Day Two DevOps
by Packet Pushers
Join hosts Ned Bellavance and Ethan Banks as they dive deep into the challenges of cloud operations from the perspective of seasoned practitioners. You'll hear from expert guests—technical leaders, trainers, and consultants with years of hands-on experience—discussing the nuances of modern cloud environments. From AWS to Azure, networking to security, automation to DevOps, each weekly episode equips you with the insights to confidently address tech and business challenges such as resilience, cost management, and performance. Whether you want to hone your skills today or prepare for what’s coming next, Day Two Cloud cuts through the vendor fog to guide you through a shifting IT landscape.
Episodes
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D2DO317: Building the Operational Reality for Sandboxed Agents in Production (Sponsored)
In this sponsored episode, Michael Levan and Nathan Pearce of Solo.io join Kyler and Ned to explore how to run AI agents securely at enterprise scale. Together they break down key architectural challenges such as maintaining state, implementing secure sandboxes, and optimizing resources with...
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D2DO316: Local AI Foundations
Ned Bellavance gets to be the guest on today’s show to discuss foundational AI knowledge, inference training, and running local models with Kyler Middleton. Together, they break down practical approaches to local model execution, comparing performance trade-offs and how engineers can safely...
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D2DO315: Running Agents Securely at Scale
Ned and Kyler explore the challenges and best practices of running AI agents securely at scale with guest Michael Levan. Together they discuss operational realities of agentic workloads such as specialized AI gateways, semantic routing, sandboxing, and the importance of robust observability...
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D2DO314: Backups SaaS – Safety as a Service
Ned and Kyler talk with Jim Jones about data protection, backups, and security in the age of hybrid cloud and AI. They explore the operational challenges of integrating automated AI agents into enterprise workflows, the need for proper permission scoping, immutable backups, and data security...
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D2DO313: Operations is a Reconciliation Loop (Sponsored)
In this sponsored episode, Paul Delory of Gartner joins Kyler and Ned to discuss the reconciler pattern for operations and the shift toward continuous operations. Together they discuss how immutable infrastructure, policy as code, and platform engineering help bridge the gap between traditional…
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D2DO312: Networking at Scale: AWS Transit Gateway War Stories
How can network architects successfully manage 95,000 hosts while navigating the complexities of large-scale cloud migrations? Devender Singh, a Principal Cloud Architect, joins Ned and Kyler to discuss the practical realities of managing network chaos, the migration from Transit Gateways to AWS...
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D2DO311: Code Review Is Dead – Long Live Peer Review
Traditional peer review processes are breaking down in the new AI era. Dylan Ratcliffe, founder and CEO of Overmind Technology, joins Ned and Kyler to discuss the importance of treating AI as a machine to be audited rather than a peer. Together they share practical advice on how to adapt peer...
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D2DO310: Developing Efficient AI Workflows
Tyler Lynch, Outbound CTO at IBM, joins the show to discuss shifting from “tokenmaxxing” to “valuemaxxing” by optimizing AI agent workflows for efficiency. They explore using Obsidian for persistent agent memory to combat context bloat, the critical importance of secure sandboxing practices, and...
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D2DO309: Packet Pushers Assemble! Bridging the Telemetry Divide
Today, several members of our Packet Pushers podcast team assemble to discuss whether the grass is greener on the NetOps or DevOps side of the telemetry fence. William of The Cloud Gambit, Scott of Total Network Operations, and Ned and Kyler of Day Two DevOps discuss the difficulties and...
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D2DO308: Exploring the AI Governance Paradox (Sponsored)
In this sponsored episode, Jonah Kowall from Spacelift joins the show to unpack the findings of the 2026 Infrastructure Automation Report. The discussion covers the “governance paradox”, where organizations have confidence in their AI oversight despite a lack of formal policies. Ned and Jonah...
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D2DO307: Why AI Can’t Replace DevOps Fundamentals
Ned and Kyler welcome Andrew Brown, co-founder of ExamPro, to discuss how AI is reshaping the IT education and training landscape. They discuss why foundational technical knowledge remains vital, how AI-generated answers can make mistakes at scale, and the importance of learning how to…
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D2DO306: Platform Engineering in the Agentic Era (Sponsored)
Platform engineering forms the foundation for developers to build on, and you shouldn’t be surprised that folks from VMware have been thinking about platforms for a long time. In today’s episode, sponsored by Broadcom, Ned and Kyler discuss the current state and future of platform engineering…
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D2DO305: Scaling Human Connection in Tech Communities
Kyler and Ned are joined by former AWS Community Program Manager Jason Dunn to discuss what it takes to build and maintain a thriving tech community. Jason shares his “benevolent dictatorship” philosophy on community management, emphasizing the importance of authentic human connections. They also...
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D2DO304: Observability in the Age of AI
As AI matures, it becomes increasingly important to know how it’s performing and what it actually costs. Ned and Kyler are joined by Anuj Tyagi, Senior Site Reliability Engineer for RingCentral, to discuss the critical shift toward AI observability. AI observability is not just about costs; Anuj...
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D2DO303: Commiserating About AI with Ned and Kyler
Hosts Ned and Kyler compare notes on everything they’ve been doing with AI, including the successes they’ve enjoyed and headaches they’ve suffered building and implementing AI agents. They talk about how AI has sped up their workflows, how managing multiple AI agents is akin to raising toddlers,...
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D2DO302: Not Just Brains in Jars: The Human Psychology of Developers
Ned and Kyler are joined by Dr. Cat Hicks to discuss her new book “The Psychology of Software Teams.” They talk about software development from a psychological perspective, including how negative stereotypes of developers can lead to them being treated simply as “brains in jars” in toxic...
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D2DO301: Actually Implementing AI
Kyler and Ned are joined by Enrico Teotti, an independent consultant with over 25 years of experience. Enrico has worked with clients on real-world AI implementations, and he’s here talk about what he’s learned, including using AI to query databases, and for debugging and performance analysis.…
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D2DO300: Open Source Malware!
Malware has shifted from phishing expeditions to open source packages, domains, and repositories. Ned and Kyler welcome Jenn Gile, co-founder of Open Source Malware, to discuss how malware is making its way into open source software. Together they break down NPM compromises, AI-driven…
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D2DO299: The State of Platform Engineering and DevEx
Ned and Kyler discuss the state of platform engineering, DevEx, and how AI is affecting choices in those domains with guest Annem Shah. They discuss how AI can help bridge the gap between initial setup and continuous operations by providing feedback and interpreting complex error messages. They...
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D2DO298: Spacelift Intelligence: Infrastructure Keeping Pace with AI-Enhanced Development (Sponsored)
On today’s sponsored episode, Ned Bellavance and Kyler Middleton welcome guest Marcin Wyszynski, Head of R&D at Spacelift to guide them through the potential future of IaC and how AI is changing the landscape of developer productivity, especially around infrastructure. They discuss two of...
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D2DO297: The Future of Open-Source Contributions in the AI Age
Kyler and Ned sit down with Liz Fong-Jones, Technical Fellow at Honeycomb, to discuss the impact of AI on open-source contributions. Liz proposes shifting the script from code patch contributions to detailed bug reports. They also break down the distinction between programming and software...
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D2DO295: Risks and Benefits of Putting AI in Production
Engineers and developers are using AI like never before, including in production. That has potential consequences, both good and bad, for uptime, operations, security and risk management, and more. Today’s guest, Rich Mogull, guides us through the decision-making process of adding AI to your...
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D2DO294: AI in My Vuln Research Workflow
Kat Traxler, Principal Security Researcher at Vectra AI, returns to the podcast to discuss her AI-powered vulnerability research workflow. She explains how she uses two different AI models to act as the “blackboard” while she applies her expertise to triage AI-generated ideas to increase her...
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D2DO293: Haskell in the Modern Day
Ned and Kyler sit down with Tikhon Jelvis to discuss Haskell and other niche programming languages. They explore how this decades-old language isn’t just surviving, but thriving. They also break down how Haskell can provide distinct advantages over traditional programming, especially for complex...
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D2DO292: AI, Augmented Engineers, and the Timeless Principles of Software Architecture
Ned and Kyler sit down with industry analyst Jon Collins for a fun and free-ranging discussion that covers everything from the changing landscape of software engineering to the importance of good architecture (physical and digital). They tackle the pros and cons of “Vibe Coding” as well as the...
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D2DO291: From Politics to Machine Learning and AI Engineering
Marina Wyss, Senior Applied Scientist at Twitch, joins Kyler and Ned to discuss her unique path from political science to AI Engineering. Wyss clarifies the difference between AI Engineering and Machine Learning Engineering and offers practical advice for aspiring engineers who want to…
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D2DO290: AI’s Impact on Developer Productivity Vs. Development Productivity
Ned Bellavance and Kyler Middleton are joined by Rachel Stephens, Research Director at RedMonk, to discuss the state of DevOps and the impact of AI. They explore the distinction between developer productivity and development productivity, underlined by a DORA report finding that while AI...
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D2DO289: Instana: Leading the Future of Observability (Sponsored)
As AI tools and agentic AI become part of how applications are developed, delivered, and managed, application performance monitoring and observability have to adapt. Ned Bellavance sits down with Drew Flowers and Jacob Yackenovich from IBM Instana about where these fields sit today, and the...
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D2DO288: Technology, Career, and Finding a Purpose with Deana Solis
Ned and Kyler sit down with Deana Solis, a freelance FinOps engineer and mentor. They discuss the undervalued skills of communication, look at the inherent biases and misplaced confidence of AI models, and offer guidance for those starting their careers. Deana also talks about her journey to...
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D2DO287: Leveling Up in Data Science
Ever wonder what it takes to level up your career in data science? Senior Data Scientist Darya Petrashka joins Ned and Kyler to share her personal journey from management and linguistics into data science, the real difference between a junior and a senior role, and helps us get under the “data...
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D2DO286: Scaling Kubernetes Across Clouds – Identity, DNS, and Security
If you think managing Kubernetes clusters is hard, what about managing Kubernetes clusters across three different public clouds? We dive into the challenges that arises from running multi-cloud Kubernetes workloads. These challenges include workload identity, DNS query resolutions, and security....
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D2DO285: The Death of IaC Has Been Greatly Exaggerated
While declaring the death of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) or Terraform may get you clicks on LinkedIn, IaC is alive and kicking. On today’s Day Two DevOps we talk about why IaC still matters. Guest Malcolm Matalka argues that IaC provides the tools and a model for managing infrastructure across…
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D2DO284: AI, MCP, and the Identities that Tie Them All Together
AI is developing at an incredible pace. With that development comes questions. For instance, how do you connect your resources to agents? How do agents connect with each other? And how do you keep it all secure? Our guest Christian Posta is here to guide us through AI, MCP, and the concept of...
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D2DO283: Lessons Learned When a Startup Doesn’t Take Wing
Today we talk to Elad Ben-Israel about his former startup Wing Cloud, and the language that was built along with it, Winglang. We discuss why Eland started Wing Cloud, lessons learned about founding a start up, and what the future holds for the Winglang language. Ad Spot: Faddom Faddom helps you...
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D2DO282: Simplifying Complex Kubernetes Deployments With kro
Kubernetes is flexible and customizable, but it can also be notoriously complex and difficult to deploy to. On today’s Day Two DevOps we learn about kro (Kube Resource Operator), an open-source tool that helps simplify complex application deployments. Our guest is Islam Mahgoub, a Solutions...
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D2DO281: Faddom: Providing a Unified Source of Truth for Security and IT Operations (Sponsored)
Faddom is re-envisioning what application dependency mapping and infrastructure inventory can be in the era of cloud and hybrid IT. Join us today on this sponsored episode as we speak with Faddom’s Itamar Rotem, CPO and Ofer Regev, CTO, about how Faddom’s discovery process can help to improve...
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D2DO280: Architect for Your AI Success With F5 and MinIO (Sponsored)
In the changing landscape of AI data infrastructure, F5 and MinIO are partnering on a solution that brings together the best of each company. This solution bookends the AI stack—it uses F5 for reliable, secure, and observable data delivery and MinIO’s AIStor for storage of all data types. The…
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D2DO279: Herding the Agentic Geese
Developers Rizel Scarlett and Ian Douglas join Ned and Kyler to talk about building an AI agent. Rizel and Ian work at Block, where they’re part of a team building an agent called Goose. They talk about what the agent does, building challenges, observability, and more. They also dive into topics...
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D2DO278: The Future of HashiCorp Inside IBM
On today’s show, we talk to Armon Dadgar, co-founder and CTO of HashiCorp regarding HashiCorp’s future within IBM. We start with a quick recap of IBM’s acquisition of HashiCorp and then move on to the challenges of bringing a small, young tech company into a huge corporation that makes lots of…
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D2DO277: AI Security Submissions at Curl Dev
Curl is a widely used open source tool and library for transferring data. On today’s Day Two DevOps we talk with curl creator Daniel Stenberg. Daniel gives us a brief history of curl and where it’s used (practically everywhere). We also discuss the impact of AI on curl. Open source projects are...
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D2DO276: MCP: Capable, Insecure, and On Your Network Today
MCP, or Model Context Protocol, is an open-source project originally created by Anthropic. MCP is designed to let AI agents to connect to data repositories, applications, business and developer tools, and other agents to execute tasks and carry out instructions. Day Two DevOps explores the...
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D2DO275: WebAssembly – The Next Big Thing?
Is WebAssembly the next big thing? Here to help us understand what WebAssembly (WASM) is and what it can and can’t do is Michael Levan, a consultant and WASM trainer. He also dives deeper into WASM details such as hosting, security, monitoring, and the ever-present influence of AI. AdSpot:...
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D2DO274: Firefly’s State of IaC Report for 2025, aka ClickOps Is a Disgrace (Sponsored)
Firefly is a cloud infrastructure automation platform that helps cloud teams, DevOps, SRE, platform engineering, DevSecOps, and other groups manage their entire cloud as code. Firefly helps to manage cloud complexity and produce consistent and efficient cloud platforms with code. To help Firefly...
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D2DO273: Azure VNets Don’t Exist
Cloud networks aren’t like traditional data center networks, so applying a traditional network design to the cloud probably isn’t the best idea. On today’s Day Two Cloud, guest Aidan Finn guides us through significant differences between Microsoft Azure networking and on-prem data center…
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D2DO272: The Physics of DevOps
How do you measure developer performance and productivity? On today’s Day Two DevOps, we look at different methods with guest Laura Tacho, the CTO at DX. We explore industry benchmarks such as the DORA report, SPACE, and DevEx. Laura also introduces us to Core 4, a project she’s been working on...
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D2DO271: Public Vs. Private Cloud In 2025
The shine has been coming off public cloud for awhile. Cloud costs remain high, complexity is growing, and public cloud interoperability is difficult. And while there’s talk about moving back to private cloud, that migration presents its own costs and complexities. To help us navigate the…
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D2DO270: Spacelift Is Your Infrastructure Glue (Sponsored)
Working with multiple Infrastructure as Code (IAC) tools can be painful. Spacelift provides a platform that operates on top of disparate IaC tools, including Ansible, Kubernetes, Pulumi, Terraform, and OpenTofu. Spacelift helps build the automation with and between these tools, creating graphs of...
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D2DO269: Intergalactic Dataspeak and Making Data Actionable
Data and what you do with it is the topic of today’s show with guest Dominic Chapman, the Head of Product at Axiom. Dominic’s career focus is on data, how to store and how to operationalize all the data that different technology stacks create. We talk with Dominic about how the data does not...
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D2DO268: Solving Big Problems By Solving Small Problems
“You build a shop that solves big problems by solving small problems” is advice given by today’s guest, Merritt Baer. Merritt is currently a CISO at Reco, and has deep security experience in both government and private sectors. She chats with Day Two DevOps podcast hosts Ned Bellavance and Kyler...
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D2DO267: Get Excited About Riding the AI Infrastructure Wave
The AI buildout is driving an infrastructure boom. On today’s show, we talk with Kendall Miller, an independent consultant in the DevOps and cloud-native space, about the boom’s potential impacts on DevOps. For instance, the rise of AI workloads will increase the amount of infrastructure to be...
About this show
Join hosts Ned Bellavance and Ethan Banks as they dive deep into the challenges of cloud operations from the perspective of seasoned practitioners. You'll hear from expert guests—technical leaders, trainers, and consultants with years of hands-on experience—discussing the nuances of modern cloud environments. From AWS to Azure, networking to security, automation to DevOps, each weekly episode equips you with the insights to confidently address tech and business challenges such as resilience, cost management, and performance. Whether you want to hone your skills today or prepare for what’s coming next, Day Two Cloud cuts through the vendor fog to guide you through a shifting IT landscape.
Hosted by
Packet Pushers
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