Podcasts for DevOps admins

podcastGetting up to speed in a fast moving environment forces you to think about things in a different way, which for me was/is an interesting sort of paradigm shift.  Moving from enterprise to start up I have found things to be much different and so embracing the DevOps philosophy and culture has been a main focus of mine through this transition, in a good way of course.  Today I’d like to share some interesting resources that I have found to be immensely helpful in my journey thus far into the land of DevOps.  Hopefully readers are in the same position that I am in and can use this information in their own DevOps journey.

In my experience I have found that podcasts are one of the absolute best ways to consume information, whether it be on a morning commute or viewing the show live, good podcasts are one of the best learning tools around.  So for today’s post, I have compiled a list of some good shows related to DevOps that I hope others find to be useful.

If you’re interested, I wrote a post awhile back focusing on some my favorite podcasts relating to system administration.   You can find the list and original Podcasts for System Administrators post here.

The Food Fight Show

From their website: “Food Fight is a bi-weekly podcast for the Chef community. We bring together the smartest people in the Chef community and the broader DevOps world to discuss the thorniest issues in system administration.”  This show offers some great conversation in topics around DevOps, a lot of really in depth technical discussion from industry experts as well as some great interviews with various contributors to the DevOps community.  This right now is my favorite DevOps podcast and there are a large number of episodes to choose from, so you can hand pick a few episodes to try out if you are skeptical.

DevOps Cafe

This show takes a similar round table format similar to the style of The Food Fight Show.  This show is co-hosted by Damon Edwards and John Willis which covers a lot of cool news and interesting topics on the bleeding edge of the DevOps world.  There is is a nice variety of interesting guests as well as relevant topics of discussion.  I like this show because for me, it does a great job of focusing in on the more relevant aspects of DevOps, rather than the abstract concepts and ideas behind DevOps.  To me, it is more practice than theory.  That might be a horrible description so you’ll just have to go check out the podcast to find out for yourself.

Arrested DevOps

This podcast is in much the same vein as The Food Fight Show, where DevOps pro’s sit down and discuss issues related to what is going on in the DevOps world.  I just started listening to this podcast as it is one of the newer additions to my DevOps podcast scene.  This show definitely has a lot of potential; the hosts are knowledgeable, the guests are smart and the topics of conversation are interesting.  Trevor and Matt do a good job of mixing technical discussion with some of the more DevOps type topics and ideas, I would definitely taking a look at this podcast.

Ops All The Things

Another new kid on the block, this show is hosted by Chris Webber and Steven Murawski of Stack Exchange fame.  The focus of the show is geared towards system administration, operations and DevOps.  I like this podcast because it does a good job of blending DevOps with system administration, which is the track that I followed into the world of DevOps.  Much of the show is geared towards nuts and bolts administration which is nice.  Topics are often in depth and technical, with discussions revolving around things like configuration management, monitoring, revision control, etc.  One other nice feature is that it covers some administration topics related to Windows which I think gives listeners a good perspective.

The Ship Show

I haven’t had a chance to dive too deep into this one much yet but judging from the few episodes I’ve been able to listen to, this show definitely captures a lot of relevant and interesting issues in the community.   Once I get more episodes under my belt and get a better feel for the show I will update the post.  But just to give readers an idea, this is from their bio:  “The Ship Show is a twice-monthly podcast, featuring discussion on everything from build engineering to DevOps to release management, plus interviews, new tools and techniques, and reviews.”

If I missed any or if you’re interested in starting a DevOps oriented podcast let me know and I will be sure to add you to the list and help spread the word.  I think it’s important for people in the community to help out and share their knowledge.

Josh Reichardt

Josh is the creator of this blog, a system administrator and a contributor to other technology communities such as /r/sysadmin and Ops School. You can also find him on Twitter and Facebook.