When you're managing dozens of Kubernetes clusters, across three different clouds, for dozens of individual companies in their own accounts, the challenge of (re)designing tooling is complex. Come hear how we worked through all the many possible options (centralized IaC vs templating, whether to use cluster managers like Rancher, etc.), what high-level tradeoffs were made (i.e. ease-of-use vs speed of changes vs centralized control), and the tangible outcomes of this process. The focus here will be on the process and decision making, given all the different drivers such as technology, business, people, process, etc. This talk will cover how we undertook the process, while giving you tangible next steps to take back to your desk.

From this talk, you'll take away: - Some reasons why you should or should not attempt a rewrite of your Infrastructure-as-Code process. - An overview of the inputs that you should consider when designing an Infrastructure-as-Code tooling stack. - Some idea of how to be successful with a tooling rewrite.

Andy Suderman is CTO at Fairwinds, a managed Kubernetes-as-a-Service provider. Andy has worked with cloud native technologies for the last eight years helping organizations adopt and manage Kubernetes. Andy is the creator and primary developer of Goldilocks—an open source tool that helps companies leverage the Vertical Pod Autoscaler in Kubernetes. He has presented on many CNCF Cloud Native Live virtual events, Containers from the Couch and is a co-chair of the Policy Working Group, as well as a CNCF Ambassador.