Aarno Aukia
Partner at VSHN - The DevOps Company
Zürich, Switzerland
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Aarno is a co-founder and partner of VSHN - The DevOps Company in Zürich, Switzerland. He has been working on DevOps and Platform engineering using Kubernetes and open-source software for over ten years.
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Bringing the Cloud to Your Data with Kubernetes and Open Standards
“Move your data to the cloud” has long been treated as a prerequisite for innovation. In regulated industries and sovereign cloud initiatives, this model increasingly breaks down.
In this session, we explore a different approach: decoupling cloud services from cloud location. We demonstrate how Kubernetes and open CNCF standards enable a consistent developer and operator experience while allowing organizations to choose where their data is processed.
The talk introduces an open-source service hub that provisions and operates managed services—databases, messaging systems, reverse proxies, and DevOps tooling—across on-prem, private cloud, and sovereign public cloud environments, all through a unified API.
Data Sovereignty Is Built, Not Bought
For two decades, hyperscalers have claimed that using modern cloud services requires moving all your data into their datacenters, subjecting it to foreign jurisdictions like the US CLOUD Act.
This talk challenges that assumption. We show how cloud-native technologies enable managed cloud services to be delivered where the data already lives: on-premises, in a private cloud, or with trusted public providers.
Using Kubernetes and CNCF projects such as Crossplane, Prometheus, and Grafana, we present a platform model where databases, queues, caches, and DevOps tools are delivered as self-service managed services without data relocation or provider lock-in. Data sovereignty, we argue, is not a contract; it’s an architectural decision.
How we used Crossplane for the things we should not have
Frameworks are meant to be tweaked, that is just a part of being an engineer. Even if a new cloud native, open source framework is exactly what you are attempting to build.
This talk tells the story of what Crossplane is and what we wanted it to be. It highlights the need for the emerging Crossplane V2, and why they are different. It also illustrates a real life story when bending leads to breaking, with losing 230 production databases for a customer during maintenance. The silver lining - we kept the customer, but changed our approach.
DevOps for AI: running LLMs in production with Kubernetes and KubeFlow
Explore the essentials of deploying and managing large language models (LLMs) in production environments using Kubernetes and KubeFlow. As AI and LLMs transition from experimental phases to business-critical applications, this session provides best practices, architectural design insights, and hands-on demonstrations to streamline AI workflows, ensure scalability, and maintain reliability. Ideal for developers and DevOps professionals, this talk will enhance your AI deployment strategies and operational efficiency in real-world business scenarios.
CNCF sandbox project k8up under the hood
Join Aarno for an exclusive under-the-hood exploration of k8up, a CNCF Sandbox project simplifying Kubernetes backups and recovery. Through a technical live demo, discover how k8up seamlessly integrates with Kubernetes clusters, safeguarding critical data assets and automating backups effortlessly. Leveraging the Restic tool for storage, k8up ensures operational excellence in Cloud-native environments. Don't miss this opportunity to unravel the secrets of Kubernetes data resilience with k8up.
Empowering Developers: Building an Application Catalogue with Crossplane
This session features an introduction to platform engineering and a technical demo to help you discover how platform engineering innovations are revolutionizing internal developer platforms. Join us to explore how the open-source CNCF-Project Crossplane enables seamless application catalog construction, empowering teams to streamline development workflows and accelerate innovation. Don't miss this opportunity to see Crossplane and its impact on internal developer platforms and platform engineering.
Servala: The Cloud-Native App Store Your Kubernetes Platform Deserves
What if deploying and operating services on Kubernetes were as easy as browsing an app store? Servala.com makes this a reality. Running in production since 2021 across airgapped enterprise clouds and cloud providers alike. Servala is an open-source cloud-native service hub that has quietly managed over 2000 service instances with 24/7 support and 99.99% SLAs. Built with Docker, Helm, Kubernetes, and Operators like Crossplane, it doesn't just solve Day 1 provisioning—it standardizes Day 2 operations like monitoring, backups, updates, and lifecycle automation. Join us for a deep dive into Servala's architecture, its open API (inspired by Open Service Broker, rebuilt for the cloud-native era), and how it integrates seamlessly with developer portals like Backstage. This is the platform engineering power tool you've been waiting for.
Beyond Day 1: Scaling Internal Developer Platforms with Servala
Developer platforms promise speed, but they scale into chaos without baked-in operations. Servala.com is the missing piece—an open-source service hub built from the ground up to enable Day 1 deployment and Day 2 operations on Kubernetes. With proven use in airgapped enterprise clouds and SMB infrastructure providers, Servala combines Helm charts, Operators, Docker images, and a declarative service model to standardize everything from backups to patching. Compatible with Backstage and offering a modern, cloud-native API for service provisioning, Servala acts as your self-hosted App Store for everything from databases to DevOps tools. Learn how to bring operational maturity to your service catalog without locking into a vendor.
Operators, Helm, and Beyond: Building Composable Services with Servala
Modern Kubernetes platforms need more than just YAML—they need conventions. Servala.com is an open-source service platform that wraps best-of-breed cloud-native tools (Helm, Docker, Crossplane, Kubernetes Operators) into a unified ecosystem for provisioning, monitoring, and maintaining services across any environment, even airgapped ones. It's not just theory: Servala has been in production since 2021, managing thousands of service instances. This talk will walk you through its architecture, how to create blueprints for resilient services, and how to expose them through a developer-friendly UI and a powerful service broker-style API.
Plug In, Power Up: How Servala Brings Service Ops to Your Platform
Self-service without operations is just tech debt in disguise. Servala brings plug-and-play service consumption to Kubernetes, but with a twist: it handles the entire lifecycle, from instantiation to 24/7 monitoring. Whether you're a platform engineer building with Backstage or managing critical workloads in regulated, airgapped environments, Servala provides an open-source, mature, proven foundation to expose, provision, and manage data services, DevOps tools, and more, with 99.99% SLA and production support built in. Backed by real-world use since 2021, Servala combines Helm and Docker's composability with Kubernetes Operators' power to standardize Day 1 and Day 2 concerns across any infrastructure.
Kubernetes as an App Store: The Real-World Story of Servala
Everyone's talking about platform engineering and golden paths—but how do you actually deliver hundreds of production-grade services to developers with observability, backup, and SLA guarantees? Servala.com is an open-source Kubernetes-native "App Store" in production since 2021, offering a composable service delivery layer compatible with Backstage and other IDPs. With a cloud-native API inspired by Open Service Broker and backed by a solid operator + Helm + Docker foundation, Servala handles everything from Day 1 to Day 2—no lock-in, no YAML sprawl, just scalable, secure service operations. This is not a prototype—it's real, running, and ready.
KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2026
Project Lightning Talk: CNCF Sandbox Project K8Up Under The Hood - Aarno Aukia, Maintainer
https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EFwg/project-lightning-talk-cncf-sandbox-project-k8up-under-the-hood-aarno-aukia-maintainer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtXvB9gWTu8
The Register: Why Open Source is the foundation for digital sovereignty
Sovereignty is no longer a technical preference, but a real-world requirement shaped by regulation, geopolitics, and accountability. Meeting these needs directly changes how you manage data, operate systems, and build trust.
Red Hat approaches sovereignty through choice, believing that the path to technology independence is built on the transparency of open source. With open source, organizations can build sovereignty that is transparent, easier to audit, and secure by design. By focusing on workload portability and local ecosystems, Red Hat provides the practical control and long-term flexibility needed to adapt as rules, borders, and expectations change.
Join Julio Guijarro (Chief Technology Officer for EMEA, Red Hat), Alfons Buxo (Global Deloitte Engineering Leader, Deloitte), Aarno Aukia (Co-Founder & CTO, VSHN), and Mohammad Alavi (CTO, Health Info Net AG) for an insightful on-demand discussion moderated by Tim Phillips of The Register.
They explore the key considerations for managing data, operations, assurance, and technology sovereignty.
Watch now to discover what digital autonomy looks like in practice:
The regulatory reality: Why sovereignty is a non-negotiable requirement across sectors and how IT decision-makers can navigate conflicting requirements.
The open source advantage: How open source strategies provide the transparency and portability needed for digital sovereignty.
Implementation at scale: How leaders balance agile innovation with the sovereign controls required in regulated industries.
Red Hat Summit Switzerland
Data Sovereignty Is Built, Not Bought
Smart Country Convention
Gesundheitsamt Frankfurt: Public Health in souverän, Open Source und Cloud-native
SWITCH Forum Days: Cloud Forward
ASReview: AI for Systematic Reviews, Hosted Sovereignly
Silicon Valley Europe Gateway Frankfurt
Public Health – sovereign, open source, and cloud-native
Cloud Native Summit 2025 Sessionize Event
Swiss PGday
Operating PostgreSQL at Scale: Lessons from Hundreds of Instances in Regulated Private Clouds
Swiss Software Festival
The state of cloud native in Switzerland
KCD New York 2025 Sessionize Event
CH-Open Open Source AI Conference
DevOps für AI: AI zu den Daten bringen statt die Daten zur AI schicken
WeAreDevelopers Live 2024 (Season 8) Sessionize Event
KCD Zurich 2024 Sessionize Event
Aarno Aukia
Partner at VSHN - The DevOps Company
Zürich, Switzerland
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