Chad Crowell

Chad M. Crowell is a prominent figure in the cloud-native community, mainly known for his extensive contributions to the Kubernetes ecosystem. He serves as a CNCF (Cloud Native Computing Foundation) Ambassador, where he plays a crucial role in advocating for and promoting cloud-native technologies.

Chad's expertise in various Kubernetes-related projects, including his contributions to the Kubernetes project itself, as well as other significant technologies like Helm, Istio, and Prometheus, has solidified his position as a respected authority in the field.

Chad's commitment to sharing knowledge is evident in his role as an author and educator. His book, "Acing the Certified Kubernetes Administrator Exam," is a highly regarded resource for individuals preparing for Kubernetes certification, and his courses are widely used by those seeking to deepen their understanding of Kubernetes.

Chad is deeply involved in community engagement. He actively participates in events like KCD Texas and the Austin Kubernetes meetup, where he teaches and mentors others about Kubernetes. His approach to making Kubernetes learning fun and interactive has helped many in the community.

He is also a regular speaker at industry conferences and events, sharing his knowledge on Kubernetes, cloud infrastructure, and DevOps practices. He helps spread best practices through his presentations and deepens the community's understanding of these critical technologies.

Chad has also contributed to the educational space through platforms like A Cloud Guru and INE, where he provides courses on Kubernetes and related cloud-native technologies, further establishing himself as a leading educator in the field.

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Sessions

11-10
14:00
30min
Debug Like a Pro: Ephemeral Containers and Wolfi Linux in Action
Natalie Lunbeck, Chad Crowell

As the complexity of your Kubernetes environments grows, so does the complexity of debugging all that complexity. Developers face issues such as replicating the environments locally to test features and/or bugs properly. Developers also face the problem of debugging packages and package dependencies, as images are sometimes sourced from an entire Linux operating system like Ubuntu. Lastly, when multiple environments use non-essential components, tracking the root cause and debugging the configuration drift between environments becomes a nightmare. Not to mention storage and network bandwidth costs, which are notoriously high in cloud environments.

Minimalistic images enhance the development and operational aspects of software projects for developers. They enable more efficient, secure, and reliable software delivery, particularly in agile and DevOps environments where speed and security are paramount. Ephemeral containers are designed to be short-lived and are often used for specific tasks like debugging or running temporary jobs. When combined with minimalistic images, the result is a highly efficient, focused, and secure environment.

In this talk, we aim to identify the operational cost of using bloated images and offer a better path forward for increased efficiency, security, and maintenance in the context of debugging and error resolution. This ultimately leads to operational bliss, allowing the developer to focus on pushing features and increasing productivity.

Theater