Raju Gandhi

The Building Plan: Thinking Architecturally

9:00 AM MDT

You are ready to level up your skills. Or, you've already been playing accidental architect, and need to have a structured plan to be designated as one. Well, your wait is over.

From the author of O'Reilly's best-selling “Head First Software Architecture” comes a full-day workshop that covers all that you need to start thinking architecturally. Everything from the difference between design and architecture, and modern description of architecture, to the skills you'll need to develop to become a successful architect, this workshop will be your one stop shop.

We'll cover several topics:

• What is architecture, what is design, and the spectrum between them
• The modern description of architecture
• Understanding architectural characteristics
• A brief coverage of some architectural styles
• Other skills you need to have to become a successful architect

This is an exercise heavy workshop—so be prepared to put on your architect hat!

Platform Engineering: The What, Why & How

8:30 AM MDT

Platform engineering is the latest buzzword, in a industry that already has it's fair share. But what is platform engineering? How does it fit in with DevOps and Developer Experience (DevEx)? And is this something your organization even needs?

In this session we will aim to to dive deep into the world of platform engineering. We will see what platform engineering entails, how it is the logical succession to a successful DevOps implementation, and how it aims to improve the developer experience. We will also uncover the keys to building robust, sustainable platforms for the future

Platform Engineering: The What, Why & How

10:30 AM MDT

Platform engineering is the latest buzzword, in a industry that already has it's fair share. But what is platform engineering? How does it fit in with DevOps and Developer Experience (DevEx)? And is this something your organization even needs?

In this session we will aim to to dive deep into the world of platform engineering. We will see what platform engineering entails, how it is the logical succession to a successful DevOps implementation, and how it aims to improve the developer experience. We will also uncover the keys to building robust, sustainable platforms for the future

Microservices + Kubernetes - CrossCuttingConcerns = Istio

1:00 PM MDT

Microservices have fundamentally changed the way we develop and deploy applications. Everything from team topologies, to DevOps to observability—everything changed, and for the better.

However, it's not all rainbows and unicorns. Operationalizing microservices is hard. Microservices encourage WET (write everything twice) to ensure that services are as decoupled from each other as possible. But how does that work when we have to deal with cross-cutting concerns that we need for every service?

Enter the service mesh. Service meshes like Istio allow us to “slot” in cross-cutting architectural concerns within a kubernetes cluster, letting our services focus on solving actual business concerns.

In this fast-paced session, we will blitz through what Istio is, how it works, and what facilities it offers to DRY out your microservices. Come see how Istio can make your cluster programmable and application-aware.

Dynamic Terraform

3:00 PM MDT

You've heard of Terraform, maybe even written some scripts using it. You've heard that Terraform is capable of dynamic behavior using blocks, for loops and counters. And you've glanced at the Terraform functions list, but wondered how one would ever go about using those?

We've got you covered.

In this session, we'll build a set of Terraform scripts that can be fed a YAML file, and using Terraform's dynamic capabilities, we'll build infrastructure as specced out in the YAML file.

We'll be covering a host of different topics in this session

Terraform's dynamic capabilities including dynamic blocks, for and for_each loops
Terraform's functions and datastructures

Modular Monoliths: A happy middle

5:00 PM MDT

In this session we will discuss what modular monoliths are, what they bring to the table, and how they offer a great middle ground between monoliths and distributed architectures like microservices.

Monoliths get a bad rep. Experienced software developers have seen one too many monoliths devolve into a big ball of mud, leaving everyone frustrated, with an itch to do a “rewrite”. But monoliths have their pros! They are usually simpler, easier to understand, and faster to build and debug.

On the other side of the spectrum you have microservices—that offer scale, both technically and organizationally, as well as having the badge of honor of being “the new cool kid on the block”. But productionizing microservices is HARD.

Why can't we have our cake and eat it too? Turns out, we can. In this session we will explore the modular monolith—all the upsides of a monolith with none of the downsides of distributed architectures. We'll see what it means to build a modular monolith, and how that differs from a traditional layered architecture. We will discuss how we can build architectural governance to ensure our modules remain decoupled. Finally we'll see how our modules can communicate with one another without violating modularity.

By the end of this session you'll walk away with a greater appreciation for the monolith, and see how you can leverage this within your system architecture.

Measuring your architecture

9:00 AM MDT

It's not just architecture—it's evolutionary architecture. But to evolve your architecture, you need to measure it. And how does that work exactly? How does one measure something as abstract as architecture?

In this session we'll discuss various strategies for measuring your architecture. We'll see how you know if your software architecture is working for you, and how to know which metrics to keep an eye on. We'll also see the benefits of measuring your architecture.

We'll cover a range of topics in this session, including

Different kinds of metrics to measure your architecture
The benefits of measurements
Improving visibility into architecture metrics

Documenting your architecture

11:00 AM MDT

In this session we will discuss the need to document architecture, and see what mechanisms are available to us to document architecture—both present and future.

We've all learned that documenting your code is a good idea. But what about your architecture? What should we be thinking about when we document architecture? What tools and techniques can we reach for as we pursue this endeavor? Can we even make this a sustainable activity, or are we forever doomed to architectural documentation getting outdated before the ink is even dry?

In this session we will discuss a range of techniques that will not only help document your architecture, but even provide a mechanism to think about architecture upfront, and make it more predictable. You'll walk away armed with everything you need to know about documenting your current, and future architectures.

Container Security Fundamentals Part I

1:30 PM MDT

Containers are everywhere. Of course, a large part of the appeal of containers is the ease with which you can get started. However, productionizing containers is a wholly different beast. From orchestration to scheduling, containers offer significantly different challenges than VMs.

In particular, in terms of security. Securing and hardening VMs is very different than that for containers.

In this twopart session, we will see what securing containers involves.

We'll be covering a wide range of topics, including

Understanding Cgroups and namespaces
What it takes to create your own container technology as a basis of understanding how containers really work
Securing the build and runtime
Secrets management
Shifting left with security in mind

Container Security Fundamentals Part II

3:15 PM MDT

Containers are everywhere. Of course, a large part of the appeal of containers is the ease with which you can get started. However, productionizing containers is a wholly different beast. From orchestration to scheduling, containers offer significantly different challenges than VMs.

In particular, in terms of security. Securing and hardening VMs is very different than that for containers.

In this twopart session, we will see what securing containers involves.

We'll be covering a wide range of topics, including

Understanding Cgroups and namespaces
What it takes to create your own container technology as a basis of understanding how containers really work
Securing the build and runtime
Secrets management
Shifting left with security in mind

Git features you aren’t using

5:00 PM MDT

In this session we'll take a tour of some features that you might or might not have heard of, but can significantly improve your workflow and day-to-day interaction with Git.

Git continues to see improvements daily. However, work (and life) can take over, and we often miss the changelog. This means we don't know what changed, and consequently fail to see how we can incorporate those in our usage of Git.

In this session we will look at some features you are probably aware of, but haven't used, alongside new features that Git has brought to the table. Examples include:

• Rebase and interactive rebase
• restore/switch and when to use them
• worktrees
• shallow-clones
• Git's filesystem monitor

By the end of this session, you will walk away with a slew of new tools in your arsenal, and a new perspective on how this can help you and your colleagues get the most out of Git.

Terraform-ing your Cloud

8:30 AM MDT

A large part of embracing DevOps involves embracing automation. Over the last decade we have seen the emergence of “as Code” — Build-as-Code, Configuration-as-Code and Infrastructure-as-Code. The benefits to utilizing such tools are huge! We can codify the state of the world around our applications, giving us the ability to treat everything that our code needs like we treat the code itself. Version control, release management, tagging, even rolling backs are now possible.

Terraform, an open-source tool from HashiCorp allows us to build, control and modify our infrastructure. Terraform exposes a Domain-specific language (DSL) that we can use to express what our infrastructure should look like. Terraform can work with all the major cloud providers, including Amazon AWS, Google GCP and Microsoft Azure.

We will be using AWS as our playground for this workshop

Agenda

• The place for, and benefits of “Everything as Code” alongside GitOps
• Terraform's architecture
• Terraform 101
• Introduction to HCL
• What are providers?
• Initializing terraform and providers
• Dive right in! Creating your first resource in AWS using Terraform
• Understanding references, dependencies
• apply-ing terraform
• Variables and the HCL type-system
• Using data and output in your terraform scripts
• Understanding how Terraform manages state
• Using S3 as a backend
• DRY with Terraform modules
• Collaboration using Terraform
• Terraform ecosystem, testing, and GitOps
• Closing arguments, final Q/A, discussion

Instructions

Please visit https://github.com/looselytyped/terraform-workshop/ for detailed instructions. They might seem a tad arduous but it's not as bad as it looks :)

Terraform-ing your Cloud

10:30 AM MDT

A large part of embracing DevOps involves embracing automation. Over the last decade we have seen the emergence of “as Code” — Build-as-Code, Configuration-as-Code and Infrastructure-as-Code. The benefits to utilizing such tools are huge! We can codify the state of the world around our applications, giving us the ability to treat everything that our code needs like we treat the code itself. Version control, release management, tagging, even rolling backs are now possible.

Terraform, an open-source tool from HashiCorp allows us to build, control and modify our infrastructure. Terraform exposes a Domain-specific language (DSL) that we can use to express what our infrastructure should look like. Terraform can work with all the major cloud providers, including Amazon AWS, Google GCP and Microsoft Azure.

We will be using AWS as our playground for this workshop

Agenda

• The place for, and benefits of “Everything as Code” alongside GitOps
• Terraform's architecture
• Terraform 101
• Introduction to HCL
• What are providers?
• Initializing terraform and providers
• Dive right in! Creating your first resource in AWS using Terraform
• Understanding references, dependencies
• apply-ing terraform
• Variables and the HCL type-system
• Using data and output in your terraform scripts
• Understanding how Terraform manages state
• Using S3 as a backend
• DRY with Terraform modules
• Collaboration using Terraform
• Terraform ecosystem, testing, and GitOps
• Closing arguments, final Q/A, discussion

Instructions

Please visit https://github.com/looselytyped/terraform-workshop/ for detailed instructions. They might seem a tad arduous but it's not as bad as it looks :)