Eric D. Schabell

Wednesday, March 20, 2024

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe - Checking the pulse of your cloud native architecture (slides)

As mentioned previously, it's been a really busy week at KubeCon Europe, with co-located external events and internal activities. 

I wanted to share on this post the content from my Google partner booth lightning talk where I talked about checking the pulse of your cloud native architecture. While that sounds like a dry architecture type of talk, I promise you, I took it in a unique direction with the focus not on the technology as much as on the side-effects it has on your teams.

Getting the control and overview back into the hands of your developers and engineers with regard to the massive challenges around cloud native observability data is the number one challenge we are all facing. I hope my insights provided a few hand holds for you to start gaining ground on your own organization's challenges.

See below for the slides from my talk.

Tuesday, March 19, 2024

OpenShift Commons Paris 2024 - Choose Your Own Observability Adventure Workshop

In my previous article, I mentioned I would be in Paris for the OpenShift Commons co-located event at Gaumont Aquaboulevard. 

I was asked to share some insights into the link between Platform Engineers and the importance of providing cloud native observability tools and infrastructure as part of their developer experience from the start.

We had a movie theater as a venue with a nice group of experienced Platform Engineers that I presented the slides you'll find below before letting them choose from four different workshops that featured the CNCF observability technologies for monitoring, tracing, telemetry pipelines, and open visualization.

We kicked it off at 11:00 on Tuesday, March 19th and had a lot of fun. See below for the details.

Friday, March 15, 2024

Incontro DevOps Italia 2024 - 3 Pitfalls Everyone Should Avoid with Cloud Data (slides)

As previously posted, I made it a priority to attend Incontro DevOps Italia 2024 in Bologna, Italy.  I felt it was important to come back this year and share my thoughts on cloud native data and some of the challenges that organizations are facing.

The event was in Bologna, the lively, historic capital of the Emilia-Romagna region, in northern Italy. Its Piazza Maggiore is a sprawling plaza lined with arched colonnades, cafes and medieval and Renaissance structures such as City Hall, the Fountain of Neptune and the Basilica di San Petronio. Among the city’s many medieval towers are the Two Towers, leaning Asinelli and Garisenda. 

I really enjoyed exploring the culinary offerings that Bologna offered and hope to be invited back again next time!

Below you will find the outline of my talk along with the slides, as promised.  

Thursday, March 7, 2024

Telemetry Pipelines Workshop - Installing Fluent Bit from Source

Are you ready for getting started with cloud native observability with telemetry pipelines? 

This article is part of a series exploring a workshop guiding you through the open source project Fluent Bit, what it is, a basic installation, and setting up a first telemetry pipeline project. Learn how to manage your cloud native data from source to destination using the telemetry pipeline phases covering collection, aggregation, transformation, and forwarding from any source to any destination. 

The previous article in this series provided an introduction to Fluent Bit where we gain an understanding of its role in the cloud native observability world. This article dives into the installation of Fluent Bit on your local machine using the project source code. You can find more details in the accompanying workshop lab.

Monday, March 4, 2024

Telemetry Pipelines Workshop - Introduction to Fluent Bit

Are you ready for getting started with cloud native observability with telemetry pipelines? 

This article is part of a series exploring a workshop guiding you through the open source project Fluent Bit, what it is, a basic installation, and setting up a first telemetry pipeline project. Learn how to manage your cloud native data from source to destination using the telemetry pipeline phases covering collection, aggregation, transformation, and forwarding from any source to any destination. 

Since Chronosphere acquired the capabilities for integrating telemetry pipelines, I've been digging into how this works, the use cases it solves, and having a lot of fun with the basis, CNCF project Fluent Bit. This workshop is the result of my sharing how to get started with telemetry pipelines and all that you can do with Fluent Bit.

This first article in the series provides an introduction to Fluent Bit where we gain an understanding of its role in the cloud native observability world. You can find more details in the accompanying workshop lab.

Friday, March 1, 2024

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe - Workshops, architectures, and Chronosphere preview

It's that time of year again where the legions of cloud native and open source communities from the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) gather for this semi-annual event, this time in Paris, France!

There are so many things going on there, from the pre-event Cloud Native Rejects from 17-18 March at ESpot in Paris. You will find an array of talks that, in theory, didn't make the selection for KubeCon and yet are so good we have two days of enjoying them.

This is followed by a day of co-located events, which are single day conferences targeting specific areas of technology and CNCF communities. This all happens on 19 March and see the website listing for exact locations of the event that interests you.

Finally, we get to spend 20-22 March in the Paris Expo Porte De Versailles with thousands of our favorite community members sharing information, workshops, talks, lightning talks, and a huge booth pavilion. 

Below you'll find all the fun and adventures that I have planned throughout the week in Paris.

Monday, February 19, 2024

O11y Guide: Cloud Native Observability Pitfalls - Sneaky Sprawling Mess

Are you looking at your organization's efforts to enter or expand into the cloud native landscape and feeling a bit daunted by the vast expanse of information surrounding cloud native observability? 

When you're moving so fast with agile practices across your DevOps, SRE's, and platform engineering teams, it's no wonder this can seem a bit confusing. 

Unfortunately, the choices being made have a great impact on both your business, your budgets, and the ultimate success of your cloud native initiatives that hasty decisions up front lead to big headaches very quickly down the road.

In the previous article, we looked at the pain we are facing when led down proprietary paths for our cloud native observability solutions. In this last article in my series, I'll address the sneaky sprawling mess that  often develops in our cloud native observability tooling landscape. By sharing common pitfalls in this series, the hope is that we can learn from them.

Monday, February 12, 2024

O11y Guide: Cloud Native Observability Pitfalls - The Protocol Jungle

Are you looking at your organization's efforts to enter or expand into the cloud native landscape and feeling a bit daunted by the vast expanse of information surrounding cloud native observability? 

When you're moving so fast with agile practices across your DevOps, SRE's, and platform engineering teams, it's no wonder this can seem a bit confusing. 

Unfortunately, the choices being made have a great impact on both your business, your budgets, and the ultimate success of your cloud native initiatives that hasty decisions up front lead to big headaches very quickly down the road.

In the previous article, we discussed why so many practitioners are underestimating their existing landscape within cloud native observability solutions. In this article, I'll share insights into the maze that is the protocol jungle and how it's causing us pain. By sharing common pitfalls in this series, the hope is that we can learn from them.

Wednesday, February 7, 2024

O11y Guide: Cloud Native Observability Pitfalls - Ignoring Existing Landscape

Are you looking at your organization's efforts to enter or expand into the cloud native landscape and feeling a bit daunted by the vast expanse of information surrounding cloud native observability? 

When you're moving so fast with agile practices across your DevOps, SRE's, and platform engineering teams, it's no wonder this can seem a bit confusing. 

Unfortunately, the choices being made have a great impact on both your business, your budgets, and the ultimate success of your cloud native initiatives that hasty decisions up front lead to big headaches very quickly down the road.

In the previous article, we looked at the problem of underestimating cardinality in our cloud native observability solutions. Now it's time to move on to another common mistake organizations make, that of ignoring our existing landscape. By sharing common pitfalls in this series, the hope is that we can learn from them.

Tuesday, January 30, 2024

O11y Guide: Cloud Native Observability Pitfalls - Underestimating Cardinality

Are you looking at your organization's efforts to enter or expand into the cloud native landscape and feeling a bit daunted by the vast expanse of information surrounding cloud native observability? 

When you're moving so fast with agile practices across your DevOps, SRE's, and platform engineering teams, it's no wonder this can seem a bit confusing. 

Unfortunately, the choices being made have a great impact on both your business, your budgets, and the ultimate success of your cloud native initiatives that hasty decisions up front lead to big headaches very quickly down the road.

In the previous article, we talk about how focusing on cloud native observability pillars has outlived its usefulness. Now it's time to move on to another common mistake organizations make, that of underestimating cardinality. By sharing common pitfalls in this series, the hope is that we can learn from them.

Friday, January 26, 2024

O11y Guide: Cloud Native Observability Pitfalls - Focusing on The Pillars

Are you looking at your organization's efforts to enter or expand into the cloud native landscape and feeling a bit daunted by the vast expanse of information surrounding cloud native observability? 

When you're moving so fast with agile practices across your DevOps, SRE's, and platform engineering teams, it's no wonder this can seem a bit confusing. 

Unfortunately, the choices being made have a great impact on both your business, your budgets, and the ultimate success of your cloud native initiatives that hasty decisions up front lead to big headaches very quickly down the road.

In the previous article, we looked at the problem of controlling cost in cloud native observability. In this article you'll find the next pitfall discussion that's another common mistake organizations make. By sharing common pitfalls in this series, the hope is that we can learn from them.

Thursday, January 25, 2024

KCD Oslo 2024 - Observability for you and me with OpenTelemetry (slides)

 As I previously published, today I spoke at the inaugural  Kubernetes Community Day (KCD) in Oslo

Events like KCD Oslo 2024 are essential CNCF community driven and sponsored gatherings in various countries around the globe for developers, engineers, DevOps, managers, and Site Reliability Engineers (SREs). 

Last year I shared this talk at KCD Denmark and really enjoyed the community atmosphere combined with enterprise practitioners. This is a well organized event, with +150 attendees that sold outand my talks were so much fun with the engaged and enthusiastic +70 audiences.

Below you'll find the slides from my talk and for completeness, my talk title and abstract.