Blog

Most of my blog posts dating back to 2002. Some written here, some written elsewhere and aggregated here.
An Introduction to PromQL

An Introduction to PromQL

27/05/2021
For metrics stored within Prometheus, the Prometheus Querying Language (PromQL) is the main way to query and retrieve the results you are looking for. Chronosphere supports querying metrics data using PromQL and Graphite functions, but as PromQL is the most popular option we see customers use. PromQL has some differences to other query languages you might have used. Here is an overview guide to get you started.
The Pros and Cons of GitOps

The Pros and Cons of GitOps

03/03/2021
GitOps takes familiar tools such as Git and Continuous Delivery pipelines to automate infrastructure. The GitOps approach is vendor-neutral, provides a clear history of changes, and allows you to reproduce or roll back deployments. Yet, we can't ignore the problems with this approach: Proliferation of repositories, no help for secrets management, or simultaneous file writes. Let's explore.
Developer Experience - How to Define Good Documentation?

Developer Experience - How to Define Good Documentation?

10/02/2021
When comparing products, you want to decide on their usefulness. Yet, we often forget to evaluate the project's documentation. A project might offer an excellent set of features but might lack easy-to-use documentation. This can have a detrimental effect on the developer experience and your team's efficiency. So, how do you evaluate the developer experience of documentation?
Scaling your team alongside Kubernetes

Scaling your team alongside Kubernetes

22/01/2021
Many of you have probably read countless technical articles about scaling application infrastructure and capacity with Kubernetes. This is not one of those posts. Rather, it looks at how and when to implement Kubernetes when your team or the demands on your team grow rapidly.
Why GitHub built their own Internal Developer Platform

Why GitHub built their own Internal Developer Platform

24/11/2020
An Internal Developer Platform (IDP) is an essential step for rapidly scaling companies to keep their developers working productively and happily. In this roundtable discussion we speak with Jason Warner, the current CTO of GitHub and previous VP of Engineering for Heroku about how IDPs help teams of that scale build efficiently.
Why Sport1 built their Internal Developer Platform

Why Sport1 built their Internal Developer Platform

23/11/2020
German broadcaster Sport1 realized they were spending too much time grappling with an outdated deployment process, they decided it was time to build their own flexible Internal Developer Platform. Find out how it changed their development process in our roundtable with Paolo Garri, the director of technology.
Why Zalando built their Internal Developer Platform‍

Why Zalando built their Internal Developer Platform‍

12/10/2020
An internal developer platform (IDP) is an essential step for rapidly scaling companies to keep their developers working productively and happily. In this roundtable discussion we speak with Jan Löffler who helped build Zalando’s IDP about the problems they were trying to solve and the steps they took.
An Introduction to Developer Experience (DevEx, DX)

An Introduction to Developer Experience (DevEx, DX)

06/10/2020
In this article I look mostly at improving the developer experience within a company, and touch upon other aspects where relevant, we have future articles planned to help you improve the DX of the projects you maintain. The goal of this article is to help those in charge of development teams understand what their developers struggle with and complain about and help them do something about it.
Version changes to configurations for Kubernetes-ready applications

Version changes to configurations for Kubernetes-ready applications

21/09/2020
Your Kubernetes configuration represents environments that are a fundamental part of your application, unyet we generally treat them as less important from our application code. In this post we look at best practices for managing changes to configuration, and how to treat it the way it deserves.
Sandbox Environments for Testing

Sandbox Environments for Testing

06/08/2020
In this article by Nils Balkow Tychsen, Lead Q&A Engineer at Humanitec, you will learn some use cases for sandboxed environments such as parallel feature development, parallel testing of feature flags, and parallel testing of microservice versions in different combinations.
Developer Experience Roundtable - Continuous Improvement

Developer Experience Roundtable - Continuous Improvement

15/07/2020
A good developer experience is crucial to keep developer teams productive, happy, and focussed on work important to your business aims. In this first roundtable, we get the opinions and experiences from two experts in the field: Nigel Simpson, Director, Enterprise Tech Strategy at a Fortune 100 company, and Erik Muttersbach, CTO at forto (formerly FreightHub), a Berlin logistics startup.
The Benefits and Best Practices of Continuous Delivery

The Benefits and Best Practices of Continuous Delivery

16/06/2020
Continuous delivery helps software development teams get their code changes from development to testing, and into the hands of users more quickly. In this post, Chris Ward looks at the benefits and best practices for implementing this practice into your teams.