Hugo Santos, founder & CEO of Namespace Labs joins us today to share his passion for fast infrastructure. From sharing childhood stories & dial-up modem phone line wiring experiences, we get to speed testing Hugo's current home internet connection: 25 gigabit FTTP.
We shift focus to Namespace, and talk about how it evolved from software-defined storage to building an application platform that starts Kubernetes clusters in seconds. The underlying infrastructure is fast, custom built and is able to:
- Spin up thousands of isolated, virtual machine-based Kubernetes clusters
- Run millions of jobs concurrently
- Control everything from CPU/RAM allocation to networking setup
- Deliver exceptionally low latency at high concurrency
A significant portion of the conversation centres on a major service degradation Namespace experienced in October 2024. Hugo shares the full story, including:
- How a hardware delivery delay combined with network issues from a third-party provider created problems
- The difficult decision to rebuild the network setup rather than depend on unreliable components
- The emotional toll of not meeting self-imposed high standards despite working around the clock
- The surprising customer loyalty, with no customers leaving despite an impact on their build system
Hugo emphasises taking full responsibility for this incident: "That's on us. We decide which companies we work with..."
We switch gears and watch Hugo show us 🐙 Foundation, an open-source Kubernetes application platform that powers Namespace's developer-optimised compute platform:
As a last twist, we explore whether a remote Docker build can be faster than running everything locally. Hugo shares more insights into what is happening behind the scenes, how everything fits together, and gives us a glimpse into the future that makes some of us excited about these new building blocks:
We conclude with Hugo sharing his philosophy on excellence: "I find that it's usually some kind of unrelenting curiosity that really propels people beyond just being good to being excellent... When we approach how we build our products, it's with that same level of unrelenting curiosity and willingness to break through and change things."
