Category Archives: Automation

Evolution of Networking Systems

How do we evolve technology in the future?  We centered the answer on networking, but in a very general way.

The ability for a vendor to distribute technology and then connect things together and then build networks of that technology is a core component of how networking is evolving.   Ultimately, this is about building technology systems.

Sadly, that led us into a very dark place where we really thought through who’s going to own all of that infrastructure and their motivations.  How can we make sure that the people’s needs and the systems and the vendors’ needs are well aligned?

Transcript: https://otter.ai/u/H8ik1HcmSExVBRklYbSCsV4yu2k

Image: https://www.pexels.com/photo/shallow-focus-photography-of-keychains-1194036/

Rob’s Hot Take:

Rob Hirschfeld, CEO and co-founder of RackN and host of the Cloud 2030 Podcast, reflects on the November 2nd DevOps Lunch and Learn session, which explored the motivations and impacts of building highly networked systems. While acknowledging the significant societal benefits of interconnected technology, Hirschfeld emphasizes the importance of understanding and mitigating the potential risks, particularly regarding data control and accessibility. He advocates for building inclusive systems that prioritize adaptability and service to the greater good, inviting listeners to explore the comprehensive discussion on these critical topics at the2030.cloud.

What is Platform Engineering?

What is platform engineering? And why is it necessary and how to make it work compared to DevOps.

In this conversation, we really hit on the challenges of creating automation teams for building automation in scalable ways. Frustratingly, we never really came up with a particularly good answer to “what is a platform team” and why you should care. Strangely, your organization is probably building one.

Transcript otter.ai/u/zJeQbqXIyD8kZUxfKQdvQAfQGog
Image: www.pexels.com/photo/building-co…chnology-9617733/

Rob’s Hot Take:

Rob Hirschfeld, CEO and co-founder of RackN and host of the Cloud 2030 Podcast, reflects on the November 9th DevOps Lunch and Learn session focused on platform engineering. He highlights the challenge of executing platform engineering initiatives despite the straightforward concept of improving automation and tooling at an architectural level. Hirschfeld emphasizes the importance of defining success metrics, empowering teams to enforce standards, and adopting consistent, repeatable patterns and practices to advance the industry’s maturity. He encourages listeners to explore the insightful discussion at the2030.cloud for a deeper understanding of platform engineering’s significance.

Securing Software Supply Chains

Today we talked about supply chains, but mainly security and the security aspects of supply chains because we have a very serious challenges here.

We have made software and on boarding software for developers so easy, but haven’t put the same efforts in how to manage production systems! The team really talked about what it takes to build production systems that respect security, supply chains, dependency graphs, and inclusion in a way that cross teams.

It’s an incredibly important topic, and it is the foundation of any successful supply chain hardening effort.

Transcript: otter.ai/u/6zfld2gBpZMSGT8Vk_1Ka3pWtN0
Image: www.pexels.com/photo/light-city-…traffic-10390684/

Serverless At The Edge

Serverless at the edge, part one. This is a dynamic and engaged conversation with key questions like:

What is serverless?
Do we need serverless?
How is edge serverless different than cloud serverless?

We see edge environments as collecting data from sensors that needs to be heterogeneous, multi vendor, dynamic and centralized. But where centralized?

I think that the serverless aspect of this really drives home the idea that we need to be able to make small, quick, easy updates into an edge environment into a sensor environment. But how we accomplish that is still to be defined.

Transcript: otter.ai/u/XOOi-HhvbqC6NG16-7ns6j_hPLE
Image: www.pexels.com/photo/man-in-whit…ing-tray-3772524/

Rob’s Hot Take:

In the November 11th episode of the Cloud 2030 podcast, the discussion centered around the concept of serverless at the edge, a topic not widely understood. Distinct from traditional cloud-based serverless systems like Lambda, serverless at the edge involves diverse sensors and input sources, requiring different architectures. The conversation emphasized the critical role of serverless at the edge but highlighted the need for unique definitions and platforms, shaping the future of this technology.

Does Business Value Mapping Deliver?

Today’s episode is about business value mapping. Instead of focusing on Ray Wang’s “Who wants to rule the world” book, we got really deep into the why.

We discuss what is business value mapping, how it works, why it works, when it doesn’t work, and what it takes to make it succeed.

So if you’ve read Ray’s book, I think you’ll get a lot of extra depth out of this, if you haven’t read it at all, it might be a good primer on why you want to learn more about business value mapping and how to apply it within your own organization.

This is part one, we’re actually having a whole other session about operations, value mapping, and talking that through in the next session.

Transcript: otter.ai/u/P_8lounzOlH-Ufw4urRDMpU9ILs
Photo by cottonbro from Pexels [ID 5370916]

Edge Networking: Facebook, BGP and 5G

Edge networking is hard! Because before we can talk about edge networking, we actually have to talk about edge management and edge control, and what it takes to build resilient infrastructure and train people to use it.

In the first half, we’re talking about the challenges of managing infrastructure, using the Facebook outage of the week we recorded as a starting point for how challenging it is to build resilient infrastructure.

In the second, we talk about edge networking with solid insights about how challenging edge networking really is not just creating networks in edge locations, but what does it take to sustain an edge network and the integration and technologies over the course of multiple technology generations?

Caption: otter.ai/u/U6PvW4S34DUi1Awiu4gcYMLp-pk
Photo by Tony Mucci from Pexels [ID 5367334]

Rob’s Hot Take:

Rob Hirschfeld, CEO and co-founder of RackN and host of the Cloud 2030 Podcast, reflects on the October 5th discussion about edge networking, highlighting the conversation’s focus on the long lifecycle expectancy of edge technologies and the challenges associated with their maintenance and evolution. He emphasizes the need to address these critical topics in edge networking discussions, inviting listeners to explore the in-depth conversation at the2030.cloud.

Your next DC… Edge or Cloud?

Cloud versus Edge? This panel dove into what makes edge different than cloud.

There are a lot of different technical and commercial drivers. And fundamentally, it matters who owns the sources of data and how data sources are different. This underscores how it is critical to understand data sources, infrastructure ownership, and how everything fits together.

This discussion will change to you rethink what makes Edge different than Cloud.

Transcript: otter.ai/u/y2ubHGGIhY31hRyiV6mW_B8e-os
Photo by Agafonova Photo from Pexels [ID 5284983]

Modular Automation via Pipelines and Digital Twins

Today’s episode, we talked about the challenge of making Modular Automation. We broke down why that is so hard and really dug into ways in which we can increase the modularity and reuse of automation.

That led us to talking about infrastructure pipelines, infrastructure, reuse, and sharing state via digital twins in infrastructure.

All of this comes together in really fascinating ways!

Transcript: otter.ai/u/O1KFCsmEpMpV-hNZjTzJ_ewxaUA
Photo by Alena Darmel from Pexels [ID 7751055]

Deep Dive into Secrets Management

We go into the details about Secrets Management. We explore how the process works, and how to do it right. We also cover the alternatives.

This podcast is for you if you are trying to understand how secrets management works. We cover different scenarios where it can be applied, and where can go wrong.

Transcript: otter.ai/u/SvO6_I3RIiGmc2FLJM70y9xoQB4
Photo by Anna Shvets from Pexels [ID 4587991]

Continuous Infrastructure Automation

Continuous Infrastructure Automation is a critical concept about driving much more resilient and repeatable systems.

As we build out applications on infrastructure, we should not treat them as a static deployment. Instead, we should think of infrastructure as constantly evolving, growing and changing.

There’s a lot of technology and challenges in building that! In discussion, we firmly believe that this is the right path, but the path to get there is challenging. There are a lot of components that have to be considered: everything from artificial intelligence or machine learning, to how to manage and control and standardize the automation that does all that work.

Transcript: otter.ai/u/KmdQpMPJDPL1BjzXjEIEeavQRco
Photo by Aleksejs Bergmanis from Pexels [ID 681335]