Category Archives: Development

Podcast – Dave Blakey of Snapt on Radically Different ADC

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Joining us this week is Dave Blakey, CEO and Co-Founder Snapt.

About Snapt

Snapt develops high-end solutions for application delivery. We provide load balancing, web acceleration, caching and security for critical services.

 Highlights

  • 1 min 28 sec: Introduction of Guest
  • 1 min 59 sec: Overview of Snapt
    • Software solution
  • 3 min 1 sec: New Approach to Firewalls and Load Balancers
    • Driven by customers with micro-services, containers, and dynamic needs
    • Fast scale and massive volume needs
    • Value is in quality of service and visibility into any anomaly
  • 7 min 28 sec: Engaging with DevOps teams for Customer interactions
    • Similar tools across multiple clouds and on-premises drives needs
    • 80% is visibility and 20% is scalability
    • Podcast – Honeycomb Observability
  • 13 min 09 sec: Kubernetes and Istio
    • Use cases remain the same independent of the technology
    • Difference is in the operations not the setup
    • Istio is an API for Snapt to plug into
  • 17 min 29 sec: How do you manage globally delivered application stack?
    • Have to go deep into app services to properly meet demand where needed
    • Immutable deployments?
  • 25 min 24 sec: Eliminate Complexity to Create Operational Opportunity
  • 26 min 29 sec: Corporate Culture Fit in Snapt Team
    • Built Snapt as they needed a product like Snapt
    • Feature and Complexity Creep
  • 28 min 48 sec: Does platform learn?
  • 31 min 20 sec: Lessons about system communication times
    • Lose 25% of audience per 1 second of website load time
  • 34 min 34 sec: Wrap-Up

Podcast Guest:  Dave Blakey, CEO and Co-Founder Snapt.

Dave Blakey founded Snapt in 2012 and currently serves as the company’s CEO.

Snapt now provides load balancing and acceleration to more than 10,000 clients in 50 countries. High-profile clients include NASA, Intel, and various other forward-thinking technology companies.

Today, Dave has evolved into a leading open-source software-defined networking thought leader, with deep domain expertise in high performance (carrier grade) network systems, management, and security solutions.

He is a passionate advocate for advancing South Africa’s start-up ecosystem and expanding the global presence of the country’s tech hub.

Infrastructure Provisioning for Ansible with Digital Rebar Provision

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Digital Rebar Provision (DRP) is the perfect technology partner for Ansible customers looking to automate their infrastructure setup before applying their orchestration tool of choice. DRP automatically generates a complete inventory of provisioned infrastructure which is a must have for Ansible to complete its orchestration. In addition, DRP is able to deploy Kubernetes clusters using Ansible and Kubespray as part of its standard Workflow automated process.

Together, DRP and Ansible enhance the automation, repeatability, and transparency for DevOps teams.

Learn more about DRP and Ansible in the demonstration video and podcasts below.

Demonstration Video of Kubespray with Digital Rebar Provision:

Learn more about Digital Rebar Provision and Ansible in this podcast:

Learn more about Digital Rebar Provision, Ansible and Kubernetes installation with Kubespray in this podcast:

Podcast – Chris Short on SRE, DevSecOps, Pipelines, Immutability, and Kubernetes

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Joining us this week is Chris Short, Senior DevOps Advocate, SJ Technologies. Chris is also a CNCF Ambassador managing an excellent newsletter, DevOps’ish.

Highlights

  • Site Reliability Engineering & DevOps relationship & philosophy
  • SRE details in budgets, toil, and security
  • Pipeline infrastructure, configuration management, and immutability
  • Cultural aspects of DevOps
  • Why Kubernetes? Ecosystems? Build for Kubernetes apps
  • SaaS vs Licensing models (answer to all things software)

Topic                                                                                   Time (Minutes.Seconds)

Introduction                                                                        0.0 – 1.50
Site Reliability Engineering & DevOps                           1.50 – 4.36
SRE Budgets   (Error)                                                         4.36 – 6.56 (Toil)
Helping customers reduce toil                                        6.56 – 10.50
2018 is Year of DevSecOps                                              10.50 – 12.32
IT is Pipeline Infrastructure (Immutability)                    12.32 – 18.32
Immutability – what Chris means                                   18.32 – 23.05 (Move Back in Time)
Toil and Culture                                                                 23.05 – 30.49 (SRE Half-Life)
Kubernetes                                                                         30.49 – 34.44
Ecosystem Forming                                                          34.44 – 40.55 (Kube Required)
SaaS Product vs Licensing                                              40.55 – 46.06
Wrap Up                                                                             46.06 – END

Podcast Guest: Chris Short, Senior DevOps Advocate, SJ Technologies

CHRIS SHORT has spent more than two decades in various IT disciplines, from textile manufacturing to dial-up ISPs to DevOps engineer to manager of DevOps to senior DevOps advocate. He has been a proponent of open source solutions throughout his time in the private and public sectors. Chris is a partially disabled US Air Force veteran living with his wife and son in Greater Metro Detroit. Chris writes about DevOps and other topics at chrisshort.net. He also runs the DevOps, Cloud Native, and open source focused newsletter DevOps’ish.

Christine Yen on 2nd Wave of DevOps, Monitoring Containers, and Listening to Users at a Startup

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Joining us this week is Christine Yen, Co-founder at Honeycomb coming from a recording at SRECon Americas in March 2018 at Santa Clara Convention Center Hyatt.

Highlights

  • Understanding of what developer tools are today
  • Observability vs Monitoring
  • Instrumenting Apps for Diagnostics to help Developers do More
  • Tool to build not just better engineers but teams as well to support customers
  • Brief history of Honeycomb and where it came from (Parse and Facebook)
  • How debug containers that are most likely gone by time problem arises?
  • AI / Machine Learning – can it really help today?
  • 2nd Wave of DevOps
  • Impact of listening to users at a startup – people problems vs technology

Topic                                                                                    Time (Minutes.Seconds)

Introduction                                                                             0.0 – 2.05
Integration of Honeycomb and Digital Rebar Provision  2.05 – 3.01 (Plugin Info)
Developer Tools – what is that category?                          3.01 – 5.15 (Not doing harm)
Observability vs Monitoring                                                  5.15 – 7.45 (Doctor analogy)
Instrumenting Applications for Diagnostics                      7.45 – 10.19
My View vs Team View                                                         10.19 – 14.45 (Build better eng & teams)
Why we built Honeycomb?                                                 14.45 – 18.38
Centralized Logging in Distributed Containers                18.38 – 19.25
Can AI / Machine Learning assist in Finding Issues?     19.25 – 21.35 (7 Different Ways by Barry Schwartz)
Team Specialties – 2nd Wave of DevOps                          21.35 – 26.35 (Teach Devs to Own Code)
Listening to Users as a Startup                                           26.35 – 35.35 (UI Issues)
Who is Charity Majors? Co-Founder Honeycomb          35.35 – 38.30
Wrap Up                                                                                  38.30 – END

Podcast Guest:  Christine Yen, Co-founder at Honeycomb

Christine Yen is a cofounder of Honeycomb, a startup with a new approach to observability and debugging systems with data. Christine has built systems and products at companies large and small and likes to have her fingers in as many pies as possible. Previously, she built Parse’s analytics product (and leveraged Facebook’s data systems to expand it) and wrote software at a few now-defunct startups.

 

Podcast – Chetan Venkatesh talks Edge, IoT, and Dishwashers as a Service

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Joining us this week is Chetan Venkatesh, CEO/President of Macrometa, a stealth startup. Chetan is actively engaged in the data issues for edge computing and provides insight into the reality of edge computing and its changes in application development and delivery.

Sample posts from Chetan:

Highlights

  • Overview of Edge Computing and Chetan’s 3 Edges
  • Internet of things, gateways and data aggregation
  • Can Telcos compete against cloud providers?
  • How apps handle massive scale? Developer’s support? Distributed architecture?
  • Multi-tenancy impact on edge infrastructure?
  • Re-think where data resides to support user location
  • What is possible with IoT is unknown
  • What are the first movers in the edge computing space?

Topic                                                                                   Time (Minutes.Seconds)

Introduction                                                                                 0.0 – 1.20
Background Info (Journey to Edge)                                         1.20 – 4:18
Edge Computing Definition (3 Edges)                                     4:18 – 7.28
Car as IoT?                                                                                    7.28 – 9.05
IoT Gateways                                                                                9.05 – 10.57
Data Aggregation                                                                        10.57 – 14.51
Can Telcos Build the Infrastructure like Cloud Providers?   14.51 – 19.03
App Management / Data State Problem                                19.03 – 29.00 (Redis Lab Podcast)
Distributed Edge Infrastructure – Multi-Tenant?                    29.00 – 32.16
Where Data Reside for Edge? (Not Blockchain)                     32.16 – 37.59
Value of Data & IoT Possibilities                                                37.59 – 40.14
First Movers in this Space                                                          40.14 – 44.33 (Dishwasher as a Service)
Wrap Up                                                                                        44.33 – END

Podcast Guest: Chetan Venkatesh, CEO/President Macrometa

Founder and executive focused on enterprise data center, cloud infrastructure, and software products/companies. Strong competency in helping early-stage teams find & exploit product-market fit, early customer wins to repeat sales and scaling startups from pre-revenue to growth stage and profitability. Experienced in building strong and productive teams in sales, product development, product management, gaining early lighthouse customer wins, stage centric positioning with customers & partners, venture scaling and capital raise (equity and debt) Chetan Venkatesh was the Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer of Atlantis.

Podcast – Baruch Sadogursky on Pipeline, Immutability, and Edge

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Joining us this week is Baruch Sadogursky, Head of Developer Relations at JFrog. Baruch is an industry veteran in management of complex software and is a fantastic event speaker; I highly recommend attending his sessions at a future event. Short promotion for JFrog Swamp Up (May 16 – 18, 2018)

Highlights

  • Short overview of JFrog and its relationship to CI/CD pipelines
  • Discussion of immutability (shifting left) in deployment paradigms
  • Metadata and the impact of scale (Toyota Manufacturing Model)
  • How can I update software components with confidence?
  • Distributed programming and impact of edge computing

Topic                                                                                        Time (Minutes.Seconds)

Introduction                                                                            0.0 – 2.17
JFrog Artifactory                                                                    2.17 – 3.26
Pipeline (Starting)                                                                  3.26 – 7.53
Immutability (Shifting Left)                                                  7.53 – 11.51
Metadata (Surrounds the Artifact)                                     11.51 – 16.45
Impact of Scale (Excessive File Names)                           16.45 – 23.30 (Toyota Model)
Updating Software Components                                       23.30 – 28.32 (Pain is Instructional)
Edge Computing (IoT is Next Frontier)                              28.32 – 38.01
Wrap Up                                                                                 38.01 – END

Podcast Guest: Baruch Sadogursky

Baruch Sadogursky (a.k.a JBaruch) is the Developer Advocate at JFrog. His passion is speaking about technology. Well, speaking in general, but doing it about technology makes him look smart, and 17 years of hi-tech experience sure helps. When he’s not on stage (or on a plane to get there), he learns about technology, people and how they work, or more precisely, don’t work together.

He is a CNCF ambassador, Developer Champion, and a professional conference speaker on DevOps, Java and Groovy topics, and is a regular at the industry’s most prestigious events including JavaOne (where he was awarded a Rock Star award), DockerCon, Devoxx, DevOps Days, OSCON, Qcon and many others. His full speaker history is available on Lanyrd: http://lanyrd.com/profile/jbaruch/sessions/

You can follow him @jbaruch on Twitter.

Week in Review: Operational Paralysis is Real

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Welcome to the RackN and Digital Rebar Weekly Review. You will find the latest news related to Edge, DevOps, SRE and other relevant topics.

Mobilize your Ops Team Against Operational Paralysis  

Many IT departments struggle with keeping “the lights on” as legacy hardware and software consume significant resources preventing the team from taking advantage of new technologies to modernize their infrastructure. These legacy issues not only consume resources but also cause challenges to find qualified experts to keep them operational as the older the technology the less likely to find experienced support.

Freezing older technology in place without capable support or an understanding of how the product works is certainly not an industry best practice; however, it is commonly accepted in many large IT organizations. RackN has built a single, open source platform to manage not just new technologies but also legacy services allowing IT teams to actively engage the older technology without fear.

Full Post

News

RackN

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L8ist Sh9y Podcast

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Mobilize your Ops Team Against Operational Paralysis

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Many IT departments struggle with keeping “the lights on” as legacy hardware and software consume significant resources preventing the team from taking advantage of new technologies to modernize their infrastructure. These legacy issues not only consume resources but also cause challenges to find qualified experts to keep them operational as the older the technology the less likely to find experienced support. Even worse, new employees are typically not interested in working on old technology while the IT press obsesses on what comes next.

Freezing older technology in place without capable support or an understanding of how the product works is certainly not an industry best practice; however, it is commonly accepted in many large IT organizations. RackN has built a single, open source platform to manage not just new technologies but also legacy services allowing IT teams to actively engage the older technology without fear.

Issue: Expertise & the Unknown

  • Existing Infrastructure – legacy technology abounds in modern enterprise infrastructure with few employees capable of maintaining
  • State of the Art vs the Past – new employees are experienced in the latest technology and not interested in working on legacy solutions

Impact: Left Behind

  • Stuck in the Past – IT teams are unwilling to touch old technology that just works
  • Employee Exodus – limited future for employees maintaining the past

RackN Solution: Stagnation to Action

  • Operations Excellence – RackN’s foundational management ensures IT can operate services regardless of platform (e.g. data center, public cloud, etc)
  • Operational Paralysis – RackN delivers a single platform for IT to single platform capable of supporting existing solutions, newly arriving technologies as well as prepare for future innovation down the road.

The RackN team is ready to unlock your operational potential by preventing paralysis:

Podcast – Mark Imbriaco on SRE, Edge, and Open Source Sustainability

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Joining us this week is Mark Imbriaco, Global CTO DevOps, Pivotal. Mark’s view of ops and open source from a platform perspective as it relates to SRE offers listeners a high-level approach to these concepts that is not often heard.

Highlights

  • Site Reliability Engineering – Introduction and Advanced Discussion
  • Edge Computing from Platform View
  • Open Source Projects vs Products and Sustainability
  • Monetization of Open Source Matters

Topic                                                                           Time (Minutes.Seconds)

Introduction                                                                0.0 – 3.27
Platform and Value of Platforms                            3.27 – 3.59
SRE Definition & Model                                            3.59 – 10.30 (Go Read Google Book)
SRE is not a Rebadging of Ops                               10.30 – 12.16
Why are Platforms Essential?                                 12.16 – 14.59
Edge Definition and Platform Concept                 14.59 – 21.55
Car Compute at Traffic Intersections                     21.55 – 25.29
Open Source Projects vs Products                       25.29 – 38.18
Open Source Monetization vs Free                       38.18 – 45.33 (Support Vampires)
SRE to Edge to Open Source                                 45.33 – 47.03 (3 Scenarios)
Wrap Up                                                                    47.03 – END

Podcast Guest:  Mark Imbriaco, Global CTO DevOps at Pivotal

Mark Imbriaco is currently Global CTO DevOps at Pivotal. Prior to that Mark Imbriaco was VP, Technical Operations at DigitalOcean.

Technical Operations and Software Development leader with 20 years of experience at some of the most innovative companies in the industry. Broad experience that runs the gamut from service provider to software-as-a-service to cloud infrastructure and platforms.

Podcast: Justin Garrison on Cloud Native Infrastructure, Immutability, Observability and Much More

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In this week’s podcast, we speak with Justin Garrison, co-author of Cloud Native Infrastructure (CNI).

  • Behind scenes for O’Reilly book and choice of cover animal
  • Infrastructure and CNI approach
  • State and Immutability / Immutable VM
  • Terraform and Kubernetes
  • Observability
  • The Why of Immutability
  • Infrastructure as Software (Netflix)
  • Site Reliability Engineering and DevOps

Topic                                                               Time (Minutes.Seconds)

Introduction                                                     0.0 – 2.11
TechNative Podcast on writing book          2.11 – 2.45
Cover of Cloud Native book                         2.45 – 4.52 (Andean Condor)
Why is infrastructure a dead carcass?        4.52 – 5.38 (Shift and lift is not enough)
Describe your approach to infrastructure  5.38 – 8.40
Maintain state with immutability                  8.40 – 13.14 (Containers don’t mean cloud native)
Immutable VM                                                13.14 – 18.55
Terraform                                                         18.55 – 21.55
Kubernetes                                                      21.55 – 27.52 (Helm example)
Observability                                                   27.52 – 35.32 (Prometheus)
Immutability and Why                                   35.32 – 38.08 (Repository dependencies)
Infrastructure as Software                            38.08 – 40.33 (Chaos engineering)
Google SRE Book                                           40.33 – 44.11 (Build empathy vs everyone as dev)
Wrap Up                                                          44.11– END

 

Podcast Guest

Justin Garrison, co-author of Cloud Native Infrastructure (CNI)

Justin loves open source almost as much as he loves community. He is not a fan of buzz words but searches for the patterns and benefits behind technology trends. He frequently shares his findings and tries to disseminate knowledge through practical lessons and unique examples. He is an active member in many communities and constantly questions the status quo. He is relentless in trying to learn new things and giving back to the communities who have taught him so much.