When it comes to building and deploying applications, one increasingly popular approach these days is to use microservices in Kubernetes. It provides an easy way to collaborate across organizational boundaries and is a great way to scale. However, it comes with many operational challenges. One big issue is that it’s difficult to test the microservices in real-life scenarios before letting production traffic reach them. But there are ways to get around it.

Have you ever wanted to load test an application behind a corporate firewall? If so, you probably ran into a few issues. Load testing on the cloud can be the most cost-effective way to run a load test, but not if the application isn't publicly accessible. Recently, we released a new feature for k6 Cloud that allows you to run load tests on your own private load zones. But first, does it really matter where load is generated from?

In last week's office hours, Nicole and Paul sat down with engineering manager Marko Pandurovic to discuss the ever-evolving k6 backend. All systems turn more complex with time, and the k6 backend is no exception.