Talks


Nowadays, Kubernetes has become one of the most popular platforms for many workloads; from databases, to data streaming systems, to microservices-based applications. However, managing these workloads using only the Kubernetes native resources is not easy. Especially when it comes to day 2 operations like upgrades and scaling. Helm charts can help to a certain extent, but they don’t solve all the potential problems.

What you need is an operator, not a human one, looking after your Kubernetes workloads 365/24/7. In the end, this is how the internal mechanics of a Kubernetes cluster works, so why not use the same approach for your own applications?

During this session we’ll explore what the “operator pattern” is and how a software-based operator, with the necessary domain-specific knowledge, can take care of your Kubernetes workloads; helping with installation, upgrades, certificate management, and reducing the need for human intervention. We’ll also demonstrate a real operator in practice - the open-source Java-based operator Strimzi which manages Apache Kafka clusters in a cloud-native way.

Kate Stanley
Red Hat
Kate Stanley is a software engineer, technical speaker, and Java Champion. She has experience running Apache Kafka on Kubernetes, developing enterprise Kafka applications, and writing connectors for Kafka Connect. She also specialises in cloud-native Java applications and microservices architectures. Kate currently works as a principal software engineer in the Red Hat Kafka team. She also contributes to multiple open source projects, including the Kafka operator, Strimzi.
Alongside development, Kate has a passion for presenting and sharing knowledge. She has presented at conferences around the world, including Devoxx Belgium, Kafka Summit in San Francisco and Jfokus in Sweden. She has authored two LinkedIn Learning courses on MicroProfile and Apache Kafka, and written an eBook on writing microservices with Java. She has also written a book on Kafka Connect which was published in 2023.
Paolo Patierno
Red Hat
Paolo is a Senior Principal Software Engineer working for Red Hat on the messaging and data streaming team. He is a maintainer of Strimzi, a CNCF incubating project for running Apache Kafka on Kubernetes using operators. In his previous role, he worked on different integration projects such as an AMQP bridge for Apache Kafka and Spark, and on the EnMasse messaging-as-a-service project to enable the integration with MQTT. He is also a maintainer for different IoT related components in Eclipse Vert.x and Eclipse Paho projects. He has spoken at numerous national and international conferences about Kafka, Strimzi, and IoT, including KubeCon and DevNation. Finally, he is CNCF ambassador and he has been a Microsoft MVP for the Azure category since 2014.