Ep. 30 - Local‑First Lifeboats: Architecting for Post‑EOL Usability
CloudChat
This episode is about designing for the last day, not just the launch day. Carl kicks off with the Bose SoundTouch situation: a vendor moves toward EOL on a cloud-tethered API, users push back, and the outcome (at least in spirit) becomes a blueprint we wish was more common: keep the hardware useful by enabling local control paths and leaning on protocols that already work without your cloud. From there we broaden the conversation to the bigger problem: products and services that do something totally reasonable in a LAN suddenly need a round trip to the internet just to respond to a button...
info_outline
Ep. 29 - New Year's ☁️ Resolutions
CloudChat
“In 2026, your cloud is not allowed to have the same incidents for the same reasons as last year.” Carl and Brandon treat this episode like a retrospective (the kind any good agile team would run), but instead of talking about sprint tickets, they write a New Year’s resolution list on behalf of your cloud team. The format is simple: Stop, Start, Keep. Small, opinionated constraints that change day-to-day habits, not vague wishes about “better reliability, security, and cost.” The Stop list hits the repeat-incident patterns: single-region “global” apps, treating...
info_outline
Ep. 28 - Respect My (DNS) Awe-Thor-Ih-TAY!!
CloudChat
Your cloud is humming along, then an edge breaks. What lever do you actually still have to steer users? In this episode, Carl and Brandon dig into DNS as a control plane and why “it is always DNS” keeps being true in 2025. DNS was designed for a slower internet with long TTLs and infrequent changes, but we now treat it like a real-time steering wheel for global failover. That mismatch shows up in outages where the backend is fine but nobody can resolve the hostname that front doors, CDNs, and APIs live behind. We unpack how TTL and caching really work (including negative caching and...
info_outline
Ep. 27 - Whoops, No VM's!!!
CloudChat
You’ve planned for redundancy, scaling, and failover, but what happens when the cloud itself runs out of space? In this episode, Carl and Brandon untangle capacity (what the provider physically or logically has available in a region or zone) versus quota (the soft limit on what you can consume). Mixing the two leads to painful surprises during scale events and failovers. We talk through how capacity shortfalls show up in real life—zones that are full, SKUs that vary by location, and limited supply for GPU-heavy instances, and the patterns that help: design for multiple zones and regions,...
info_outline
Ep. 26 - Are Your Cloud Costs Too Damn High???
CloudChat
Cloud cost optimization is about designing systems that perform efficiently without wasting money. In this episode, Carl and Brandon break down how AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud help teams rightsize compute, manage storage tiers, and control networking costs. They talk through savings plans, spot instances, lifecycle management, and data transfer strategies that keep performance high and waste low. The discussion then moves into monitoring, automation, and FinOps culture, where budgets, policies, and shared accountability make optimization stick. They cover dashboards, tagging, auto-shutdown...
info_outline
Ep. 25 - The Sound of Security
CloudChat
Security is more than a feature, it’s a pillar of the Well-Architected Framework. In this episode, Carl and Brandon explore how AWS, Azure, and GCP approach security across identity and access, infrastructure defense, data protection, monitoring, governance, and the shared responsibility model. They compare tools and practices like IAM, RBAC, and conditional access; network firewalls, WAFs, and DDoS protection; encryption at rest and in transit; and incident detection and automated remediation. The conversation also dives into security testing, drift detection with IaC, compliance posture,...
info_outline
Ep. 24 - Operating Excellently
CloudChat
Operational excellence goes beyond uptime, it’s about building and operating cloud systems with discipline, automation, and continuous improvement. Carl and Brandon break down what operational excellence really means, drawing a distinction between striving for perfection and building resilient, adaptable systems. They discuss how principles from AWS, Azure, and GCP converge around key practices like repeatable automation, structured change management, and process validation. The episode dives into real-world strategies for automation, incident readiness, and observability, including where...
info_outline
Ep. 23 - Turbocharged: Mastering Performance in Cloud Architecture
CloudChat
Cloud performance is one of those words that everyone agrees matters, but often means different things depending on who you ask. Is it latency? Is it autoscaling? Is it picking the right SKU size? We cover the fundamentals of designing for performance in the cloud: how to select the right compute options, when to scale up or out, and what it takes to reduce latency across global workloads. We explore autoscaling strategies, observability tooling, cost tradeoffs, and real-world tuning stories—plus we wrap with a cheat sheet of optimization tools across AWS, Azure, and GCP. Performance...
info_outline
Ep. 22 - What is Cloud Resiliency, Really?
CloudChat
Carl and Brandon break down the core concepts behind cloud resiliency, availability, reliability, and redundancy — how they relate, where they differ, and why understanding those distinctions is critical. Just because a service is “always on” doesn’t mean it’s resilient. They explore the difference between planned and unplanned outages, how graceful degradation works in practice, and why resiliency is measured by recovery, not just uptime. It’s not just about uptime. It’s about what breaks, how you recover, and what keeps going when everything else doesn’t. They also cover...
info_outline
Ep. 21 - The 9 Circles of Dependency Hell 🔥
CloudChat
Carl and Brandon descend into the fiery depths of Dependency Hell, exploring nine common (and painful) challenges that plague developers working in modern cloud environments. From version mismatches to licensing traps, each “circle” offers insights, real-world examples, and actionable tips for escaping the chaos. If you’ve ever watched a cloud deployment crash because of a transitive dependency or scrambled to patch a vulnerability from three layers down in your stack, this episode is for you. Links Visit us at:
info_outlineEpisode 0017 - The Source is with Us
In this episode, Carl and Brandon speak with Brian Munzenmayer, who shares his extensive experience in the open-source community. Brian discusses his journey from fixing simple typos in documentation to becoming a key maintainer of a large open source website that you’ve probably used. The discussion delves into the importance of community engagement in open-source projects, the spectrum of contributions, and the various roles individuals can play, from coding to organizing and managing projects. Brian also touches on the challenges of maintaining open-source projects, including the risk of burnout and the need for sustainable practices.
The episode also explores the broader impact of open-source software on the tech industry, highlighting how contributions can influence major projects and even corporate products. Brian emphasizes the value of open-source work in professional development and the importance of fostering inclusive and collaborative environments. The episode concludes with insights into the future of open-source software and the ongoing need for community-driven innovation.
And of course, we have to mention that Brian is the author ofApproachable Open Source, which is available now for purchase!
Links
- Approachable Open Source by Brian Muenzenmeyer. A brief book with a big vision.
- Approachable Open Source on Bluesky
- Brian on Bluesky
- Brian on LinkedIn
- Brian’s Website
Visit us at: