26 resources
Worth exploring
Articles, talks and websites that go deeper than this catalog. Each one also appears on the pages of the concepts and technologies it covers.
The big picture
WebsiteCNCF Cloud Native LandscapeCloud Native Computing FoundationA map of more than 1,000 cloud-native projects and products, each placed in one category, from container runtimes to observability. Use it to see what exists for a job before you pick. It generally leaves out commercial editions of open-source software.
Developer tools
Video· August 2025Advanced Context Engineering for AgentsDex Horthy (HumanLayer), YC Root AccessA talk on getting coding agents to work in large, existing codebases by keeping their context small and correct: split work into research, plan and implement, compact each step into a Markdown file, keep context use around 40–60%, and spend human review on the research and plan rather than every line of code. Summarised here from the written version in HumanLayer’s GitHub repository, which also notes where the approach failed; HumanLayer builds tools for this workflow.AI coding agentsClaude Code
Compute
Article· August 2025lambda to eks pod migrationAWS re:Post community questionA short Q&A on what replaces Lambda’s built-in triggers, SQS polling and scaling when functions move to EKS pods. The useful answer points to KEDA (with Karpenter) for scaling pods on queue depth; the longer answer is an unreviewed AI-generated checklist from AWS’s own assistant, so treat it as a starting list, not guidance.Serverless functions (FaaS)Container orchestrationAutoscalingAWS LambdaAmazon EKSKubernetesAmazon SQSAmazon EventBridgeKarpenter
Article· January 2025How to create Kubernetes Jobs from AWS LambdaCloudfleetA tutorial for a Lambda function (a Bash custom runtime that downloads
kubectl on start) that runs kubectl commands against a cluster, used here to launch a Kubernetes Job in response to an event. It is written for Cloudfleet’s own managed Kubernetes and its CLI, so the authentication steps need changing for other clusters, and passing raw kubectl arguments in an event is fine for a demo but too permissive for production.Serverless functions (FaaS)Container orchestrationAWS LambdaKubernetesArticle· August 2023Using Kubernetes with AWS Lambda: Scaling Up Your Serverless ApplicationsRohit Ghumare, LumigoA vendor blog post whose concrete part is a walkthrough of creating a Lambda function from an EKS cluster with the AWS Controllers for Kubernetes (ACK) Lambda controller, closely following AWS’s own 2022 tutorial. The benefits section is vague and blurs what Kubernetes and Lambda each do, and the post ends with a pitch for Lumigo’s observability product.Serverless functions (FaaS)Container orchestrationAWS LambdaKubernetesAmazon EKSAmazon S3
Article· March 2023The Great Lambda Migration to Kubernetes Jobs: a Journey in Three PartsLiav Yona, InfoQA first-person account of how Firefly moved event-driven work off Lambda (after hitting the 15-minute timeout), briefly onto ECS, and finally onto Kubernetes Jobs on EKS, with practical notes on reusing container images, swapping an IAM trust policy for EKS OIDC, moving environment variables into ConfigMaps and a blue/green cutover. It is one company’s story with few numbers, and the author’s employer sells infrastructure-as-code tooling, which colours the emphasis on IaC.Serverless functions (FaaS)Container orchestrationContainersAWS LambdaKubernetesAmazon EKSTerraformAWS IAM
Article· August 2022Deploying AWS Lambda functions using AWS Controllers for Kubernetes (ACK)Rajdeep Saha, AWS Compute BlogAWS’s step-by-step tutorial for managing Lambda functions as Kubernetes custom resources: install the ACK Lambda controller in EKS, give it IAM permissions through IRSA, then
kubectl apply a Function manifest that points at code in S3. It explains why you might (one GitOps and RBAC model for pods and functions) but, being AWS’s own post, not the drawbacks.Serverless functions (FaaS)Container orchestrationInfrastructure as codeAWS LambdaAmazon EKSKubernetesAmazon S3AWS IAMArticle· May 2021Spice up Your Kubernetes Environment with AWS LambdaLiav Yona, MediumShows how a Lambda function triggered by SQS or SNS can forward events to an internal (ClusterIP) service in EKS through the Kubernetes API server’s service proxy, using IAM-to-RBAC mapping instead of exposing an endpoint, with code on GitHub. A clever pattern, but written for 2021-era EKS: it maps the IAM role through the
aws-auth ConfigMap, and it routes application traffic through the cluster’s control plane.Serverless functions (FaaS)Container orchestrationAWS LambdaAmazon EKSKubernetesAWS IAMAmazon SQSArticle· February 2021Alternative to AWS lambda serverless concept in Kubernetes?Stack Overflow question by ajsgA team running everything on Kubernetes asks how to get Lambda-style, per-request scaling for loading AI models from S3. The 2021 answers name Knative, KFServing (now KServe) and Kubeless (since archived), which makes it a quick snapshot of the options rather than an up-to-date guide.Serverless functions (FaaS)Container orchestrationAutoscalingKubernetesAWS LambdaAmazon S3Istio
Article· October 2020Is there a way to containerized a normal AWS Lambda function?Stack Overflow question by Sivvie LimA newcomer asks how to move an SNS-triggered Lambda function into a container on EKS. The answers, from October 2020, point to the
lambci/docker-lambda images (since deprecated in favour of AWS’s official Lambda base images) and to Knative; read it mainly for the question, which is a common one, rather than for current tooling.Serverless functions (FaaS)ContainersAWS LambdaDockerKubernetesAmazon EKSFirecrackerArticleKubernetes in a microVMsmol machines docsThe vendor’s own guide to two ways of combining Kubernetes with microVMs: a containerd shim and
RuntimeClass that start each pod as its own VM (marked experimental, with its known blockers listed), or a whole k3s cluster, through k3d, inside one VM. Useful for the concrete details, such as per-pod overhead, the /dev/kmsg device the kubelet needs and why Docker’s storage must sit on ext4, but written to sell smolvm.MicroVMsContainer orchestrationsmolvmKubernetesK3sArticleUsing Lambda with KubernetesAWS Lambda Developer GuideAWS’s short docs page on managing Lambda functions through the Kubernetes API, with either AWS Controllers for Kubernetes (ACK) or Crossplane, and the use cases for each (reusing RBAC and IAM roles for service accounts, GitOps, tag policies). It covers provisioning only: the functions still run on Lambda, not in your cluster.Serverless functions (FaaS)Container orchestrationInfrastructure as codeAWS LambdaKubernetesAmazon EKS
Messaging
Article· June 2026Durable Queue Workers With Just PostgresFatih Yildiz (mfyz)Starts with the
FOR UPDATE SKIP LOCKED queue, then shows what to add when a job has several steps: Absurd stores each step’s result in Postgres, so a crashed worker resumes from the last checkpoint. The author calls it a fit for small and medium projects, not high volume.Message queuesWorkflow orchestrationPostgreSQLArticle· June 2026Making Postgres Queues ScaleQian Li and Peter Kraft, DBOSHow DBOS got its Postgres-backed queues to 30,000 workflows a second:
SKIP LOCKED, the weaker READ COMMITTED isolation unless a queue needs global limits, partial indexes on waiting rows only, and an index that matches the dequeue order. DBOS wrote it about its own product, but the techniques apply to any Postgres queue.Message queuesWorkflow orchestrationPostgreSQLArticle· April 2026Keeping a Postgres queue healthySimeon Griggs, PlanetScaleWhy a busy queue table fills with dead rows, and how one long query elsewhere can stop vacuum from cleaning them up and slow every dequeue. The diagnosis applies to any Postgres; the fix it ends on, Traffic Control, exists only on PlanetScale.Message queuesPostgreSQLPlanetScaleBackground jobs with a queue
Article· September 2025Understanding Apache FlussJack VanlightlyA long, detailed walk through Fluss internals, reverse-engineered from the code: log tables, primary-key tables that emit changelogs, and tiering to lakehouse tables. The author works at Confluent, which runs Flink but not Fluss, and says so up front.Event streamsLakehousesApache FlussApache FlinkApache Paimon
Article· October 2024Stream Processing With Apache Flink: book notesChris Shumaker, Maker ConsultingOne engineer’s chapter-by-chapter notes on the O’Reilly book by Fabian Hueske and Vasiliki Kalavri, read to understand what owning a Flink job in production involves: state, time, scale and performance. A quick way to decide whether the book is worth reading in full.Stream processingApache Flink
Video· April 2022Queues in PostgreSQLThomas Munro, PostgreSQL committer, at Citus Con 2022A Postgres developer walks through what queue-like workloads do inside the database, and the complications of using Postgres as a job or message queue.Message queuesPostgreSQLBackground jobs with a queue
Databases
Slides· September 2025How and Why Datadog moved from cloud-managed to self-managed PostgresNick Canzoneri, Datadog, at PGConf NYC 2025Slides from a talk on why a company running hundreds of Postgres clusters across several clouds left managed services for its own Postgres platform on Kubernetes, how it moved a whole region, and what got better and worse. The stack is Patroni (with ZooKeeper for leader election), WAL-G backups, a Helm chart rather than an operator, and Temporal workflows for automation. Useful before you weigh RDS-style convenience against running Postgres yourself.Relational databasesPostgreSQLPatroniWAL-GKubernetesTemporalEnvoy
Article· November 2024Kubernetes for databases: weighing the pros and consKate Obiidykhata, Percona, on the CNCF blog (first published on The New Stack)A short, high-level overview of why companies move databases onto Kubernetes (one platform across clouds and data centres, self-service, scaling, built-in failover) and the three ways to get there: a cloud DBaaS, a private DBaaS product, or an internal platform built from operators and monitoring. There is no technical depth or data. It is a CNCF member post by a Percona employee and ends by recommending Percona Everest, so read it as a vendor’s framing of the choice.Relational databasesContainer orchestrationKubernetesPercona Operators
WebsiteDB-EnginesDB-Engines, provided by Redgate SoftwareA directory of hundreds of database systems with their data models, licences and features, which you can compare side by side. Its monthly ranking measures popularity (search results, Google Trends, Stack Overflow questions, job ads, LinkedIn profiles, posts on X), not quality or speed.Relational databasesKey-value storesDocument databasesWide-column storesTime-series databases
WebsiteThe Umbra Database SystemThomas Neumann’s group, Technical University of MunichThe research site for Umbra, the successor to HyPer and the basis of CedarDB: a feature overview and the full publication list with PDFs, from the CIDR 2020 paper “Umbra: A Disk-Based System with In-Memory Performance” onwards. You can try queries in the browser or pull a Docker image, but its terms allow only evaluation, not production use.Relational databasesReal-time analytics databasesCedarDB
Analytics
Article· August 2021What Is a Data Lakehouse and Answers to Other Frequently Asked QuestionsMichael Armbrust, Bharath Gowda, Reynold Xin, Matei Zaharia and Ali Ghodsi, DatabricksDatabricks answers ten questions: how a lakehouse differs from a data lake and a warehouse, how it compares on cost and speed, what governance it supports, and how it relates to a data mesh. Databricks sells a lakehouse, so read it as the case for one.LakehousesData warehousesDatabricks
WebsiteAwesome DuckDBDavid Gasquez and contributors, on GitHubA community-curated list of more than 400 DuckDB links: client APIs, core and community extensions, BI and ETL tools built on DuckDB (grouped by commercial, open core and open source), WebAssembly and SQL clients, plus talks, podcasts, blog posts and books. Use it to find what already exists around DuckDB; entries arrive by pull request with one-line descriptions, so judge each project yourself.DuckDB
Delivery
WebsitePlatform tooling landscapePlatformEngineering.orgA filterable map of tools for building an internal developer platform. Each tool sits in one of five “planes” (developer control, integration and delivery, resource, observability, security) and a category such as IaC, CD pipeline, secrets or developer portal, with a one-line description. Vendors can submit their own tools, so treat it as a list of what exists rather than a ranking.CI/CD pipelinesInfrastructure as codeObservabilitySecrets management
WebsitePlatformEngineering.orgThe Platform Engineering communityA community hub for teams that build internal developer platforms: a blog, a Slack workspace, the PlatformCon conference, courses, and a map of platform tooling.CI/CD pipelinesInfrastructure as code