Alex Parra - Platform Engineer

Cloud Architect, DevOps Engineer, and Full-Stack Developer

Hi There!

“Alejandro Parra is a specialist in DevOps and Cloud with strong experience in backend development using Python and TypeScript. Throughout his career, he has worked on building scalable infrastructures and automating workflows, enabling him to design robust solutions for cloud-native environments. His focus is on optimizing processes and modernizing applications through innovative technologies, always driven by the belief that ‘Res publica non dominetur’.”

Writing

Day 26: Securing Your Platform with OPA and Trivy

Welcome to Day 26 of the Zero to Platform Engineer in 30 Days challenge! 🚀 Today, we’ll focus on securing Kubernetes platforms using Open Policy Agent (OPA) for policy enforcement and Trivy for vulnerability scanning..

Day 25: Canary Deployments and Feature Flags – Safe Rollouts

Welcome to Day 25 of the Zero to Platform Engineer in 30 Days challenge! 🚀 Today, we’ll cover canary deployments and feature flags, two essential techniques for safe, controlled software rollouts in Kubernetes.

Day 24: Scaling Applications with Kubernetes HPA and Cluster Autoscaler

Welcome to Day 24 of the Zero to Platform Engineer in 30 Days challenge! 🚀 Today, we’re diving into autoscaling in Kubernetes, focusing on Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA) and Cluster Autoscaler to efficiently manage workloads..

Day 23: Managing Secrets with HashiCorp Vault and AWS Secrets Manager

Welcome to Day 23 of the Zero to Platform Engineer in 30 Days challenge! 🚀 Today, we’re focusing on secrets management using HashiCorp Vault and AWS Secrets Manager, two powerful tools for securing credentials, API keys, and sensitive data.

Day 22: Building Templates and Catalogs with Backstage

Welcome to Day 22 of the Zero to Platform Engineer in 30 Days challenge! 🚀 Today, we’re diving into Backstage, the leading Internal Developer Platform (IDP) tool, to build service templates and a software catalog for streamlined developer workflows.

Day 22: Building Templates and Catalogs with Backstage

Welcome to Day 22 of the Zero to Platform Engineer in 30 Days challenge! 🚀 Today, we’re diving into Backstage, the leading Internal Developer Platform (IDP) tool, to build service templates and a software catalog for streamlined developer workflows.

Day 22: Building Templates and Catalogs with Backstage

Welcome to Day 22 of the Zero to Platform Engineer in 30 Days challenge! 🚀 Today, we’re diving into Backstage, the leading Internal Developer Platform (IDP) tool, to build service templates and a software catalog for streamlined developer workflows.

Day 22: Building Templates and Catalogs with Backstage

Welcome to Day 22 of the Zero to Platform Engineer in 30 Days challenge! 🚀 Today, we’re diving into Backstage, the leading Internal Developer Platform (IDP) tool, to build service templates and a software catalog for streamlined developer workflows.

Day 22: Building Templates and Catalogs with Backstage

Welcome to Day 22 of the Zero to Platform Engineer in 30 Days challenge! 🚀 Today, we’re diving into Backstage, the leading Internal Developer Platform (IDP) tool, to build service templates and a software catalog for streamlined developer workflows.

Day 22: Building Developer Portals with Backstage

Welcome to Day 16 of the Zero to Platform Engineer in 30 Days challenge! 🚀 Today, we’re focusing on Internal Developer Portals (IDPs) and how to build one using Backstage, an open-source platform that enhances developer experience by centralizing documentation, services, APIs, and deployments.

Day 19: Chaos Engineering – Building Resilient Systems

Welcome to Day 19 of the Zero to Platform Engineer in 30 Days challenge! 🚀 Today, we’ll explore Chaos Engineering, its origins with Netflix’s Simian Army, and modern tools like LitmusChaos, Gremlin, and LambdaChaos that help test system resilience.

Day 20: Recap – Creating a Basic Observability Stack

Welcome to Day 20 of the Zero to Platform Engineer in 30 Days challenge! 🚀 Today, we’re doing a recap of observability best practices and assembling a basic observability stack using Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, and OpenTelemetry.

Day 18: Distributed Tracing with OpenTelemetry

Welcome to Day 18 of the Zero to Platform Engineer in 30 Days challenge! 🚀 Today, we’re diving into Distributed Tracing using OpenTelemetry, an essential tool for monitoring request flows across microservices.

Day 17: Visualizing Data with Grafana

Welcome to Day 17 of the Zero to Platform Engineer in 30 Days challenge! 🚀 Today, we’re focusing on visualizing Kubernetes metrics with Grafana, creating real-time dashboards to monitor application performance.

Day 16: Getting Started with Prometheus – Monitoring Metrics

Welcome to Day 16 of the Zero to Platform Engineer in 30 Days challenge! 🚀 Today, we’ll explore Prometheus, the go-to tool for monitoring Kubernetes and collecting real-time metrics.

Day 15: Automating Workflows with Kustomize and Skaffold

Welcome to Day 15 of the Zero to Platform Engineer in 30 Days challenge! 🚀 Today, we’re diving into workflow automation for Kubernetes using Kustomize and Skaffold, two tools that simplify managing and deploying Kubernetes configurations

Day 14: Securing Kubernetes – Runtime Security and Policy Enforcement

Welcome to Day 14 of the Zero to Platform Engineer in 30 Days challenge! 🚀 Today, we’ll focus on securing Kubernetes clusters, covering runtime security and policy enforcement to ensure your applications and infrastructure are protected from vulnerabilities and misconfigurations.

Day 13: Monitoring with Prometheus and Grafana

Welcome to Day 13 of the Zero to Platform Engineer in 30 Days challenge! 🚀 Today, we’re focusing on monitoring and observability, key components for maintaining the health, performance, and reliability of your applications in Kubernetes.

Day 12: Advanced GitOps with Argo Rollouts

Welcome to Day 12 of the Zero to Platform Engineer in 30 Days challenge! 🚀 Today, we’re diving deeper into GitOps by exploring Argo Rollouts, a powerful tool for managing progressive delivery strategies like canary and blue-green deployments.

Day 11: Introduction to GitOps with ArgoCD

Welcome to Day 11 of the Zero to Platform Engineer in 30 Days challenge! 🚀 Today, we’re diving into GitOps, a modern approach to managing Kubernetes applications declaratively, with ArgoCD as our tool of choice.

Day 10: Managing Kubernetes with Helm and Terraform

Welcome to Day 10 of the Zero to Platform Engineer in 30 Days challenge! 🚀 Today, we’ll explore how to combine Helm and Terraform, two powerful tools, to simplify the deployment and management of Kubernetes applications.

Day 9: Advanced Terraform – Managing Kubernetes Resources

Welcome to Day 9 of the Zero to Platform Engineer in 30 Days challenge! 🚀 Today, we’re diving deeper into Terraform, exploring advanced features like modules, workspaces, and how to manage Kubernetes resources programmatically

Day 8: Introduction to Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

Welcome to Week 2 of the Zero to Platform Engineer in 30 Days challenge! 🚀 This week, we’re diving into Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and CI/CD pipelines, two cornerstones of modern platform engineering. Today, we’ll focus on understanding what IaC is, why it matters, and how it helps manage infrastructure efficiently.

Day 7: Recap and Hands-On Challenges for Week 1

Congratulations! 🎉 You’ve completed the first week of the Zero to Platform Engineer in 30 Days challenge. This week, we’ve covered the foundations of Cloud Native and Kubernetes, setting the stage for everything to come. Today, we’ll recap the key concepts, reflect on your progress, and dive into some hands-on challenges to solidify your learning.

Day 6: ConfigMaps and Secrets – Managing Configurations in Kubernetes

Welcome to Day 6 of the Zero to Platform Engineer in 30 Days challenge! Today, we’re focusing on ConfigMaps and Secrets, two essential tools for managing application configurations and sensitive data in Kubernetes.

Day 5: Kubernetes Services – Connecting Your Applications

Welcome to Day 5 of the Zero to Platform Engineer in 30 Days challenge! Yesterday, we explored Deployments and Scaling in Kubernetes, learning how to manage application lifecycles and scale them effectively. Today, we’ll dive into Kubernetes Services, which are essential for enabling communication between your applications and making them accessible to users.

Day 4: Deployments and Scaling in Kubernetes

Welcome to Day 4 of the Zero to Platform Engineer in 30 Days challenge! Now that we’ve covered the basics of Kubernetes, it’s time to explore one of its most powerful features: Deployments and Scaling. These tools let you manage your applications efficiently, ensuring they’re always running and able to handle demand.

Day 3: Getting Started with Kubernetes – The Foundation of Cloud Native

Welcome to Day 3 of our Zero to Platform Engineer in 30 Days challenge! Today, we’re diving into Kubernetes, the backbone of modern cloud-native platforms. Whether you’re new to Kubernetes or looking to refine your skills, this post will give you a strong foundation to build on.

Day 2: Containers and Docker – The Building Blocks of Cloud Native

Welcome to Day 2 of the Zero to Platform Engineer in 30 Days challenge! Today, we’re diving into the fundamentals of containers, the role of Docker, and exploring other container runtimes like CRI-O and containerd. By the end of this post, you’ll know how to build, run, and manage containerized applications.

Day 1: Introduction to the CNCF and Its Landscape

Welcome to Day 1 of Zero to Platform Engineer in 30 Days! Yesterday, we set the stage with what Platform Engineering is and why it’s such an exciting and impactful field. Today, we’re diving into one of the most important resources for Platform Engineers: the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) and its famous Landscape.

Day 0: Zero to Platform Engineer in 30 Days – Introduction

Ready to level up? In just 30 days, you’ll go from zero to Platform Engineer hero. We’ll break it down step by step, covering everything from Kubernetes to building Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs). Let’s make cloud native simple and fun!.