Day Two Cloud 136: The Role And Responsibilities Of A Kubernetes Operator (Sponsored)

Today on the Day Two Cloud podcast we examine the role and responsibilities of Kubernetes operators; that is, the humans in charge of running Kubernetes. An operator does more than just update the cluster and make sure nodes don’t go down. Kubernetes operators have to support application and security teams, handle capacity planning, keep an eye on versioning, and more. This episode is sponsored by F5’s NGINX team. Our guests are Jenn Gile, Sr Manager of Product Marketing; and Brian Ehlert, Sr Product Manager. We discuss: * Responsibilities of a Kubernetes operator * When this role makes sense in a Kubernetes adoption cycle * Essential skills and background for this role * Reasons to bring a Kubernetes operator into the organization * The need to understanding networking and infrastructure * More Takeaways: Kubernetes operators are an important part of getting Kubernetes into production and keeping it there To be a good K8s operator, you need to really understand Kubernetes networking concepts and tools. NGINX’s Microservices March 2022 program is a 1-month free program on Kubernetes networking that can give you a good foundation and help you decide if this is something you want to pursue further. Show Links: NGINX NGINX Microservices March 2022 Educational Program NGINX Blog @GileJenn – Jenn Gile on Twitter @BrianEh – Brian Ehlert on Twitter Transcript: [00:00:05.210] – Ethan Welcome to Day Two Cloud. Today we got a sponsored show coming at you from F5 Networks, the NGINX team within F5. And we are talking today about Kubernetes operators, the humans, the people that would be titled Kubernetes operators. What did you think of this show, Ned? [00:00:21.420] – Ned I thought it was really interesting how they approached what an operator might be responsible for. And it’s more than you might think. It’s not just updating the cluster and making sure nodes don’t go down. They really dug deep into the fact you have to support the application teams and the security teams and be very mindful of versioning within the Kubernetes cluster. So that’s what jumped out to me. [00:00:42.750] – Ethan Yes. Please enjoy this conversation. Please enjoy this conversation with Jenn Gile, senior manager of product marketing at F5 Networks for the NGINX team, and also Brian Ehlert, senior product manager. Brian and Jenn, welcome to Day Two Cloud. Thank you for joining us. Jenn, first question to you. What is a Kubernetes operator? Because we’re talking about a human being, right? [00:01:05.120] – Jenn Yeah. We’re not talking about the machines. We’re talking about the people. And so the Kubernetes operator, which we’ve seen, called a lot of different things. You might have seen it as a cluster operator. It’s kind of analogous to what we would have called a sysadmin in the precloud era. So we’re seeing a lot of different actual job titles for people who are in this domain. It can be a cloud architect, it could be an SRE, maybe there’s a general It Ops title. They’re probably part of a larger org maybe they call a platform Ops team. And so in terms of the job description, we’re looking at people who are responsible for Kubernetes as a piece of infrastructure.