Interview with our co-founder on Kubernetes and operations

A few days ago, Tech Times published an interview with Dmitry Shurupov, co-founder of Palark, in which he shares his thoughts on Kubernetes and the broader Cloud Native ecosystem.

The topics covered in this interview include the complexity of Kubernetes, rapidly changing Cloud Native technologies, best practices for today’s operations, building a DevOps career, and the benefits of Open Source contributions.

Here are a few quotes from this article:

— Kubernetes has a reputation for being complex. How did it become so popular anyway?

Yes, Kubernetes is complicated—but that’s because it addresses serious challenges. This complexity shouldn’t be unexpected. With 20 years of experience in IT operations and Open Source, I view Kubernetes as a natural evolution of global engineering efforts to address real-world operational challenges. Kubernetes offers sophisticated solutions for orchestrating containerized workloads at scale, and with that comes inherent complexity.

That said, it’s perfectly acceptable to start simple. If you’re just beginning to build your infrastructure, running your software on regular virtual machines without Kubernetes is often a valid approach. However, you should expect to transition to Kubernetes at some point, as your product grows and your development team expands. [..]

— What advice do you have for aspiring DevOps engineers?

Don’t make the mistake of becoming a DevOps engineer by skipping system administration fundamentals: operating system internals, networking, storage, and so on. It’s a significant trend now that young professionals want to jump into the high-paying, highly sought-after world of DevOps immediately. But you can’t become a good DevOps engineer without knowing how everything “under the hood” works.

While you primarily operate high-level software and abstractions, when something breaks—and it will—you need to understand what could possibly lead to these issues. [..]

— What about Open Source contributions on GitHub?

Being active in Open Source communities is beneficial in so many ways. It confirms your technical expertise—especially if you contribute meaningful features or bug fixes to well-known software projects. It develops your soft skills through collaboration and communication. It connects you with like-minded people and contributes to better software available to everyone. And honestly, it’s just fun! [..]

You can read the full interview on Tech Times.