ValkeyConf 2026: Full Schedule

5 October 2026 | Prague, Czechia
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17:05 CEST

A Field Guide To Your First Valkey Operator PR - Sagar Utekar, CrowdStrike

Monday October 5, 2026 17:05 - 17:15 CEST

Chamber Hall, Level 3

The Valkey ecosystem is bigger than the server: operators, Helm charts, clients, and tooling, all short on contributors. I recently went from running Valkey to landing merged PRs in the Valkey operator: priorityClassName support so cache pods survive scheduling pressure, and an e2e test verifying failover when a primary receives SIGTERM.

This talk is the field guide I wish I'd had. Concretely: how to pick a first issue maintainers actually want fixed (mine were an open feature request and a known testing gap); setting up a productive dev loop with Kind and the e2e suite, including the toolchain gotchas that cost me an evening; reading a controller's reconcile flow well enough to change it safely; and writing a deterministic e2e test for something as messy as killing a primary and asserting failover.

I'll also share what review taught me: what maintainers pushed back on, the mistake I made in a review thread (asserting something about the codebase without verifying it; don't), and why small PRs build trust faster than big ones.

If you use Valkey but have never contributed, this is your on-ramp: a map of the ecosystem's open needs and a realistic first-contribution checklist.

Speakers

Sagar Utekar

SRE, CrowdStrike

The Valkey ecosystem extends beyond the core server, but its operators and tooling are short on contributors. After landing my first operator PRs adding priorityClassName support and SIGTERM failover tests, I built the field guide I wish I’d had. This talk covers picking issues... Read More →

Monday October 5, 2026 17:05 - 17:15 CEST
Chamber Hall, Level 3

Contributing

Audience Level Any

ValkeyConf 2026

17:05 CEST

Sagar Utekar

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