes it has. When a group's Kubernetes cluster crashes in the middle of a trip, they learn the importance of backups, redundancy, and disaster recovery planning.
00:44:51
Speaker
The next one is the load balancing challenge. Again, in quotes, when they encounter heavy traffic on a highway, the group has to figure out how to balance the workload across their fleet of vehicles to optimize their journey. I'm not sure I fully understand that one, but the next one is the networking conundrum, maybe something at 5E here. When they arrive at a remote campsite with no internet access,
00:45:16
Speaker
They have to work together to set up a local network and troubleshoot connectivity issues.
00:45:23
Speaker
Yeah, there's a few more here. We have the configuration conundrum. When they stop at a roadside diner for lunch, they discover that the restaurant's point of sale system runs on Kubernetes and they have to help the owner troubleshoot a configuration issue. That's a very likely one, actually. You never know. You could be on a cruise ship somewhere and have to help the Kubernetes ship. The containerization conundrum. I think the conundrum thing is a theme here.
00:45:52
Speaker
When they visit a theme park and have to wait in long lines for rides, they come up with a creative solution to containerize the queues and optimize wait times. Again, not sure if I understand that one. But this is the end. This says, overall, the group would learn the importance of teamwork, problem solving, adaptability as they navigate the challenges of the road trip together.
00:46:12
Speaker
This is Chad GBT's take on learning, apparently, with Kubernetes on a road trip. All right. Well, there you go. I think the next study group will have to be on a road trip. Maybe I can...
00:46:26
Speaker
Check out from Boston to your place, Ryan. Yeah, there you go. A little, little trip out West here. Totally, totally fair. Well, this has been fun, Michael. I think hopefully our listeners enjoyed it too. And again, if you are looking to get involved in community, please don't hesitate to reach out and we'll talk to you soon. Thank you, Michael, again, for being on.
00:46:50
Speaker
All right. Well, you know, Michael was, I think, a great guest for the show. A perfect guest to have on before QCon. And we'll have, like, basically a small break in the next couple weeks because we're gonna, I think, skip a week.
00:47:06
Speaker
Well, maybe we won't even, but the next show will be a KubeCon recap. So if you aren't going to KubeCon and you're interested in Kubernetes and what's going on, Bhavan and I always take sort of that week's big announcements, the musings, the, you know, where people are paying attention, some of the things that are attracting people, maybe some of the things that released at KubeCon. And we talk about them on the show in a full episode. And so it's a good way to kind of come back and recap. But
00:47:34
Speaker
I think Michael being on the show talking about community and what it takes to get involved in the community, how to build a community and be a part of one or even start to get involved if you want to get hands on and technical and take your certified Kubernetes admin.
00:47:50
Speaker
The main takeaways for me is don't be afraid to ask for help. Don't be afraid to reach out and get involved in your local community, get involved with the people who are in your current network, because likely they're part of something and or want to be part of something as well. And it just needs a little bit of momentum to start rolling down the hill, so to speak.
00:48:10
Speaker
Um, you know, thank you again for, uh, today's episode. And with that brings me to the end of today's episode and I'm Ryan and thanks for joining another episode of COVID 90 Spikes. Thank you for listening to the COVID 90 Spikes podcast.