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Code RED

Dash0

How can you avoid your next outage? And what's next for observability?

Code RED is a podcast for developers, site reliability engineers, CTOs and anyone who's excited about the future of software management and observability.

Code...because we're talking about code! And RED for Requests, Errors, and Duration: the core metrics of observability.

Hosted by Mirko Novakovic, CEO of Dash0 and co-founder and former CEO of Instana, you'll hear from leaders around our industry about what they're building, what's next in observability, and what you can do today to avoid your next code red moment.

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  • 22 episodes
  • fortnightly
  • Avg 37 min
  • English

Episodes 22

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  • Yesterday · 32 min

    #50 – Can AI Run Production? Inside ResolveAI with Spiros Xanthos

    ResolveAI CEO Spiros Xanthos joins Dash0’s Mirko Novakovic to make the case that the AI SRE is moving beyond incident summaries and into the critical path of production. Spiros explains what it takes to trust an agent to investigate an alert and one decides whether a human needs to be paged or whether it can recommend or take mitigation action. They also get into why Resolve is training its own models and why observability tools will need to evolve for a world where agents do most of the querying — not humans.

  • September 3 · 37 min

    #49 – The Single Pane of Glass Is a Myth: AI, Telemetry and the Future of Observability with Clint Sharp

    Cribl co-founder and CEO Clint Sharp joins Dash0’s Mirko Novakovic for a wide-ranging conversation about where observability goes next. Clint explains why he thinks the future is flexible data layers rather than all-in-one platforms, plus how AI agents change the economics of telemetry and the way that data gets queried. He also reveals the top things he’s hearing from his most advanced customers and why enterprises still need purpose-built infrastructure instead of simply dumping everything into a general-purpose data warehouse. Mirko and Clint also debate querying across multiple systems, AI SRE and what happens when dashboards are no longer the primary interface for production data.

  • August 18 · 32 min

    #48 – Why We Acquired Polar Signals with CEO Frederic Branczyk

    Dash0 is acquiring Polar Signals. In this special behind-the-scenes episode, Polar Signals founder and CEO Frederic Branczyk joins Mirko Novakovic to share how a chance dinner in Berlin turned into a plan to join forces, and why continuous profiling and Polar Signals’ Great Lakes database were the missing pieces Dash0 was already looking to build. They dig into what profiling reveals that traditional observability can’t, how AI can now make performance optimization accessible to every engineering team, and what the acquisition unlocks for Dash0 customers, from always-on CPU profiling to an entirely new approach to GPU performance.

  • July 30 · 39 min

    #47 – Platform Engineering Was Never Just About Kubernetes with Rachael Wonnacott

    Platform engineering leader Rachael Wonnacott joins Code RED co-host Kasper Borg Nissen to explain why great platforms are defined by the experience they create for developers. Drawing on years of building internal platforms in large enterprises, she explains how poorly designed abstractions can turn a golden path into a golden cage, why reducing developer cognitive load often means transferring that complexity to the platform team, and how observability helps both sides understand what is happening beneath the abstraction. They also explore context-driven development: using platforms to give AI agents the architecture, constraints, and production signals they need to make better decisions. Links mentioned in this episode: Patrick Debois — Context-Driven Development: https://tessl.io/blog/context-development-lifecycle-better-context-for-ai-coding-agents/ Daniel Bryant — Golden Bricks (KubeCon NA 2024 talk): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhfQfQmnNd4 Rachael Wonnacott — The Conservation of Cognitive Load (FastFlow keynote): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4CTkModyEk

  • July 13 · 35 min

    #46 – Beyond Observability: Introducing Darkplane and the Future of AI-Native Software Delivery with Evgeni Wachnowezki

    In this special launch episode, Dash0 Director of Product Evgeni Wachnowezki joins Mirko Novakovic to introduce Beyond Observability, Dash0’s vision for closing the loop from AI-generated code to production. They discuss why AI has shifted the bottleneck from writing code to safely shipping and operating it, and how Dash0 is building the control plane for that new reality. They also walk us through their new releases: AI Coding Insights, Agent0 Automations, AutoMerge and SignalControl.

  • June 25 · 37 min

    #45 – The Cloud Native Pulse: AI Agents, Platform Engineering, and the Future of Kubernetes with Abdel Sghiouar

    Abdel Sghiouar, Senior Cloud Developer Advocate at Google and KubeCon + CloudNativeCon co-chair, joins Kasper Borg Nissen to discuss what’s changing across the cloud-native ecosystem. They explore why AI and agentic workloads are becoming a dominant theme in Kubernetes, why platform engineering teams are under more pressure than ever, and why the industry is still inventing best practices in real time. Abdel also shares lessons from his career in developer advocacy and the basic formula for a great conference talk. Links mentioned in this episode: Kubernetes for agentic apps: A platform engineering perspective – https://platformengineering.org/blog/kubernetes-for-agentic-apps-a-platform-engineering-perspective The Kubernetes Podcast: https://kubernetespodcast.com/ More from Abdel: https://linktr.ee/boredabdel

  • May 21 · 36 min

    #44 – Tracing at Planet Scale: How Zalando Monitors 60 Million Spans Per Second with Heinrich Hartmann

    Heinrich Hartmann joins Dash0’s Mirko Novakovic to share how Zalando runs their observability at an extraordinary scale. Heinrich explains why Zalando standardized on OpenTracing and OpenTelemetry across 3,500 microservices and 250 Kubernetes clusters, what it takes to process up to 60 million spans per second during Cyber Week, and how the team approaches sampling, cost control, and adaptive telemetry. They also discuss the future of observability in the age of AI and Heinrich’s new conference, SignalsConf Berlin, which will focus on reliability and AI.

  • April 30 · 36 min

    #43 – Observability at the Proxy Level: How Linkerd Brings Visibility to Services, Identity, and AI Agents with William Morgan

    Buoyant CEO and creator of Linkerd William Morgan joins Dash0’s Mirko Novakovic to explore what happens when you instrument traffic at the service mesh layer. Drawing on his experience at Twitter, William explains how Linkerd gives platform teams HTTP and gRPC-level visibility without touching application code, why retry budgets help prevent cascade failures, and how workload identity creates a stronger foundation for security and observability. They also discuss MCP traffic, AI agents in production, and how observability needs to be re-optimized for LLMs.

  • April 16 · 34 min

    #42 – Killing Observability Noise: How Grepr Reduces Data by Up to 90% and Rebuilds the Pipeline with Jad Naous

    Jad Naous, founder and CEO of Grepr, joins Dash0’s Mirko Novakovic to tackle one of observability’s biggest problems: too much data and not enough signal. Drawing on his experience at AppDynamics and Apache Druid, Jad explains why current architectures are fundamentally broken, and how Grepr compresses, aggregates and extracts signal directly in the stream, reducing data volume by up to 90% before it ever hits tools like Datadog. They dive into real-time pattern detection across logs and traces, why rule-based pipelines fall short, and how high-signal data is the foundation for any future AI SRE system.

  • April 2 · 42 min

    #41 – Platform as a Product: Why Internal Platforms Fail (and How to Fix Them) with Abby Bangser

    Abby Bangser, founding principal engineer at Syntasso and co-author of “Platform as a Product,” joins Kasper Borg Nissen to unpack why most internal platforms struggle, and what it means to treat them like products. They explore producer vs. consumer dynamics, why golden paths often fail, how to measure platform success, and the shift toward internal “platform marketplaces” that scale beyond a single team. The conversation also covers observability for vs. of the platform, and why AI is putting even more pressure on platforms to remove bottlenecks and make access to resources feel effortless. Links mentioned in this episode: Platform as a Product report: https://www.syntasso.io/platform-as-a-product-oreilly-report

  • March 19 · 35 min

    #40 – Breaking the Observability Model: Pricing, AI SRE, and a Developer-First Mindset with Juraj Masar

    Better Stack co-founder and CEO Juraj Masar joins Dash0’s Mirko Novakovic to challenge the fundamentals of modern observability, from cloud lock-in and pricing models to how platforms should be built in the age of AI and how we market them. They discuss why observability costs are fundamentally broken, how Better Stack combines cloud and ‘bare metal,’ and why small teams can outperform large engineering orgs. The conversation also explores eBPF as the new default for instrumentation, the shift toward AI SRE, and how Better Stack has paired a developer-first product with unconventional marketing, from generous free tiers to SEO-driven status pages to a massive YouTube presence.

  • March 5 · 41 min

    #39 – Beyond On-Call: How incident.io Built Multiplayer Incident Response with Stephen Whitworth

    incident.io co-founder and CEO Stephen Whitworth joins Dash0’s Mirko Novakovic to explain why paging someone is only the start of an incident, not a holistic solution. They break down how incident.io supports the full incident lifecycle (coordination, comms, timelines, and follow-ups), why incident response is a “multiplayer game” across engineers, support, and leadership, and how AI is starting to reshape triage by pulling context from telemetry, past incidents, and customer signals. The episode closes with a practical look at what it will take to safely move from AI-assisted response to AI-driven auto-fixes that minimize the rollout ‘blast radius.’

  • February 19 · 36 min

    #38 – Beyond Kubernetes: Platform Engineering, Developer Experience and GenAI with Mauricio Salatino

    Mauricio Salatino, open source and ecosystem engineer at Diagrid and author of Platform Engineering on Kubernetes, joins guest host Kasper Borg Nissen to break down why Kubernetes is a foundation, not just a standalone platform. They discuss ecosystem-driven platform design, reducing developer cognitive load, bringing feedback from production back into the ‘inner loop’ of development, and how generative AI is reshaping platform APIs and tooling. They explore whether Kubernetes is still waiting for its “Rails moment” — an opinionated, developer-first layer that makes building on it dramatically simpler. Links mentioned in the episode: Platform Engineering on Kubernetes by Mauricio Salatino (Manning): https://www.manning.com/books/platform-engineering-on-kubernetes The Evolution of Platforms: Gen.AI Edition (Blog Post by Mauricio Salatino): https://www.salaboy.com/2025/11/18/the-evolution-of-platforms-genai-edition/

  • February 5 · 39 min

    #37 – Prevention Over Alerts: How Ottermon AI Reimagines Observability with Checo

    Checo, CEO and founder of Ottermon AI, joins Dash0’s Mirko Novakovic to argue that modern observability is rife with noise, reactivity and human bottlenecks. Drawing on years of frontline SRE and product experience, Checo explains why most telemetry is wasted, how signal distillation and “fingerprinting” can surface real risk earlier, and why observability must shift from dashboards and alerts to prescriptive, prevention-first intelligence.

  • January 22 · 35 min

    #36 – OpenTelemetry in Practice: How to Contribute, Grow, and Build Community with Marylia Gutierrez

    Marylia Gutierrez, principal software engineer at Grafana Labs and an OpenTelemetry maintainer, joins Code RED guest host Kasper Borg Nissen, Dash0’s principal developer relations engineer, for a deep dive into how OpenTelemetry really works. They unpack how contributors get started, SIGs, why non-code contributions like documentation, localization, and governance matter just as much as PRs, and what it takes to grow from first-time contributor to maintainer. Links mentioned in the episode: How to Contribute to OpenTelemetry, by Marylia Gutierrez: https://opentelemetry.io/blog/2025/contribute-to-otel/ OpenTelemetry community resources: https://opentelemetry.io/docs/contributing/

  • January 8 · 37 min

    #35 – Preventing the Next Outage: How NOFire Uses Causal and Agentic AI to Shift Reliability Left with Spiros Economakis

    NOFire AI founder and CEO Spiros Economakis joins Dash0’s Mirko Novakovic to discuss why traditional observability and post-incident RCA are no longer enough in an AI-accelerated engineering world. Drawing from real production failures and years of SRE leadership, Spiros explains how causal AI and agentic workflows can predict failures before code ever reaches production. The conversation also explores why the future of observability is moving from dashboards and alerts toward understanding, reasoning and proactive decision-making.

  • Dec 18, 2025 · 38 min

    #34 – Rethinking Observability: eBPF, Bring Your Own Cloud, and the Future of the Monitoring Market with Shahar Azulay

    Groundcover CEO Shahar Azulay joins Dash0’s Mirko Novakovic for a candid conversation on why modern observability needs a fundamental reset. They dive into the real-world challenges of eBPF-based instrumentation, migration friction from legacy vendors and bold go-to-market strategies. They also debate Groundcover’s “Bring Your Own Cloud” model and how it prompts a reassessment of cost, control and business model incentives in observability.

  • Oct 9, 2025 · 41 min

    #33 – Inside the AI SRE Boom: Anish Agarwal on Traversal, Finding Root Causes, and What’s Next for Observability

    Traversal CEO and co-founder Anish Agarwal joins Dash0’s Mirko Novakovic to unpack why AI-powered SRE agents are emerging as the next big shift in incident response. A former MIT researcher and now Columbia professor, Anish explains how causal machine learning and reinforcement learning shaped Traversal’s approach to finding root causes in complex systems. The conversation explores alert fatigue, multi-tool fragmentation, why accuracy builds trust, and how automation may soon take incident management from detection to full remediation.

  • Aug 28, 2025 · 32 min

    #32 – Data Observability at the Source: Ido Bronstein on Upriver, Bad Data, and How To Monitor A Future Full of AI Systems

    Upriver co-founder and CEO Ido Bronstein joins Dash0’s Mirko Novakovic for a deep dive into the hidden risks of bad data and why “shift-left” observability is becoming essential. Ido shares why catching data issues at the source is critical for reliable pipelines, how Upriver helps engineers take ownership of data quality, and why AI adoption is making data accountability non-negotiable.

  • Aug 15, 2025 · 50 min

    #31 - Code RED LIVE: Beyond Hype - The Real Impact of AI on Observability

    We’re taking the Code RED podcast public! Join Dash0 CEO Mirko Novakovic, CTO Ben Blackmore, and Principal AI Engineer Lariel Fernandes for a no-fluff look at AI in observability.We’ll dig into: ⃗⃗⃗→ What agentic observability might actually look like → How OpenTelemetry enables the AI ecosystem → How AI shows up in real engineering workflows → And what still needs to be built

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