Cloud Native Computing Foundation Kubernetes Community Days Bengaluru 2021, 10 Jul 2021

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From YouTube: Chaos Engineering for beginners Contribution to Chaos Mesh as LFX Mentee

Description

Kubernetes Community Days Bengaluru'21

This talk will cover my role as a student developer and LFX mentee for ChaosMesh project, how the community is evolving and beginner-friendly. I hope to inspire and appeal audience to join and contribute to projects under CNCF.

Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/14UNKMM9HkLhjjPhqhUASMqvs6OW-LYyLQQ4ubBmBfi0/edit?usp=sharing

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Hi I'm their brother, and uh this is my talk on chaos, engineering for beginners contribution to chaosmas as an lfx mentee.

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So about me I am presently a junior undergraduate majoring in biomedical engineering in the department of biotechnology and medical engineering at nasa's institute of technology raukela.

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Over the years I have developed keen interest in open source and have been quite passionate about uh cloud native technologies, and recently I happened to be a part of the lfx mentorship program, uh which we will talk in uh in few minutes. uh Also, you could connect with me on my twitter and linkedin. Also, you could find about my project and mentorship in the next foundation portal, which we will discuss in later, slides so yeah. uh Today we will discuss about what is this lfx mentorship program?

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How does the selection process goes on and what to expect after getting selected? And what was my experience as a mentee and also I'll uh ponder upon few of the misconceptions that people have on fx mentorship program? So starting with lfx mentorship program is a 12-week full-time mentorship program developed by the lux foundation. It is designed to help developers with necessary skills to experiment, learn and contribute effectively to open source. Community program is actively used by cloud native computing foundation as a mentorship platform across the cnc projects.

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uh I happened to be uh mnt under chaos, mass enriching aws kiosk project, which was proposed by kiosmas a cnc of sandbox project. There are many projects like this uh which are proposed by various orgs. Like you know, there are colonel linux kernel mentorship, there are a hyperledger mentorship and so on and various cnc projects that are present uh apply for this program and they select every cohort. It happens. uh Basically, it happens uh for three cohort last year.

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It was, uh I think, so, uh basically yeah you get to know about this uh program from the the lfx uh portal. Also, uh there are various blogs that is released at this point of time uh to make you aware about that. The application has been opened like for me uh when I was part of this program uh for the spring cohort. The applications were open in the month of february until mid february, we applied uh so yeah.

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Let's talk about the selection process, I applied so, as I said about uh when I applied in spring, uh it was uh till mid february. The portal was open and I could apply to projects and uh as soon as I applied, I was assigned with two tasks, so the basic task is to submit your cv and cover letter and after the date or the application portal closed, uh I was asked to submit another task. You know this.

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uh This mail that is in this picture, came over to me uh from a mentor asking me to solve a question. It is a related question uh and, uh like you know, submit it uh through a github repository and I did the same. uh Also the task is in my github repository. You could have a look also and after a few days of submitting, I got first of all, I got this mail, it was the end of february from my mentor.

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uh We would say that I am selected for the program and would I would maybe accepting the offer so yeah I accepted the offer and then uh around uh march first week I received this formal letter from lfx uh that I have been selected under this mentorship and the program uh mentors will correct me for the other steps. So, basically, uh my mentorship topic was chaosmas, enriching, aws chaos.

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My mentor was a kang who, who happens to be a maintainer at chaos, mess and what is chaosman so chaosmas is a chaos engineering tool uh which helps you to inject chaos. uh Testing uh also like it helps it's a kubernetes based uh chaos, engineering platform. So you you get to inject the chaos into the pods or containers and test the resiliency of your system. uh So that is how chaos mess works and there are various chaos that is available under this chaos.

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Mess thing like their https gives the stress, chaos and then a lot of things. uh So uh there is something called aws kiosks and as a mentee, my work was to contribute uh more features or add more features to features to aws kiosks so yeah. uh How was my fast food all about? So, uh basically, as I introduced myself, I am from a department that is not related to software engineering.

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uh I I I am a self-taught programmer and uh before starting with this mentorship program, I happened to be well was doing python and c, but uh until I started there was requirement of golang in this program. Also aws and kubernetes was must to know or to work on this particular repository uh so yeah. Since I was quite new to all those things, uh my mentor suggested me some online resources on golang and kubernetes. He provided me with those links and also I remember one of the books he provided me was kubernetes and accents.

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I went through that and it has a very, uh very illustrated explanation about the infrastructure of kubernetes how how this controllers work, what are crds, what are parts and all those things, uh and also, uh as I was a beginner to uh such kind of environment like large scale projects. uh So initially my mentor uh asked me to solve some good first issues. You know uh which, which just require few modifications in the code like you know, just switching on a few lines and all those things.

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So uh why that, because you know you have to be acquainted with how to contribute how to uh like you know you have to go through the contributor guidelines. You have to follow a particular procedure to contribute as the large projects and they have a cicd pipeline in place and uh to to align your work with all those things and push it to upstream. It's it's a challenging task for a beginner like me. So when I started, I obviously had some problems. I I used to fail in dcu certification.

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Then I knew about like something called the list that I have to sign off uh from my uh like email id of github and then only it passes the dcu certification and other tests uh begin to start so yeah. That was something challenging for me to begin with and uh yeah.

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Obviously, with this a few of the good first issues, I got acquainted with all those things and now, like you know, I could uh very seamlessly uh like keep my repo local rep, updated with the uh upstream and also contribute uh quite uh frequently and whenever it's it's quite easy for me now.

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uh So after I solved a few of the good first issues and uh I tried to add some features uh like good features, then we started with aws cures. It was around uh 1.5 months till now and there were again another 1.5 months remaining in my mentorship.

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So initially I would go through uh in depth to what I did, but I will give you overall idea about what I did so aws suppose, supposedly uh is something uh which it is used to implement chaos, uh two aws ec2 instances and like there are uh very uh a few, like you know, uh features that were added earlier and now what we try to do is we try to integrate this aws, ssm chaos, runner functionality uh to this aw secure, so that this aw system kiosk run, is basically something that has already been built by aws, and it has a lot of cures, features uh to offer and we wanted to integrate it with our observational tools or the dashboard we have, and so that we just have to write one controller for the whole thing and uh we get in in much features of aws skills.

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uh So yeah we started with that. uh We did it. uh We had to do two parts of it and then uh successfully we completed it also, and it came out to be an amazing integration to uh chaosmas yeah so ma. After all, this things hassle and a lot of learning and all those things I finally graduated and, as I said, you know, I'm just a newbie to all these things. I I learned about container technology.

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I learned I learned all those things, so my graduation is just a stepping stone uh for my contribution and into the cnc projects or, like you know, chaosmas, and I will be now a more uh more regular contributor to all these projects and, like you know, I am quite interested in all these things. Now like I now I am able to understand uh the code base. I am able to understand the tech stack that is present in this chaos, mess and all those things so yeah.

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So how do you get started if you want to be an lfx mentee like me? How do you get started? What are the? What are the workflow? You need to follow so yeah. Basically, we have an amazing uh documentation by elias foundation and I'll provide you. The link, supposedly. This workflow has also been taken from that uh docs. So yeah you have to go to that eligibility rules.

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Those are pretty straightforward and then create a community profile in the cnc platform uh also submit an application, and by application I mean you have to just submit with your cv and uh cover letter, and then, if approved, you work on tasks, uh work with the mentors and also graduate and explore more opportunities in that particular domain.

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If you are rejected for one cohort uh yeah, so that there is no issue in that, uh you could keep on contributing, as this program happens three times a year and you will get a chance at any cohort. uh You like uh so obviously where to find this information yeah. As I was talking about this, the docs were provided by linux foundation, uh which has a great information available on this whole program.

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You have the program schedule, you have the timelines, you could view about the mentorship program, details how to create a profile how to toggle between mentorship and all those things. Also, you could uh view the status of your application, manage your tasks and a lot of things. You know. There's a there is a lot of information that is available and since uh cncf is a pretty great landscape which might be intimidating to beginners like me, yes, I I was also intimidated when I started, and now also I'm intimidated uh to all the projects.

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I don't have any idea on all the projects that is present in the cncf uh portfolio or the cnc landscape, but yeah a few of the projects which I work upon or which I use. I have idea on them, so yeah, it's very natural for you as a beginner to get stumbled upon all those things and find it difficult uh to understand what is there and what is not there. But yeah. One thing is very positive about this cnc project is they have a very good uh documentation?

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They maintain good contributor guidelines, developer of documentation and all those things you could go through them, and uh you know you could ask your doubts on the cncf slack, like every project has its own channel in the cncf slack that I have given. So you could join the slack channel. You could uh ask questions on that particular projects. Also how to select. You know when whenever there is a mentorship application that opens up, uh there are a lot of projects that that come up for one cohort.

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So I I suggest you guys, you know you go read the description. You know, whichever project you find interesting, go to that github repository try to join the slack channel- and there is you know this uh developer guidelines with the initial setup uh that the guideline about initial setup is uh there and you could go through that. You could try try playing around with that and if you stumble upon uh somewhere you know, obviously you will stumble upon the lord. These are very complex projects. Then there are maintainers and contributors in this slack channels.

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Those are ready to help you. You know we are a very welcoming community. We want contributors, uh like you know young contributors, students to join us and uh continue with this cnc projects. uh Also, uh there are a lot of benefits. You know you get to learn about this container technologies like kubernetes, which is going to be a like. You know default uh thing in a few few years uh in this tech industry also, uh there are a lot of projects to capture everyone's interests. It's not about like.

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I worked on chaos, engineering that that's it. No. There are a lot of projects like jagger, something called hyperledger the linux kernel and there are various code base code requirements. You know some require c plus plus some require python. Some require goal line so yeah. It has to cater uh for everyone's interest and you could go on and explore the thing.

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So now, let's address few of the misconceptions I usually get from uh participants or you know I. I got a lot of mess message from the aspirants. You know about the cncf mentorship thing like a lot of them are where uh that came with this. Initially so how to uh choose uh like you know how to select the projects. I am not able to get it. What to write in the cover letter see, as the name suggests, it's a mentorship program. You know it's like you come you learn you implement.

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So that's how the thing works. So it's absolutely a beginner friendly program. You don't have to worry about uh like you, you don't know something. Obviously you won't be knowing about cloud native technologies if you haven't used it earlier, but there is nothing wrong in it. You know uh it's a wigner-friendly program. uh You have to go through the docs. You know there are well-maintained docs go through that start somewhere. You know you have to start summer start playing around with it uh get acquainted with it.

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Talking to the maintainers of the repository message them uh in the slack channels, and you will get an apt reply also for any mentorship related queries, any technical queries. You are having uh do a message or do uh mention it in the mentoring uh channel of the in the cncf slack. There are people ready to help you at any point of time. Also, uh I could suggest one more thing.

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You know don't panic about how to write the cover letter, whether I should mention about the proposal or not yeah, it's good to mention if you know anything about how to uh go on with that project or how to uh complete that project in uh two three months. But if you don't have any cleared id or clear description, then it's absolutely fine. You know uh we we try to you know this.

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Mentorship programs are for curious people who are uh like you know who are ready to contribute or who are willing to uh be a part of this community even after the mentorship program is over. So we want to have a long-term uh members or you know, contributors who could help in maintaining the projects a lot of projects that require a lot of people in the cnc of landscape. And you know these kind of programs are just a stepping stone for anyone in the tech industry.

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Any beginner is welcome out to this kind of program and yeah. Absolutely you don't have to worry about if you would fit in or not. If you only know like you know a few languages like previously when I started, I didn't have any idea about gold line, neither about kubernetes. I was basically a python developer and even the you know the task I was asked. I submitted it using c plus, plus uh and yeah. I was selected okay, so uh I had to learn golang I had to uh like write my own controllers. Custom controllers.

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Like few months back, I was not even able to understand what is the kiosk game on what is all those things but yeah the at the end of the 12 weeks. I could say now, like I'm a little bit confident about my knowledge and uh distributed file system or be it kubernetes or of any container services, so yeah now and it was a fun ride. You know break things using chaos, engineering and all those things so yeah just come up. uh Just join this program. uh Try to explore.

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You know, try to play around with these things. You know those are very interesting projects like prometheus, grafana and all those things. So uh you you, I I suggest you to come up and join this. You know join this lfx mentorship program, try to learn as much as you can and contribute to this, and we look forward to a lot of having a lot of contributors and students in this particular program. So, thank you any other, no doubts or any other things you want to ask to me. You could bring me on twitter about.

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