Systems Engineering and Architecture sessions

Track host

Bridget Lane (Gannett & USA TODAY) is a Software Developer for Gannett & USA Today where her day to day job involves deep-diving into Golang APIs, API management, and cache setup. On her free time, Bridget enjoys cooking, playing board games, and slaying ferocious beasts as a sorcerer in the distant realm of Dungeons and Dragons.

1:30pm–5:00pm Monday, October 1, 2018

Serverless APIs with AWS Lambda and API Gateway

Location: Beekman/Sutton North Level: Intermediate

Secondary topics:  Systems Architecture & Infrastructure

Bill Boulden (ClearView Social)

Average rating:

(3.00, 1 rating)

Serverless architectures remove load from web servers and scale flawlessly to handle any volume while keeping you from paying for an instant of wasted idle time. Bill Boulden walks you through creating a functioning serverless API that coexists alongside conventionally served web pages using AWS Lambda and API Gateway. Read more.

1:30pm–2:10pm Tuesday, October 2, 2018

"Not invented here" syndrome and dark debt: The PagerDuty story

Location: Gramercy Level: Intermediate

Secondary topics:  Systems Architecture & Infrastructure

Aish Raj Dahal (PagerDuty)

Average rating:

(3.25, 4 ratings)

Finding the right balance between writing custom in-house software and using an off-the-shelf solution is difficult. Aish Raj Dahal sheds light on the age old build versus buy problem and "not invented here syndrome" by explaining how PagerDuty built a distributed task scheduler and later moved off it to use an off-the-shelf open source solution. Read more.

11:35am–12:15pm Wednesday, October 3, 2018

Availability, latency, and cost: Withstanding regional outages

Location: Murray Hill Level: Intermediate

Secondary topics:  Systems Architecture & Infrastructure

Aaron Blohowiak (Netflix)

Average rating:

(3.00, 1 rating)

Multiregion deployments can improve availability and latency and can cost way less than you think. Aaron Blohowiak dives into his experience operating in multiple regions at scale at Netflix and shares the algebraic models, code, and incident management playbooks the company has developed to tame, refine, and leverage its approach. Read more.

1:30pm–2:10pm Wednesday, October 3, 2018

How to get away with refactoring

Location: Murray Hill Level: Beginner

Secondary topics:  Systems Architecture & Infrastructure

Maude Lemaire (Slack Technologies, Inc.)

Average rating:

(5.00, 6 ratings)

How do you refactor major, core functionality in a million-line codebase without disrupting the entire system? Maude Lemaire explains how Slack overhauled channels and shares the many obstacles the company overcame to boost both application performance and company-wide developer productivity (with only a few hiccups). Read more.

2:25pm–3:05pm Wednesday, October 3, 2018

Revisiting HTTP/2

Location: Murray Hill Level: Intermediate

Hooman Beheshti (Fastly)

Average rating:

(4.50, 2 ratings)

Now that adoption is ramped up and HTTP/2 is being regularly used on the internet, it's a good time to revisit the protocol and its deployment. Hooman Beheshti reviews protocol basics and digs into core features such as interaction with TCP, server push, priorities and dependencies, and HPACK. Read more.

3:50pm–4:30pm Wednesday, October 3, 2018

Rebuilding the airplane in flight. . .safely

Location: Murray Hill Level: Intermediate

Secondary topics:  Systems Architecture & Infrastructure

Shannon Weyrick (NS1), James Royalty (NS1)

Average rating:

(3.50, 2 ratings)

Rewriting the key software component of your platform from scratch is always intimidating. Shannon Weyrick and James Royalty discuss NS1's recent DNS server rewrite and outline the steps the company took to roll it out across its globally distributed network with no downtime. Read more.

4:45pm–5:25pm Wednesday, October 3, 2018

Deprecating simplicity

Location: Murray Hill Level: Intermediate

Casey Rosenthal (Verica.io)

Join Casey Rosenthal to learn how to use chaos engineering to embrace complexity and navigate it rather than reject complexity and try to erase it. Read more.