We take a short diversion from our planned CI/CD series to try and identify a few of the countless stresses that bombarded all of us in 2020. We try to figure out what, if anything, we can do about it and what's worked from our attempts to stay sane and productive during this generational turmoil.

Not much tech, but we hope you'll still get something from it.

Episode 11 is the beginning of a 5-6 episode series about CI/CD in the modern Kubernetes ecosystem. In the first episode, we lay out our ground rules and begin the discussions by focusing on the CI/CD backbone tools available in 2020. We break them into different categories and compare capabilities and experiences.

In episode 10 we discuss the Helm and Kustomize automation tools. We start the conversation thinking that one is an evolution of the other, but we don't end up that way. We were all a little surprised at where we ended up for Episode 10. We hope you are, too.

We dig down into how the CKA Kubernetes certification looks and feels, and what value certifications bring our industry (hint: it's a lot on balance). To prepare for this episode John took 4 exams in 17 days while Jamie took 2 and has another scheduled for early November 2020. So this isn't abstract, this is real life that we've recently lived.

Episode 8 has the folks from The K Files looking at the Service Mesh Interface, Microsoft's Open Service Mesh, and Hashicorp's Consul Service Mesh.

After a long pandemic-related hiatus, we get back together for the second episode in our series on service meshes. This episode we discuss the philosophy, feature set, and functionality of Linkerd.

In our second episode on service meshes, we start to peel back the layers of complexity and myth around Istio. We talk about how the latest Istio release returns to its monolith heritage, how it all glues together, where to start, and we toss in a real-world example of an application whose screams for Istio go unheard by its creators.

Service meshes on top of Kubernetes. Do you need one, and what are they good for if you already have one? In this first of a multi-part series around service meshes we ignore the hype machine and begin to dissect where service meshes should actually live in your world. 

After some discussion, we settle them pretty comfortably into the continuum of automation and modernization where every application lives.

We dig down into what OPA is, how it works with Kubernetes. We focus on how to start consuming it, and some of the things that you discover about your security posture after you start creating declarative OPA policies.

When GitOps is done well (or poorly?) it can feel like you're crossing the streams in Ghostbusters. In this episode, we dig into what GitOps means, how we can get there as a community, and how it affects implementing a multi-cluster Kubernetes deployment.

Links and notes from this episode - Full show notes are available at https://episodes.k8sfiles.com

* People used to tie off their networking wires with waxed string. 

* Google's 4 golden signals are useful for anyone building large (or even small) systems.

* KubeCon Europe 2019 Panel on GitOps best practices - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvbaxC1Dexc

* Argo and Flux are joining forces to create the GitOps Engine.

* Argo has a Kubernetes Operator.

* Episode 4 is going to be all about Open Policy Agent (OPA), and may we have our first guest!