KubeCon 2024: All the latest news and announcements

It's a crisp but sunny day here in Paris as people make their way in to the Paris Expo Centre for the first day of KubeCon 2024.

The registration area is filling up, although the Paris Expo Centre's coffee shops aren't open yet unfortunately! 

The weather's getting nice now! KubeCon's keynote talks are located on the third floor of the centre. 

No one's allowed into the keynote theatre just yet so this is a good time to get acquainted with the conference space.

Everyone has now been allowed into the keynote theatre and it's filling up quickly. 

The keynote session has begun, kicked off with a promotional video!

Priyanka Sharma, Executive Director of Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) has hit stage to wild applause from the audience. 

This is apparently the largest KubeCon ever according to Sharma - so big, she jokes, that even her parents are here! 

Sharma talks about how, together, cloud native has made platforms more resilient and stable, listing some of the big names associated with it - Adidas, Disney, Spotify…the list goes on.

Sharma develops a visual language model that impressively details a picture of the conference hall itself! Everyone was suitably pleased. 

Sharma’s focusing on linking cloud native and AI together, now bringing to the stage the co-founder of Mistral AI, Timothée Lacroix, lead product manager at Google, Paiege Bailey, and founder of Ollama, Jeffery Morgan. They discuss the relationship between AI and cloud native. 

The group also talk about inference cases, the possibility of smaller model use, and evolution in the space in general. They talk about the different workloads for AI, such as training, fine-tuning, and inference. 

Sharma brings up the phrase “open source washing,” which turns the group’s attention to the importance of open source in AI. Morgan talks about the open source nature of Kubernetes but then also comments that this is affected by whether a model is open source, while Lacroix says that it would be helpful for all the tooling for AI to be open source. 

Two new speakers hit the stage, Kevin Klues, Distinguished Engineer, and Sanjay Chatterjee, Engineering Manager at NVIDIA, to talk about AI workloads with GPUs in Kubernetes. 

They talk about how GPUs are at the heart of the AI revolution and will talk about what it takes to enable GPU support in Kubernetes, support that can help in directing AI workloads. 

They talk about ‘time-slicing,’ a technique used to split the demands of AI workloads, as well as GPU sharing. Kevin gives a little shout out to some other talks at the conference if people want to know more!

Klues hands over to Chatterjee to talk about the issues around scaling out GPUs, particularly with regard to training. To satisfy the demands of generative AI, he says, a vast amount of GPUs are needed. 

‘Topology aware placement’ is key to avoiding problems, he says, as well as an understanding of fault tolerance and resiliency. Problems need to be diagnosed easily and observability needs to be built in. 

Next to the stage is Jorge Palma, Principal PM Lead at Microsoft, who will be taking the lead for a sponsored keynote on building an open source platform for AI. There are a lot of issues along the way, he says, such as containerizing models. 

Thats why he’s announcing the company’s new KAITO architecture, which will deploy and run inference for models. It’s a speedy run through of the product and then he’s off!

Next to the stage are several people for a panel discussion: Lu Qiu from Alluxio, Susan Wu and Clayton Coleman from Google, Victor Jakubiuk from Ampere Computing, and Ricardo Rocha from CERN.

The panel starts with a question about how Kubernetes might be simplified, followed by a question about the compute decisions people should make in regard to Kubernetes. GPU-free LLM inference is one response to the latter of the two questions.

Compute power seems to be a running theme in KubeCon 2024’s opening keynotes, and the panel’s attention is turned considerably towards concepts of GPU sharing and efficient GPU use. 

The questions are flying: What can we do to optimize for sustainability? One panelist jumps in to tout lower usage compute systems that, in turn, create lower costs. 

To close out, the panel host reaffirms Kubernetes as becoming the standard for AI platforms, while also going over some of the panel’s discussion on resource allocation, data loading, and the importance of choosing the right specialized compute for the right model. 

Next to the stage is the curiously named ‘Cloud Native News Show’ (complete with faux-news show graphics) headed up by Nikhita Raghunath and Rajas Kakodar. 

This just in…Kubernetes enters its second decade. It learned how to walk and then run, and now will “fly” into the AI galaxy - it looks like this keynote session will feature several different “news broadcasters,” or just plain speakers, over its duration. 

The keynote now cuts to an imitated “live report” from somewhere outside the conference center.

Now Kakodkar will speak to cloud native and AI’s relationship more generally, talking about the relationship of infrastructure and cloud native as symbiotic. 

After another speaker jumps into the news room, Ibrahim Haddad (via video), it’s a wrap for the news show! 

Now two more speakers for the next keynote, Yuzhui Liu Team Lead at Bloomberg, and Leon Zhou, Software Engineer at Bloomberg.

They talk about the company’s flagship product, Bloomberg terminal. The company handles a massive amount of data every day. They talk about how Bloomberg terminal uses AI (unsurprisingly given the focus of the keynotes so far).

To support their features, they need a scalable infrastructure and they need to support a complex machine learning lifecycle. They leverage open source solutions to help with this process. 

Managed model training is a topic of the pair’s address, and they discuss using Buildpack and Kubeflow, before moving on to talking about multi-cluster scheduling. Knative and KServe are also platforms used at Bloomberg. 

And now, as they leave the stage, it looks like it's already time for the opening keynote’s closing remarks! The hosts announce some exciting events that are yet to come during the conference. 

The crowd is thanked for joining and, just like that, people begin to filter out the keynote theatre.

Thanks for following ITPro's coverage of the opening keynote at KubeCon 2024 in Paris. Stay tuned for more KubeCon news over the next few days!

Today’s schedule jam-packed - while we wait for it to start, why not check out this great view from atop the Paris Expo centre!

Take a look at KubeCon's second floor layout as well:

With not long to go the keynote theatre’s already nearly full. 

Some more graphics to lead in the opening remarks!

Hip hip beret! Not my words, the title of this next keynote apparently - the crowd welcomes Taylor Dolezal, Head of Ecosystem at the CNCF, to the stage.

The focus will be on end-users and Dolezal celebrates contributors to the CNCF. He talks about how the CNCF brings the complex landscape of cloud native into focus.

Next, Dolezal invites some of these end users on to the stage against a backdrop of…a boxing ring?

Our next speaker then goes on to compare aspects of cloud native to boxing weight classes - a container is middle-weight, web assembly is lightweight, and so on. 

The speakers then begin to talk about web assembly within the cloud for its speed and agility -  web assembly is used in an on-screen demonstration of a  ‘generalized order processing system.’

Using web assembly over standard deployment allows for increased scale and lower cost, according to the speakers. 

All this still exists within containers inside Kubernetes, one of the speakers makes sure to point out.  

They then announce that a new platform, SpinKube, will be coming to CNCF to allow for the enhanced leveraging of web assembly in the cloud native space. 

Who needs the Oscars anyway? KubeCon has its very own awards ceremony for the very best end users of cloud native.

This year there were three nominations - the runner up is Expedia, followed by Shopify (which gets a big clap). 

And the winner is…(drum roll please)...CERN! Some from CERN comes up to collect the award and thanks the cloud native community before reflecting on how beneficial cloud native has been for CERN. 

A sponsored keynote now, starring Fabian Deutsch, Senior Engineering Manager at Red Hat and Michael Hanulec, Vice President and Technology Fellow at Goldman Sachs.

The pair discuss virtualization and virtual machines which, according to them, are still incredibly useful and trusted forms of compute. 

Now Gualter Barbas Baptista, Lead Consultant for Platform Strategy and Enablement at Deutsche Bahn, takes to the stage, to discuss all things green IT and green cloud computing.

He starts with an anecdote about surfing which captivates the audience and then, out of the blue, manages to encourage the entire audience to participate in making a wave with their arms, right the way to the back of the room. 

Then Baptista gets serious, talking about the critical state of the environment and climate change.

Measuring the cloud footprint of a business is key, and the tools to do this, Baptista says, are not always entirely useful. Baptisa looks to three pillars to move forward in sustainable IT - sufficiency, efficiency, and consistency. 

Baptisa then talks about standardization in Deutsche Bahn and how it allows for easy adoption of green and sustainable practices. 

He also talks about Kubernetes - it is KubeCon after all - and the extent to which it offers platforms such as vertical pod autoscalers which help to optimize container workloads, thus making cloud operations more efficient. 

Kubernetes also helps with scheduling, through its ‘downscaler’ capabilities, saving developers from wasting power running platforms when they’re not there. 

Then he shows off Deutsche Bahn’s ‘green observability’ dashboard, and some other software platforms that are being developed and worked on within Deutsche Bahn. 

He closes on a motivational note, telling the audience to maintain a focus on gaining an understanding of their sustainability metrics. 

Next up Dennis Gu, chief architect at Huawei Cloud, for another sponsored keynote to talk about cloud native and AI. Have we traveled back in time to day 1?

He talks about the complexity of AI development, as well as the risk, before bringing up KubeEdge as a potential solution. Similarly, he brings up the Volcano platform. 

More sustainability now, with Aparna Subramanian from Shopify giving a keynote on innovating responsibly. 

So what does building and operating a sustainable platform look like? Well, to answer that, Subramanian welcomes Adrienne Jan from Scaleway to the stage. She’s going to talk about how cloud providers are thinking about sustainability. 

Some of the biggest sources of carbon emissions in data centers, she says, relate to the cooling of data centers. 

Jan says cloud users can help out cloud providers with sustainability. Developers, for example, can cut down on code that is too power-hungry. 

Next up, Subramanian invites David Meder-Marouelli from 1&1 Mail & Media GmbH and Todd Ekenstam from Intuit to the stage, to talk about how cloud users can be sustainable.

Meder-Marouelli begins by talking about how servers consume idle power, before going on to explain how understanding utilization and spare capacity can save a lot of power. 

Now Todd Ekenstam talks about the efficient use of resources. He reiterates the need to avoid over-provisioning when scaling.

Ekenstam thinks AI will have a big impact on efficiency, allowing for more intelligent auto-scaling to ensure workloads have the correct amount of resources. 

And now it's time to close out the keynotes! After a few announcements, the crowd is invited to go and enjoy the second day of KubeCon.

Once again, the crowd filters out into the Paris Expo center. 

See you again tomorrow for the next set of keynotes! While you wait, why not check out some of ITPro’s other coverage from the event:

Why workload identity complexity is causing cloud native security headaches

The weather's turned a bit colder but it's still just as sunny for the third and final day of KubeCon 2024 in Paris. 

While we're waiting for the keynotes to begin, why not check out some of our other coverage from the event: 

Why workload identity complexity is causing cloud native security headaches

It's getting busy outside the keynote theatre! 

Excitement for the keynote is brewing - maybe it's just me but the theatre seems even busier today!

We welcome to the stage Chris Anisczcyk, CTO of the CNCF, for the final opening remarks. 

He takes us on a trip down memory lane for the event, recapping some of the amazing events, before taking us on an even longer trip down memory lane - right back to the beginning of the CNCF. 

It’s hard to imagine that the first KubeCon only had a few hundred people in attendance!

He announces ‘KuberTENes,’ an event the CNCF has come up with to celebrate 10 years of Kubernetes (in case the name hadn’t given it away).

Anisczcyk then asks everyone to reflect on their time with Kubernetes, encouraging the crowd to follow a QR code on the screen and share their first contributions.

More kube-based naming now, as Anisczcyk announces the Kubestronaut mentorship program, part of the CNCF’s push for training and education.

The opening remarks are now wrapped up with thanks to the community - next up, Bob Wise, CEO of Heroku. 

Reflection seems to be the mood of this final set of keynotes, as Wise wants to talk about the early days of the industry. 

He talks about some of the obstacles he faced - one was in using Kubernetes at scale. Back then, 100 nodes were the supposed limit, but Wise and his team developed SIG scalability. 

He takes us on a trip through some of the highlights of Kubernetes, all the way up past the EKS launch in June 2018 before handing out shout-outs to to the team that was part of Buildpacks.io. 

Did I mention that KubeCon has had its own hackathon event running throughout the event, dubbed CloudNativeHacks? Well if I didn’t it’s too late because now they’re announcing the winner! 

The hackathon was undertaken in collaboration with the UN, with the aim of promoting and enabling global sustainable development initiatives. 

In third place, it’s Team Potato! They created a collaborative walking safety map as part of the competition.

In second place, Team Forester! As part of CloudNativeHacks, this team built an application that aids in the automatic detection and monitoring of deforestation. 

And finally, in first place…Urban Unity! Their competition-winning project created a collaborative city planning application. 

Time for some more nostalgia, 10 years worth apparently as Solomon Hykes, CEO of Dagger.io delivers his keynotes, “A 10-year Detour: The Future of Application Delivery in a Containerized World”

He talks about platform-as-a-service (PaaS), jokingly reminiscing on the fact that, back in those days, he thought there would be a single platform on which every application on the cloud would exist. 

He brings the crowd back to considering the developer experience and making sure that remains something of importance.

He begrudgingly says he’s going to talk about AI, bringing the crowd back around by affirming the point that AI is, of course, just software just another thing for this community to work on developing. 

Now a sponsored keynote from Sudha Raghavan, Senior Vice President of OCI Developer Platform in Oracle.

Raghavan talks about how Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is open, and that thousands of Oracle customers use millions of Kubernete’s cores. Similarly, all of Oracle’s generative AI services run on Kubernetes.

Apparently, Oracle is thinking about using CPUs instead of GPUs to improve cost-efficiency and energy-efficiency.

Now it’s time for a panel on diversity, featuring Kasper Borg Nissen from Lunar, Jinhong Brejnholt from Saxo Bank, Andrea Giardini from Independent, Anastasiia Gubska from BT group.

The group discusses ‘no-code’ contributions as well as the development of events that play a role in supporting a diverse and inclusive community. 

One panelist mentions an initiative named ‘KubeTrain: Road to Paris 2024,’ a project with the aim of bringing as many people as possible to KubeCon 2024 by train. 

Now it's time to hear about updates from the latest graduated projects from the CNCF (via video). 

It’s a whistle-stop tour of CNCF projects, including Cillium, CloudEvents, EnvoyProxy, Falco, FluentBit, Flux, Harbor, Istio, Kedify, and more, all of which are offering exciting new updates and features.

The names keep coming - Rook, Vitess, and Kubernetes SIG Storage.

Now it’s time for the final keynote, ‘Cloud Native in its Next Decade,’ delivered Davanum Srinivas, Principal Engineer at AWS, and Lin Sun, Head of Open Source at solo.io.

They talk about the cloud native evolution, looking all the way back (again) to the earliest days and working their way towards the current day. 

So where is cloud native going next? According to a study shown on screen, AI looks unsurprisingly to be a hot topic, with sustainability following close behind. 

And with that, it looks like it’s time for the closing remarks of KubeCon 2024! It’s been a blast! 

Make sure to check out our coverage from the last couple of days of keynotes, as well as our other coverage of the event: 

Why workload identity complexity is causing cloud native security headaches