Alright, so once again, hello everyone and welcome to today's online workshop. The topic we'll be looking at today is, what is the domain name system? So, yeah, whoops. So, I am Ben. I was born in Australia but I've lived pretty much my entire life in Japan. So, I am bringing this to you today at 9am Japan time. I've been a WordPress user since 2014, so just about nine years now. And this year I was selected as a representative for the WordPress training team. So, the WordPress training team, we create and maintain the learn.wordpress.org website and I represent that team to the larger WordPress project. So, yeah, that's what I'm working on today. William, I saw you, I'm new to, did you have a question? No. What is an online workshop? So, online workshops are a place where participants can learn together and be provided by volunteers in the WordPress training team. So, I'm volunteering to produce this online workshop and if you're interested in producing online workshops, you are welcome to do that as well. Come join the WordPress training team and we will get you started with that. These are places where we learn together. So, I don't presume I know everything. There's always something new we can all learn. So, feel free to ask questions in the Zoom chat at any time and anyone can answer each other's questions. I can answer questions, but also participants can answer each other's questions too. And yeah, if you're interested in learning more about WordPress, come visit the WordPress official education website at learn.wordpress.org. And this would actually be a good place for me to share the link to my slides so that everybody can follow along with me. Just a moment. Here we go. For today's slides. All right, I've dropped that in the Zoom chat there. Let me go back to full screen mode. So, let's start with a question. And I'd like everybody to type their answer in the chat here. How familiar are you with the domain name system? This is often abbreviated DNS. So, on the scale from one to five, one is I've never heard of it so that's the very first time I'm learning about the domain name system and five is I consider myself an expert. So, from one to five, how familiar are you with the domain name system? Oh, good. We have a few threes, three and a half, a four, a three, a five. Eric, great. If we have questions, everybody with Eric. Okay, we have a pretty good crowd here today. Everybody has a fairly good understanding about the domain name system. I would consider myself about a four. So, yeah, hopefully there's still something new. I want to make it go full screen rather than meeting just part of it. Sorry, could you say that again? Okay, so if you missed the last session about domains, there's a link here to the recording. Last time we talked about just basically what is a domain. So a domain is a string of text that corresponds to an IP address. So computers or devices on the internet call each other by their IP address names and domains are a text that are easier for humans to remember. So why does a site need a domain? A domain helps people remember and locate your website. So last time we talked about how you could actually type an IP address in your browser to access different services. But it's just difficult for humans to remember long strings of numbers. And so domains are easier for us to access websites and services. So for example, the IP address <IP_ADDRESS>. If you type this in your browser, that will take you to the WordPress.org website. But rather than remembering that, we just type WordPress.org because that's more explanatory of what the site is. And yeah, the same thing for Google.com. You could type this IP address, but by typing Google.com, your browser and your computer transfers that into the IP address and pulls up the site for you. We also had a look at the different parts of the domain. So the section at the far right here after the final period, this is called the top level domain. And then the further left you go, you have a second level domain, a third level domain, a fourth level domain, etc. The top level domain is the most general part of the domain. And the further left you go, it gets more specific. So what we'll be talking about today is, first of all, how does the domain name system work? Second is what are DNS records? Third point, where can I edit my domain's DNS records? The fourth one, what DNS records do I need for my site? And finally, what is domain record propagation? So we have a lot of content to get through. And I will pause at the end of each of these sections for questions. So feel free to type whatever you want to ask in the Zoom chat. And I will get to them at the end of each of those sections. All right. Any questions about all that before we get started? James, okay, now I need to drop myself down to a two based on that list. That's fine. Drop yourself down and then you can come back to a four by the end of the session. But yeah, if you have any questions along the way, do ask. All right. So let's dive into it. This first section is the meatiest part of today's presentation. So how does the domain name system work? So just a quick refresher. The internet is a complicated network of devices. So of course we have our personal computers and our phones that connect to the internet. But there are also other devices. For example, you have web servers on the internet. You have like routers and hubs. And these days you also have like household appliances like refrigerators, microwaves and lights and doors and locks. And all these devices are connected on the internet. And these devices communicate with each other. So the internet is just information going between devices, devices talking to each other.  And the conversation does go something like this. So for example, the computer connects to the blue server over here. And he says, I'm trying to find the WordPress website. And the blue server says, sure, the server over there, the orange server over there has the information. And so your computer connects to the orange server and says, hi, I'm trying to find the WordPress website. And the orange server says, sure, I have the data. Let me send that over. And your computer says thanks. And so information goes between devices like this. But in reality, they don't call each other the blue server or the orange server. Each server has a name. And this name is a list of numbers called an IP address. So for example, if I were to connect to the blue server and say, I'm trying to find the WordPress website. The blue server would respond and say, sure, it's on server <IP_ADDRESS>. So I asked for the WordPress.org domain website. And the blue server sends back an IP address to me. And that is the domain name system transferring the main domain into an IP address. And so I'm going to break this down even further to see how this happens. So this is the overview. You don't have to read all that right now. I'm going to go through that step by step. But this is to just show you the domain name system is a little complicated and there are multiple servers involved in this. But let me explain this one at a time. William, I see your question. So I'll get to that at the end of this section. Just a moment. All right. So when we start off, when we open our computer, open a browser, we type in a domain. For example, WordPress.org. And we type enter. Now, in the beginning, your computer does not know the IP address for WordPress.org. And so what your computer does is it connects to what is called a DNS resolver. The DNS resolver's job is to change a domain name into an IP address.  Please tell me the IP address for WordPress.org. Now, the DNS resolver doesn't know what the IP address is either. However, the DNS resolver has a list of what are called DNS root name servers. Now, DNS root name servers are the top most level in the DNS system. So there are about a dozen of these around the world. And DNS resolvers all over the world know the IP addresses for DNS root name servers. So these are recorded inside the DNS resolver. And so what the DNS resolver does is it connects to the closest DNS root name server to it. Usually, it's usually the geographically closest DNS root name server. And it says, I'm looking for the IP address for WordPress.org. Now, the DNS root name server doesn't record the IP address for domains. Instead, the DNS root name server records the IP addresses for what are called the TLD name servers or top level domain name servers. So in the case of WordPress.org, the top level domain is the final .org. So other top level domains could be .com or .blog. Or you have country code top level domains like .jp, .mx, .au, etc. For each of these top level domains, there is just one TLD name server in the world that contains all the records for that top level domain. So for the .org domain, there is just one top level domain name server for all the .org domains in the world. So the DNS root name server, the server shown in orange on the slide here, it records the IP addresses for all the TLD name servers for all the domains. So there are hundreds of TLD domains and the DNS root name service responsibility is to record the IP addresses for each TLD name server. So going back to the DNS resolver, the DNS resolver has contacted the DNS root name server and says I'm looking for WordPress.org. The DNS root name server says you will want to connect to the .org TLD name server to find that information. Here is the IP address for the .org TLD name server. So the DNS resolver receives that IP address and next it connects to the .org TLD name server and says I'm looking for the WordPress.org IP address. Could you tell me? Now, the TLD name servers, they don't actually contain the information about each domain, or sorry, the DNS records for each domain. Instead, they contain information for what is called the authoritative name server for each domain. So the authoritative name server is basically where you would log into to edit your DNS records. So if you own a domain, you would log into somewhere to update your DNS records. What you are logging into is your authoritative name server. And the top level domain name servers have a list of what the authoritative name server is for all the domains it manages. So there are probably thousands of .org domains in the world. The .org TLD name server has the IP address for each authoritative name server for all the .org domains. All right, so the DNS resolver has contacted the TLD name server for .org and says I'm looking for the IP address for WordPress.org. The TLD name server responds and says, all right, the authoritative name server for WordPress.org is this IP address. Connect to that server and they will be able to tell you the answer. All right, so we've connected to the DNS root name server. We've connected to the TLD name server. And finally, we connect to the authoritative name server for WordPress.org. And so the DNS resolver says I'm looking for the IP address and the authoritative name server finally says, sure, I have that information. The IP address for WordPress.org is <IP_ADDRESS>. So the DNS resolver now has finally received the IP address. So it communicates to the laptop and says, hi, the IP address for WordPress.org is <IP_ADDRESS>. So your laptop hasn't been doing all this communication. All it did was send one message to the DNS resolver. The DNS resolver communicates with all the other servers and it sends one message back to your computer, the IP address. So then your computer can now access that IP address, which is the web server for WordPress.org and says, hello, <IP_ADDRESS>. Please send me the website data for WordPress.org and then the web server, which is shown in orange on this slide, sends that information back to the HTML code, the CSS code, the JavaScript code. The web server sends that back and your computer can finally show the website to you. All right? So this whole process is called the DNS lookup. So you're looking up the IP address for a domain and the DNS lookup is primarily conducted by the DNS resolver, which is the light blue server shown in the middle here and it connects to the DNS root name server, the TLD name server and the authoritative name server in order to find the IP address. All right. So let me pause and have a look at the questions that have come in. So, William, you asked, how does it work when several URLs share the same IP address? That's a good question. So some people might be familiar with the term IP version 4 and IP version 6. IP version 4. So this IP address you see here is an IP version 4 IP address. The world has basically run out of IP version 4 IP addresses. And so what we are doing is different websites are actually sharing the same IP address. So the DNS lookup, although you're looking for the IP address of the web server, when you make the request to the web server here, so in this orange request, you're actually still sending the domain name information along with the IP address. So the computer would say, hello, web server at this IP address, please send me the data for WordPress. So you could say, you could send a similar message, for example, hello, this IP address, please send me the site data for learn.wordpressable, which is a different domain. But if it's hosted on the same server, you're still connecting the same IP address, but just sending over a different domain. So to answer your question, if multiple domains use the same IP address, which does happen, your computer is still sending an IP address and domain name pair to the web server when requesting information for the web server can identify which of its website it should be sending back to you. I hope that makes sense. I hope that makes sense. Great. And then James, is the authoritative name server where you initially registered the domain name? That is a good question. And the answer is, it depends. So we'll actually get to that later in this presentation. So hold that thought and we'll talk about that a bit later on. All right. But thank you for the questions. Is there anything else anybody wanted to ask? Just to sort of review, so how does the domain name system work? The domain name system is sometimes referred to as the internet's phone book. So nowadays, you don't actually use phone books that often. You probably Google the company to find their telephone number. But like in the old days, you would have a name of a company. So you would open a phone book. It's usually listed in alphabetical order. So you look through that to find the phone number for that company. The DNS resolver does that for us. So we tell the name, the domain name we're looking for to the DNS resolver. And the DNS resolver looks through all the records to find the IP address and send that back to us. So DNS is sometimes referred to as the internet's phone book. And it's basically the process where a DNS server translates a domain name into an IP address for you. All right. That was the meatiest part of today's presentation. So if any questions come up, do let me know. But let's move on to the next section. And that is, what are DNS records? So if you've registered the domain, you've probably set DNS records before. But let's just take a moment to review what exactly are DNS records? So DNS records are text files that give information about the domain. So it's important to remember DNS records sound spectacular, but they're really just text files. So they're very small and they're connected to your domain. DNS records live on the authoritative name servers of a domain. So we talked about authoritative name servers. Authoritative name servers contain all the DNS records. And you can use tools like the Google dig tool, DNS tool, which I've also opened here, to look up DNS records. So DNS records are public information. You can look up the DNS records of any domain on the internet. And they're all public information. So let me copy this link and drop it in the Zoom chat. If you aren't familiar with this tool, you can have a look at this as well. And domain owners can make changes to these records. So that's us. We can make changes to our DNS record. Now, the way this tool works is, so you type in whatever domain you want here, for example, WordPress.org, and then you click on the type of record you want to look at. So for example, if I click on the A record, this will tell me the information about the WordPress.org A record. So we have a TTL value, which is short for time to live. And then we also have the data for this record. Now, this information will change depending on what record you're looking at. For example, if you click on C name, okay, this one does have a C name. For example, if you click on MX, you see we have a time to live value. We have an exchange value, and then we also have a preference value. Or if you click on NS, you'll see we have multiple NS records here, which each have a time to live value and the target value. Or if you click on TXT, you'll see we have three TXT records here, each with a time to live value and a value. So you can type whatever domain you want here and look up the records for that domain. So just to refresh, DNS records are stored in the authoritative name server for WordPress. And each domain can have multiple DNS records. So as we just had a look at WordPress.org, that had A records, MX records, TXT records, it could have a lot more records. And so all those records are stored on the authoritative name server. And then the TLD name server. So that's why it doesn't store all the DNS records because every domain could have multiple DNS records and that's a lot of information. So it's the responsibility of the authoritative name servers to keep track of all the DNS records. And the TLD name server just remembers what the authoritative name servers are. All right. Now servers remember DNS records for a while. And this is called caching. So DNS records, we had a look before each of them have a TTL value or a time to live value. And this tells the device how long it should keep the record before coming back to ask for the same information again. So for example, what do we have? We have a TXT record open here and the TTL value is set to 49 minutes, 26 seconds. So what that is saying is, once you request TXT records for this domain, you can keep that information for 49 minutes, 26 seconds and you don't have to come back and ask me about that again. 49 minutes, 26 seconds, just refer to that information and after the TTL has expired, then come back and ask me. The TTL value is different for each type of DNS record. And we, the domain owners can set this to whatever we want. So for example, the A record is a lot shorter. It's two minutes, 27 seconds. MX records are probably longer, an hour and eight minutes. All right. So each domain record has a TTL value and the process of temporarily saving information is called caching. Now with WordPress and websites, caching happens in a lot of different places. Today we're just talking about DNS caching. But if you're building a website, then you sometimes have like page caching, you have to clear or object caching in type of server, etc. So there are a lot of types of caching and in any case caching is just the process of storing information temporarily so you don't have to go looking for it again. So for example, for example, something we often do is like accidentally close our browser, accidentally close our page, and we're like, oh, I need to open that page again. So what we might do is once we accidentally close the browser, we would open up again, we would type WordPress.org and press enter, and the computer goes, oh, okay, I have to go looking for the IP address for WordPress.org. So it connects to the DNS resolver and says, what is the IP address for WordPress.org? Now the DNS resolver will look through its records and you'll notice, hey, I just looked this up two minutes ago. And the record he received has a four hour time to leave value. That means the record it has is still current, so it doesn't have to go looking for that again. And the DNS resolver just sends the same information back to the browser. So theoretically, a DNS resolver should connect to the DNS root name server and the TLD name server and the authoritative name server to figure out what the IP address is. But that is at least three requests it has to make before it gets its answer. So having a time to leave value means the DNS resolver can just skip all that and send the information already has to the computer. So from the computer's perspective, we're doing the same thing. It's asking for the IP address and it receives the IP address back. But in reality, this process is a lot quicker because the DNS resolver hasn't had to connect to all these other name servers to figure out what the IP address is. So caching can speed up the process of a DNS lookup. Now this slide, a user who attended my presentation yesterday gave me this information with me. In Wikipedia, if you look up DNS records, it gives you at least 48 different types of DNS records. Honestly, that is a lot. And in most cases, you do not need to set all 48 types of DNS records. In most cases, you probably just need three or four types of DNS records and your services run fine. But if you click on the image here, it will show you there's a diagram here that sort of split the different type of DNS records. So for example, we have like meta information. We have IP address related information. We have informational records. We have records for service discovery, records for email, et cetera. So there are different types of DNS records. And in this presentation, I'm just going to have a look at five. And in most cases, as long as you understand these five records, you should be able to set your DNS records properly for your site. All right, so the easiest record to understand is the A record. Now A, I believe, is short for access. So what IP address do I have to use to access the website? So A records, in the DNS lookup example I showed before, we were translating a domain into an IP address. What we were actually looking for is the A record for that domain. So the A record, so there's a domain, there's a record type, and then there's a value. The value is an IP address, and then there's a time to leave value as well. And A records are usually set shorter. And these are listed in seconds. So 600 seconds, what's that? That's 10 minutes. So for example, let's come over here. If we look at the A record for WordPress.org, WordPress.org, we'll see the time to leave value was seven minutes, 25 seconds, and the data. So there's an IP address here. And we can do the same for any domain. So for example, Google.com. And we see the Google.com actually has multiple A records, and the time to leave value is set to five minutes, and each of these records have different IP addresses. So we could access any of these IP addresses, and that should bring up the Google.com website. All right, so A record is the most basic domain, a DNS record. Next, we have C name records. And C name, I believe is short for canonical name record. I think we might have to ask Wikipedia to confirm that. But basically, C name records forward one domain to another domain. So for example, there is a domain, learn.wordpress.org. And although it looks similar, this is different to the WordPress.org domain. The two domains represent two different services, two different websites. But in reality, the information for learn.wordpress.org, like the website data, is stored on the same web server as WordPress.org. So this relates to your question before, William. These two domains represent two different websites, but the information is stored on the same web server. And so rather than setting, for example, the same DNS records for learn.wordpress.org, what you can do is set a C name record. And that tells us whenever we're looking for domain records for learn.wordpress.org, we can actually look up the records for WordPress.org and the same information would apply to learn.wordpress.org. Let's have a look. So before, we had a look at WordPress.org and we had a look at C name and there was no record found. So the WordPress.org domain doesn't have any C name records. But we can look at the learn.wordpress.org domain and here there is a C name record. And the C name record has a time-to-live value of about an hour and 20 minutes and it says the target is WordPress.org. So if we're looking for DNS records for learn.wordpress.org, they'll be the same as the WordPress.org domain records. James, you asked, is this what they call the subdomain? Correct. So learn.wordpress.org is a subdomain of WordPress.org. Now you don't have to set a C name on subdomains. Subdomains don't need a C name. You can point a subdomain to a totally different web server and set up different websites over there. So it's not that subdomains always have a C name record. But for example, in the case of WordPress.org, this subdomain happened to have a C name record that points to WordPress.org. So we have A records, we have C name records. Next we have TXT records. So TXT is short for text and these are just text notes, text notes associated with a domain. So you could write whatever you wanted in a text record and your domain would still work fine. So for example, you could type, you can make a text record that says, I love orange juice or chocolate ice cream is the best. Like you could literally write whatever you wanted in your text record. Now these records are public, so anybody would be able to find that information and it doesn't directly affect your domain. So text records are really just text notes added to a domain. But in reality, text records are often used for two purposes, domain verification and email security. So if we have a look at the WordPress.org text records, let's do that over here. So you'll see there are three records, three text records for the WordPress.org domain. And if you look at the value, you'll see the first one starts with Google site verification. Second one also starts with Google site verification. And then the third one starts with V equals SPF one and then it has a couple of IP addresses here, etc. So if you've connected your domain to, for example, Google search console, then at the very beginning when you connect your domain, you had to verify to Google that you do indeed own that domain. So you can't go connecting somebody else's domain in your Google search console account. You can only connect your own domain. And in order to do that, you have to verify to Google that you do own that domain. Now, Google has a few different ways you can verify your domain. But one of the ways is, goes like this. So you type your domain into Google search console and you say I want to register this domain. And Google says, all right, if you really own that domain, then go and copy paste this bit of text into a text record on that domain. So only the domain owner can log in to the authoritative name server. Only the owner can log in and add DNS records. So if Google can give you a unique piece of text and you can log in and add that text to your DNS record, then that proves you are the owner for that domain.  So we'll go and connect that to Google search console for you.  So the login information to your authoritative name server is vital to the safety of your domain. So make sure you have the highest security on that login information. But yeah, adding a text record is one way to verify you own a domain. And then the second use of a text record is for email security. So we won't go into all the details of what's listed here. But basically what this record is saying is it's announcing to the world if you receive an email from a WordPress.org email address, check the IP address of the mail server the email arrived from. And if the email arrived from either this IP address or this IP address, then that email did come from us. But if the email arrived from a different IP address, a different mail server, then it's most likely a phishing email. And so don't trust what it said. So this text record here is used for email security. And in this case, this tells people what the correct email servers are. Should you receive an email from a WordPress.org email address? There's a bit more information here, but we'll leave it at that. So just to refresh text records, just text memos left on the domain. And they are often used for domain verification and email security. James, I see you've added another question. Subdomains are cheaper for clients since they don't have to pay to register another domain name, right? And the answer is correct. Just going back one slide, we were looking at how learn.wordpress.org is the subdomain of WordPress.org. But even though you own two domains here, you only have to pay for WordPress.org and then the owner can make any number of subdomain on that domain as they want. So yes, in theory, subdomains are cheaper. Well, in fact, they're free if you already own the parent domain because you can make as many subdomains as you want. You still have to pay for web hosting and email servers and all that. So the domain itself is free, but then everything else you connect to the domain, all the services you connect, you do have to pay as if it were a second site. So that's probably why you said it's cheaper. And that's correct. All right. Let's get through two more DNS types, DNS records. So the next DNS record is a MX record. So MX is short for mail exchange. And so MX records are used for email services. And MX records have an extra piece of information to it. So there's a priority number, a value, and the time to live. So the value is the domain name of the mail server. So we were talking before how website data is stored in a web server. Email data is stored in a mail server. So the two servers are built totally differently. They're configured differently. And so an MX record tells us what the mail server for this particular domain is. Now the priority is used because usually a domain will have multiple MX records. And so the priority tells us which of the mail servers is a priority. And then if that mail server is busy or down, then we use a different mail server with a lower priority. So a priority just tells people which mail server to use first. All right. And finally, NS records. NS is short for name server. And this indicates the authoritative name server of the domain. So James, before you ask, is the authoritative name server where you initially registered the domain name. The answer is you could make that your authoritative name server, but you could make a totally different name server, your authoritative name server. And NS records let you choose who you will make your authoritative name server. Now, domains will usually always have multiple name servers because if the authoritative name server goes down, then you can get the information for the domain. So most domain owners set multiple authoritative name servers for the domain. In the case of wordpress.org, it looks something like this. NS. NS1. Wordpress.org is the first name server. NS2. Wordpress.org is the second name server, et cetera. And Wordpress.org I think has four authoritative name servers. One, two, three, four. Yep. All right. So again, there was a bit of information just to refresh. DNS records are text files that provide information about the domain. And for example, the IP address of the domain is stored as a DNS record. It is actually an A record for a domain. All right, let me pause there. Does anybody have any questions about all these DNS records? So yeah, James, you asked about subdomain and how that eludes to the multi-site feature. Subdomains are often used in multi-site configurations. And in the case of wordpress.org, there are actually a lot of subdomains for wordpress.org. For example, we were looking at learn.wordpress.org, but there's also make.wordpress.org. So that's a different subdomain. And these are all part of the wordpress.org multi-site. So there are lots of websites inside the wordpress.org multi-site. All right. No questions. Okay. Yep. No questions are coming through. So let's move on. Those two sections are the biggest sections today. So the next few sections we should be able to get through a bit quicker. So where can I edit my domain's DNS records? And this comes back to your initial question, James. Does this have to be the place you initially registered your domain? Now, the quick answer is if you registered your domain through your web host, then your web host dashboard will have an area when you can update your domain records. So oftentimes when you sign up for a website, your web host will also give you the option to buy a domain through them. So if that's the case, you can edit your website and your domain information all in the same web host dashboard. But sometimes you would purchase your domain separately to your web host, or you might initially purchase them together, but then you keep your domain there and you move your web host to another company. So sometimes the two are in different locations. So in that case, where would you edit your domain records? Now, the overview is, first of all, number one, you choose where your authoritative name servers are going to be. So are you going to make your web host's name servers your authoritative name servers? Or are you going to use your domain registrars with name servers, your authoritative name servers? Or are you going to use a third service, for example, like Cloudflare? Are you going to use their name servers as your authoritative name servers? So there are a few options here. You can either use the name servers at your domain registrar, you can use the name servers at the web host, or you can use a third party service. So first of all, you need to choose what, who you're going to make your authoritative name server. Then next, step two, set NS records at your domain registrar that indicate who your authoritative name servers are. So at your name server, you'll always have to set NS records and that states who your authoritative name servers are. And then finally, step three, all your other records, you would set inside your authoritative name server. So I've prepared some diagrams to help us understand this a bit better. So example one, if you registered your domain through your web host, then you can just use your web host name servers as your authoritative name servers. So you can update your DNS records there, you can update your website data there all in the same location. This is probably the easiest case. And if you're starting off with WordPress, this is what I recommend you do. But sometimes your domain is registered separately to your website. So in this case, you need to decide, are you going to make your domain registrar your authoritative name servers or are you going to make your web host the authoritative name servers? Now, if you're going to use your web host as your authoritative name server, what you would do is in your domain registrar, you would set NS records that point to your web host. So people know, okay, your authoritative name servers are actually over here at your web host. And then all the other domain records you would set in your web host name servers. But maybe you want to use your domain registrar as your authoritative name server and just point your A record to web host. In that case, you can set all your records inside your domain registrar. And so there would be NS records that point to your domain registrar inside your domain registrar. And then you would just use an A record that points to your web host. So people know all your DNS records are here, but they can access the IP address of that A record to get your website data. So to answer the question, where can I edit my DNS records, you get to choose who you want to use as your authoritative name server. You would always set NS records at your domain registrar to point to the authoritative name server. And then all the other DNS records you would register inside that authoritative name server. All right, so let me look at the questions here. James, you say you only ask because a client of yours dislikes the service from a hosting provider and was asking me if they could move the record away permanently to someone else. And so that question for them. So the quick answer is yes. So you can move your web host or your website data to a different web host if you want. You're totally free to do that. You can also in many cases move your domain registration to a different service as well. So you can move your domain registration, you can move your web host. And whenever you do, you just want to update your DNS records so they're still pointing to the correct thing. So James, in your case, you will want to confirm. Does your client dislike the web host? Or does your client dislike the domain registrar? If they dislike the web post, then you would change the web. You would move your website data to a different post and then update the a records to point to the new host. But if they dislike the domain registrar, then they actually keep the a record the same because that still points to the same web host and you just transfer your domain to a different registrar. So I hope that answers your question, James. And then Larry, you've asked the question. Thank you, Laura, for answering that. Laura, are there pros or cons to putting it on domain or host? I just moved my Google domain to web.com and see that my name is registered with my domain. That's a good question. So if you don't have a strong preference, if you don't have a strong preference, then keeping your domain registered at the same place as your website is the easiest solution because then you just have to have login details to your web host and then you'll be able to edit your website and your domain all in the same place. So if you're going for easy, keeping them both in the same place is the easiest solution. However, web hosts sometimes add an extra fee to your domain renewal. And so depending on the web host or even the domain registrar, the price to renew the exact same domain can be different. And that's because each web host or each service adds their own cut on time. So keeping them both in the same place is the easiest solution. But sometimes it's not the cheapest solution. But sometimes finding a different place to register your domain and then keeping your website at the web post is cheaper. It's a little more complicated because now you have two logging credentials you have to look after and then you have to point domain records across. So it's a bit more complicated, but sometimes it's cheaper. And I guess the other thing is, if your domain is registered with your web host, then your web hosts support people are able to edit your domain records for you. So for example, you start your site and then you add email service later. Whenever you add an email service, you then have to add MX records and other email related records. If these are in two separate places, then you have to add those records yourself. But if your web host and your domain are all in the same place, then you could contact your web host support and ask them to add the domain records for you, and they will have the access to do that. So I guess if you're not familiar with domain records, keeping them all in the same place is indeed easier. But if you're comfortable editing your own records and you understand how DNS records work, then you may also want to look into registering your domain in a separate place. And I guess the final thing I wanted to mention is some records, some domains can only be registered at certain domain registrants. For example, country code top level domains are often very restrictive and where you can register them. For example, the .jp domain for Japan can only be registered through a limited number of registrants. Not every web post offers the opportunity to register .jp domain. And so sometimes if there's a particular top level domain you're wanting, there is no way to register that at your web post. So you just have to register that somewhere else and connect that to your domain, connect that to your website. So it's a case by case, but hopefully that answers your question, Laura. And I just noticed this should be example three. All right, so one, one, two, three. All right. Great. So we're coming to the end of the hour. I do have a bit more content I want to get through. If you have to leave this session, that's totally fine. If you have a few more minutes, please stick around and let's get through the last few points about domains. So what DNS records do I need for my site? So we mentioned before there are like 48 different type of DNS records. You could register them, but in reality, what records do you need for your site? Now, first of all, every domain needs DNS records. You need to register an authoritative name server for your domain. So every domain will always have DNS records. If there are no DNS records, the domain doesn't work. Now, on top of that, it depends what services you're using. So if you have a website connected to your domain, then you will want an A record. You will always need an A record. If your domain is registered the same web host, then they will usually set these records for you. So you might not have to manually set them. They will set the A records for you in the background. But if your web host is different to where your domain is registered, then you will need to set A records that point your domain to your website. And next, if you use email services, then you will always need MX records. So whether you have your own email inbox for your domain, or even if you're just using mail forwarding services. If you have any type of email service, then you will also need MX records. But really beyond that, the details of what records you need really depends on the service you're using. Every domain needs NS records. If you have a website, you'll need A records. If you have email services, you'll need MX records. But beyond that, the best thing to do is to ask your service providers, and they will tell you what domain records you need to set. So if your web host needs more records, they'll tell you what you need. If your email server needs more records, your email provider will also tell you what you need. But you probably don't need a 48. 48 is a lot of different type of DNS records. But really just with four or five records, you should be able to set the basic services up for your website. Laura, you asked a question. What does SOA mean again? SOA is start of authority. So start of authority. Now what that means, I actually do not know off the top of my head. So domain records, SOA. So SOA records thoughts, important information about a domain or zone such as the email address of the administrator, when the domain was last updated, and how long the server should wait between refreshers. Does WordPress at all have an SOA record? It does, all right. So the SOA records for WordPress at all. So yeah, that's the information. Laura, is that enough for today? You can also ask Google and you can probably find a bit more information there too. Now, one final point I wanted to get through today is domain record propagation. So when you look online for domain records, related information, you'll often see the word propagation pop up. And that's not a way we use in everyday English. So what exactly is domain record propagation and why is it important? So in general, whenever you make updates to your domain records, it will take time for those updates to reflect all around the world. And this is because, as we mentioned earlier, domain records are cached. Each record has a time to leave value. And while that time to leave value is still active, the DNS resolver and different servers won't go looking for the new information. So this means, even if you update your records, you still have to wait for the time to leave value to expire before people come looking for your new records. And that's why domain records take time to update. Now coming back to this diagram here, where exactly does caching happen? It actually happens in at least five locations. So inside your computer browser, your browser caches IP addresses, and then your operating system also caches IP addresses. So sometimes your computer won't even connect to the DNS resolver. If you've looked up an IP address recently and the time to leave value is still current, then your computer will skip connecting with the DNS resolver and it will use the information it already has stored. But beyond that, the DNS resolver also caches information, the TLD name server also caches information, and the authoritative name server caches information as well. So that is at least five locations, your domain records are cached. And for example, if your domain record has a four hour time to leave value, then in an extreme case, it will be at least 20 hours, almost a full day before my computer accesses the newest current information. So the information can be cached in more locations. So this is just a minimum. But hopefully this gives you an idea of why it takes time for domain records to update. So sometimes you've updated your domain records and you expect different services to start working, but they're not. And so you want to check, well, has the domain, has the propagation completed? Have the updates completed gone around the whole world? In general, in tech support, we usually say wait up to 72 hours for your domain updates to reflect all over the world. So 72 hours is three days. If you make any domain record updates, sometimes it's just a few hours before the updates are current, but sometimes it can take three days. So just keep that in mind. If you're launching like a new service on your domain, just keep in mind it could take three days once you make the domain changes before people can access those new services. And there are also free services online, free websites online where you can check domain name propagation. So I'll drop that link in the Zoom chat here. One of those is called DNS Checker. And what this does is it looks at different DNS related servers all around the world. It looks up the DNS records for you. If all the servers have the same information, then you can pretty much conclude the propagation has completed. But if different DNS servers around the world have different information, then it means your new information is still propagating to those different servers. And so you have to wait a bit longer for it to happen. And for example, we can look up wordpress.org. And then we can choose which record we want to look at. So for example, let's look at the MX record. Search. And this shows that these green ticks mean all these servers have the same information registered. So it looks like propagation has completed. Wordpress.org hasn't updated its MX records recently. So this is to be expected. But propagation is complete. So James, you asked a question out of curiosity. Where does VPN service reside within this diagram? Where does VPN reside in this diagram? I am going to say here. So a VPN allows you to, in a sense, mask or hide your IP address. So this computer says, what is the IP address for wordpress.org? It's connecting to the DNS resolver. But what it's actually saying is, what is the IP address for wordpress.org? When you have the answer, please send it back to me or this IP address. And so in this request, the computer will actually be sending its own IP address to the DNS resolver. So the DNS resolver knows which and the answer back to. So in this request, your IP address is going to get known by the DNS resolver. So what the VPN does is it stands in the way here. So you make your request to the VPN. Then the VPN connects to the DNS resolver in your place. And so the DNS resolver is only notified of VPN's IP address. And then once the VPN receives the answer, it sends it back to you. So my quick answer is I think it resides right here. But other people with more knowledge might have a better answer for you there. So I hope that helps you, James. All right. So that is the end of our presentation for today. Are there any final questions or comments people want to ask before we conclude this session?   So for example, if I make a request here to, let's say, if I look at the address to a site that is illegal in my country, then the DNS resolver is maintained by people. So they can look into the access records in the DNS resolver, and they can tell who has been accessing what sites. So for example, if a government owns DNS resolvers, they can look at the records to see who in that country is accessing what sites. They can find the record of what sites their country members are looking at. Now, if you want to access a illegal site, then they will be known to whoever has access to the DNS resolver as well. So by using a VPN, you're sort of hiding your identity so that people beyond the VPN don't know who the real inquirer is. I hope that doesn't sound like I'm condoning accessing illegal websites. I'm just saying, in the world, there are people like that who would probably want to hide their identity so that they can access sites without being known that they have. So, yeah, great. All right. Any other questions? Thank you all so much for attending. If you have a question after this session is finished, I've left a link here to my Slack account. The WordPress project has a Slack instance, and if you make an account, you can connect with other WordPress volunteers in the project. So there's a link here to how you can create your Slack account, and then once you create your account, if you click on this link here, you can connect with me personally and you can ask me additional questions even after this session is over. Once this recording is processed, it will be uploaded to WordPress.tv so anybody can look at this recording again. And if you are interested in learning more about WordPress, then please come and access the Learn WordPress website, learn.wordpress.org, where you can find more information about using WordPress. So let me have a quick look here. James, you're back at 3.2 in grade. I'm glad you found this interesting. And William, can we have a lesson on mail service settings like DMARC, et cetera? That's a good idea. Let me make a note to do that in the future. That would be interesting, because email server, yes. And then what to do when issues arise with email? Like if you have your own email address, what can we do when email issues arise? That sounds like a good topic. So let me look into that, and I will schedule it in future. All right, thank you everyone, and I hope you all have a good rest of your day or evening. All right then, bye for now.


the whole story around because the pro is born from interactions with very fast scaling startups and very large enterprises. Hi, this is your host, Martin Parthia. And welcome to another episode here for Let's Talk. And today we have with us once again, Lukas Tintli, CEO of Love Lab. Lukas, good to see you after a long time. Yeah, hi Swapno. Good seeing you again. Thanks for having me on today. It's my pleasure to of course host you again. And today we are going to talk about Vcluster Pro. Talk a bit about the pro in the name Vcluster. There's so many people excited about our open source project Vcluster. You know, there's over 40 million virtual clusters out there. There's some major companies building on top of our solution. There were people speaking at KubeCon about how they were rolling out hundreds and thousands of virtual cluster. A lot of people save a ton of infrastructure costs with virtual clusters, but there are certain things that you cannot do in Vcluster in the, in the, you know, part itself that you're launching to start up a virtual cluster. You need something external. You need kind of a control plane. You need a CRD. You need a management UI, right? You may want to add like audit logging and SSO centralized for all of your Vclusters. So we are thinking, okay, this is something that needs to live outside of Vcluster, but it needs to be connected with Vcluster. And then there are certain things in the Vcluster core itself in the distribution, the Vcluster distro where people just are demanding more security, guardrails, more performance, optimized features and very, very enterprise focused features. So we were thinking about creating a commercial offering around it. And yeah, we're announcing that right now with Vcluster Pro. Can you also talk about when we look at this pro version? Because sometimes what happened a lot of, you know, when you do come in the enterprise editions, you are working with a company because they had the pain point that you had this and solves. So can you elaborate a bit on if there is any design partner or customer for Vcluster Pro? The whole story around Vcluster Pro is born from interactions with very fast scaling startups and very large enterprises. Most of the folks that we engaged with in the pilot phase were either like, you know, Global Fortune 500 companies or really, really quickly growing startups. One company in particular that was an amazing design partner for us was CoreWeave. CoreWeave is a cloud provider that is focused on GPUs. They're really shipping the next wave of, you know, Nvidia GPUs for AI workloads to a massive amount of people at this point. They're based in New York City and they have, you know, and they build an incredible product to power these AI workloads. A lot of these startups building on AI right now are running on top of CoreWeave. And, you know, you may have seen like OpenAI's engineering blog. Everything they do is based on Kubernetes, right? So a lot of these AI companies are banking heavily on Kubernetes. They need a lot of Kubernetes power. So CoreWeave was looking to partner with a company that can help them scale Kubernetes beyond the limits of what you can do with physical clusters. And then virtual clusters was a perfect solution. So they were a very early design partner for us and we're super excited that we, you know, that they give us the permission to also talk about this case. And yeah, we also have a joint KubeCon talk that will discuss how in detail they're using Vcluster and Vcluster Pro under the hood to deliver GPUs to their customers with Kubernetes. Pro will be serving a much larger, you know, customer base there. Can you talk about how and where does Vcluster Pro fit in a company's cloud native or infrastructure stack? Yeah, absolutely. So if you're running more than just a couple of virtual clusters, then you probably want to look into Vcluster Pro. Most people that we engage with today, they're thinking in the numbers of like 100 plus virtual clusters. And then really the management and the security controls around so many virtual clusters is a big focus as well as the, you know, resource consumption and performance of these virtual clusters. One very exciting thing we're doing in Vcluster Pro, for example, is we're pulling CoreDNS which was running alongside each of your Vclusters. We pull it inside of Vcluster and ship it directly with Vcluster in a security hardened container image. That means we can, instead of launching two pods, we just launch one. So that's obviously a lot more efficient. It stands up quicker. You have less pieces to manage, right? And essentially we make this part of our promise to you that we're kind of obviously updating this, looking at, you know, any patch releases, feature releases coming out and really pushing out CoreDNS joined with Vcluster rather than as a separate DNS solution for each Vcluster. And then on top of that, there's a lot of like management functionality that people are profiting from. So if you are setting up authentication for each one of your virtual clusters individually, that becomes very tedious when you have, you know, 100 plus virtual clusters and different teams and users using them. So with Vcluster Pro, you launch a management UI and you have a management CLI that will essentially allow your engineers to access these Vclusters via their SSO. You have audit logging for any interactions that they do inside their virtual clusters and a lot more. And one feature in particular that's important for the security perspective is, you know, typically when you launch a Vcluster, the Vcluster pod itself, alongside with the applications that you launch in the Vcluster, typically run in the same namespace, in the same Kubernetes cluster. But we launched a feature in Vcluster Pro called isolated control plane that allows you to run the Vcluster pod, the control plane of the Vcluster in one Kubernetes cluster and then the tenant workloads of your engineers that are working in that Vcluster in another Kubernetes cluster. That means when you have hundreds of Kubernetes, hundreds of virtual clusters, you can have one cluster that manages all of your virtual clusters control planes and nobody can touch it and launch any other workloads in this cluster, which makes it much more stable, much more secure.  You can upgrade them. You can have like rolling upgrade windows, right? There's a lot of things you can do with centralizing these control planes and then your workloads, they run in separate clusters so they can't reach the control plane unless through the regular API calls, right? And that's super valuable from a security perspective as well. How easy or difficult it is to work between, you know, the community version, which is Vcluster open source project and Vcluster Pro. We made the focus of this initial release to make it as easy as possible for people to get started with Vcluster Pro and explore it. So if you already have the Vcluster CLI installed, well, you're ready to go. The only thing you need to run is the command Vcluster Pro start and it's going to fire up Vcluster Pro in your cluster, which is a centralized control plane for all your virtual clusters and then essentially it immediately detects all these virtual clusters and then you can import them into Pro. That means you upgrade them technically, right? Because these Vclusters, they run their separate core DNS, right? And they don't have these features enabled like as their control plane. There's a couple of other security and performance features that are not available in the open source. If you are opening up the dashboard or you're running the command Vcluster import with one command, you can essentially turn a Vcluster into a Pro distro Vcluster and it couldn't be easier than that. And we also have the functionality to revert things back and give you a smooth path back to the open source. If Vcluster Pro is just something you were curious about and just wanted to look into that, but we're trying to keep them as compatible as possible and keep the experience as much the same as possible. So you have a very, very smooth transition. You're essentially running Vcluster Pro start and then you're running Vcluster create and now you're creating a Pro Vcluster instead of an open source one. Very, very smooth transition. Same CLI, same dox link, right? Obviously we show you which of the pages focus on Pro and which focus on the open source piece of the project, but we really want to make it a very integrated experience to not confuse things between the commercial Vcluster Pro and the open source version that's available. Talk a bit about the benefits and use cases for Vcluster Pro, not just Vcluster. Yeah, so I think anyone who wants to enable self-service for virtual clusters and who wants to run virtual clusters at scale in a very secure way, they're probably going to look into Vcluster Pro for CoreV, for example, right? They obviously, they're cloud provider, right? So security is of utmost importance for these guys, right? If you're using Vcluster for internal use cases, obviously security is a priority as well, but they're dealing with other people's workloads, right? With three, five different clusters, right? Running alongside each other on the same host cluster and they need to isolate them, right? They need to make sure that obviously customers can cross boundaries, right? And they're locked into the Vcluster because the Pro makes it incredibly easy and also it helps you with the CRD, right? You have a control on a CRD. Vcluster open source is just a help chart. So there's not a lot of lifecycle management. We all know that upgrading help charts, there's a lot of things that get you wrong when you do that. If you have a controller in a CRD, then you have a Vcluster object in Kubernetes now and that object is managed by our software that makes sure you can smoothly upgrade them. You can rollback changes, right? You can see which Vcluster is behind and it's a security patch, right? You can version and create templates for these individual Vclusters to say like, hey, this is our standard Vcluster with Argo CD batteries loaded, right? And if someone in the company needs that, boom, just instantiate the template and Argo is already running in there with the version and with the security constraints that you put in place for that setup. And that makes it really great for self-service. So if you're looking to make Vcluster available internally, that's a really great solution. If you're like CoreWeave in your cloud provider and you're literally spinning up Vclusters for other people or launch your Argo application side of it and then give Argo to your customers, that's another really great use case. So we typically see the internal use case, multi-tenancy for Kubernetes for internal use to reduce cost, right? Not to have so many clusters around, right? That's a lot of the reasons why people switch over to Vclusters instead of Vclusters. And then we see the production use case where companies like CoreWeave want to achieve multi-tenancy to host their own software or in this case, even cloud infrastructure that needs to be isolated on the Kubernetes level for their different customers. If you look at this space, the fact is that cloud native Kubernetes ecosystem, it's very like overall, maybe if you look at the CNC of LandScape, so many logos of their complexity is there and it is going to stay there. That is the fact that complexity is not going to go away. What we have to do is to make it easier for customers to deal with this complexity. There are a lot of players who offer managed Kubernetes solutions. They are known as managed Kubernetes providers. Even Google, with the JK Enterprise, they are trying to make it easier to kind of manage fleet of clusters. Do you compete with folks like Google or just talk a bit about, of course, this is a market where there will be a mix of solutions for folks who pick and choose whichever work for them. They will even mix two different vendors. But what I want to understand is that how do you differentiate yourself from some of these players and on what level you compete with them? We're glad that we found a niche with virtual clusters that only we are serving at this point. There are a couple of smaller companies that also have integrated our open source vcluster, but they're essentially relying purely on what's available in the open source. All these innovations that we put in vcluster pro, for example, in the past, this is a project that's been going on for like over nine months internally. There's so much innovation going in this as well that if you're looking into vcluster, it's the obvious choice to go with the makers of vcluster, right, with the inventors of the technology, with the ones that have the deep knowledge and really the deep experience on how to run these things for security related use cases or for large scale or really that enterprise environment and people trust us, right? They saw our open source, they saw the quality we put into vcluster and they know that vcluster pro and anything we add on top on the commercial side has that same level of sophistication and reliability that they can trust. I think with regards to competition, obviously there's offerings like EKS and GKE that make it very easy for you to create a Kubernetes cluster and we are complementary to them. You cannot run a vcluster without a real cluster, right? So ultimately, you've got to have an EKS cluster and then you launch five or 10 or 100 vclusters on top of it, right? So it's not like you won't need EKS, you will still need the nodes, the VMs that power that cluster, right? We're all going to pay the AWS tax ultimately, right? That's no way to do this without a cloud provider like CoreWeave or like AWS. And the great thing is, and you can see that with us partnering with CoreWeave, we're not really competitive to them. We actually drive more people towards cloud and towards spinning up more Kubernetes workloads because we make these clusters more cost-effective and because we make these clusters easier to scale and manage, right? Because managing 500 EKS clusters is really, really hard. Managing three of them and then having dynamic, ephemeral and non-ephemeral virtual clusters running on top of it is so much easier and that's why a lot of people go down that route. Of course, you folks keep working on new projects. A lot of things that you cannot talk officially at this point of camera, CubeCon is coming up. So we will hear a lot of things there, but if you can just get a glimpse, what are the things that loft is working on these days? Yeah, we launched another open source project, believe it or not, VCluster was a hit, right? We started it two and a half years ago and now we launched another project about a half a year ago called DevPod and that keeps us busy as well. It's like in the early stages of the hype cycle. It's another very exciting thing to work on. It's super, super early, right? Like we're very far away from anything like commercialization of the project or anything like that. It's really more like an exploration, but it's the massive fraction that was trending on Hacker News. That was like the day we launched it and it became trending on Hacker News. 60,000 people started using it day one, right? That was amazing to see and we got so much positive response in terms of like, oh, we've been waiting on like a GitHub code spaces, open source alternative, right? We've been starting this little Python project on the side to kind of emulate. It's great that you have this project out there and you open source it. I think there's a lot of really interesting stuff going on in the DevPod space as well. And I'm sure like 2024, we're going to have some really exciting announcements in that direction as well. But obviously for KubeCon, we are heavily focusing on the cluster because that's very dear to our heart and to our Kubernetes community. And it has so many exciting folks out there who are like just, you know, have so many good use cases for because there's so much untapped potential still here. We've just recently learned people are using it for internal workshops and e-learning and that's even things that we haven't even, you know, like we've been focusing so much on like multi-tenancy internal platforms, production multi-tenancy, right? That we haven't even tapped into like learning experience yet. So I think on both of these, you know, I guess we're a multi-product company now but we definitely drive both of these projects forward and I think there's a lot more exciting, you know, stuff to come. Lukas, thank you so much for taking time out today and walk us through, you know, the whole evolution of B cluster Pro, how it came to exist and the importance of customers that they play in this, the importance of the role that customers play in this space in kind of emergence of some new product, which actually end up helping everybody, you know. So, you know, rising tide lift everybody. That's what the saying goes. So thank you for all those insights and as usual, I look forward to chat with you again soon at KubeCon. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you.


What's up YouTube Dylan to be progressive soccer training here are some individual highlights from my recent futsal match Progressive futsal club versus United 88 We won the match four goals one assists. It was a good game. Check it out Please let me know what you think make sure you like and share. Let's go Sunday November 18th Wanna play some futsal played against United 88 this is actually A group of guys that I grew up playing with so I know these guys really well Last time we played them was last time you play them was a semi-finals last year Which was a good game actually scored four goals in that game So I guess you gotta get five tonight, but we're going out for the win number one I Hurt my ankle in the last game if you guys watched the video you may have seen I was blocking a shot and my ankle Inverted so it was swollen and it was a little tender I wasn't able to train the way I want it to all week This is actually gonna be the first time I'm really pushing it, but again, I'm not being stupid I'm confident that it's gonna be fine. Just unfortunately I haven't been able to train the way I want it to all week So when that happens you don't have physical sharpness that you may want What's so important is that you have that mental sharpness So even if my body's not going to go as quick as it normally does because I'm just I haven't really played trained properly in a week My mind has to be on point So I'm really gonna focus on just mentally being quick with my play with with my touches Mentally sharp with my decisions. So I'm going out for the win Hope you guys enjoy the video if you do please remember to like and share Comment below. Let me know what you think and make sure you subscribe hit that bell notification So you never miss a video I'm some good players, but we we played really well defended well pulls myself My man Luke on the camera. Even though I didn't play all week. I felt pretty fresh So maybe it was a goal so I need to arrest it But happy with the win if you guys enjoyed the video, please comment If you want to hate on me, please click on my website for exclusive training


Okay, get those thumbs ready because we're going to do thumbs up when you hear rhymes and thumbs down. And hey, how about today when we have our thumbs up, let's do a smiling face too. Good. I see on hill smile. Oh, there's the knees. Yes, Valeria, when we put them down, we're going to make our frowny face because they don't rhyme. Okay. Are you ready? Okay, put them behind your back. Here we go. My turn, your turn. Mouse two. Good job. My turn, your turn. Look, sock. Yay, they do rhyme. Good for you. Okay, ready? Up, pup. Yay. Good job. Crichton, are you hearing those rhymes? Did you hear those rhymes? Oh, listen carefully.  Oh, well maybe listen to this one. Down, frown. Down, frown. Do those? Yes. Yes. One more. Ran, tan. Yes. Yes. Good for you.


Okay, we're gonna go really fast. Hopefully you guys can handle really fast talking because that's how we're gonna do this. We have about 40 slides to cover in five minutes. I'm gonna tell you a little bit about my Phoenix project, one developer's evolutionary journey. And it actually starts with this fellow, Gene Kim. If you do not know who Gene Kim is, I'm actually kind of amazed by that because Gene is everywhere. He's at conferences speaking all the time and he specifically spoke at a conference that I also spoke at. It was actually kind of crazy. We're both keynote speakers and we had people, I specifically had people come up to me at the end of my presentation, maybe a few hours later, they said, we loved your presentation. I said, did you like the demo? And they're like, we didn't actually see a demo, but I'm gonna buy the book. And I realized, oh, they're not talking about me. And I had to think, what was it? I didn't have my glasses on at the time, so maybe that was part of the confusion. But maybe I had to kind of think about what was the confusion here? He's an entrepreneur, kind of the king of DevOps, if you will. I'm specifically a developer advocate. I've been at Red Hat 10 years. So we didn't really have that similarity. He founded the DevOps Enterprise Summit. I founded DevNexus Developer Conference out of Atlanta. So we both have founded conferences for technologists. He's a world famous author. And I pretty much have authored some tweets. So again, not much in common there, but then I finally figured out why did people confuse us? And it's because he has a goatee and I have a goatee. So that's what it is. So apparently we're twinsies with facial hair, but that's awesome. But what we both have is a passion specifically for the hands-on technologists. So for those developers that craft awesome code, for those infrastructure operators that actually spin out amazing infrastructure, the people who put hands to keyboard matter a lot to me, and I know they also matter a lot to Gene in particular. And so let's talk about that just briefly, because we're gonna talk about DevOps and we're gonna walk you through a very fast project.  Yeah, that doesn't work anymore. And we basically have to have developers and operators working hand in hand in a harmonious way, working together to build better business value faster. That is the new world we're about to enter and while not every organization is there yet, that is the world we're going through. So let me tell you quickly about my Phoenix project. It was actually based in Phoenix, Arizona, funny enough. We were gonna take an old character-based user interface system that was not making them competitive. We're gonna replace it with a web-based system, with a customer self-service portal. We were gonna basically do all of that, go directly to production, no migration, no actual cut-over of any sort. Just one morning the workers would show up on a brand new system, and we were gonna put $5 million at risk when we did this. And by the way, the time box was fixed, the requirements were fixed, and all this had to be done in an incredibly short timeframe. I didn't mention to the boss they should read Mythical Man Month and he had not, but I said, not only do we have to work overtime, we actually won't sleep. And his famous quote was, great, you can sleep when you're dead. So I took that to heart. We basically saddled up, we basically pulled the best engineers I could find inside the company, we hired some additional folks, we basically grouped all our cubicles together, because when we did a stand-up meeting, I actually jumped up on the desk of the top cubicle and basically said, what's blocking you? Where are you challenged? Can you help her?  It was ugly. Point of sale transactions were now done by hand, they were taking receipts by hand, we actually locked people out of the building because we had third party integration that actually did door locks too. So it was bad. But the one thing that we knew, in order to get out of this, we had to work together and we basically had to bring Dov, Ops, DBAs, the business and the executive team and we had to work together. We eventually did solve it and I'll keep on moving because we got to move fast, but we did eventually solve it over the course of the next three months rolling out patches almost every night, doing bug fix Saturdays, but let's kind of keep going, okay? All right, so this is your evolutionary journey. You basically have to have self-service on-demand infrastructure as code that's API driven where the developer and whomever needs a resource can get to it instantly. Shouldn't take three weeks to get a VM. You have to embrace this concept of Dov and Ops. It's Dov Ops together as well as security and business and all the other key players in the software architecture. You got to think about CICD and you got to think about your specific deployment pipeline. You got to think about your automation when it comes to Publix, Chef or Ansible. You also need to think about what's coming in the world of containers and microservices and then you can be the GitHub Unicorn and the Mythical Beast. Okay, do read these books. If you've not read them yet, you must. You must read these books. It's the Phoenix Project by Gene Kim. It's also the new book that just shipped about a week and a half ago, the DevOps Handbook. Just read them again and again, actually. And then the last thing I'll leave you with here is by a fellow named Victor Frankel, incredibly inspirational and Nazi concentration camp survivor. If you can no longer change a situation, you must change yourself.  If you can't change anything else, you can change your attitude. Thank you very much.


I'm Keptin Katie Copp, I'm the Brigade Psychologist for the 4th Brigade Combat Team in 4th Infantry Division. I'm a clinical psychologist and part of the Combat Stress Control Team here. Hank is a three-year-old Boston Terrier. He came here with me essentially to help as part of the Combat Stress Team. He is a great morale booster for a lot of the soldiers. I've had so many people say that he just reminds them of their dogs at home that he's really made their day by them having the chance to pet them. A lot of them comment on the fact that he's one of the only dogs that they can actually legally pet around here and feel safe doing so. One of the things he helps me do is really break the ice with soldiers because my job is to travel to a lot of different locations and talk to soldiers either after critical incidents or just on a regular battlefield circulation.  But when I have Hank with me, you know, it's a perfect icebreaker, so they want to pet him, they want to tell me about their pets at home, we start talking about their families. Like, it's just a really great way for me to get out and meet soldiers and stuff, and he really helps with that. My name is Sergeant Naumisa El Campos. I'm an infantryman. Everybody in this fog knows about Hank. Every time, you know, after somebody comes home turning up patrol, just seeing a dog, you always want to play with it. So it really, really does help with morale. I wish every combat stress control provider had a therapy dog just so that they would have the experience I do of people actually being excited to see us instead of scared, like, the shrinks in town, you know, avoiding us in that way. So, yeah, I mean, as far as making our jobs easier and then just the benefit that he provides to them, I think it's invaluable. Like, I can't even begin to describe the number of ways that it's had a positive impact on the soldiers in Fourth Brigade already, and we're only a month into this.


from Sean Cuddy. Now you're welcome back to the program. If you've just joined us it's David taking you through until five o'clock here on the program and lots to come up between now and then and I was walking through Belfast Airport the last day when who did he meet but Sean Cuddy and now here he is in the studio beside me. Sean, good to see you. How are you David? Nice to be here. Well I couldn't believe it. I was sitting, well I wasn't even looking around me. I was on the phone to Sean chatting to him and I was just I was actually talking about you. I had just said to Sean on the phone I think David James changed the car and the next thing you walked over and put out your hand I said talk about deja vu. I know. Isn't it a good job you weren't saying any bad things about me? It was a good job I wasn't saying, well we weren't. Like you normally are. No, she didn't know. Sean, it's great to have you in the studio.   I couldn't believe it when they contacted me last October and wanted to do something. I had to sort of pinch myself but it was lovely and you know I have to thank so much the charities and you know the different people that nominated me for it and it was a lovely day for myself and the family and for all our friends and we had a lovely day in Lifford and to the councillors and to the Lord Mayor and everybody at Donegal County Council was a lovely day and you know it's unusual Dave because as you know yourself you're the same as myself you're up public speaking you're chatting and you're doing your music all the time but when something like that happens it's a bit different you know it's a little bit different and it was nice to be recognized for because we all do so much for charity and we do so much for things like that and it's it was lovely I really really enjoyed it. It's somewhat of a humbling experience. It is really you know and I sat back and I listened to you know people are sort of saying something about you and thinking well you know it I really was so pleased because when the Covid came and all that sort of thing and no more than yourself and myself we didn't know what to do and I was very fortunate where I started working up in Brentwood in the Alzheimer's unit and I had a lovely time and the staff were so good and John Kelly and Maggie and Linda and and all them people that were there they were so good to me and you know when you're working in the music and all of a sudden you're back working in a nine to five job now it is 12 hour shifts but I loved it and it was lovely to I suppose it grounded me yeah and it made me see reality back again because I did work on a nursing home many many years ago before I put the band on the road yes I worked for the nuns in Mount Malik in County Leash in the geriatric hospital yes when I left school because I had intended to do nursing that was what a male nursing yeah but then I couldn't train in Ireland at that time you had to go away to the UK okay when I heard that I wasn't going to leave home here me now and we're traveling all over the place but to go back and do something like that it was a very humbling experience and I was glad and delighted I was able to do it and I have to say this and I've said it all the time people that work in the health profession and cares especially and people that work so hard to look after people they're not appreciated enough totally totally agree with that honest to God David it's unspeakable the words that you do but listen Sean well done on on that lovely acknowledgement from our County Council and it's not only for your services to music but your services to charity brilliant just a lovely well-deserved recognition brilliant but now Sean you are getting ready to kick off your big weekend which starts when does it start Friday kicks off on Friday night the 12th at the Allingham in Bondorn yes and we're there straight through until Tuesday really looking forward as I do this is our 30 third weekend wow I was the first to actually start bringing over people here many many moons ago our first weekend we had at the Montecou Hotel in Port Lige yes and then we had it there for about two or three years then we went to Kildare we went to County Meet and we've been in Donegal ever since yeah and for the last number of years I've been delighted to be part of it oh yeah you've always been there maybe the last five or six years six years is it six years wow and you know yeah the likes of yourself was there to give me an opportunity back when I you know I didn't have many opportunities to perform on larger scale games so it's always lovely and I always really really look forward to it you have a big schedule across the course of the weekend which we'll chat about but this come in Monday which is the 15th of October or 15th of April sorry October 15th of April in the Allingham there's a big concert and the artist appearing on the night is the lovely Susan McCann Susan a great singer and Patrick love her Patrick Feeney he'll be there to bring the house down with his wonderful ballads Declan Ernie he'll be there to lift the roof of the place with his unmatchable energy and what a vocalist Dez Willoughby is Dez is a tenor and a lovely fellow and Dez is a tenor and I'm a fiver and I'll be there as well Gary Gamble will be there me as I said plus Barry Doyle so that's going to be a great concert I'm really look I always love I love the concert and our dinner dance is a wonderful night as well yes with a galonate on the Sunday night but listen I love the weekend from start to finish and you know touching back on I mean I know you you came into me and we did concerts when you started you would only been the business remember my my son was at a wedding in Harvest Point one night and he had seen you there I think you're doing a spot or something you've done many many moons ago now you're only a young lad at the time and I remember you starting to come on the weekend but I also introduced Owen Mack to this area Nathan Carter uh different people were the first to get spots on my weekend and introduce them to my Scottish and English people and our local people from the midlands and from all over so you know it's lovely to be able to do that and I love bringing in new people I you know I have a great opportunity doing glory here and doing things like that where you meet these new artists and I'd say to them come up and sing a song on one of the nights it's a great opportunity for them to get in front of a different crowd for sure no that's not a way exactly but you know my weekend I couldn't do it without the support you know of artists like yourself the support of Sheila my final secretary for the last she's been working with me now for 35 years Sheila Graham and she's great and she puts the team together and it's it's a hard hard job as you know and she's at the Allingham now today she's checked in from today and she'll be there till next Wednesday and looks after everything so all I have to do is turn up and sing yes and make sure the band's okay and everything like that so it's great when you have a good team behind you but Sean whenever you're there you work so hard because you're never off the batter you're running by chatting to people the full time and it really is a great weekend now the weekend is sold out but uh you do have the option to go along and most nights tell us the schedule for the week yes on Friday night we kick off and you know people are welcome to come into all the shows Friday Saturday you do need a ticket for the Sunday night because it's the dinner dance concert there's tickets available at the hotel reception come along you're very welcome but on Friday night we kick off now I before I go any further I have to say our concert will not be the same this year without poor Seamus McGee Seamus McGee had been on my concert for the last 22 years that we've been at the tannery what a great came along every year he was a lovely singer and a lovely guy for sure and we're going to miss Seamus this year and you know I want to extend my sympathy to to the family and to all the McGee family we will miss him and a lot of my fans have even commented on that so we will be thinking about Seamus on the Monday night such a lovely man I remember meeting Seamus McGee for the first time down at a show in carlo in 1988 Seamus was doing an awards night and him and I have been very good friends and he was very friendly with my wife Roberta and Claire for many years because they used to go and support Seamus all the time so listen I will be thinking of Seamus at the weekend but anyway Seamus or David will move on on Friday night we kick off Curtis McGee opens the show and Curtis will be on from about a quarter to nine straight through till about 10 10 30 and then we have Alistair Spence is coming in to sing a couple of songs on the night and then Tim Divine will be on with me and myself on Friday night on Saturday afternoon by the way if anybody would like to come in to our afternoon show on the Saturday we have Eddie Gallagher is there on Saturday afternoon and then on Saturday night Alistair Coyle will be kicking off the first part of the show and then we have Richie Remo and we have a change of poor Norman Borland can't come Norman hasn't been very well yes and John Glenn is coming in in Norman's in Norman's place yes that's on Saturday night and then on Sunday after Sunday afternoon there's nothing on because we have to get ready for the gala ball and then Sunday Sunday night is our dinner dance and we have the singing chef on with us and we have a celebrity special guest every year and you never know I never know because Sheila says if she tells me I tell everybody so I can't hold my water so I don't know until I walk out to the reception who I'm meeting yeah so it we've had or we've had Margot we've had Daniel we've had Louise Morrissey we've had Trudy Lawler we've had Cornel Gallon yeah we've had so many people over the years so big surprise for me on Sunday night then on Monday night Monday afternoon do you know Monday afternoon who have we oh it's me self on Monday afternoon with John McHugh we're doing a bit of music for the fans and then on Monday night then is our gala concert so we're really looking forward to the whole weekend yes and tickets available for the hotel from the hotel reception yes big concert and you'll be available to pay on the door as well but it's always a huge night listen Sean it's great to catch up with you as it always is just before we let you go please say a big hello to Sean Cuddy can't wait for the weekend from Anthony Downey who's working hard today and asks Sean will John McHugh be in the band with him well that's like asking isn't going to be there without deck exactly John John has been associated with me now for over 30 years so we have John on stage and we have Brian Kerrigan on keyboards Jonathan Milligan on steel and lead guitar and Gary Porter on drums so we've a great lineup of the band couldn't be better before I go David I know I'll thank you for bringing me in today but I will have to say hello to some people Isaac Porter is in Leicester County General Hospital that's Benny's mum oh okay and she's not in the best of form and I just want to say hello to her I know she's tuned in at the moment yes and also to Margaret Breslin that's my sister-in-law and Margaret's not very well at the minute from Port Hall and I want to wish them all all the best and looking forward to seeing now I'm not going to go into names mentioning people but everybody that knows me and Donegal and I'm looking forward to seeing everybody on or some part of the weekend anyway and I'll have to say hello to all the staff down in home instead my wife works down there Roberta so I have to say hello to all the gang down there they tune into home highland all the time and David thanks for having me in and to everybody that knows me come along you're all very very welcome looking forward to seeing you all it's going to be a great one Sean please say good luck to Sean for the weekend hope all goes well lots of love from Ann Doherty and a few more Texas in there too it's set to be a great weekend the Allingham Arms in Bundorn is where it's happening the one and only Mr Sean