Dive into the cutting-edge realm of cloud-native technologies with our dynamic meetup, featuring enlightening talks and a special guest. 

First, delve into "GitOps for Databases," a comprehensive discussion and live demo on Kubernetes-native database migrations using the Atlas Operator and ArgoCD, led by the insightful Rotem Tamir from Ariga. Following this, transition to our second talk, which focuses on the seamless integration of AWS Controllers for Kubernetes with the CDK8s framework, enabling k8s-native management of AWS resources such as RDS. 

But that's not all—prepare for an interactive and fun quiz, with the chance to win swag!

Talk 1: GitOps for Databases

In this talk, we explore the challenges of database schema changes at scale. We will demonstrate ways we can apply modern concepts such as Continuous Integration and Infrastructure-as-Code to build robust developer platforms that can make database changes both safer and faster at the same time.

Database schema changes are a risky business. If you’re not careful, you can introduce a breaking change that can bring your application down, run a destructive change that results in data loss or accidentally lock a table for writes for a long period of time.

When observed through the lens of widely accepted metrics for software delivery such as deployment frequency, change failure rate, etc we can see how the way most teams manage database schema changes today has an adverse impact on their performance. Simply put, teams are generally super careful when it comes to planning and applying changes to the database, choosing safety over velocity.

In this talk we will review: 

• The risks associated with making database schema changes, and the shortcomings of current approaches to managing them. 
• Schema-as-Code: how modern tools, such as Atlas (an OSS schema management tool) apply proven principles from other DevOps domains to make database schema changes both safer and faster at the same time.
•  How to build schema change management capabilities into your developer platform today.

Talk 2 - YAML Your Way to the Cloud : Declarative Management with Config Controller (Playful and emphasizes YAML usage)

In this talk, we'll delve into Config Controller, a powerful tool within Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) Enterprise that simplifies managing your infrastructure on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Kubernetes clusters. We'll break down the core concepts, explore their functionalities, and demonstrate how to leverage them within your Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) for streamlined infrastructure management – all with the power of YAML!

Declarative Configuration: Gone are the days of complex scripts! Config Controller lets you define the desired state of your infrastructure using human-readable YAML files. You simply specify what you want (e.g., a Cloud SQL instance with specific settings), and the Config Controller takes care of creating and configuring it for you.

GitOps Workflow: Embrace the power of Git! Config Controller integrates seamlessly with Git, allowing you to version control your infrastructure configurations. This ensures collaboration, simplifies rollbacks if needed, and maintains a single source of truth for your infrastructure as code (IaC).

Kubernetes-centric Management: If you're already familiar with Kubernetes, you'll feel right at home. Config Controller leverages familiar Kubernetes APIs and tools, making it easy to learn and integrate into your existing workflows.

Policy Management : Rules of configurations, enforce best practices, security and compliance

Talk 3: CDK and Kubernetes: A Match Made in the Cloud

In this talk we'll delve into CDK8s, a versatile framework that defines Kubernetes applications and abstractions using familiar programming languages and object-oriented APIs. Our presentation will include practical examples and use cases drawn from professional experience.

We'll explore the numerous advantages of CDK8s, such as utilizing strongly-typed data types to articulate the abstraction's API, enabling rich interactions through methods and properties, and fostering polymorphic programming with interfaces and base classes. CDK8s also facilitates the versioning, sharing, and testing of these models, known as "Constructs", using standard package managers and conventional testing tools.

Our discussion will address the limitations of prevalent Kubernetes configuration methods like Helm, Terraform, and Kustomize. We'll scrutinize common issues with Helm, particularly the challenges with gotemplates and YAML inputs, such as indentation errors, and the absence of clear schemas, which often lead to user frustration, upgrade issues, and deployment inaccuracies. We'll also compare CDK8s with Terraform's HCL (a domain-specific language) and discuss the inherent conflicts in the reconciliation strategies between the Terraform execution engine and Kubernetes controllers. We'll highlight integration patterns between CDK8s/CDK8s+.

Furthermore, we'll share practical tips and strategies for effectively utilizing CDK8s. This includes demonstrating design patterns and highlights from example repositories as well as highlight some issues, hard learned lessons and battle scars from adopting CDK8s, ensuring a comprehensive understanding of the landscape.

We're thrilled to bring together learning, practice, and the opportunity to network with industry experts like Rotem Tamir. Don't miss this unique blend of education, engagement, and excitement!