KubeCon EU 2023 - Beyond O11y at Cloud Native Scale and Tracing Adventures

Next year in Amsterdam, the KubeCon and CloudNativeCon Europe 2023 conference kicks off from 17-21 April 2023.

There will be co-located events on Monday and Tuesday, which are one day events like Prometheus Day and Open Observability Day, then a three day event with the focus on open source and Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) projects. 

I've attended these events in both Europe and North America over the years but have yet to try speaking at one. That changes next year as I've jumped on their call for papers with several colleagues, one old and one new!

Below you'll find my submissions to the CNCF KubeCon and CloudNativeCon Eu event.

O11y Guide - Bringing Monoliths into the Cloud Native World

This is the fifth article in the series covering my journey into the world of cloud native observability. If you missed any of the previous articles, head on back to the introduction for a quick update.

After laying out the groundwork for this series in the initial article, I spent some time in the second article sharing who the observability players are. I also discussed the teams that these players are on in this world of cloud native o11y. For the third article I looked at the ongoing discussion around monitoring pillars versus phases. In the fourth article I talked about keeping your options open with open source standards.

Being a developer from my early days in IT, it's been very interesting to explore the complexities of cloud native o11y. Monitoring applications goes way beyond just writing and deploying code, especially in the cloud native world. One thing remains the same, maintaining your organization's architecture always requires both a vigilant outlook and an understanding of available open standards.

In this fifth article I'm going to look at architectural choices you might encounter when older monolithic applications and monitoring tools are still part of an organization's infrastructure landscape.

Webinar - Shift Left Observability: Discover true cloud native observability

On 15 November 2022 I presented, together with George Hamilton Director of Product Marketing at Chronosphere, a webinar talking about how shifting left helps provide true cloud native observability. 

This webinar is now available on demand and below you will find the slides we used and the details around the presentation.

We both hope you enjoyed our take on pushing your focus back to the left with your cloud native observability strategy and how the Chronosphere platform helps you get back to what you do best.

Kubernetes Community Day France 2023 - Observability for Complexity at Cloud Native Scale

This Spring, the Cloud Native Community Groups has organized a few Kubernetes Community Days (KCD) across Europe. I've always been curious about these events, wondering if they might allow me to share my cloud native observability insights and meet with fellow practitioners in this space. 

On 7 March 2023 the KCD France 2023 will take place in Paris, France and their call for papers went out in September. Together with a French speaking friend of mine, we're submitting a few talks to see if they will allow us to entertain the KCD France attendees.

The submission deadline closed this week, so I wanted to share my submissions while we wait on the responses from the selection committee.

PromCon EU 2022 - All things in the Prometheus community

For two days last week I was on site at the PromCon EU 2022 event in Munich Germany. A very well organized community event focused on all things in the open source Prometheus project, including for example PromQL and PromLens. 

This will be a bit of an overview, not each specific talk, covering what I saw and found interesting between the common discussions and chatting that happens between talks in the hallways. Often these overlapped session starting times and prohibit one from seeing everything at a conference.

Trajectory 2022 - Shifting Cloud Native Observability to the Left (slides)

Today I presented at the online event known as Trajectory 2022, a virtual conference. It's a conference is about exploring how development, engineering, and product teams are modernizing software development and delivery.

I'm sharing the slides here of my talk that touched on one of my favorite topics, how the promise of DevOps has led developers down a path that is totally unsatisfying in the cloud native world.

Let's take a look at the slides I used, shall we?

PromCon EU 2022 - Centralized versus Decentralized Prometheus Metrics (slides)

Today I was on site at PromCon EU 2022 in Munich, Germany for the first of two days. 

The main event for Prometheus across Europe and the minds that are behind this open source metrics monitoring project gather to share and collaborate for two days.

he last in person edition was in 2019 and you can see what that was like in their video recap.

As they state on their website, this conference is to "...connect Prometheus users and developers from around the world in order to exchange knowledge, best practices, and experience gained around using Prometheus. We also want to collaborate to build a community and grow professional connections around systems and service monitoring."

I co-presented with Ales Koprivnikar on a session that DoorDash gave a few weeks ago at Prometheus Day in North America, a story about insights into metrics collection at a very large scale.

KubeCon - Quick Guide to Prometheus Day North America

Today I was on site in Detroit at KubeCon and CloudNativeCon pre-event Prometheus Day North America. 

It was on-site at the Huntington Place Convention Center in room 360, which is on the river with views across the water into Canada. Just a bit of geography as many attendees I spoke with were not aware that Detroit was so close to the northern US border.

The full schedule for Open Observability Day is available online but wanted to share an overview impression of what it was like to be there.

The day is centered around all the CNCF projects related to Prometheus and observability. Let's look closer at my impressions of the sessions I found interesting.

KubeCon - Summary of the Open Observability Day North America

Today was the one day inaugural event known as Open Observability Day, held as one of the off-site options before the full KubeCon and CloudNativeCon event this week in Detroit.

It was on-site at the Huntington Place Convention Center, which is on the river with views across the water into Canada. Just a bit of geography as many attendees I spoke with were not aware that Detroit was so close to the northern US border.

The full schedule for Open Observability Day is available online but wanted to share an overview impression of what it was like to be there.

The day is centered around all the CNCF projects related to open observability and is full of both vendors and project focused talks.

Let's look closer at my impressions of the sessions I found interesting.

Webinar - How to Wrestle Your Observability Data Demons and Win!

This week I presented, together with Scott Kelly a Senior Product Marketing Manager at Chronosphere, a webinar talking about the advantages of a platform that gives you control over your observability data. 

This webinar is now available on demand and below you will find the slides we used and the details around the presentation.

O11y Guide - Keeping Your Cloud Native Observability Options Open

This is the fourth article in the series covering my journey into the world of cloud native observability. If you missed any of the previous articles, head on back to the introduction for a quick update.

After laying out the groundwork for this series in the initial article, I spent some time in the second article sharing who the observability players are. I also discussed the teams that these players are on in this world of cloud native o11y. For the third article I looked at the ongoing discussion around monitoring pillars versus phases.

Being a developer from my early days in IT, it's been very interesting to explore the complexities of cloud native o11y. Monitoring applications goes way beyond just writing and deploying code, especially in the cloud native world. One thing remains the same, maintaining your organization's architecture always requires both a vigilant outlook and an understanding of available open standards.

In this forth article I'm going to look at architecture level choices being made and share the open standards with the open source landscape. 

PromCon EU 2022: Centralized vs. Decentralized - How DoorDash Collects Prometheus Metrics (accepted)

This year PromCon EU 2022 in Munich, Germany is the seventh edition where all things dedicated to the open source Prometheus monitoring system are on display. 

The last in person edition was in 2019 and you can see what that was like in their video recap.

As they state on their website, this conference is to "...connect Prometheus users and developers from around the world in order to exchange knowledge, best practices, and experience gained around using Prometheus. We also want to collaborate to build a community and grow professional connections around systems and service monitoring."

Since the event will be in person this year it seemed like a great idea to submit something technically interesting and we happen to have a great story to tell with a customer around centralized verses decentralized metrics collection at a very large scale.

Trajectory 2022 - Shifting Cloud Native Observability to the Left

Just this last month I was made aware of Trajectory 2022, a virtual conference. This conference is about exploring how development, engineering, and product teams are modernizing software development and delivery.

It's a two day conference spanning 9-10 November and speakers will share challenges, tips, insights and more from the frontlines of feature management. It sounded like a great venue for sharing some insights into how cloud native observability applies to your product releases and production environments in the modern cloud world.

The following talk I'm sharing touches on one of my favorite topics, how the promise of DevOps has led developers down a path that is totally unsatisfying in the cloud native world.