Tag Archives: Infrastructure

Time for SBOMS? What’s Ahead for 2024?

After a brief hiatus, thecloud2030 group is back and deep in tech, talking about things that we think are going to come on the tech front, sans AI.

In this episode, we take some time to go through Kubernetes, hardware, software, bill of materials, and some governance. This includes a smattering of predictions to get your year started off with a bang.

From there, we are going to be moving into our tech-ops series. Find more details about that in today’s outro!

Resources:
www.theregister.com/2023/12/27/bruc…erens_post_open
developersalliance.org/open-source-l…ty-is-coming/

Transcript: otter.ai/u/UQyqHKJ9oNd1SquAWW…?utm_source=copy_url
Image by DALLE: cartoon images of a robot reviewing a long bill of materials on a scroll of paper.

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Data Center & Hardware Impacts on AI

What goes on behind the scenes with AI, and specifically data center infrastructure and hardware?

We discuss broad ranging concerns, opportunities and market blockers around AI. We also address how deeply it can impact innovation companies’ privacy legislation from the frame of hardware and automation.

Today’s discussion leads us to a larger question of what unlocks innovation in general that we will address in future podcasts.

Links: research.aimultiple.com/wp-content/we…kers.png.webp

Transcript: otter.ai/u/3FUaZ3m8JabYLyJZGH…?utm_source=copy_url
Photo by Tim Samuel: www.pexels.com/photo/woman-handf…hy-chips-6697286/

Book Discussion: Investments Unlimited

This is the second installment of our book group, which is a discussion about Investments Unlimited. We have one of our authors, and a great all around DevOps enthusiast, John Willis, on the call with us.

As you might expect, while we talk about the book and John gives a lot of background and details about the book, we treat it with the classic cloud2030 style, and bring in AI, large language and advanced DevOps.

We take the topics of the book to the next level, and frame it in the moment of the year, looking beyond and into how the concepts of compliance, validation, team coordination and risk assessment are incorporated into the coming AI and how it changes in our landscape.

Sources
Book www.amazon.com/Investments-Unlim…tal/dp/1950508536
techstrong.ai/aiops/the-rise-of-shadow-ai/
guidehouse.com/insights/financia…-lines-of-defense

Transcript: otter.ai/u/uC9c3xJS4oATQx7BrY…?utm_source=copy_url

Deflating Cloud Mythology [+ book club]

Is hardware going to be innovative and change? Brian Cantrell brings up oxide computing and some of their design motivation.

Today we discuss our skepticism about some of his points, as well as the impacts for cloud distributed Compute hardware design mainframes, cloud, repatriation, and a whole bunch of topics about next generation thinking in Compute infrastructure management and applications.

We are officially starting our cloud2030 book group and I hope you will join us – we are going to be reading Data Cartels by Sara Landon, followed by Investments Unlimited by John Willis and crew.

Book Clubs Links:

May 4 > Data Cartels www.amazon.com/Data-Cartels-Comp…ion/dp/1503633713

Early July >
www.amazon.com/Investments-Unlim…tal/dp/1950508536

Transcript: otter.ai/u/S7CRv2J9fmOjAc8HM_…?utm_source=copy_url
Image: www.pexels.com/photo/a-man-stand…-balloon-9128460/

Can Platform Engineering Hide Complexity?

Is platform engineering effective at hiding complexity from developers? Today we tear apart what platform engineering is doing, how it came about and what it’s trying to be.

We discuss what companies are trying to accomplish with platform engineering – how can successful efforts improve outcomes for development teams and operations teams by improving collaboration in contracts? Why and how is that important, and what do those efforts entail?

Transcript: otter.ai/u/bVd1_IwEqFD-uEYxsy…?utm_source=copy_url
Image: www.pexels.com/photo/woman-posin…erwater-15674505/

Rob’s Hot Take:

In the Cloud 2030 podcast episode on platform engineering, Rob Hirschfeld, CEO of RackN, explores the profound impact of platform engineering on operational efficiency and developer complexity. He emphasizes the discipline’s role in making operations accessible, efficient, and repeatable, leading to significant benefits for companies and DevOps teams. While discussing how platform engineering can hide complexity, Hirschfeld highlights the ongoing essential work involved, debunking the notion of shortcuts and emphasizing the value it adds to organizations. He invites listeners to join discussions at the 2030.cloud, where important technology topics are analyzed in depth.

Balancing Architecture and Ease of Use

What is the architectural balance between learning curve, architecture, building things that can scale while acknowledging overhead, and the attitude of just get it done? Don’t make my tools complex and let me be very productive quickly. If it doesn’t scale, then we see this as an ongoing challenge.

Two engineers from RackN led today’s discussion in which we really talked about the balance that we try to achieve at RackN as we design our product, with the understanding that, ultimately, scale really does matter.

If users have trouble understanding how the product works, at first, that learning curve can push people away, so that they never actually get into the product. That’s where finding the right balance is absolutely essential to success.

Transcript: otter.ai/u/DAfKcHVBAiOY5EuReW1krDYsqso
Image: www.pexels.com/photo/anonymous-w…h-outfit-7148032/

Platform Engineering Makes You Angry?

Platform engineering is a topic that seems to be generating a lot of interest going into 2023. It’s sure to be one of those things that enterprises spend a lot of time arguing about and telling each other that they’re doing it wrong.

In this podcast, we dissect why platform engineering seems to be so controversial, and what we can do to help make it more understandable.

We break it down into DevOps components, team components, Dev components, operations components, and ultimately talk about long term trajectories of how all this stuff is going.

Image:www.pexels.com/photo/person-skat…ard-ramp-1527241/
Transcript: otter.ai/u/SAAMNdHZh9lEeHrBxwcWmUxuDhs

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Rob’s Hot Take:

In the December 13th DevOps Lunch and Learn on the Cloud 2030 podcast, Rob Hirschfeld explores the concept of platform engineering emerging from enterprises grappling with the challenges of enabling developers while rationalizing operations. The discussion introduces the idea of operational entropy or infrastructure entropy, emphasizing how platform engineering teams can effectively manage the constant changes, security vulnerabilities, and evolving environments, relieving developers of this burden. By shifting entropy management to a shared and collaborative task, platform engineering teams have the potential to enhance how they function, offering opportunities for improvement across the industry. For those intrigued by these discussions, the full episode is available at the2030.cloud, inviting participation in ongoing conversations.

VMware Explore Retrospective

VMware Explore is a show at the end of August where VMware brings together its community, its vendors and tells what’s going on. VMware is dominating in their market, they are making the right moves, and doing a good job for their customers and their partners. This is a surprising summary of the conversation, because this conclusion is certainly not where we started out.

In this conversation, we start from the position of VMware not doing what it needs to do. It’s fumbling its message, it’s not doing the right things. Then we talk through all of the things that contribute to VMware’s position in the market.

If you listen through, the conversation follows a fascinating path to our concluding position.

Transcript: otter.ai/u/NO-lHxp4EfDy9cmyP8Yr-dayi9Q
Image: www.pexels.com/photo/man-in-brow…noculars-3811807/

Real Life Chaos Monkeys And Other Infrastructure Challenges

How do we use chaos monkeys in real life, and practically? This happens all the time when we have failures. The Rogers failure that took out the internet and cell phone use in Canada last week was the start of our discussion.

Predicting how things are going to go out is a common theme for chaos monkeys, and really comes back to how we test infrastructure. Should we be putting it under stress in planned ways like Chaos Monkey, in order to ensure that our increasingly internet and power dependent society is prepared for the inevitable outages?

We have a really fascinating discussion about what it would take to make this type of practice real, including alternatives that people can look at today.

Transcript: otter.ai/u/D0ZV5c3ikvAiinsK7ugf_duCjv8
Image: www.pexels.com/photo/monkey-sitt…s-hands-11999152/

Training Teams to Fight Complexity

How do we manage complexity? Today we discuss sources of complexity and explore design rules. We also talk about how you think about the systems that you’re building in ways that allow them to handle complexity gracefully.

The simple answer is to have people who are good at thinking about complex systems. Part of that is experience in looking at complex systems, seeing how they operate and being ready to deal with that type of thing like training pilots.

How we get to that insight is really significant, and it impacts how you build teams and systems. In addition to how you build systems that defend themselves that are naturally complex, but have the right defense mechanisms to make them more stable over the long term.

Transcript: otter.ai/u/f2t7gZfQhzG1Dgeg5ePwFHZOTmw
Image: www.pexels.com/photo/colorful-fu…ironment-3872003/

Rob’s Hot Take:

In the June 28th episode, Rob Hirschfeld delves into the topic of complexity, emphasizing the inevitability of complex systems in real-world scenarios. The discussion highlights the importance of training individuals to navigate and manage complex systems effectively, suggesting that exposure and interaction with complexity are critical learning experiences. The key takeaway underscores the need for proactive training to equip individuals with the skills to handle and defend complex systems, ultimately preventing the creation of increasingly fragile structures. For a comprehensive exploration of the human element in dealing with complexity, listen to the entire podcast at the2030.cloud and join the ongoing discussions.