Modeling Over Mocking: Building Realistic Test Systems for Cloud Native Apps with Oleg Nenashev

04/16/25 • 30 min

In this episode, Ole sits down with Oleg Nenashev—CNCF Ambassador, open source advocate, Jenkins Maintainer, and Lead Developer Advocate at Gradle—to unpack the evolving world of cloud native testing. From the rise of integration testing to the role of tools like Testcontainers and WireMock, Oleg shares why modeling realistic systems is more powerful (and more reliable) than traditional mocking. They explore the complexities of testing in Kubernetes and why Java is experiencing a renaissance in the cloud native ecosystem.

This podcast is proudly sponsored by Testkube, the cloud-native, vendor-agnostic test execution and orchestration platform that enables teams to run any type of test automation directly within their Kubernetes infrastructure. Learn more at www.testkube.io

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Why Ephemeral Environments Are a Game-Changer for Testing with Ramiro Berrelleza

In this episode, Ole sits down with Ramiro Berrelleza, CEO and co-founder of Okteto, to explore the evolution and impact of ephemeral environments in cloud-native development. They discuss the challenges of testing in traditional setups, how Kubernetes enables ephemeral environments, and their growing role beyond testing—spanning customer research, support, and more. The conversation also dives into data management strategies and the seamless integration of ephemeral environments into the development lifecycle, emphasizing faster feedback loops and enhanced collaboration between developers and QA teams.

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Beyond Pipelines: Designing a Testing Culture That Actually Works in Cloud Native with Joseph Karp

In this episode, Ole Lensmar talks with Joe Karp, DevOps Architect at UWM, about what it really takes to build a testing culture inside a modern, cloud-native organization. Joe shares how his team intentionally designed clear ownership between developers, QA engineers, and platform teams—and why empowering devs to own their testing is key to scaling quality across hundreds of services.

From infrastructure-level chaos testing to critical-path monitoring in production, Joe walks through the tooling, strategies, and cultural shifts that enabled UWM to test across multi-cloud, multi-cluster environments. They discuss why off-the-shelf tools often fall short, how internal platforms should be treated like products, and what it means to build resilience into both systems and teams.

Cloud Native Testing Podcast - Modeling Over Mocking: Building Realistic Test Systems for Cloud Native Apps with Oleg Nenashev

Transcript

Ole Lensmar (00:01.422)
Hello, everyone. Welcome to today's episode of the Cloud Native Testing Podcast. I am super happy to be joined today by Oleg Nenashev, who is a lot of things, champion for test containers, one of many. I'll hand it over to you, Oleg, to do the extended intro. Welcome.
Oleg Nenashev (00:18.019)
Yeah, thanks for inviting me. And definitely a lot of things in my portfolio. Sometimes when I do presentations, I say that I'm not a mother of dragons, but a father of m