The Cloud Native Craftsman#
Welcome to my website. I鈥檓 Mischa, a Cloud Native Engineer from Amsterdam.
Here I share thoughts and learnings about technical topics such as Microsoft
Azure, Kubernetes, Cloud Native technologies, DevOps and Linux. I’m also very
interested in anything that increases my productivity, so you will also find
writings on Zettelkasten, (Neo)vim, study techniques and anything that has to do
with taking notes.
In 2024 I was awared the Microsoft MVP title for my efforts of sharing knowledge
with the community.
Years of sharing knowledge on YouTube and this blog have uncovered a talent for
tackling difficult technical topics and explaining them in simple terms to
others.
In other words, I’ve found out that I have a knack for teaching. Following this
curiousity I started a Skool Community
where I create video courses on Kubernetes, Productivity, DevOps and much more.
My courses are also available on
Udemy
My courses have been received very well and I receive plenty of positive
feedback.
This blog is also available for your preferred RSS reader. Use
this link.
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Most Recent Posts#
Ran into a problem when cloning my second brain repository on a new windows machine which I need to use for work. Also trying to get familiar with VSCode although I鈥檓 doing my best to get a good WSL setup going on my new windows setup.
One problem I was running into was that I could not for the life of me clone my repository at all on Windows. Eventually I realized that it kept failing on a file that had a question mark in its filename.
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Although I rarely use Obsidian anymore, I still have it open because it is running the obsidian-git plugin in the background and it is constantly backing up my second brain to GitHub.
I use iCloud to synch my vault across my iOs devices and I always create and edit my files using neovim.
For my new gig at work I鈥檓 forced to use a windows laptop which means I cannot use iCloud to synch my vault. Then it is a godsend to be able to install Obsidian and use that to interact with my second brain.
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Recently I was comparing apps for navigation (TopoGPS and Outdooractive). Both apps are great, but the main perk of Outdooractive is that it has a web interface. You can plan routes from your computer and access them on the iPhone app, but TopoGPS is on the iPhone only.
The app I probably have the most interaction with during the day is my calorie tracking app. I鈥檝e been using YAZIO for about two years and it has been satisfactory, but there were a few small annoyances to the app and I was never completely satisfied with.
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Before I went on holiday I formed the intention to begin studying again after I came back.
During my current gig I鈥檓 configuring a fair bit of networking, VNets, peerings, firewall rules and set up a full hub-spoke network from scratch, so I鈥檝e had a fair bit of practical experience. Now that the experience is still fresh in the mind I figured I鈥檇 go for this certification.
Usually I only use Microsoft Learn and practice exams, but this time around I want to try out a video course. I purchased a year of A Cloud Guru access and so far it has been a good experience.
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I notice that I鈥檓 not writing in my journal every day like I used to. I always wrote down what I did, what I felt, what my plans and ambitions were, every single day.
During my holiday I started writing by hand in a notebook again which was really nice. It felt good to feel the pencil scratching on the paper again and to practice my cursive writing.
After I came back I first tried to keep journaling by hand again, but after a few days the journal remained untouched. I figured I would go back to my usual digital journaling again by writing daily notes.
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Yesterday a few interesting AKS related features became Generally Available on Azure.
KEDA add-on makes it easier to scale your applications on AKS cluster.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/generally-available-keda-addon-for-aks/
You can have a flexible and customized strategy for node-level OS security updates.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/ga-node-os-patching-nodeimage-feature-in-aks/
Use Vertical Pod Autoscaling add-on for AKS to improve cost-efficiency, and cluster utilization for your workloads
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/ga-vertical-pod-autoscaling-addon-for-aks/
Preview Public preview: AKS support for Kubernetes version 1.28
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/public-preview-aks-support-for-kubernetes-version-128/
Links: 202309281009
[[Azure]]
[[Kubernetes]]
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Past week we鈥檝e been struggling a bit with poorly configured pod disruption budgets. When you do an AKS upgrade, a new node is created and one of the old nodes is drained.
If a deployment has a pod disruption budget which is incorrectly configured, it might show up as ALLOWED DISRUPTIONS: 0. When this happens, the node cannot be drained and you will get an error message in your events.
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From here on out you can access Microsoft Learn during the exams. This is great news! This is much more like the actual experience of an engineer鈥檚 daily activities. It is arguably more important to look up things efficiently rather than memorizing everything for a test and forgetting it a few weeks later.
Links: 202308231608
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I鈥檝e just finished my last workday and tomorrow I鈥檓 heading off to Norway! When I glance at the amount of posts I鈥檝e made on my blog recently it鈥檚 obvious that it is time for a break from the entire routine. I鈥檝e been tapering down to this moment for a while now, toning down the studying and prioritizing relaxation so I can enter the holidays with a clear mind.
Now it鈥檚 time for lots of fresh air, mountains, many kilometres on the trails, and to pick up the connection to Nature I鈥檝e made during the 9 years that I lived in the beautiful North.
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During the Bicep Community Call of July 2023 I was introduced to the new experimental testing framework that the Bicep team is working on. After learning the fundamentals of the Go programming language I saw the value of test driven software development, and it will be an advantageous improvement if we can start applying this methodology to Infrastructure as Code as well.
Test driven software development is a software development practice that involves writing unit tests before writing the actual code, and then refactoring the code to pass the tests. Some of the advantages of test driven software development are:
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