Mike Sigsworth on a Containerized Journey Using .NET Core - Episode 101

Joining Jeffrey Palermo today is Mike Sigsworth, a Principal Software Architect at Clear Measure.

Mike has been developing for over 20 years (most of that in the .NET space) and an unquenchable curiosity to learn keeps him close to the cutting edge of technology. He is also incredibly passionate about board games and is an avid listener of sci-fi audiobooks!

In today's podcast, Jeffrey and Mike are talking about a huge project that Mike is working on for a client that has made some big shifts for a massively critical system. They discuss this project, how they handled migration to .NET Core, tackled containerization, broke up services into microservices, how the DevOps pipeline was pieced together, and the overall structure of the team. Mike also gives his thoughts and sheds some light on Docker, Helm, Kubernetes, NServiceBus, and more.

Topics of Discussion:

[:38] Be sure to visit AzureDevOps.Show for past episodes and show notes.

[:46] About The Azure DevOps Podcast and Jeffrey's offer to speak at virtual user groups.

[1:55] About today's episode with Mike Sigsworth.

[2:17] Jeffrey welcomes Mike to the podcast.

[2:21] Mike gives some sci-fi audiobook recommendations.

[3:11] The lessons learned and challenges he (and his team) have overcome with moving from .NET Framework to .NET Core, figuring out when they need to split something out to a separate git repository, etc.

[6:13] Mike gives some context, explaining the type of system it is, the shape of the environment, etc. for this client.

[7:42] How big is this production environment?

[8:22] Mike explains what a 'pod' is and how it works.

[9:01] Mike shares how their environment is all in AWS.

[9:40] Mike speaks about the course of the project and how it has evolved over time and some of the challenges they faced.

[12:16] Talking Dapper.
[14:19] Mike continues detailing the evolution of the project from moving to .NET Core, getting things running in Containers, and more.

[15:28] Mike shares about a recent fun experience he had with Kubernetes and NServiceBus.

[17:30] Mike gives his take on NServiceBus and whether or not he thinks it will be sticking around.

[20:16] A word from Azure DevOps Podcast's sponsor: Clear Measure.

[20:44] Having fully containerized their environment, in most cases does that provide them with a zero-downtime deployment process?

[24:51] With this type of system architecture, how did they piece together their DevOps pipeline?

[27:50] Mike speaks about their testing surface area and how they know when something is not destabilized whenever a new Git commit comes through.

[30:43] For such a massively busy system, what's the necessary structure for the team?

[32:00] Mike shares some of the indispensable go-to resources he recommends listeners to check out.

[32:58] In the future when Cloud providers may have "plug and play" Container or Kubernetes services, would Mike give up some control in order to just say, "Run my stuff"?

[34:13] Jeffrey thanks Mike for joining the podcast!

Mentioned in this Episode:

Azure DevOps

Clear Measure (Sponsor)

.NET DevOps for Azure: A Developer's Guide to DevOps Architecture the Right Way, by Jeffrey Palermo — Available on Amazon!

bit.ly/dotnetdevopsebook — Click here to download the .NET DevOps for Azure ebook!

Jeffrey Palermo's Youtube

Jeffrey Palermo's Twitter — Follow to stay informed about future events!

The Azure DevOps Podcast's Twitter: @AzureDevOpsShow

Mike Sigsworth

Hyperion Cantos

Dragon Masters