Cloud Commute

Welcome to this week's episode of Simplyblock's Cloud Commute podcast! Host Chris Engelbert sits down with Shaun Thomas, affectionately known as "Mr. High Availability" in the Postgres community, to discuss his journey from a standard DBA to a leading expert in high availability solutions for Postgres databases.

In this episode of Cloud Commute, Chris and Shaun discuss:

• The evolution of high availability (HA) in Postgres and the challenges of implementation
• The rise of cloud-native Postgres and the role of Kubernetes in high availability
• Tembo’s open-source contributions to Postgres, including PGXN and extensions like pg_vectorize
• The future of Postgres with AI and vectorized searches using pgvector

Interested to learn more about the cloud infrastructure stack like storage, security, and Kubernetes? Head to our website (www.simplyblock.io/cloud-commute-podcast) for more episodes, and follow us on LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com/company/simplyblock-io). You can also check out the detailed show notes on Youtube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYlJfG_1hbs).

You can find Shaun Thomas on X @BonesMoses and Linkedin: /bonesmoses.

About simplyblock:

Simplyblock is an intelligent database storage orchestrator for IO-intensive workloads in Kubernetes, including databases and analytics solutions. It uses smart NVMe caching to speed up read I/O latency and queries. A single system connects local NVMe disks, GP3 volumes, and S3 making it easier to handle storage capacity and performance. With the benefits of thin provisioning, storage tiering, and volume pooling, your database workloads get better performance at lower cost without changes to existing AWS infrastructure.

👉 Get started with simplyblock: https://www.simplyblock.io/buy-now

🏪 simplyblock AWS Marketplace: https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/seller-profile?id=seller-fzdtuccq3edzm

In this episode of simplyblock's Cloud Commute podcast, host Chris Engelbert welcomes Alessandro Vozza, a prominent figure in the Kubernetes and cloud-native community. Alessandro shares his journey from his early days in open-source advocacy to his pivotal role in organizing the DevOps and Kubernetes meetups in Amsterdam.

In this episode of Cloud Commute, Chris and Alessandro discuss:

• Kubernetes community engagement and CNCF ambassador role
• Developing namespace-as-a-service for Kubernetes platforms
• The future of Kubernetes: WebAssembly, AI, and environmental sustainability
• Building flexible, cloud-agnostic infrastructure for developers

Interested to learn more about the cloud infrastructure stack like storage, security, and Kubernetes? Head to our website (www.simplyblock.io/cloud-commute-podcast) for more episodes, and follow us on LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com/company/simplyblock-io). You can also check out the detailed show notes on Youtube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Y8XBTGSSig).

You can find Alessandro Vozza on X @bongo and Linkedin: /alessandrovozza.

About simplyblock:

Simplyblock is an intelligent database storage orchestrator for IO-intensive workloads in Kubernetes, including databases and analytics solutions. It uses smart NVMe caching to speed up read I/O latency and queries. A single system connects local NVMe disks, GP3 volumes, and S3 making it easier to handle storage capacity and performance. With the benefits of thin provisioning, storage tiering, and volume pooling, your database workloads get better performance at lower cost without changes to existing AWS infrastructure.

👉 Get started with simplyblock: https://www.simplyblock.io/buy-now

🏪 simplyblock AWS Marketplace: https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/seller-profile?id=seller-fzdtuccq3edzm

The podcast episode of simplyblock's Cloud Commute features Chris Engelbert interviewing Anders Eknert. They discuss Anders' background and current role at Styra, the company behind the Open Policy Agent (OPA) project. Anders lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden, and has been involved with Styra for about three and a half years. He shares how his previous work led him to OPA due to a need for managing complex authorization requirements across diverse environments.

Styra, founded by the creators of OPA, focuses entirely on the OPA ecosystem. They offer two main products: Styra DAS (Declarative Authorization Service) and an enterprise version of OPA. Styra DAS helps manage OPA at scale, providing a control plane for policy management, lifecycle, and auditing. The enterprise OPA offers enhanced performance, lower memory usage, and direct integrations with data sources.

OPA itself is a policy engine that enables policies as code, allowing for decoupled and centralized policy management. Common use cases include authorization and infrastructure policies, where OPA acts as a layer between services to make policy decisions. The discussion highlights the importance of treating policy like any other code, allowing for testing, reviewing, and versioning.

Chris and Anders also discuss the functionality of OPA from a developer's perspective, explaining how it integrates with services to enforce policies. They touch on the broader benefits of a unified policy management system and how OPA and Styra DAS facilitate this at scale, ensuring consistency and control across complex environments.

If you have questions for Anders, you can find him here:

• Blog: https://www.eknert.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anderseknert
• X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/anderseknert
• Mastodon: https://hachyderm.io/
• GitHub: https://github.com/anderseknert/

Styra and the Open Policy Agent can be found here:

• Styra Website: https://www.styra.com/
• Styra LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/styra/
• Styra X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/styrainc
• OPA Website: https://www.openpolicyagent.org/
• OPA X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/openpolicyagent
• OPA GitHub: https://github.com/open-policy-agent/opa

The Cloud Commute Podcast is presented by simplyblock (https://www.simplyblock.io)

Using CI/CD pipelines to build and deploy your applications is common sense. Many use combined tools though. Stefan Prodan, from ControlPlane, talks about the importance of recognizing that a deployment pipeline is basically a cluster admin and needs to be handled securely as a production system.

If you have questions to Stefan, you can reach her here:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefanprodan/
• X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/stefanprodan
• Github: https://github.com/stefanprodan
• Blog: https://stefanprodan.com/

If you want to try ControlPlane:

• ControlPlane Website: https://control-plane.io/

Additional show notes:

• FluxCD website: https://fluxcd.io/
• CNCF website: https://www.cncf.io/

The Cloud Commute Podcast is presented by simplyblock (https://www.simplyblock.io)

Running vulnerability scanners during development and in your build pipeline is great, but not enough. Newly emerging CVEs, and other application behavior anomalies need to be caught in production. Oshrat Nir, from ARMO, talks about the importance of runtime vulnerability scanning.

If you have questions to Oshrat, you can reach her here:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oshratn
• X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/oshratn
• Github: https://github.com/Oshratn
• Medium: https://medium.com/@oshratn_61520

If you want to give ARMO or Kubescape:

• ARMO Website: https://www.armosec.io/
• Kubescape Website: https://kubescape.io/

Additional show notes:

• https://www.cncf.io/
• https://www.giantswarm.io/

The Cloud Commute Podcast is presented by simplyblock (https://www.simplyblock.io)

Gerald Venzl, lead product manager for Oracle databases, talks about the shift of focus away from on-premise databases towards the cloud. It's a big change for a company like Oracle, but a necessary one. Learn more about the challenges and why Oracle believes multi-cloud is the future.

If you have questions to Gerald, you can reach him here:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geraldvenzl/
• X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GeraldVenzl
• Github: https://github.com/gvenzl
• Medium: https://medium.com/@gvenzl
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/geraldonit
• Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@gvenzl
• Blog: https://geraldonit.com/

You can find the Oracle Database team at:

• Website: https://www.oracle.com/database/technologies/
• X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/OracleDatabase

Additional show notes:

• Oracle and Microsoft Partnership: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABTpRAU4HaA

The Cloud Commute Podcast is presented by simplyblock (https://www.simplyblock.io)

Brian Vermeer from Snyk, a cybersecurity company providing tooling to detect common code issues and vulnerabilities throughout your development and deployment pipeline, talks about the necessity of multi checks, the commonly found threads, and how important it is to rebuild images for every deployment, even if the code hasn’t changed.

If you have questions to Brian, you can reach him here:

• Blog: https://brianvermeer.nl
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianvermeer/
• X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrianVerm
• Github: https://github.com/bmvermeer

If you are interested in Decodable, you can find them here:

• Website: https://snyk.io/

Additional show notes:

• Log4Shell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log4Shell
• XZ vulnerability: https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/04/what-we-know-about-the-xz-utils-backdoor-that-almost-infected-the-world/

The Cloud Commute Podcast is presented by simplyblock (https://www.simplyblock.io)

Jimmy Angelakos, a freelance consultant, talks about his experiences with customers running PostgreSQL on bare-metal, in the cloud, and on Kubernetes. He also talks about his new book "PostgreSQL Mistakes and How to Avoid Them" (discount link below).

If you have questions to Jimmy, you can reach him here:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vyruss/
• X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/vyruss
• Mastodon: https://fosstodon.org/@vyruss

Additional show notes:

• PostgreSQL Mistakes and How to Avoid Them: http://mng.bz/NVzn
• PostgreSQL 16 Administration Cookbook: https://packt.link/DBjEW
• Simon Riggs' Keynote "The Next 20 Years": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8W-J36IxYv4

The Cloud Commute Podcast is presented by simplyblock (https://www.simplyblock.io)

Gunnar Morling, from Decodable, a company simplifying the use of Apache Flink, talks about how to extract modifications from a database using change data capture tools, such as Debezium, and how to use Apache Flink or Decodable to run your real-time analytics or queries in a stream processing fashion.

If you have questions to Gunnar, you can reach him here:

• Blog: https://www.morling.dev/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gunnar-morling-2b44b7229
• X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gunnarmorling
• Mastodon: https://mastodon.online/@gunnarmorling

If you are interested in Decodable, you can find them here:

• Website: https://www.decodable.co/
• X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/Decodableco

Additional show notes:

• Apache Flink: https://flink.apache.org/
• Debezium: https://debezium.io/
• PostgreSQL: https://www.postgresql.org/
• MySQL: https://www.mysql.com/

The Cloud Commute Podcast is presented by simplyblock (https://www.simplyblock.io)

Nicolas Fränkel from API7.ai, the major company behind the Apache APISIX API gateway, talks about how APISIX helps you implement rate limiting, customer-specific behavior, and how API gateways in general help secure your APIs.

Editor's note: Sorry for the bad audio quality. The recording got messed up.

For questions, you can reach Nicolas at:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolasfrankel
• X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/nicolas_frankel
• Mastodon: https://mastodon.top/@frankel
• Blog: https://blog.frankel.ch/

If you are interested in Apache APISIX and want to learn more:

• Apache APISIX: https://apisix.apache.org/
• X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/ApacheAPISIX
• API7.ai: https://api7.ai/

The Cloud Commute Podcast is presented by simplyblock (https://www.simplyblock.io)