►
From YouTube: Kubernet-Bees: How Bees Solve Problems Of Distributed Systems - Simon Emms & Christian Weichel
Description
Don’t miss out! Join us at our upcoming event: KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2023 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands from April 17-21. Learn more at https://kubecon.io. The conference features presentations from developers and end users of Kubernetes, Prometheus, Envoy, and all of the other CNCF-hosted projects.
Kubernet-Bees: How Bees Solve Problems Of Distributed Systems - Simon Emms & Christian Weichel, Gitpod
Speakers: Christian Weichel, Simon Emms
Many CNCF participants use bees as logos (e.g. eBPF, Cilium, GiantSwam, Honeycomb). This is no coincidence; the two worlds have more in common than you might think. Honey bees are social animals which operate as a distributed system. As experienced beekeepers and cloud-native engineers, the similarities between bees and Kubernetes are fascinating. Bee hives autoscale, self-heal, have message passing mechanisms, service discovery, and RBAC. For bee colonies, these are fundamental processes which must be cost-effective. This talk is an introduction to the fascinating world of honey bees, explains how bees have solved problems we face on a daily basis as Kubernetes users and gives an outlook on features that are missing from Kubernetes which bees support today.
A
A
So
this
talk
is
was
supposed
to
be
together
with
Simon
EMS,
a
calling,
a
friend
of
mine
who,
unfortunately,
was
not
able
to
to
make
it
so
you'll
have
to
make
do
with
me.
My
name
is
Chris
working
at
Gip
pod,
so
a
few
disclaimers
to
begin
with.
First
much
like
there's
more
than
one
way
to
build
a
distributed
system
and
much
like
there
is
more
than
one
way
to
run
kubernetes.
There
is
more
than
one
way
to
do.
A
A
A
A
The
work
could
be
a
strange
combination
of
what
in
kubernetes
you
would
consider
a
pod
and
people
who
operate
those
pods
and
they
go
through
a
series
of
steps
along
their
career,
so
they
start
out
as
an
intern
and
they
get
to
clean
up
the
things
that
others
didn't
want
to
clean
up.
That's
the
first
three
days
in
the
life
of
a
bee.
A
Then
they
move
on
into
a
sort
of
devops
and
delivery
role
where
they
help
bring
new
bees,
I.E
workloads
into
life,
so
they're
literally
nannies
that
feed
other
bees
and
help
them
get
out
of
get
out
of
their
comb.
Then
they
become
Builders
which
in
our
world
would
be
the
equivalent
of
an
SRE.
They
quite
literally
built
honeycomb.
A
They
quite
literally
produce
wax
and
they
stand
the
infrastructure
that
the
rest
of
the
hive
runs
on
after
that
they
move
to
The
Blue
Team,
where
they
prevent
Bad
actors
from
entering
the
hive,
so
they're,
quite
literally
God
bees
that
stand
God
at
the
entrance
and
followed
by
becoming
a
forager,
and
when
you
normally
think
of
a
bee.
This
is
what
you
would
think
of.
You
would
think
of
the
one
that
flies
around
and
goes
to
flowers
and
collects
necta
and
Poland
and
brings
that
home.
A
A
A
A
Let's
talk
about
drones,
so
that
was
the
workability.
This
is
the
bee
that
makes
the
the
worker
bee
is
the
most
common
bee.
It
makes
the
mass
of
these
in
in
a
hive
or
put
into
the
kubernetes
world,
it's
the
mass
of
workloads
that
you
would
run,
and
then
there
is
a
drone
and
the
Drone
doesn't
have
a
good
equivalent
in
this
example,
or
in
this
analogy
you
could
think
of
it
as
a
way
to
bootstrap
The
Hive
in
in
nature.
The
purpose
of
a
drone
is
to
ensure
genetic
variants
within
within
the
bees.
A
They
do
have
a
service
Discovery
aspect,
so
drones
and
virgin
Queens
meet
to
introduce
genetic
variants
and
they
need
to
discover
where
they
would
meet
and
the
way
that
happens
is
through
the
use
of
so-called
drone
congregation
areas.
So
there
are
specific
areas
that
drones
fly
to
and
that
Queens
fly
to
where
they
meet
and
they're
about
a
hundred
meters
in
in
diameter,
and
they
can
contain
drones
for
more
than
100
different
colonies.
A
So
thousands
of
drones
and
the
interesting
thing
is
we
humans
have
absolutely
no
idea
how
they
do
it.
We
don't
know
how
they
identify
those
areas
and
we
don't
know
how
they
how
to
do
that
kind
of
service
discovery,
and
yet
drones
as
well
as
Queens,
are
capable
of
doing
this.
So
they're,
capable
of
most
of
the
best
theory
we
have
is
that
they
can
detect
landscape
features
to
to
find
those
areas.
Now
we
don't
understand
how
they
do
it,
so
you
might
be
wondering
how
do
we
produce
Maps,
like
that?
A
There
is
a
out
of
resource
a
resource
pressure
eviction,
so
in
kubernetes,
when
a
node
runs
out
of
memory
out
of
disk
space,
it
will
start
evicting
workloads
and
the
same
thing
happens
in
bees
as
the
winter
news
and
food
gets
more
scars
and
there
are
fewer
queens
that
would
need
drones
to
match.
Drones
are
evicted
and
in
English
this
is
quite
literally
called
drone
eviction
in
German.
This
has
a
very
poetic
name
in
German.
This
is
called,
which
literally
translates
to
the
battle
of
the
bees
or
the
slaughter
of
the
drones.
A
A
A
The
queen,
intuitively,
we
think
of
the
queen
as
sort
of
the
head
of
state,
and
the
name
would
imply
that
in
reality,
the
queen
is
really
just
one
other
function
within
a
hive
and
in
our
analogy
to
kubernetes
the
queen
is
really
a
horizontal
pod,
Auto
scaler,
so
the
horizontal
part
autoscaler
will
increase
or
decrease
the
number
of
replicas
in
a
replica
set
depending
on
different
signals
such
as
CPU
or
memory
needs
or
requests
per.
Second,
the
queen
does
very
much
the
same.
A
What
a
queen
does
is
She
lays
eggs
and
scales
up
and
down
the
mainly
scales
up
actually
down
as
a
natural
process,
the
population
within
a
hive,
and
so
here
you
see
the
average
Colony
population
as
it
happens
over
a
year
again.
This
is
a
very
eurocentric
View
and
this
Curve
will
look
very
different
in
in
other
parts
of
the
world.
A
All
right,
that's
about
five
hands
who
thinks
it's
a
thousand,
that's
considerably
more
I
want
to
say
a
third
and
who
thinks
it's,
two
thousand,
that
is
the
vast
majority,
and
you
are
indeed
correct.
So
a
queen
will
be
able
to
lay
or
bring
to
bring
to
life,
so
to
speak,
two
thousand
fees
per
personal
day.
A
There
is
a
failover
mechanism
that
does
not
exist
in
kubernetes
in
kubernetes,
if
your
horizontal
or
the
schedule
autoscaler
goes
missing,
for
whatever
reason
it
is
not
automatically
replaced,
whereas
with
bees,
if
the
queen
goes
missing,
that
does
happen.
So
when
the
queen
goes
missing,
the
hive
will
recognize
that
and
will
take
existing
brood
to
rear
a
new
Queen
so
they'll.
A
So
one
bee
flies
out,
finds
nectar
or
pollen
and
then
comes
back
to
the
hive,
and
if
there
is
enough
food
for
other
bees
to
gather
the
one
that
just
returned
will
advertise
where
that
food
is
to
be
found,
and
it
will
do
that
by
walking
in
a
figure
of
eight
and
on
a
straight
line,
we'll
waggle
their
tail
and
the
angle
at
which
they
do.
That
indicates
the
angle
of
the
food
where
the
food
is
to
be
found
with
respect
to
the
Sun
and
the
length
of
the
dance
indicates.
A
There
are
other
Pub
sub
mechanisms,
specifically
pheromones
and
pheromones
are
widely
used
in
between
different
participants
in
the
system
and
for
different
purposes.
So,
for
example,
the
queen
emits
two
pheromones
nine
Oda
and
five
HDA,
which
you
can
think
of
as
a
health
endpoint,
and
that's
really
what
it
is.
It's
it's
sort
of
the
the
how
the
liveness
check
of
that
Queen
and
it
tells
the
rest
of
the
hive
that
there
are
still
a
queen
here.
You
don't
need
to
produce
a
new
one.
Please
don't
it
is
also
something
that
really
calms.
A
The
Hive
and
you
can
tell
the
difference
if
you
approach
a
hive
that
has
a
queen
versus
one
that
doesn't
the
one
that
doesn't
will
sound
very
aggressive,
whereas
the
one
that
does
will
sound
very
calm
worker
bees
also
emit
pheromones
amongst
each
other
and
so
there's,
for
example,
the
alarm
pheromone
in
the
alarm.
Pheromone,
unsurprisingly,
is
an
alarm
signal.
Something
is
wrong
in
the
hive
now.
A
You'll
be
able
to
see
that
they'll
hang
outside
of
a
hive
and
they'll
fan
air
out
and
part
of
it
is
to
cool
The
Hive.
The
other
part
is
to
tell
incoming
bees
where
they
need
to
go,
so
it
looks
kind
of
like
this.
They
just
hang
outside
and
they
fan
their
wings
and
what
they
do
here
is
they
really
spread
this
NASA
no
pheromone
in
a
stream
outwards
it's
kind
of
like
a
landing
strip
that
tells
the
incoming
bees
where
they
need
to
go.
A
A
There's
also
more
direct
one-to-one
communication,
you
know
things
that
we
might
be
using
something
like
grpc
or
rest
style.
Apis
for
bees
have
something
similar,
and
it's
called
it's
scientific
term
for
all
I
could
decipher
is
the
whoop
whoop
sound
and
the
whoop
whoop
sound
is
used
as
a
means
of
collision
avoidance,
so
a
beehive
is
a
rather
crowded
place
and
they
need
to
avoid
bumping
into
each
other.
A
Honeycomb
is
a
a
really
good.
Segue
honeycomb
in
this
case
is
pretty
much
our
notes
and
control
plane
in
one.
So
when
kubernetes
we
have
multiple
nodes
and
we
have.
We
have
a
control
plane
that
controls
controls
it
all,
essentially
honeycomb
acts
as
both
in
one
so
first
off,
it's
quite
literally
the
thing
that
bees
run
on
pun
intended.
It's
also
the
place
where
they
collect
and
store
the
nectar
and
then
turn
that
into
honey.
A
And
so
this
is
an
important
thing
to
know:
bees
don't
actually
collect
honey
bees,
collect
nectar
and
then
they
turn
it
into
honey,
and
there
are
two
key
differences
between
those
two
substances.
One
nectar
has
about
80
percent
of
moisture
content,
whereas
honey
has
about
18
1
8
of
water
content
and
honey
has
gone
through
through
bees,
so
to
speak
multiple
times
and
every
time
they
add
enzymes
that
make
the
honey
more
durable
and
antibiotic
in
the
end,
and
this
process
happens
on
top
of
honeycomb.
So
what
you
see
here
is
at
the
bottom.
A
Honeycomb
is
also
used
to
grow
the
bees
themselves,
and
so
what
you
see
on
the
far
left
are
the
eggs
that
the
the
queen
laid
and
then
the
further
we
shift
right.
We
go
through
the
different
stages
that
it
be
grows
in
and
in
the
end
again,
it
gets
kept
and
you'll
notice.
How
the
capping
here
looks
different,
that's
much
more
yellow
it's
not
as
white
and
in
there
the
bees
will
take
a
few
more
days
until
they
they're
ready
to.
A
We
also
spoke
about
the
queen
as
a
horizontal
pot.
Auto
scaler
and
the
size
of
honeycomb
determines
what
kind
of
brood
gets
laid
in
it,
so
the
queen
doesn't
actually
get
to
make
that
decision.
This
decision
is
made
by
the
bees
as
they
build
the
comb
and
the
size
determines
what
gets
put
into
it
and
so
again
pulling
this
back
to
the
control
plane
analogy
like
if
you
think
of
these
individual
cells
as
resources.
You
know
they
they
tell
you,
they
give
you
information
about
what
needs
to
be.
What
needs
to
happen
with
that.
A
A
A
You
might
be
asking:
why
is
Honeycomb
shaped
the
way
honeycomb
is
shaped?
Why
are
bees
doing
that,
and
the
reason
is
it
is
the
most
efficient
way
to
build
this
structure
that,
with
regards
to
how
much
material
do
you
need
to
build
the
walls
and
how
much
surface
do
you
get
out
of
it?
It
is
also
the
only
polygon
that
that
tessellates
across
the
plane
so
take
this
example.
A
A
So
we've
spoken
about
the
workloads,
we've
spoken
about
nodes
and
the
control
plane,
and
then
there
are
clusters
as
a
whole,
and
in
this
analogy
clusters
are
the
hives,
and
so
hives
are
a
collection
of
all
these
things
put
together.
This
is
what
a
modern,
so-called
length
Strath
looks
like
and
most
sort
of
Western
styles
of
beekeeping
use,
some
derivation
or
another
of
this
kind
of
format,
and
so
what
looks
like
essentially
server
blades
is
really
individual
frames
that
where
the
honeycomb
grows
in
and
then
the
different
levels
are
used
for
different
purposes.
A
A
There's
also
multi-cluster
setups,
which
is
actually
the
most
common
way
of
of
keeping
bees,
where
you
would
have
multiple
hives
standing
next
to
each
other,
and
you
might
have
seen
the
colorful
paint
that
gets
added
to
beehives
and
that's
not
just
decorative
it.
Also
helps
the
bees
actually
find
their
home
so
as
they
leave
The
Hive
they'll
circle
around
and
sort
of
scan
the
area
that
they're
in
and
they
remember,
the
color
of
the
hives
that
they
left
from.
A
There
is
an
admission
controller
that
exists
for
hives,
so
a
mission
controller
in
kubernetes
will
reject
workloads
that
that
we
want
to
run
on
it
or
not,
and
something
similar
exists
in
in
beehives.
So
if
these
then
are
not
part
of
that
Hive
or
say
wasps
or
bumblebees
or
anything
else
tries
to
enter
that
Hive
that
will
be
rejected
and
the
way
that
looks
like
is
a
bit
like
this
again.
A
Control
loops
control
loops
are
one
of
the,
if
not
the
Core
Concepts
in
in
kubernetes,
so
in
at
kubecon
in
Valencia,
there
was
a
talk
that
looked
at
different
Real
World
principles
and
ideas
and
how
that
applied
to
kubernetes
and
one
that
was
specifically
given.
Emphasis
was
control
loops
and
so
what
they
do
is
they
take
a
desired
state
in
the
real
state
of
the
world,
and
then
they'll
perform
some
action
to
produce
that
real
estate
of
the
world
and
so
in
a
kubernetes
context.
A
Bees
in
turn
will
basically
create
the
equivalent
of
a
new
Hive.
So
think
of
this
as
your
kubernetes
cluster
doesn't
work
anymore.
So
it's
just
going
to
go
and
create
a
new
one,
and
that's
literally
what
bees
do.
The
process
is
called
swarming,
where
approximately
half
of
the
colony
will
decide
to
just
go
and
find
a
new
home
and
create
a
new
hive.
A
A
So,
summon
this
up,
we've
seen
that
a
lot
of
Concepts
that
that
exist
within
exist
within
kubernetes
also
exists
in
the
real
world,
specifically
within
bees
from
Auto
scaling
to
failover,
even
failover
modes.
That
kubernetes
does
not
yet
support
to
service
Discovery
role-based
Access
Control.
We
have
not
spoken
about
metrics,
we
submit
a
variety
of
sounds
weight,
count
temperature
Etc
that
we
as
sort
of
operators
of
those
clusters
can
use
to
to
gauge
their
how
well
they're
doing.
There
are
means
of
message
passing
there
is
a
concept
of
time
and
there's
quorum.
A
So,
in
conclusion,
inspiration
for
solving
our
problems
can
come
from
pretty
much
anywhere,
specifically
things
that
look
so
tiny.
Like
bees
and
I
know.
This
is
a
really
lofty
conclusion.
So
I'll
end
on
something
that's
a
bit
bit
less
lofty.
These
are
pretty
awesome
creatures.
Thank
you
for
your
attention.
A
A
So
the
question
was:
if
there
were
any
other
metaphors
that
I
liked,
but
that
didn't
not
fit
the
mold
of
the
story
we
thought
to
like
my
co-author
and
I.
We
thought
to
pull
this
a
bit
like
structure
this
along
sort
of
this
distributed
system.
This
is
what
kubernetes
does
and
then
this
is
what
he
can
run
on
top
of
kubernetes
and
we
did
find
metaphors
for
these
individual
points,
but,
as
you
notice,
some
of
them
were
stretching
the
analogy
already
and
for
structuring
this
way
we
found
that
most
would
have
yeah
strength.
C
A
So
there
are
several
reasons:
one
Simon
and
I.
We
are
both
beekeepers,
we
keep
bees
ourselves
and
the
ones
that
we
spoke
about
is
just
what
we're
most
familiar
with.
It
is
something
that
we've
very
intrinsically
or
intricately
looked
at,
whereas
other
bees
some
behave.
Similarly,
however,
there
are
about
four
or
five
types
of
honeybees
that
behave
in
the
way
I
showed
wild
bees,
for
example,
behave
completely
different.
A
A
So
the
the
failover
modes
are
particularly
interesting
where,
for
example,
the
the
cluster
essentially
replicates
itself
in
a
way
I'm
not
even
like,
when
I
think
about
needing
to
operate
something
I'm,
not
sure.
I
would
like
that
also
thinking
about
Cloud
cost.
But
this
is
one
thing
like
the
the
many
ways
that
that
bees
can
fail
over
the
resilience
that
is
built
into
the
system
is
astonishing
and
goes
like.
Kubernetes
does
a
really
good
job
at
that.
What
bees
do
goes,
Way,
Beyond
what
that
system
can
do
today.
E
A
Painstakingly
so
marking
these
with
something
is
actually
quite
common
process,
so
Queens,
for
example,
are
commonly
marked,
sometimes
with
kind
of
little
stickers,
and
so
there
is
a
glue
that
does
not
hurt
the
the
bees
and
the
the
outer
shell
is
so
you
can.
You
can
stick
things
to
that.
So
the
way
you
add
the
antenna
is
you
catch
a
bee
and
you
glue
that
antenna
to
the
back.
A
B
My
father
is
a
beekeeper
I
think
this
is
fascinating
and
I
love.
The
metaphor
I'm
wondering
if
you
can
extend
it
further
and
and
comment
on
like
the
role
of
the
beekeeper
in
this
versus
the
role
of
of
humans
working
on
distributed
systems.
Are
there
lessons
we
can
take
away
and
things
like
doing
maintenance
in
a
non-impactful
way?
That
sort
of
thing.
A
Yeah
yeah,
that's
a
really
great
idea.
I
briefly
alluded
to
this
when
showing
the
overview
of
what,
how
Concepts
that
bees
have
and
that
we
have
in
sort
of
this
world
or
in
the
kubernetes
world
overlap.
One
thing
that
we
did
not
speak
about
is
exactly
what
you
alluded
to.
The
role
of
The,
Beekeeper
I
would
think
of
us
as
sort
of
operators
really
operators
of
those
clusters
and
hives,
and
we
do
use
signals
and
we
do
use
observability
into
into
those
hives.
A
So
if
you
wanted
to
stretch
that
you
could
say
that,
for
example,
The
Sounds
they
emit
is
is
or
the
weight
of
of
the
hive
is
kind
of
like
a
count
of
what's
happening
so
there's
a
whole
host
of
signals
that
you
can
pull
out.
Most
of
it
is
through
manual
inspection,
and
so
here
maybe
there
is
something
that
we
as
beekeepers
can
learn
from
from
this
community,
where
this
community
puts
a
lot
of
emphasis
on
Automation
and
good
observability
in
beekeeping.
It's
a
very
manual
process
and
the
equivalent
is
literally
do
a
cube.