Monthly Archives: December 2015

12 Predictions for ’16: mono-cloud ambitions die as containers drive more hybrid IT

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I expect 2016 to be a confusing year for everyone in IT.  For 2015, I predicted that new uses for containers are going to upset cloud’s apple cart; however, the replacement paradigm is not clear yet.  Consequently, I’m doing a prognostication mix and match: five predictions and seven items on a “container technology watch list.”

TL;DR: In 2016, Hybrid IT arrives on Containers’ wings.

Considering my expectations below, I think it’s time to accept that all IT is heterogeneous and stop trying to box everything into a mono-cloud.  Accepting hybrid as current state unblocks many IT decisions that are waiting for things to settle down.

Here’s the memo: “Stop waiting.  It’s not going to converge.”

2016 Predictions

  1. Container Adoption Seen As Two Stages:  We will finally accept that Containers have strength for both infrastructure (first stage adoption) and application life-cycle (second stage adoption) transformation.  Stage one offers value so we will start talking about legacy migration into containers without shaming teams that are not also rewriting apps as immutable microservice unicorns.
  2. OpenStack continues to bump and grow.  Adoption is up and open alternatives are disappearing.  For dedicated/private IaaS, OpenStack will continue to gain in 2016 for basic VM management.  Both competitive and internal pressures continue to threaten the project but I believe they will not emerge in 2016.  Here’s my complete OpenStack 2016 post?
  3. Amazon, GCE and Azure make everything else questionable.  These services are so deep and rich that I’d question anyone who is not using them.  At least one of them simply have to be part of everyone’s IT strategy for financial, talent and technical reasons.
  4. Cloud API becomes irrelevant. Cloud API is so 2011!  There are now so many reasonable clients to abstract various Infrastructures that Cloud APIs are less relevant.  Capability, interoperability and consistency remain critical factors, but the APIs themselves are not interesting.
  5. Metal aaS gets interesting.  I’m a big believer in the power of operating metal via an API and the RackN team delivers it for private infrastructure using Digital Rebar.  Now there are several companies (Packet.net, Ubiquity Hosting and others) that offer hosted metal.

2016 Container Tech Watch List

I’m planning posts about all these key container ecosystems for 2016.  I think they are all significant contributors to the emerging application life-cycle paradigm.

  1. Service Containers (& VMs): There’s an emerging pattern of infrastructure managed containers that provide critical host services like networking, logging, and monitoring.  I believe this pattern will provide significant value and generate it’s own ecosystem.
  2. Networking & Storage Services: Gaps in networking and storage for containers need to get solved in a consistent way.  Expect a lot of thrash and innovation here.
  3. Container Orchestration Services: This is the current battleground for container mind share.  Kubernetes, Mesos and Docker Swarm get headlines but there are other interesting alternatives.
  4. Containers on Metal: Removing the virtualization layer reduces complexity, overhead and cost.  Container workloads are good choices to re-purpose older servers that have too little CPU or RAM to serve as VM hosts.  Who can say no to free infrastructure?!  While an obvious win to many, we’ll need to make progress on standardized scale and upgrade operations first.
  5. Immutable Infrastructure: Even as this term wins the “most confusing” concept in cloud award, it is an important one for container designers to understand.  The unfortunate naming paradox is that immutable infrastructure drives disciplines that allow fast turnover, better security and more dynamic management.
  6. Microservices: The latest generation of service oriented architecture (SOA) benefits from a new class of distribute service registration platforms (etcd and consul) that bring new life into SOA.
  7. Paywall Registries: The important of container registries is easy to overlook because they seem to be version 2.0 of package caches; however, container layering makes these services much more dynamic and central than many realize.  (more?  Bernard Golden and I already posted about this)

What two items did not make the 2016 cut?  1) Special purpose container-focused operating systems like CoreOS or RancherOS.  While interesting, I don’t think these deployment technologies have architectural level influence.  2) Container Security via VMs. I’m seeing patterns where containers may actually be more secure than VMs.  This is FUD created by people with a vested interest in virtualization.

Did I miss something? I’d love to know what you think I got right or wrong!

2015 Container Review

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Rob H's avatarCloud2030 Podcast

It’s been a banner year for container awareness and adoption so we wanted to recap 2015.  For RackN, container acceleration is near to our hear because we both enable and use them in fundamental ways.   Look for Rob’s 2016 predictions on his blog.

The RackN team has truly deep and broad experience with containers in practical use.  In the summer, we delivered multiple container orchestration workloads including Docker Swarm, Kubernetes, Cloud Foundry, StackEngine and others.  In the fall, we refactored Digital Rebar to use Docker Compose with dramatic results.  And we’ve been using Docker since 2013 (yes, “way back”) for ops provisioning and development.

To make it easier to review that experience, we are consolidating a list of our container related posts for 2015.

General Container Commentary

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2015 Container Review

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It’s been a banner year for container awareness and adoption so we wanted to recap 2015.  For RackN, container acceleration is near to our heart because we both enable and use them in fundamental ways.   Look for Rob’s 2016 predictions on his blog.

The RackN team has truly deep and broad experience with containers in practical use.  In the summer, we delivered multiple container orchestration workloads including Docker Swarm, Kubernetes, Cloud Foundry, StackEngine and others.  In the fall, we refactored Digital Rebar to use Docker Compose with dramatic results.  And we’ve been using Docker since 2013 (yes, “way back”) for ops provisioning and development.

To make it easier to review that experience, we are consolidating a list of our container related posts for 2015.

General Container Commentary

RackN & Digital Rebar Related

My OpenStack 2016 Analysis: Continue Core, Stop Confusing Ecosystem, Change Hybrid Approach

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Note: I’ve served on the OpenStack Foundation board since its formation.  There I’ve led the “define the core” DefCore efforts.  I’m on the 2016 ballot for another term.

I love using end-of-year posts to reflect (2015, I got 6 of 7!) and try to set direction (OpenStack needed to prioritize).  This year, I wanted to use a simple “Continue, Stop, Change” format that I’ve used for employee reviews in the past.  These three items reflect how I think OpenStack needs to respond to the industry in 206.

Continue: Focus on Core

OpenStack adoption continues around the legacy projects that traditionally define it for most users.  A lot of work and focus is needed around those projects including better representation of user, operator and product interests.

Towards that end, we’ve made amazing progress on DefCore implementation and I’m excited about the discussions that it’s been generating.  It’s driving pragmatic decisions about what is required (running a vm?) and how to verify compliance.  It’s also driving conceptual thinking around OpenStack principles and ecosystem priorities.

DefCore’s focus on using community tests to define OpenStack creates a very concrete and defensible standard.  Ultimately, it comes back to users and operators demanding compliance for the work to remain meaningful.

Overall, To focus on core function, OpenStack needs to empower new groups within the community.  Expanding the role of the Product Group, Operators, and User Committee are key to giving a voice to these constituents.

OpenStack core must transition into a consistent platform or it risks becoming irrelevant.

Stop: Confusing The Ecosystem

I’m concerned about the “big tent” governance change puts OpenStack into conflict with both community vendors and the larger cloud market.  I believe we’re creating an echo chamber of OpenStack on OpenStack focus that forces adjacent efforts (like software defined network, storage and container orchestration) to be either inside or outside the community circle.  While that artificially grows the apparent contributor base, it creates artificial walls between OpenStack and the dominate cloud platforms.

Let me illustrate using my own company, RackN.  We create cross-platform devops orchestration based on an open source project, Digital Rebar.  We consider ourselves to be part of the OpenStack community and have supported deploying the core.  We also provision bare metal and deploy Kubernetes, Docker Swarm and Cloud Foundry.  That has apparent conflicts with big tent Ironic and Magnum projects.  Does that make RackN competitive with OpenStack or not?

It hurts OpenStack when competitive alignment is unclear because vendors, users and operators are uncertain about where to make investments.  In the end, users will choose simpler alternatives.

I believe the Board needs to define the OpenStack ecosystem strategy in a clear and actionable way.  If re-elected, that will be my Board priority for 2016.

Change: Hybrid Approach

My top 2016 prediction (post coming) is that we accept “hybrid IT as the new normal.”  That means that we stop driving towards an IT mono-culture and start working towards tools that embrace heterogeneity.  Along those lines, OpenStack needs to evaluate our relative position and strengths in a hybrid cloud landscape.

Interoperability between OpenStack implementations is important because it reduces friction; however, we need to expand our thinking to ensure interoperability with other platforms.  That does not mean simply cloning the AWS APIs!  It means that we need to consider users and operator needs against a spectrum of private and public infrastructures.

A broader hybrid approach also suggests that duplicating cloud-locked adjacent services (e.g. Cloud Formation vs. Heat) does not address user needs.

I am advocating that OpenStack encourage a cloud-neutral ecosystem, outside of the OpenStack tent, that work across a wide range of platforms.  That leads to user choice and creates a truly open platform. 

And, of course, more Community Discussion!

I want to thank the many people who participated in a heated twitter discussion in advance of this post.  There are many great ideas and counter-points covered in that lengthy dialog.

Do you have an opinion about what to OpenStack should stop, accelerate or change?  I’d love to hear it!

Generating Traffic Through Search

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