KubeCon NA 2024 – Adding Some Spice to the Cloud Native Community

Posted: November 10th, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , | No Comments »

It is that time of the year once again where KubeCon + CloudNativeCon returns to North America and this chapter takes a page from KubeCon NA 2022 as it is in a location that is outside of the typical conference circuit destination. I, for one, am excited for this event as it not only brings together key leaders in the Cloud Native community, but Salt Lake City is a city (as well as Utah as a  state) that I have yet to visit previously. Similar to many of the other KubeCon events in the past, I will be participating in the main event as well as several co-located events that are taking place beforehand. This post will highlight the presentations that I have taking place and where you might be able to find me throughout the week.

Workload Identity Day

Workload Identity Day is a new day zero event, led by my friends at Venafi, which focuses on solving identity challenges and zero trust security. One of the projects that I have been working with for some time now is SPIFFE and SPIRE as it provides solutions for addressing many of the challenges with assigning identities to workloads to facilitate secure communication. I will be joined by fellow Red Hat and IBM Research colleagues where we will illustrate how SPIRE can be federated across multiple environments and how the Tornjak project provides a single pane of glass for managing identities at scale.

Federating Trust in the Cloud Multiverse with SPIRE and Tornjak
Tuesday November 12, 2:00pm – 2:30pm MST
Venafi Headquarters 175 East 400 South, Salt Lake City, UT 84111

Security SIG at OpenShift Commons Gathering

OpenShift Commons Gathering brings together users, partners, customers, contributors and upstream project leads to discuss all things OpenShift and the various cloud native projects that it comprises. For the third straight gathering, I will be leading a breakout session for the Security Special Interest Group (SIG) to hear about how organizations and the community manage various security concerns when working with OpenShift. The goal of this session, aside from taking a pulse from attendees on their latest security concerns, is to determine the specific areas of focus that the SIG should prioritize over the course of the next 6-12 months. By identifying the most pressing matters from those running OpenShift within some of the largest enterprises in the world, the community can work together to develop best practices and solutions that can be both disseminated throughout the community, but also built into the OpenShift product.

OpenShift Commons Security Special Interest Group (SIG): Building a more secure OpenShift, through collaboration
Tuesday November 12, 3:00pm – 4:30pm MST
Breakout Room 2: Van Ryder
Le Méridien Salt Lake City Downtown, 131 South 300 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84101

Helm

While I am a maintainer of several Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) Open Source projects, Helm is the project where I place the majority of my attention on. As Helm has become the de-facto package manager for Kubernetes, change is afoot. It has been five years since the release of the last major version of the project back in 2019. Since that time, a lot has changed (we won’t even address world events that took place around that time as well). Technologies have evolved. New patterns and tools have emerged. And with that in mind, it’s time to discuss the next evolution of Helm and the next major version: Helm 4.

Two sessions taking part during the main KubeCon event will highlight steps the project is taking to prepare for and deliver the next generation of the Helm package manager. The first session, the traditional graduated project session, will review the journey that the Helm project has taken up to this point, why a major version release is needed, and the efforts already underway to develop and deliver Helm 4. This session is a fit for anyone in the Kubernetes community who has either used Helm in the past and wants to understand what might be coming in the future.

The second session, associated with Contribfest, allows anyone with a vested interest in developing or supporting efforts surrounding Helm 4.  Attendees will work directly with Helm project maintainers as well as others interested in contributing to the next version of Helm and learn about the features currently under consideration, the various roles and responsibilities at play with regards to Helm 4, and most importantly, how to get involved. This is a must attend session for anyone who has an affinity for Kubernetes packaging tools and for those that develop and use Helm in their daily activities.

The Path to Helm 4
Thursday November 14, 2024 5:25pm – 6:00pm MST
Level 2 | Salt Lake Ballroom C
Hyatt Regency, 170 South West Temple Street, Salt Lake City, UT 84101

Contribfest: Helm 4: The Next Generation of the Kubernetes Package Manager
Thursday November 14, 2024 2:30pm – 4:00pm MST
Level 3 | 355 D
Salt Palace, 100 South West Temple Street, Salt Lake City, UT 84101

Booth Duty

In addition to formal presentations, I will also be overseeing several of the project booths throughout the week to support many of the initiatives that I work with in the cloud native ecosystem as well as to assist the community to better understand how to take advantage of various cloud native offerings.

Helm Project Booth

Do you use Helm to manage the deployment of applications in Kubernetes? Are you interested in contributing to the project? Do you want to learn more about Helm in general? If you answered “yes” to any of the previous questions, then you certainly do not want to miss stopping by the Helm project booth. I will be taking a turn on Wednesday afternoon to meet with members of the community to share how Helm can help make their lives easier working with Kubernetes and to talk about the future of the project — and in particular, Helm 4.

Wednesday November 13, 2024. 3:15pm – 5:30pm MST
Salt Palace, 100 South West Temple Street, Salt Lake City, UT 84101

Click here for a full overview of the Helm project activities taking place at KubeCon NA. In addition, the Helm release team will be performing a project release LIVE for all attendees to take part in. A comprehensive discussion of the release event including when and where it is taking place can be found here.

Sigstore Project Booth

Leaning in once again on the security theme is Sigstore, a project that provides tools for signing and verifying software and is the underlying technology behind Red Hat Trusted Artifact Signer. As a contributor and member of the Sigstore community, I will be working several shifts on Friday to learn how the community is using tooling related to the project and how they are managing the Secure Software Supply Chain.

Friday November 15, 2024. 10:30am – 11:30am, 1:30pm – 2:30pm MST
Hall 3 – Q34
Salt Palace, 100 South West Temple Street, Salt Lake City, UT 84101

Red Hat Booth

Of course, you will certainly see me hanging around the Red Hat booth at points throughout the event and at the booth, you can engage with other Red Hatters to hear about all of the great projects and communities they are working within as well as to experience the products that Red Hat has to offer. To learn more about Red Hat at KubeCon NA, click here.

Connecting with the Community

Aside from the formal sessions, the most important reason for partaking in KubeCon is to engage with the Cloud Native Community. It is the reason that the “Hallway Track” is probably the most popular part of the event. So, if you want to catch up or sit down and chat, or grab a coffee (or for those that know me best, a Diet Mountain Dew or Diet Pepsi), reach out on Twitter, Bluesky or LinkedIn. Always have time to meet new friends or reconnect with old ones!

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