CI/CD with Robert Erez

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Robert Erez is a principal engineer at Octopus Deploy, and a longtime expert in CI/CD, deployment systems, and software delivery. Rob and I were also once colleagues on the Skype web team, working on large-scale deployments and release processes.

In this episode of The Pragmatic Engineer, I sit down with Rob to discuss how teams deploy software safely and efficiently at scale. We cover Kubernetes, GitOps, platform engineering, progressive delivery, feature flags, cloud development environments, and the growing role of AI in CI/CD workflows. We also get into the tradeoffs in different deployment approaches, why self-hosted software still matters for some organizations, and the recent evolution of software delivery practices.

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Timestamps

00:00 Intro

02:09 Canary deployments at Skype

05:01 Joining at Octopus Deploy

06:15 Continuous deployment

10:26 Why Kubernetes won

15:51 Kubernetes on-prem

18:50 How GitOps works

25:00 The uses and limitations of GitOps

31:04 The rise of platform teams

35:51 How AI is changing CI/CD

39:49 Progressive delivery explained

47:31 Rollbacks and roll-forwards

50:14 Feature flags

54:32 How development environments are evolving

57:40 Cloud development environments (CDEs)

1:03:45 Self-hosting CI/CD

1:09:25 Getting started with progressive delivery

1:11:15 Book recommendations

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The Pragmatic Engineer deepdives relevant for this episode:

• Kubernetes and retiring at the top with Kelsey Hightower

• The past and future of modern backend practices

• Microsoft is dogfooding AI dev tools’ future

• How Kubernetes is built with Kat Cosgrove

• How Linux is built with Greg KH

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