Guest Host: Kelsey Hightower - Beyond Pipelines: Infrastructure As Data

2025-11-05

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Is your Git repo really the source of truth for infrastructure - or just a suggestion?Guest host Kelsey Hightower sits down with Cory O’Daniel to unpack why many teams hit dead ends with CI/CD for provisioning, where GitOps struggles with drift, and when TicketOps helps or hurts. They explore a different model: infrastructure as data with typed contracts, shared artifacts, and workflows that embed policy, validation, and upgrades from the start. You’ll hear practical ways to reduce cognitive load for developers while giving operations reliable control and...

Is your Git repo really the source of truth for infrastructure - or just a suggestion?

Guest host Kelsey Hightower sits down with Cory O’Daniel to unpack why many teams hit dead ends with CI/CD for provisioning, where GitOps struggles with drift, and when TicketOps helps or hurts. They explore a different model: infrastructure as data with typed contracts, shared artifacts, and workflows that embed policy, validation, and upgrades from the start. You’ll hear practical ways to reduce cognitive load for developers while giving operations reliable control and better day‑2 levers.

You’ll learn:

Why pipelines are a poor fit for infra provisioning and what to do instead
How to reason about drift as a three‑way merge with reality
When reconciliation helps, and when it breaks production firefights
How typed contracts and artifacts connect modules and teams without glue scripts
Ways to present safer self‑service without requiring everyone to learn Terraform
A simple mental model for treating TicketOps as a surface, not the workflow

Guest Host: Kelsey Hightower

Kelsey has worn every hat possible throughout his career in tech and enjoys leadership roles focused on making things happen and shipping software. Prior to his retirement, he was a Distinguished Engineer at Google, where he worked on Google Cloud Platform. He is a strong open source advocate with a focus on building great software as well as great communities around them. He is also an accomplished author and keynote speaker with a knack for demystifying complex topics, doing live demos and enabling others to succeed. When he is not writing code, you can catch him giving technical workshops covering everything from programming to system administration.

Guest: Cory O'Daniel, CEO and Co-Founder of Massdriver and Co-Founder of OpenTofu

Cory has been a software architect and engineer for 20 years, leading up to the founding of MassDriver. He's also a husband and the father of two kids.

Cory O'Daniel, X

Cory O'Daniel, Medium

Massdriver, website

Massdriver, GitHub

Massdriver, Youtube

Open Tofu

Links to interesting things from this episode: