Posted on August 13, 2024
Kubestronaut social card with David Pech

Get to know David 

David has more than 20 years of experience in SW development and infrastructure and hands-on experience in dozens of technologies and is the only Kubestronaut who has ALL of the CNCF certifications. He takes a pragmatic approach to new technologies with a focus on finding the most reasonable and secure solutions. David is a big fan of CNCF tools such as ArgoCD, Traefik, Knative, Prometheus, CloudNativePG and many others, and likes to help other people understand and onboard cloud technologies, preferably in the Kubernetes ecosystem. 

If you’d like to be a Kubestronaut like David,  get more details on the CNCF Kubestronaut page. 

When did you get started with Kubernetes–what was your first project?

In 2021, I worked on a project where we initially considered K8s for re-platforming a large Czech and Slovak retail e-commerce site. When we realized how difficult it would be, we decided to use Docker Swarm instead. However, I became very interested in Kubernetes and have been learning about it ever since. In 2023, we understood k8s enough that we migrated that same retail e-commerce site to kubernetes.  We had migrated a dozen smaller projects before to build up gradually. Now we get the benefit of autoscaling, sidecars and other features of k8s. I’ll be telling the story of my kubernetes journey in a session at  KCD Czech and Slovak 2024  if anyone is interested.

What are the primary CNCF projects you work on or use today?  What projects have you enjoyed the most in your career?

I am mostly a user with a few contributions in testing and enhancing docs.

How has CNCF helped you or influenced your career?

CNCF helps me the most with orientation – with the famous Landscape page. I know there is a lot of criticism on how many projects there are, but I would probably still prefer the CNCF project over “fill-in any large company” GitHub project, just for the licensing reason lately. Another influential part for me was that CNCF allowed me to network with a lot of people not just within the Kubernetes project, but in a wider ecosystem – so we can meet, share ideas, and help each other move forward with real business projects.

What motivated you to get all the kubernetes certs?

As Abdellfetah Sghiouar from Kubernetes Podcast said: certs are just like Pokemon cards, gotta catch them all, right? For me, the final cert is just nice-to-have garage decoration. Typically I have very limited time, and I can’t get much deeper into technologies than my current projects require at the time.

But when I sign up for a certificate, it forces me to study to get a broader picture and open all the major chapters in the documentation. Getting the Istio (ICA) and Cilium (CCA) certification is a perfect example of this – I use these regularly, but while studying for the cert I learned many new features and also some insights on misconfigurations I encountered in the past. I will add that I pay for all the certs myself, so my motivation may be quite different from others.

How have the certs helped you in your career? 

Because I am currently looking for a new job, I have fresh insight on this. I would say that the CNCF certifications are generally quite new and not all companies understand their content. So for example, if my resume mentions the certs, companies still consider me much more a developer than an infrastructure person. Some front-runners understand CKAD, CKA, and maybe CKS.

I have seen some vague descriptions regarding CNCF technology requirements in many job ads. I’ve even seen the phrase “Kubernetes/OpenShift certificate eligible” but it is not clear what that means. Even with the expanded understanding of the need for CNCF technology, non-technical hiring managers might have problems understanding the certs. Also even if you explain the certs, they still give you test questions for the very same area (some even apologized that I would probably find the questions too basic – but still didn’t skip it).  But generally, I believe that companies will evolve in their understanding of the certs in the future.

What are some other books/sites/courses you recommend for people who want to work with k8s?

CKA and CKS simulators are good starting points. These are the top choices IMHO:

What do you do in your free time?

I run and spend time with my family – we have a very active 3-year-old daughter.

As you know, Kubernetes is turning 10 this year, what are you most excited about for Kubernetes in the next 10 years?

I’m looking for Kubernetes “to be the default” as a platform choice. Also I would be excited if GitOps would become the de-facto standard on how to run workloads. If this happens, it would mean that companies would already have solutions for containers, packaging apps, externalizing configs, versioning and much more. Often CNCF-enabled startups tend  to misunderstand that the majority of workloads still do not operate inside k8s. There is no technical obstacle to moving them there, but it will take years for the companies to migrate. I would just consider it a success if like 80% of companies would consider k8s as the default runtime environment for their new projects in a few years. In 10 years K8s will become similar to Linux – an essential foundational piece, yet very boring and transparent to users.

What would you tell someone who is just starting their K8s certification journey? Any tips or tricks?

I would always advise pairing each certification with some hands-on project. Either you already have a project using the technology/concepts under certification, or just create a new branch migrating to the technology, or even start some small hobby project. When I have time for this, I get double or triple the know-how value except when I “just go over the examples in the docs”. Also, my method is typically starting from the project documentation – in some certs exams it’s useful to be familiar with the docs, but also you should understand the full breadth of the technology. (Although this might be a bit cumbersome if the exam is limited to only small parts). For my example 

There are no shortcuts – having the cert without the know-how behind it is completely useless.

Today the Cloud native ecosystem is way more than Kubernetes. Do you plan to get other cloud native certifications from the CNCF ?

Except for the Kubestronaut (CKAD, CKA, CKS, KCSA, KCNA), I already have:

Are there any more? 🙂

How did you get involved with cloud native and Kubernetes in general?

I have vast experience working with monolithic legacy systems. If your server can’t keep up, you just buy a bigger one. Except it takes months to buy, deliver, install, migrate etc. So I was always fascinated with cloud concepts in general, when I discovered Google’s Borg and Docker Swarm later on, I had an almost child-like urge to try this in production. I’m a self-learner typically and was pioneering most of the tech stack we use myself, so little by little, project by project, it took me maybe 2-3 years to understand the “big picture”. Only after this journey, I found the confidence to offer a client solution based on Kubernetes (“kube-what?” is their typical reaction here in Czechia). Only after understanding the “big picture” I could clearly express business benefits for their practical use cases and not just repeat some leaflets. But except for the first spark of “childish” interest, I still explore and advocate for the CNCF ecosystem just because it’s currently the best of what’s available. There is (almost) no company at least not considering using some of the CNCF projects.

Any additional thoughts?

Kubernetes is hard. It’s difficult to understand what CNCF projects do and their place in the ecosystem. Don’t give up just because it takes weeks or months to understand even the basics. Take your time and don’t look for shortcuts in learning the concepts. Give yourself enough time and know that the CNCF community is eager to help you. Your patience will be rewarded in decades to come because Kubernetes will be omnipresent.

If you’d like to be a Kubestronaut like David  get more details on the CNCF Kubestronaut page.