Justin Garrison

Linux has evolved a lot over the past 30 years. Distributions were created as opinionated starting points for general usage, but the advent of containers changed what was required and expected. CoreOS pushed the limits of what a server distribution should be, and those limits continue to be refined with more special purpose options.

While many of these next generation distros have similar characteristics they're not all the same. Justin will provide an overview of the current landscape of immutable distributions and what sets each one apart, and what they have in common.

We will discuss Kelsey's thoughts on what is happening with Cloud Native and the Cloud. Find out what has been interesting in public and private clouds and ask your questions.

Just because Kubernetes is cloud native doesn’t mean you can’t run it on-prem, but why is it so hard in 2024? There are lots of options but all of them have trade-offs. Justin has been building on-prem clusters for 8 years and will help you figure out if you need a project or a product, CAPI or PXE, and cloud-init or config management.

Kubernetes is just for big server farms, no? No! You can run Kubernetes in your own home or small office, and build your own on-prem bare-metal cluster. Join some community folks who have done so to discuss how to do this, and share your own experiences with running small, on-prem clusters.

Config management is a magical tool until it can't do the thing you need. Justin will explore some of the things you can't do and poor design decisions of Puppet, Chef, Ansible, and Salt.

Infrastructure in the cloud should not be built or managed the same way as traditional infrastructure. Justin will review patterns and practices for creating infrastructure that has been proven to run at scale in the cloud from companies such as Netflix and Google. He'll also look at projects that encompass the cloud native ethos to help bootstrap your infrastructure.