Top 5 Innovations from KubeCon 2024: Revolutionizing Data Management, Recovery, Developer Portals, Observability, and Security

Honey wake up! Belmin just posted an article about KubeCon 2024.

It is finally time to write some of the things which I really liked from KubeCon 2024. It is going to be tough, it always is when it comes down to selecting some interesting solutions that may come in use later on in your various projects. I narrowed it down to five and to point out the obvious, all of these written here will are my preferences.

So, as stated before during my daily updates of the event itself (check them out if not), my goal was to bring you closer some of the tools and talks I found interesting, while talking to their engineers or hearing about it in various sessions.

Let’s dive in and start with:

5. Vitess – the all-in-one database solution

Coming into the session itself, the only thing I knew about Vitess was from the description of what the talk is exactly going to be about and that got me interested. Even though I am not working much with the data as I did before, still I was very intrigued to find out more about Vitess just based on their given description and it did not disappoint.

So what is it?

Vitess is a database solution for deploying, scaling and managing large clusters of open-source database instances. It combines and extends many important SQL features with the scalability of a NoSQL database. Vitess helps out with the following problems:

• Scaling a SQL database by allowing you to shard it, while keeping application changes to a minimum.
• Migrating from bare-metal or VMs to a private or public cloud.
• Deploying and managing a large number of SQL database instances.

On top of it all, it implements the MySQL server protocol which is compatible with virtually any other language.

Pretty awesome right? Really key important note here is how it actually works well with MySQL, migration, huge amount of data, even in a way that going to the future it may be the solution which will become a standard and replace MySQL. Really something I am looking forward to deploy and test out as much as possible with huge amount of dummy data and see the use cases and it’s behavior.

4. Veeam – The solution for data recovery

What happens with all the files and all your data when something goes down? How did you set up your recovery? Do backups regularly occur and does it already fetch the newest instances? If something goes down, am I able to retrieve it quickly and efficiently without making too much noise and respect my SLA? Am I actually the data?

To all the questions, besides the last one, a proper answer gives Veeam Software. With their data recovery solutions, you have instant restoration to handle anything you need, from attacks to accidental deletion, across any cloud, physical, virtual or SaaS platform. Main emphasis here is that you’re always covered, from large-scale recovery to the most granular levels of data protection. And their approach to orchestrated disaster recovery puts the tools you need before and after recovery at your fingertips so you can focus on saving time and getting back to business.

3. OpsLevel – deliver high-quality software faster

OpsLevel is an internal developer portal that helps you ship high quality software, faster. The way it gets achievable is by improving visibility of context using the catalog, promoting and tracking org-wide and team-based standards, and empowering developers to automate or self-serve more tasks to help them stay in flow.

In one of my initial posts and the BackstageCon, I explained more about the IDPs and how they can help up with portal development. Since I am working extensively with Backstage, one of the key takeaways when it comes to OpsLevel is that you don’t need to know ReactJS or Typescript in order to set up your frontend and backend to work with the developer portal.

My reaction was already positive about it, since I don’t need to spend my time developing the code, and I can easily focus on building it all with YAML. I was already hooked on that idea, because with that I don’t need to tackle software development and I can only focus on what is important, and that is on core functionalities of portals by means of having templates prepared, catalogs registered and properly shipped to customers for their usage and track of all the things they build on top of it. Along with them providing various plugins by means of having them or creating it for you, you can easily leverage and scale on the go and by what actually you desire to do with your portal.

My goal is to deeply investigate this and how it can easily help out in achieving the end result, that alongside my team are constantly developing through Backstage developer portal. For now, big thumbs up from my side.

2. Datadog – amazing UI with endless possibilities

This platform for observability deserves to be high on this list. Datadog simply delivers on all the fronts, and for a engineer that knows the core basics of building and monitoring various application states, cluster, their responses, on the first glance and proper explanation and demo of it I’ve seen in front of my eyes.

Pretty amazing UI, the ability to expend and make use most of it to keep track of all the logging, CPU and memory usage, the way it completely allows you flexibility in building your own visualizations and many more, is the reason why I put this observability solution so high on my list.

Possibilities are endless and that’s also the reason why they are so high overall when it comes to monitoring. All of the capabilities when it comes to collecting data, well from anywhere helps DevOps teams in preventing downtime, addressing performance problems, and ensuring optimal user experience.

For me, it would be a good start to get into the world of Obs overall and expand my knowledge further, just by using this solution.

1. Chainguard – a secure software supply chain, without vulnerabilities

Chainguard blew me away. Plain and simple.

Why? Well imagine having your supply chain with the least amount of vulnerabilities and by that I mean, completely zero. While preparing for my CKS exam, one of the core topics is what image you’re actually building, which correct images you should use to avoid vulnerabilities and highly critical CVEs. When actually deploying something, being it bare, on-prem or completely isolated, where every single security matters. That’s where Chainguard comes into the play with their solution.

Working closely and adapting images to have that amount of vulnerabilities, as well as helping out and propagate hotfixes when CVE is discovered, but still not applied by official maintainer, it becomes clear where exactly this solution comes into play and exceeds expectations.

You can make sure to have support and assistance when it is needed to create images specific for your use, clean up all the things we don’t like seeing when it comes to CRITICAL, HIGH, MEDIUM, LOW vulnerabilities on the report cards and make life easier when knowing that stuff you’re building and deploying gives out the best security practices to live inside of your dedicated environments.

As well as the others, this is the one I look forward to see in action and see how it is integrable in day to day activities.

And we came to an end, hopefully this article gave you a proper overview on some solutions and may give you a proper start in choosing the right tools for your everyday architecture or development decisions.

Once again, huge shout-out to each and every engineer I got a chance to meet and hear about all the things that are in use by other customers and how it helps in day-to-day basis.