Platform Engineering Monthly — December 2025
Welcome to the twenty-fifth edition of Platform Engineering Monthly. Sending this issue a little earlier so you can enjoy it before the Christmas break! As always, if you have any suggestions or ideas for the next edition, let me know!
📰 News
GitHub Actions self-hosted runners cost increases — GitHub attempted to introduce $0.002 per minute charge for self-hosted runners executing jobs on private GitHub repositories, but due to a major backlash has rolled it back.
Zombie Workflows: A GitHub Actions horror story — Zombie GitHub Actions kept running long after repos were deleted — exposing secrets, executing unchecked code, and creating a hidden security nightmare.
Building the Largest Known Kubernetes cluster with 130,000 nodes — Probably not necessary for most of us mere mortals, but an interesting read nonetheless.
What’s wrong with Kubernetes today — Thoughtful piece on why Kubernetes is great at portability and reliability, but not so great at efficiency, particularly in resource usage and operational overhead.
🦮 Tutorials / How-tos
Kubernetes Optimization using In-Place Pod Resizing and Zone-Aware Routing — A nice primer on sizing down Kubernetes pods more effectively to hopefully save some $$$.
No DNS Terraform Cloud clone — Considering the Terraform Cloud Free tier is going away, I figured I’d share a guide on producing your own.
93% Faster Next.js in (your) Kubernetes — If you are dependent on SSR (Server-Side Rendering) and planning to host on Kubernetes, this guide is worth a read.
Building Kubernetes Operators Course — A great free resource for building Kubernetes operators!
📁 Interesting Projects
server-survival — Tower defense game that teaches cloud architecture. Build infrastructure, survive traffic, learn scaling.
Geodesic — A DevOps Linux Toolbox in Docker
Watt — A node.js application server. If you’re running node.js on Kubernetes, watt is essential.
Kueue — A cloud-native job queueing system for batch, HPC, AI/ML, and similar applications in a Kubernetes cluster.
📅 Events
FOSDEM 2026 — Brussels, Belgium · 31 Jan – 1 Feb 2026
Annual open-source conference with tracks across cloud-native tooling, infrastructure, and collaborative engineering.DevConf.cz 2026 — Brno, Czech Republic · Late Jan 2026
Free, community event with sessions on DevOps, CI/CD, cloud tech, and platform engineering topics.Cloud Tech Tallinn 2026 — Tallinn, Estonia · 29–30 Jan 2026
Cloud and AI-focused sessions, useful for platform teams evaluating multi-cloud and automation strategies.Cloud Native Days France 2026 — Paris, France · 3 Feb 2026
Community-centric cloud native conference with practical talks on Kubernetes, tooling, and platform ops.ContainerDays London 2026 — London, UK · 11–12 Feb 2026
Hands-on workshops and sessions covering Kubernetes, AI integrations, observability, and platform engineering practice.PlatformCon 2026 — Virtual & In-Person Days · 22–26 Jun 2026
The world’s largest platform engineering conference, with 200+ speakers and hundreds of sessions — essential for strategy and tooling insights.
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