Contributed by Mauricio Salatino, VMware (Not a CDF Member)
A couple of weeks ago, I announced that I am currently writing a book titled “Continuous Delivery for Kubernetes” with Manning. The book is already in the MEAP (Manning Early Access Program) which allows readers to have access to the early draft of each chapter as soon as the content is ready for the site. There are currently three chapters available, and I’m about to finish Chapter 4. The idea is to be able to release a Chapter a month for those who are joining the Early Access Program.
What I think is great about MEAP, is that it allows readers to send feedback so I can make the content and the examples better as I go. Because as of right now I have written less than half of the book, the feedback that I receive will have a direct impact on the book’s content. But you might be wondering: what is this book about? Is this kind of book for me? Let me explain what this book is about and the reason behind the title.
Continuous Delivery for Kubernetes is a book for developers, architects and/or CTOs who are interested in architecting, building and delivering software in a more efficient and streamlined way using open source tools. Because all the tools that I cover are related to Kubernetes and extend Kubernetes to perform very specific tasks, you might be inclined to think that this book is about DevOps and more focused on Operations, but that’s not the case.
This book is focused on the tools that developers can use to build, test, release, and manage software on Kubernetes environments. If you have been following me for some time, you might know that I love Kubernetes, but I do consider myself just a normal developer who feels empowered to build Cloud Native applications with open source projects. When I started working with Kubernetes more than 6 years ago, I quickly realized that developers like myself can create, build, deploy, and manage complex distributed applications on cloud-like environments by sharing the same language with operations teams. That language is the Kubernetes APIs.
The Kubernetes APIs provide a set of building blocks that you can use to build your applications by following some well-known practices like 12-factor apps. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, Kubernetes building blocks are very unopinionated, meaning that you can basically use them in any way you want to build whatever you want. For developers, this might be too many options and maybe dealing with concepts that are too abstract to digest and use every day.
For this exact same reason, Kubernetes being too low level for developers, this book covers tools that build on top of the Kubernetes API bringing higher level, more opinionated concepts to perform concrete tasks such as building and deploying your Cloud Native services using a Cloud Native pipeline engine like Tekton, managing infrastructure in a declarative with tools like Crossplane and integrating heterogeneous systems using CloudEvents and Knative Eventing. Each of these projects, and all the other open source projects covered in the book, extends Kubernetes to empower developers to be more productive and most importantly focus on building the right thing for their business.
Because I am really passionate about these topics, I am doing a presentation at KubeCon NA this Friday, October 15 titled: Tools That I Wish Existed 3 Years Ago To Build a SaaS Offering and I will be live for the Q&A session at the end of my presentation.
If you are interested in joining the MEAP program, follow this link and take advantage of this code that will last for a couple of weeks to get 50% off of the final price. Use the following code at checkout: mlsalatino2. Once again, if you read the early drafts and you have suggestions or you want me to add more examples of a certain topic or project please feel free to reach out via Twitter: @salaboy my DMs are open.
I hope you all have a great KubeCon NA this week!
