CloudChat
By Carl and Brandon
Categories: Technology, Education
Conversations about building software and designing architecture in the cloud natively.
36 episodes indexed on podsearch.
Recent episodes
- Ep. 35 - Reliability vs Complexity: Where to Draw the Line
Episode 0035 - Reliability vs Complexity: Where to Draw the Line Reliability is often confused with availability, and Carl and Brandon dig into why stacking more safeguards — retries, circuit breakers, asynchronous queues, and multi-region failover — frequently makes systems less reliable rather…
- Ep. 34 - Build vs Buy in 2026 (Yes, We Mean AI)
Episode 0034 - Build vs Buy in 2026 (Yes, We Mean AI) Build versus buy has been part of software since there was software to buy — custom development, licensed components, SaaS, managed service providers — and the deciding factor was usually what staff you already had or could afford to hire. What…
- Ep. 33 - Route of All Evil
Episode 0033 - Route of All Evil Cloud networking still breaks when teams assume the platform will "just handle it," and Carl and Brandon dig into why. They challenge that myth and show where parity falls apart across providers: VNet, VPC, and VCN primitives look familiar but behave differently in…
- Ep. 32 - Rolling, Rolling, Rolling…
Episode 0032 - Rolling, Rolling, Rolling… Logs are ground truth — high-fidelity, event-level data that anchor observability alongside metrics and traces. Carl and Brandon argue the biggest mistake teams make is treating "more logs" as "better logs." If everything is logged, nothing is useful, and…
- Ep. 31 - AI All the Things?
Episode 0031 - AI All the Things? Traditional sprint ceremonies start getting in the way when AI-assisted development outpaces the cadence they were built for. Carl and Brandon unpack why that happens and what to do about it — starting with the basics. Brandon defines context windows…
- Ep. 30 - Local‑First Lifeboats: Architecting for Post‑EOL Usability
Episode 0030 - Local‑First Lifeboats: Architecting for Post‑EOL Usability 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…
- Ep. 29 - New Year's ☁️ Resolutions
Episode 0029 - New Year's ☁️ Resolutions "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…
- Ep. 28 - Respect My (DNS) Awe-Thor-Ih-TAY!!
Episode 0028 - Respect My (DNS) Awe-Thor-Ih-TAY!! 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…
- Ep. 27 - Whoops, No VM's!!!
Episode 0027 - Whoops, No VM's!!! 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…
- Ep. 26 - Are Your Cloud Costs Too Damn High???
Episode 0026 - Are Your Cloud Costs Too Damn High??? 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…
- Ep. 25 - The Sound of Security
Episode 0025 - The Sound of Security 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…
- Ep. 24 - Operating Excellently
Episode 0024 - Operating Excellently 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…
- Ep. 23 - Turbocharged: Mastering Performance in Cloud Architecture
Episode 0023 - Turbocharged: Mastering Performance in Cloud Architecture 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…
- Ep. 22 - What is Cloud Resiliency, Really?
Episode 0022 - What is Cloud Resiliency, Really? 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"…
- Ep. 21 - The 9 Circles of Dependency Hell 🔥
Episode 0021 - The 9 Circles of Dependency Hell 🔥 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…
- Ep. 20 - The 3 M's of Going to the Cloud
Episode 0020 - The 3 M's of Going to the Cloud If you've been thinking of moving to the cloud, or are in the first steps of your journey, Carl and Brandon cover the 3 M's of going to the cloud: Migrate, Modernize, and Manage. The hosts cover key points in planning your move, including analyzing…
- Ep. 19 - All Your Data Are Belong to Us
Episode 0019 - All Your Data Are Belong to Us In this episode, Carl and Brandon deep dive into the world of data storage in the cloud! With numerous options, different paradigms, and a plethora of scenarios to consider, they discuss the pros and cons of each. They also touch on some…
- Ep. 18 - We Can Hardly Contain Ourselves!
Episode 0018 - We Can Hardly Contain Ourselves! In today's episode, Carl and Brandon dive deep into container technology. They cover everything from the container file to orchestrating containers on a cloud platform. Furthermore, Carl and Brandon discuss how Docker is not the end-all-be-all of…
- Ep. 17 - The Source is with Us
Episode 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…
- Ep. 16 - Control All the Things! 🛩️
Episode 0016 - Control All the Things! 🛩️ In this episode, Carl and Brandon dive into the world of control planes, starting with what they are and how they differ from other planes you may see in your solutions and the providers they run on. They chat about the balance between automation and…
- Ep. 15 - Dude, Where's My Server?
Episode 0015 - Dude, Where's My Server? Today, Carl and Brandon cover a comprehensive overview of serverless computing, starting with its importance and benefits. We explain the serverless model, highlighting the differences between serverless and traditional computing, and addresses common…
- Ep. 14 - Smooooth Operator: Configuring Your Architecture 🛠️
Episode 0014 - Smooooth Operator: Configuring Your Architecture 🛠️ In this episode, Carl and Brandon dive deep into the world of configuration, exploring various methods for system, app, and user-facing config. Starting with hard-coded values and whether there is ever a time for hard-coding…
- Ep. 13 - What is the Cloud☁️?
Episode 0013 - What is the Cloud☁️? Carl and Brandon delve into the fundamentals of cloud computing, exploring its definition, history, key components, and the various "types" of clouds such as public, private, and hybrid. The hosts also highlight the numerous benefits of cloud computing…
- Ep. 12 - Words Mean Things
Episode 0012 - Words Mean Things In our latest podcast episode, Carl and Brandon explored the fundamental aspects of cloud computing, focusing on Regions, Availability Zones, Quota, and Capacity. They discussed how regions are collections of zones, each with high-bandwidth, low-latency network…
- Ep. 11 - m*cro-services
Episode 0011 - m*cro-services Carl and Brandon delve into the fascinating world of microservices, starting with a brief introduction and a comparison to macro-services like monolithic and modular monolith architectures. We explored the evolution from monolithic architectures to microservices…
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