Andrew Hillier sits down with Dan Ciruli, who leads the cloud native product management team at Nutanix. Dan's got some great stories from his days at Google—back when cloud native and Kubernetes were just getting started, in addition to the knowledge and wisdom he picked up along the way.

Andrew and Dan talk about founding a CNCF project, and what it entailed, as well as Kubernetes in the early days and its cloud-centric evolution. Dan dives into founding the OpenAPI initiative and how it all went down. Of course, a common question is what product managers do in open source? Well, Dan and Andrew discuss it and share some good insights.

Dan discusses the Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP), resource optimization on NKP, and how to give consistent view across cloud and on-prem. Dan and Andrew dive a little into the current impact of AI (although, more discussion will likely come in the future on this topic).

And just when you think it's all code and cloud, Dan drops the story of how he spent a year as tour manager for the rock band Chevelle (yep, that Chevelle)! Turns out, wrangling open source projects and rock bands aren't as different as you'd think!

Densify is certified for the Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) to provide automated resource optimization for containerized environments—bringing AI-driven insights and precision scaling to NKP users for improved performance and cost efficiency.

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Dan Ciruli

Dan Ciruli is the Vice President and General Manager of Cloud Native at Nutanix. His (very long) career in product management includes stints at Google, Zuora and EMC, and in open source he was a founding member of the OpenAPI Initiative and sat on the Istio Steering Committee. In his spare time he's active in acting and musical theatre. Give him half a chance and he'll try to speak Spanish to you!

ABOUT DENSIFY TALKS

Densify Talks is a podcast hosted by Andrew Hillier, Co-Founder and CTO of Densify, a cloud optimization software company. The podcast focuses on interviews with IT and technical leaders and innovators who have experience in delivering cloud and Kubernetes-based infrastructure within large enterprises.

LINKS

• Dan in The Red video for Chevelle @1:20 and @1:40 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trinU3VD1Zo&list=RDtrinU3VD1Zo&t=80s

Kubernetes, container resources, request and limits, sizing, the impact of getting things wrong, CPU limits, JVMs, HPA and VPA, does Karpenter fix the request and limit problem? We've got a great episode for you today!

Thanks for joining us on Densify Talks! We welcome Daniele Polencic, one of the lead instructors at LearnK8s, which specializes in containers and Kubernetes technologies.

Andrew Hillier and Daniele Polencic discuss the complexities and difficulties of resource management in today's episode. Daniele shares about the LearnK8s Instance Calculator to help avoid pitfalls. They both give their honest thoughts on Karpenter, HPA and VPA, vCluster, JVMs, and more. What about CPU limits? Is there a single solution to the challenges?

This conversation really explores the challenges, risks, hard truths, opportunities, and gives best practices for optimization!

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Daniele Polencic

Daniele is a lead instructor at Learnk8s, specializing in containers and Kubernetes technologies. A certified Kubernetes administrator by the Linux Foundation, he has spent over a decade training developers in e-commerce, finance, and public sector organizations, helping teams effectively implement cloud-native infrastructure.

ABOUT DENSIFY TALKS

Densify Talks is a podcast hosted by Andrew Hillier, Co-Founder and CTO of Densify, a cloud optimization software company. The podcast focuses on interviews with IT and technical leaders and innovators who have experience in delivering cloud and Kubernetes-based infrastructure within large enterprises.

LINKS

• densify.com
• LearnK8s Instance Calculator: https://learnk8s.io/kubernetes-instance-calculator
• Upcoming Webinar: https://learnk8s.io/smart-kubernetes-resource-management
• LearnK8s Blog: https://learnk8s.io/blog

Welcome to another episode of Densify Talks! Andrew Hillier has a fun and informative conversation with Viktor Farcic.

Viktor considers himself a technology critic (think of the old muppet critics on the balcony) and rapscallion. We think he's also quite the thought leader and author, with some very bold insights on technology that are worth hearing! See Viktor's biography below for more information about him.

Andrew and Viktor dive into the maturing landscape of Kubernetes, asking the question "is Kubernetes now "boring"?" It's a good question and Viktor and Andrew have great thoughts on it!

They also tackle AI and where it's currently at (including Viktor's experiences with AI recently). Andrew and Viktor talk about their experiences with KubeCon over the years and where it might be going in the future. They discuss optimization, cloud costs, automation, GitOps, VPA, Densify's new Mutating Admission Controller, and what's likely to come in the near future. For fun, we also get to hear Viktor's strong opinions on Helm!

We hope you get as much out of this episode as we did!

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Viktor Farcic

Viktor Farcic is a lead rapscallion at Upbound (https://upbound.io), a member of the CNCF Ambassadors, Google Developer Experts, CDF Ambassadors, and GitHub Stars groups, and a published author.

He is a host of the YouTube channel DevOps Toolkit (https://youtube.com/@devopstoolkit) and a co-host of DevOps Paradox (https://youtube.com/@devopsparadox).

ABOUT DENSIFY TALKS

Densify Talks is a podcast hosted by Andrew Hillier, Co-Founder and CTO of Densify, a cloud optimization software company. The podcast focuses on interviews with IT and technical leaders and innovators who have experience in delivering cloud and Kubernetes-based infrastructure within large enterprises.

LINKS

• densify.com
• upbound.io
• youtube.com/@devopstoolkit
• youtube.com/@devopsparadox