In this episode of DevSecOps Talks, join Andrey, Julien, and Mattias as they dive into the world of Backstage, the notable internal development platform. Mattias is keen to peel back the layers and understand what makes people think of Backstage as a must-have in modern DevOps toolchains. Andrey highlights the platform’s core feature: a comprehensive registry that keeps track of every software service running within a company. Could this signify a revival of IT change management, but with a twist? We’ve moved on from the days of cumbersome ticketing systems to streamlined internal development platforms. The team also ponders the future role of infrastructure engineers as they navigate the rising tides of AI—will AI become the new face behind these developer portals? Tune in to find out!

Our dialogue with Paul Stack resumes on DevSecOps Talks, almost two years after our initial podcast about his work on Pulumi (episode 25). As a warm-up, we talk about what prompted his move from Pulumi and his take on Open Terraform drama. The main topic of the episode is Paul’s current focus, System Initiative; we probe into its purpose, the progress so far, and the promise it holds for redefining how we think of doing Infrastructure as Code and DevSecOps workflows in general.

In this episode of DevSecOps Talks, we dive deep into HashiCorp’s recent shift to the Business Source License and its implications. Join Andrey, Julien, and Mattias as they unpack what this means for practitioners and explore the timeline of OpenTF initiative. Stay informed about what comes ahead with our latest discussion. Tune in!

We had the opportunity to talk with Neatsun Ziv, one of the founders of Ox Security, about the Open Source Software Supply Chain Attack Reference Framework (https://pbom.dev). We delved deeper into possible attack vectors and explored ways to mitigate some of them. During our discussions, we also had a couple of unusual takes on supply chain security. If you are looking to understand the Open Source Software Supply Chain, then this episode is perfect for you.

This time we got to talk about Lingon, an open-source project developed by Julian and Jacob who is a frequent podcast guest. Discover the motivations behind Lingon’s creation and how it bridges the gap between Terraform and Kubernetes. Learn how Lingon simplifies infrastructure management, tackles frustrations with YAML and HCL, and offers greater control and automation.

Diving into the world of bare-metal servers, Mattias takes the helm solo for this episode. He’s accompanied by special guests Michael Wagner and Ian Evans from Metify, the company that powers Mojo - a leading platform for bare-metal provisioning automation.

While we often chat about the big cloud service providers, this time we’re switching gears. If you’ve been curious about how real-world, physical servers are set up and managed, this episode is just for you. Join Mattias, Michael, and Ian as they dive into the nuts and bolts of setting up servers - a topic that Mattias is super passionate about.

In this episode, we discuss the evolution of AWS networking capabilities from EC2-classic to VPC and advanced networking features. Andrey highlights that while many companies only use VPC and VPC peerings, there are lesser-known features that can significantly change how we approach networking setups on AWS.

This is a mixed bag of an episode, we chat about all sorts of digital tools and security practices that we use in our day-to-day lives. We start by talking about password managers, and why Julien still using LastPass after the recent LastPass data breach. Julien gives us the lowdown on his personal approach to handling passwords and two-factor authentication (2FA) tokens, showing us why strong security measures matter.

Julien also shares his favorite email alias service and we discuss services for sharing sensitive information to keep mail inboxes cleaner and more private.

We also spoke about ChatGPT, an AI language model from OpenAI - will it replace jobs? should we be using it? And how?

Just a heads up, we aren’t sponsored by companies we mention in this episode. We’re just sharing our personal experiences and the stuff we like to use.

Julien has extensive experience building data platforms for data engineering, so we got him talking and sharing. If infra for data engineering is your cup of tea, then this episode is for you.

We discussed tracing before but never got around to explaining details such as fundamentals, terminology, etc. This time Julien goes into detail about what tracing is, what the benefits are, the basic terms you need to understand, and where to start. Great episode for those who are considering adding tracing capabilities to their systems.