DevOps and Docker Talk: Cloud Native Interviews and Tooling

AWS Graviton: The Great Arm Migration

DevOps and Docker Talk: Cloud Native Interviews and Tooling

Show Notes

Bret and Nirmal are joined by Michael Fischer of AWS to discuss why we should use Graviton, their arm64 compute with AWS-designed CPUs.

😇 My new GitHub Security workshop has launched! A free 2-hour workshop with hands-on labs to harden your repos and your workflows from common supply chain attacks. I'll cover how attackers are getting in, and then we'll lock down a sample repo so you know what needs to be done to protect your code. You'll leave with a deep understanding of risks and mitigations as well as a list of helpful tools to keep your repos safe, including my new "gasa" tool for scanning your repos and orgs. Graviton is AWS' term for their custom ARM-based EC2 instances. We now have all major clouds offering an ARM-based option for their server instances, but AWS was first, way back in 2018. Fast forward 6 years and AWS is releasing their 4th generation Graviton instances, and they deliver all the CPU, networking, memory and storage performance that you'd expect from their x86 instances and beyond. I'm a big fan of ARM-based servers and the price points that AWS gives us. They have been my default EC2 instance type for years now, and I recommend it for all projects I'm working on with companies. We get into the history of Graviton, how easy it is to build and deploy containers and Kubernetes clusters that have Graviton and even two different platform types in the same cluster. We also cover how to build multi-platform images using Docker BuildKit. Watch the video version on YouTube. Includes demos. ★Topics★ Graviton + GitLab + EKS Porting Advisor for Graviton Graviton Getting Started Creators & Guests

Cristi Cotovan - Editor

Beth Fisher - Producer

Bret Fisher - Host

Nirmal Mehta - Host

Michael Fischer - Guest

(00:00) - Intro

(06:19) - AWS and ARM64: Evolution to Graviton 4

(07:55) - AWS EC2 Nitro: Why and How?

(11:53) - Nitro and Graviton's Evolution

(18:35) - What Can't Run on Graviton?

(23:15) - Moving Your Workloads to Graviton

(27:19) - K8s Tooling and Multi-Platform Images

(37:07) - Tips for Getting Started with Graviton

You can also support this podcast by subscribing to my YouTube channel and my monthly newsletter at bret.news! Grab the best coupons for my GitHub, Agents, Docker, and Kubernetes courses. Join my cloud native DevOps community on Discord. Grab some merch at Bret's Loot Box Homepage bretfisher.com

★ Support this podcast ★

More from DevOps and Docker Talk: Cloud Native Interviews and Tooling

Sep 18, 2026

Control Plane CEO Doron Grinstein joins me to discuss how they’ve created an AI-native cloud API that virtualizes multi-cloud and hybrid cloud to simplify management and ship faster. Watch the video of this episode.

Aug 13, 2026

What does an AI-native CI look like? The Semaphore team joins me to talk about their focus on making your agent harness the gateway to testing, fixing, and deploying your code. Video podcast version here: https://youtu.be/HzXAdtVrW70

Jun 13, 2026

OpenChoreo is a “batteries included”, AI-native Kubernetes platform stack for Platform Engineers that combines GitOps, Observability, AI Agents, and Workflows into a custom K8s distribution “super pack” that is managed via Backstage, CLI, API, or MCP. Check out the video podcast version here: https://youtu.be/AqGWjxEfj2g

Apr 7, 2026

Michael Irwin of Docker joins me to run through Gordon AI improvements, Docker Hardened Images and what's now free, Docker Sandboxes for running agents in proper isolation, Model Runner updates including MLX support on Mac, MCP Toolkit dynamic discovery, and the newly renamed Docker Agent with its GitHub Action for automating PR reviews and docs checks. Check out the video podcast version here: https://youtu.be/dTF3b36Bq6w

Mar 20, 2026

Bret is joined by the founders of Plakar - Julien Mangeard and Gilles Chehade - to nerd out over backup engineering. The kind where you're building your own file formats and cryptographic layers, not just wiring up cron jobs. We get into how Plakar deduplicates and encrypts at the source so your cloud provider never sees your keys. Also, their snapshot model has no chain dependencies, which means you can delete any backup without breaking the others. We had a fun hour of backup horror stories, ransomware pragmatism, where I'm lobbying hard for a Docker volume integration. Check out the video podcast version here: https://youtu.be/OPRK5osKQHI

See all episodes →