Agentic DevOps : AI Engineering for Infrastructure

Bret and Nirmal are joined by Rajdeep Saha from AWS to discuss AI agents and the MCP (Model Context Protocol) standard. In this episode, they explore how AI can manage infrastructure with ease and demonstrate creating Kubernetes clusters with a single prompt.

😇 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 demonstrate AWS's new MCP server for EKS, showing how AI agents can create Kubernetes clusters and deploy applications with simple English prompts. Using Claude Sonnet 4 through the Cline VS Code extension, Raj creates an entire EKS cluster with CloudFormation, deploys a workload, and demonstrates how the AI automatically troubleshoots and fixes deployment issues - all without touching kubectl or writing YAML manually.

We explore the Model Context Protocol (MCP) standard and how it enables AI agents to dynamically discover and use tools, from AWS services to cost calculators. We discuss the security implications of giving AI write access to AWS accounts, the challenges of context window management, and why local LLMs struggle with complex agentic workflows compared to foundational models like Claude.

We cover emerging standards, particularly Google's Agent-to-Agent (A2A) protocol that was recently donated to CNCF. This complements MCP by standardizing how agents communicate with each other, potentially leading to agent marketplaces where specialized agents can collaborate on complex tasks.

We stress the need for proper security guardrails, best practices, and organizational readiness. As Raj puts it, "Gen AI is an awesome white horse, but you still need Gandalf to ride it."

Looking ahead, we predict rapid evolution in agentic frameworks, multi-agent support, and standardized authentication. For DevOps professionals, the bar is rising - tasks that once took a week may soon be expected in two days with AI assistance. It is becoming crucial to understand these tools before they reach mainstream.

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

Creators & Guests

• (00:00) - Introduction

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

Grab the best coupons for my Docker and Kubernetes courses on Udemy.
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Bret and Nirmal discuss the intersection of AI agents and DevOps with Solomon Hykes, co-founder of Dagger and Docker. Solomon introduces Container Use, an open-source MCP server that gives coding agents isolated, containerized environments to work in, solving the critical problem of agents interfering with each other when running on the same system.

😇 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 examine the emerging MCP ecosystem and its potential trajectory, drawing parallels to how containers evolved from developer tools to infrastructure platforms. Solomon warns about the rapid "gatekeeping" phase already happening with MCP, where vendors rush to lock down and monetize what started as an open developer innovation space.

Other topics we touch on are: the four core components of agentic workflows, security challenges with untrusted text injection (the new "SQL injection" problem), token cost management, and the importance of balancing proprietary AI services with open-source infrastructure layers.

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

Creators & Guests

• (00:00) - Intro

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

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

Bret and Nirmal explore AI agents in Kubernetes with Eitan Yarmush, Senior Architect at Solo.io. Eitan explains how AI agents work through three simple components (system prompts, LLMs, and tools), and demonstrates the kagent project, which provides a Kubernetes-native way to deploy and manage AI workflows.

😇 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 also address the challenges including security concerns (MCP lacks built-in security standards), cost considerations, and technical limitations like context window constraints.

Check out the video podcast version here: https://youtu.be/JTTqG5SOpWY

Creators & Guests

• (00:00) - Intro

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

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

Bret and Nirmal are at KubeCon London and record their ideas about how AI Agents are about to change DevOps, platform engineering, SRE, automation, troubleshooting, and more.

😇 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.

Creators & Guests

• (00:00) - Intro

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

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