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Year 2024 in review

·5 mins
review 2024 kargo az-104 azure macos ansible terraform opentofu ckad conference luxembourg argocd flux cloudflare security dagger ci/cd
Romain Boulanger
Author
Romain Boulanger
Cloud Architect with DevSecOps mindset
Table of Contents

A few words of introduction
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I didn’t get a chance to do the traditional end-of-year recap in December, following the GitOps-themed Meetup at the Silicon Chalet, which took quite a bit of investment to prepare. That said, it’s not a major issue, so I’m using January as an opportunity to wish everyone a happy and healthy New Year while sharing the articles I’ve created or updated throughout 2024.

Once again, thank you for your loyalty, the blog’s statistics are growing day by day. It’s always a pleasure to reply to thank-you messages, whether by e-mail or on LinkedIn.

2024 was first and foremost synonymous of change in several aspects:

  • First of all, technical, the blog structure has changed. I’ve been using Hugo and the Blowfish theme for a few months now to have a static Markdown-based site, which makes things very as code. Regarding hosting, there’s also been a shift, utilising Cloudflare’s free service to host everything on Pages, combining the use of various protection mechanisms provided by the platform. Finally, the full story is summarized in an article which is detailed a little further below;

  • Then, a change in the content with the arrival of the translation of certain articles, particularly new and updated ones, into English. This marks a turning point within this blog, to make the content of my articles accessible to as many people as possible.

As mentioned above, 2024 was also the year I had the chance to take part in several Silicon Chalet Meetups on the themes of Cloud security and GitOps with the introduction of Kargo. I also had the opportunity to give a talk at Voxxed Days Luxembourg, also on GitOps.

Wether the topics deal with certifications, technological insights into tools from the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), or events, I strive to maintain a pace of one article per month

For 2025, no loss of intensity, I’m going to continue with the same pace to dive into the heart of themes that are particularly important to me, mixing Cloud, DevOps, Kubernetes, CI/CD, GitOps, Security… Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Without further delay, here is the list of articles from 2024, to discover or rediscover…

Articles not to miss
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Kargo, deploy from one environment to another with GitOps
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When talking about GitOps within Kubernetes, there’s one issue that often comes up: deployment from one environment to another. That’s why, at the beginning of the year, I wrote an article on Kargo, a solution that can be combined with Argo CD to benefit from a promotion mechanism between your environments. This article was most recently updated in December 2024 with the first major release of the tool.

L’AZ-104, ma première certification Azure ! (only in French)
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For certification enthusiasts, here’s some feedback if you’re looking to make your way into Azure, and why not go for an architect’s certification like the AZ-305 I took this year. After a brief presentation, I’ll also give you my feelings and a few notes to help you feel confident on exam day.

I use Ansible to configure macOS!
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This article has been updated twice, in March and November 2024, to be as specific as possible regarding the macOS operating system, i.e. Sonoma and Sequoia.

A large part of the code and explanations in the article have been changed to improve visibility of the different roles within the Ansible playbook.

A must have for the installation and configuration of your Macbook, Macbook Pro or other.

Some good practices to put in place when building Terraform code
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Terraform and, more recently, OpenTofu have rapidly become standards when it comes to deploying infrastructure in datacenters and in the Cloud. In this post, I highlight the key elements for building scalable, maintainable code while combining various security aspects.

Réussir la CKAD (only in French)
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Update of the article on the CKAD, which I renewed this year with the CKA. I’ve expanded the My tips section by updating the content with the exam syllabus. If you ever have any questions about this certification, feel free to consult this article, particularly in terms of resources to work on.

Voxxed Days Luxembourg 2024 - Feedback
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As mentioned earlier, I had the chance to attend and present, as a speaker, at Voxxed Days Luxembourg on the topic of GitOps with Argo et Flux sont dans un Kargo, lequel tombe à l’eau ?. A great conference for developers and tech enthusiasts.

Argo et Flux sont dans un Kargo, lequel tombe à l’eau ? (only in French)
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Following my talk at Voxxed Days Luxembourg, the media and demos are available within this article if you’d like to replay them for yourself.

Protect your services with Cloudflare and deploy your configurations with OpenTofu
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Want to combine the strengths of infrastructure as code to deploy your blog or static content on Cloudflare? Then take a look at this post on how to combine free hosting and security.

Cloud Security: best practices
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Following the Cloud Security meetup, I produced a detailed article covering all the points raised. The Slidev presentation is also available in the article.

Dagger, the new CI/CD era?
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CI/CD often poses a challenge to set up, regardless of the tool, particularly for developers. That’s why Dagger tries to simplify the process by offering a wide choice of languages, so that you can design a CI/CD that can be exported to any platform and, especially, tested locally on your machine, with the help of the tool’s container-based engine.

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