Platform Engineering Playbook Podcast

By vibesre

The Platform Engineering Playbook Podcast is where AI meets open-source infrastructure knowledge—and you're part of the editorial process. Every episode is researched, scripte

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· Technology

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FAQs about Platform Engineering Playbook Podcast:

How many episodes does Platform Engineering Playbook Podcast have?

The podcast currently has 66 episodes available.

Platform Engineering Playbook Podcast episodes:

November 16, 2025 The Kubernetes Complexity Backlash: When Simpler Infrastructure Wins
Kubernetes commands 92% market share, yet 88% report year-over-year cost increases and 25% plan to shrink deployments. We unpack the 3-5x cost underestimation problem, the cargo cult adoption pattern, and when alternatives like Docker Swarm, Nomad, ECS, or PaaS platforms deliver better ROI. From the 200-node rule to 37signals' $10M+ five-year savings leaving AWS, this is your data-driven framework for right-sizing infrastructure decisions in 2025.
🔗 Full episode page: https://platformengineeringplaybook.com/podcasts/00026-kubernetes-complexity-backlash
📝 See a mistake or have insights to add? This podcast is community-driven - open a PR on GitHub!
Summary:
• 88% of Kubernetes adopters report year-over-year TCO increases (Spectro Cloud 2025), with teams underestimating total costs by 3-5x when missing human capital ($450K-$2.25M for 3-15 FTE platform team), training (6-month ramp-up), and tool sprawl
• The 200-node rule: Kubernetes makes sense above 200 nodes with complex orchestration needs; below that, Docker Swarm (10-minute setup), HashiCorp Nomad (10K+ node scale), AWS ECS, Cloud Run (production in 15 minutes), or PaaS platforms ($400/month vs $150K/year K8s team) often win
• 209 CNCF projects create analysis paralysis, with 75% inhibited by complexity and fintech startup wasting 120 engineer-hours evaluating service mesh they didn't need for their 30 services
• Real 5-year TCO comparison: Kubernetes at 50-100 nodes costs $4.5M-$5.25M (platform team + compute + tools + training) versus PaaS at $775K-$825K (5-6x cheaper), but Kubernetes wins at 500+ nodes where PaaS per-resource costs become prohibitive
• 37signals' cloud repatriation saved $10M+ over five years by leaving AWS (EKS/EC2/S3) for on-prem infrastructure ($3.2M → $1.3M annually), proving cloud and Kubernetes aren't universally optimal—they're tools with specific use cases that require matching tool to actual scale, not aspirational scale
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16min
November 16, 2025 SRE Reliability Principles: The 26% Problem - Error Budgets, SLOs, Platform Engineering
Only 26% of organizations actively use SLOs after a decade of Google's SRE principles being gospel. We explore why adoption is so low despite 49% saying they're more relevant than ever, which principles remain timeless (error budgets, embracing risk, blameless postmortems), and how to adapt SRE for 2025's complexity of AI/ML systems, Platform Engineering collaboration, and multi-cloud chaos. Includes practical playbooks for starting from zero, fixing ignored SLOs, and ML-specific adaptations. The key insight: it's not that SRE principles are wrong—implementation is harder than anticipated, but the philosophy remains timeless when properly adapted.
In this episode:
- Only 26% of organizations use SLOs despite 85% adopting OpenTelemetry—process transformation is harder than tooling, with unrealistic targets (99.99% = 52min/year downtime) undermining entire systems
- Error budget fundamentals remain timeless: 99.999% SLO with 0.0002% problem = 20% quarterly budget spent, transforming reliability from political arguments into data-driven release decisions
- Platform Engineering ($115K average) and SRE ($127K average) are complementary not competitive—Platform teams build systems, SREs ensure reliability, both can use error budget thinking for alignment
- AI/ML systems need adapted SRE principles: data freshness SLOs, model drift detection, training pipeline reliability, and different error budget math (one LLM training failure = tens of thousands in compute loss)
- Starting from zero: pick 3-5 critical services, one SLO per service initially (99.9% = 43 minutes/month downtime is reasonable), automate with OpenTelemetry from day one, get cross-functional buy-in, target 12-month timeline
Perfect for senior platform engineers, SREs, DevOps engineers with 5+ years experience looking to level up their reliability engineering skills.
Episode URL: https://platformengineeringplaybook.com/podcasts/00025-sre-reliability-principles
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16min
November 14, 2025 Internal Developer Portal Showdown 2025: Backstage vs Port vs Cortex vs OpsLevel
Your team spent 6 months implementing Backstage. Adoption? 8%. The CFO asks: "Why didn't we buy a solution?" Here's the 2025 comparison with real pricing, real timelines, and the counterintuitive truth: commercial platforms are 8-16x cheaper than "free" Backstage for most teams. OpsLevel $39/user/month delivers in 30-45 days. Port $78/month offers flexibility without coding. Cortex $65-69/month enforces standards. We break down the decision framework by team size—under 200? OpsLevel. 200-500? Port or OpsLevel. 500+? Backstage viable with dedicated platform team. The key insight: it's not open-source free vs commercial expensive—it's transparent licensing vs hidden $150K/20-developer engineering costs.
In this episode:
- Backstage costs $150K per 20 developers in hidden engineering time—$1.5M annually for 200-person teams versus $93K-$187K for commercial platforms (8-16x cheaper)
- OpsLevel ($39/user/month) delivers fastest implementation at 30-45 days with 60% efficiency gains and automated catalog maintenance—ideal for teams under 200 engineers
- Port ($78/user/month) offers flexible "Blueprints" data model for customization without coding, 3-6 month implementation—best for 200-500 engineer teams needing flexibility
Perfect for senior platform engineers, sres, devops engineers with 5+ years experience looking to level up their platform engineering skills.
Episode URL: https://platformengineeringplaybook.com/podcasts/00024-internal-developer-portals-showdown
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25min
November 13, 2025 DNS for Platform Engineering: The Silent Killer
Why does a forty-year-old protocol keep taking down billion-dollar infrastructure? The October 2025 AWS outage lasted fifteen hours because of a DNS race condition. Kubernetes defaults create 5x query amplification. We investigate how DNS really works in modern platforms—CoreDNS plugin chains, the ndots:5 trap, GSLB failover—and deliver the five-layer defensive playbook to prevent your platform from becoming the next postmortem.
🔗 Full episode page: https://platformengineeringplaybook.com/podcasts/00023-dns-platform-engineering
📝 See a mistake or have insights to add? This podcast is community-driven - open a PR on GitHub!
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20min
November 12, 2025 eBPF in Kubernetes: Kernel-Level Superpowers Without the Risk
Your Kubernetes cluster is a black box—Prometheus shows symptoms, not causes. eBPF turns the Linux kernel into a programmable platform for observability, networking, and security. Jordan and Alex unpack how eBPF programs run safely in kernel space, explore tools like Cilium, Pixie, and Falco, and reveal the practical path from blind spots to kernel-level visibility without crashing production.
🔗 Full episode page: https://platformengineeringplaybook.com/podcasts/00022-ebpf-kubernetes
📝 See a mistake or have insights to add? This podcast is community-driven - open a PR on GitHub!
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32min
November 11, 2025 Time Series Language Models
AI models that can read your infrastructure metrics like language, explain anomalies in plain English, and predict failures without training on your data—this technology exists right now. But even the companies who built it won't deploy it to production yet. Why? In this episode, Jordan and Alex unpack the mystery of Time-Series Language Models (TSLMs), explore breakthrough projects like Stanford's OpenTSLM and Datadog's Toto, and reveal what platform engineers need to do now to prepare for this revolutionary but not-yet-ready technology.
🔗 Full episode page: https://platformengineeringplaybook.com/podcasts/00021-time-series-language-models
📝 See a mistake or have insights to add? This podcast is community-driven - open a PR on GitHub!
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20min
November 11, 2025 Kubernetes IaC & GitOps - The Workflow Paradox
77% of organizations have adopted GitOps, 60% run ArgoCD—yet platform teams are still bottlenecks and deployments still take days. Jordan and Alex investigate why the promised outcomes aren't materializing and reveal the real differentiator: workflow design, not tool selection. Learn how companies like Qonto achieved 10x deployment improvements with the same technology.
🔗 Full episode page: https://platformengineeringplaybook.com/podcasts/00020-kubernetes-iac-gitops
📝 See a mistake or have insights to add? This podcast is community-driven - open a PR on GitHub!
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20min
November 09, 2025 The FinOps AI Paradox: Why Smart Tools Don't Cut Costs (And What Actually Does)
Your company spent $500K on AI-powered FinOps tools. The AI identified $3M in potential savings. Ninety days later, you've implemented $180K—just 6%. Jordan and Alex investigate why sophisticated AI that works perfectly still fails to reduce cloud waste, and reveal the organizational changes that the 6% who succeed actually implement. Get the 90-day playbook to shift from identifying waste to capturing value.
🔗 Full episode page: https://platformengineeringplaybook.com/podcasts/00019-finops-ai-paradox
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17min
November 08, 2025 The DevOps Toolchain Crisis: Why Adding Tools Makes Teams Slower
Your team spent $500K on productivity tools. So why are engineers slower than last year? Jordan and Alex unpack the hidden crisis: 75% of teams lose 15 hours per week just switching between tools. Even worse—AI tools we adopted to boost productivity are making it worse. Discover why 53% of organizations escaped using Internal Developer Portals and get a 90-day playbook to fix it.
🔗 Full episode page: https://platformengineeringplaybook.com/podcasts/00018-devops-toolchain-crisis
📝 See a mistake or have insights to add? This podcast is community-driven - open a PR on GitHub!
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12min
November 07, 2025 Kubernetes Production Mastery Lesson 3: Health Checks & Probes
Learn how to configure Kubernetes health checks that prevent production outages. This episode covers the three types of probes (liveness, readiness, startup), production-appropriate timeouts, and the five most common health check mistakes that cause cascading failures.
🔗 Full episode page: https://platformengineeringplaybook.com/podcasts/courses/kubernetes-production-mastery/lesson-03
📝 See a mistake or have insights to add? This podcast is community-driven - open a PR on GitHub!
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18min

FAQs about Platform Engineering Playbook Podcast:

How many episodes does Platform Engineering Playbook Podcast have?

The podcast currently has 66 episodes available.