Issue #6: Systemd Timers, Kubernetes Shift Down, K8s Agentic Framework and More
DevOps engineers will play a critical role in ensuring AI-driven workloads are scalable, secure, and observable.
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🔍 Detailed Guides & Insights
1. Systemd Timers (Better than Cron)
Systemd timers are more powerful and flexible than cron.
It is designed to work directly with systemd service units.
With systemd timers, you get:
Overall, systemd timers address many issues and limitations of cron.
Here is how a systemd timer works
Unlike cron, which uses a single file to schedule tasks, systemd timers use two key files, service and timer files.
For example, if you want to run a backup script daily:
The best part is, you can manage timers just like other services using commands like systemctl start, stop, enable etc.
We have published a comprehensive beginner’s guide with practical examples on systemd timers.
Hands On Guide: Systemd Timers Practical Example
2. Grafana Loki Architecture
In this blog,
You will learn the following.
𝗗𝗲𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗹𝗲𝗱 𝗕𝗹𝗼𝗴: Grafana Loki Architecture
Recommended by LinkedIn
3. Kubernetes Shift Down Security
As DevOps engineers, focusing on Kubernetes security is important.
You may already be familiar with Shift-Left Security, where developers scan their code for vulnerabilities and misconfigurations early in the development process.
However, Shift-Down Security takes a different approach—it moves security responsibilities from developers to platform engineering teams by embedding security directly into the Kubernetes platform itself.
This means the platform team provides hardened base images, enforces security policies, and ensures compliance, so developers can focus on building applications without worrying about security at every step.
The following are the key Principles of Shift-Down Security
The Kubernetes Shift-Down Security approach ensures that security is a core part of the infrastructure, making it easier to manage at scale.
Official Paper: Read it Here
4. How Agentic AI is Reshaping Automation
AI is changing. It's not just about chatbots or creating text anymore.
Traditional Generative AI usually responds to single questions or does tasks one at a time. It might answer based on one instruction (zero-shot) or using a few examples (multi-shot).
Agentic AI takes AI further. It can do more than simply answer questions or generate text. It can think in multiple steps, learn new things on its own, collaborate with other AI systems, and complete tasks without constant human instructions.
Instead of just giving information, Agentic AI can plan actions, make decisions, and carry out tasks by itself to achieve specific goals.
This means AI can now:
Also, AI Adoption is Growing fast.. GenAI adoption rate is 2x faster than PCs & the internet!
What does this mean for DevOps?
AI-powered automation is no longer a "nice-to-have", it's a competitive advantage.
Want to Dive Deeper?
Shruti Bhat discusses the evolution of AI strategy, highlighting how real-time AI search and retrieval systems are transforming enterprise data use. Read More
5. Goodbye SaaS, Hello AI Agents
Traditional SaaS applications (like CRM, ERP, and ticketing systems) require human intervention to complete tasks.
AI agents take it further, not only providing insights but also taking action autonomously.
For example, instead of manually sending follow-up emails to leads, an AI agent detects them, drafts an email in your tone, and sends it.
Why this Matters for DevOps Engineers?
DevOps engineers will play a critical role in ensuring AI-driven workloads are scalable, secure, and observable.
AI-powered agent frameworks are in their early stages (similar to Docker in the container revolution).
We will need orchestration tools for AI agents, similar to how Kubernetes orchestrates containers.
Want to learn more?
Watch the full discussion on how AI agents are replacing traditional SaaS.
🛠️ Tool of the Week
Kagent: It is a kubernetes native framework for building AI agents.
The kagent framework is designed to be easy to understand and use, and to provide a flexible and powerful way to build and manage AI agents.
Event Director
1moSeccomp is a crucial tool for enhancing container security. How do you approach creating effective seccomp profiles in your projects?
AWS Cloud Engineer & Architect
1moThe systemd timers is literally a stupid idea, it has no link to the kubernetes eco system, it runs on single node (master, worker) and it's not elegant at all
AWS Engineer | DevOps Engineer Trainee @ PerlThogh | Freelance DSA Trainee | Cloud & DevOps Enthusiast
1moVery helpful, the new AI era of DevOps Begins!!!