Cloud Native Aarhus Summer Party with Digital Sovereignty

AGENDA

16:30: Doors open

17:00: Welcome by Cloud Native Aarhus

17:10: Welcome by our hosts Trifork

17:15: Inside Saxo Service Blueprint: Implementing Kubernetes Operators for Legacy Enterprise Infrastructure by Oskar Kristiansen, Platform Engineer @ Saxo Bank

17:50: We Broke Free From Cloud-Managed Kubernetes: Now What? by Per Hedegaard Christiansen, Head of Container and Cloud Platforms and Kārlis Akots Gribulis, Senior Container Platform Engineer @ Saxo Bank

18:20: Break with food

19:00: Talk 3 by Aeven

19:30: Networking with beer

22:00: Doors close

Talk#1: Inside Saxo Service Blueprint: Implementing Kubernetes Operators for Legacy Enterprise Infrastructure

At Saxo Bank, we built Saxo Service Blueprint as a set of Kubernetes operators that manage critical infrastructure dependencies such as DNS, certificates, load balancers, and access controls for applications running on traditional virtual machines outside Kubernetes, and for provisioning dependencies for cloud-native workloads.

This session focuses on the technical implementation of the system. We will walk through how legacy infrastructure is modeled using Custom Resource Definitions, how reconciliation logic coordinates Kubernetes state with external systems, and how the operators handle idempotency, ordering, failure recovery, and partial state across multiple infrastructure domains. The talk covers key architectural decisions, controller patterns, and the use of Git as a strict source of truth for driving infrastructure changes.

Attendees will gain practical insight into designing and operating Kubernetes operators that interact with existing enterprise platforms, and into the challenges of running these controllers reliably at scale in complex environments.

Bio: Oskar Kristiansen is Platform Engineer. Passionate about Cloud Native open source technologies, and their application in business. Kubestronaut.

Talk #2: We Broke Free From Cloud-Managed Kubernetes: Now What?

Have you ever wondered what happens after moving from cloud-managed Kubernetes to self-hosted clusters? One year into Saxo Bank’s journey, we’re sharing the full story: what worked, what surprised us, and what we would do differently.

In this talk, you’ll hear about:

• Did things just work?
• Was it possible to migrate large-scale workloads?
• Did we actually manage to get 80% cost reduction?
• Lessons learned around resilience, automation, and lifecycle management with kubeadm + Cluster API.

Attendees will leave with a realistic understanding of the trade-offs, risks, and benefits of self-hosted Kubernetes at scale, plus actionable insights for planning and operating their own clusters.

Bio: Per Hedegaard Christiansen is passionate about container technology and always eager to explore new tech stacks. With extensive experience in Docker, Kubernetes, and microservices, he design and optimize scalable, secure container environments.

Kārlis Akots Gribulis has hands-on experience working across various companies in the cloud-native space. Throughout his career, he has been deeply involved in deploying, managing, and optimizing Kubernetes clusters, helping organizations harness the full power of cloud-native technologies.