Weekly newsletter for 9 20 2021

Hello everyone!

Last week I spent five days in Nashville, taking in the sights, listening to live music, and probably drinking a bit too much. This was the first time my wife and I had been away from the kids for more than a night in ten years. Ten years! Although both of us have been on longer trips individually, we hadn’t gone together since 2011. It was supremely strange to be hanging out for multiple days and not be interrupted by a child who wants/needs something. Both of us commented on how strange and liberating it was.

But alas, as I write this, we are waiting in the airport to fly home. It was an absolutely fantastic trip and I am ready to be back home with the kiddos. It will be a brief respite, as I am heading out again on Monday to go to the Pluralsight Author Summit in Salt Lake City. Eighteen months of basically no travel, and now I have trips back to back! That’s just how things shook out with our schedules and when Pluralsight decided to have their summit. The trip is a short one and I will be back on Wednesday night with no future travel until November.

Here’s what going on with Ned in the Cloud this week.

YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/c/NedintheCloud/

The original plan for this week was to have a demonstration around using the libvirt provider for Terraform to create and configure virtual machines on a remote host. As I tried to put together the demo, I kind of hit a wall with the provider. The problem is entirely mine I’m sure. I don’t know enough about the libvirt API and the underlying components, so when something didn’t configure correctly I had a lot of trouble figuring out the cause. I am not going to abandon the demo, but I will need a bit more time to figure out.

Instead of the libvirt demo, I threw together a demo of setting up self-hosted runners in GCP for GitHub Actions. And when I say I threw it together, I mean that I had no demo at the beginning of the day on Tuesday and by lunchtime I had self-hosted runners in GCP deployed with Terraform. One of the great things about being familiar with Terraform and GCP is that I didn’t have to fight through a bunch of mistakes, because I’ve already made those mistakes before and learned from them! This is the first of at least two videos. In the next one, we are going to use GitHub Actions and our self-hosted runner to deploy an application to GCP. Once that is all working, we’ll see where else we can go. I also need to put together a demo using GitHub Actions with Microsoft Azure, so this is serving a bit of a dual-purpose.

Day Two Cloud - https://daytwocloud.io

Last week we had a sponsored episode with the good folks over at Console Connect PCCW. You might see PCCW and think that it is some consulting firm, but you would be incorrect. PCCW is one of the largest internet service providers in the APAC region. They handle a not insignificant amount of total internet traffic, and they brought Console Connect on to help them manage their internal products as well as provide their service to end customers. The central idea is simplifying the process of provisioning and connecting networks, whether public or private. Our episode with PacketFabric was along the same lines, and there is more than enough room in the market for both of these companies to grow and thrive. What I really liked about the episode was our peek behind the curtain into how the system is structured, including a discussion about APIs and abstractions.

This week is a new entry in our series about moving from an individual contributor to a management role. So far you’ve heard about Ethan and my personal journeys, from two people we know that have made the move, and now we get to talk to Shelley Benhoff. She not only made the transition herself, but went a step further to create courses on Pluralsight about becoming a more effective manager. I really enjoyed chatting with Shelley about her personal history and her struggles making the move to management. You won’t be surprised to discover that everyone struggles the first time they try to make the move. Focusing on empathy and compassion will take you a long way!

Daily Check-In

Since I was traveling last week, there’s only three Daily Check-Ins.

1. How Much To Charge? - A difficult question. There are a few shortcuts to help you out.
2. Don’t Want To Be A Pendantic Idiot - Gatekeeping through terminology is a real problem in tech. Don’t be that guy.
3. An End to Patreonizing - I’ve decided to close my Patreon page. Here’s why.

Highlighted episode - As much as I’m sure you care about the end of my Patreon, I think the most useful episode is How Much To Charge?.

Other Stuff

Top Five Cloud Posts:

1. Azure needs to update Linux Agent - Like real bad. In the meantime, you’ll have to do it.
2. AWS DevOps Pro Study Guide Part 1 - AWS Hero Chris Williams is laying down some knowledge.
3. Malware Targeting WSL - Where there’s a WSL there’s a way.
4. SoftBank Investment in Latin America - Latin America is seeing a LOT of love right now.
5. Mirantis Launches Flow DCaaS - It’s basically managed OpenStack and Kubernetes, but OK.

That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading! If there’s something you’d like to see in my newsletter, please let me know.

- Ned