Tag Archives: Infrastructure

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.

Path to Tech Success: Sexy or Boring?

What makes people interested in new tech versus the stable, boring, things that keep the lights on work?

It feels to me as if we’re in the phase of development where we start saying, I need to make sure this all works. I’ve followed all the cool stuff, now I need to make sure everything’s working and get my ROI out.

This conversation questions that assumption, talks about why we care, what we’re really trying to accomplish, and digs into what is boring and what is sexy? And what makes them different.

Transcript: otter.ai/u/vt5nB06XGD5pcXhAAjylwtFlS4U
Image: www.pexels.com/photo/woman-in-bl…ue-chair-4842498/

Infrastructure Governance As Code

We continue our Governance as Code discussions in today’s episode.

We started by very broadly looking at Governance as Code generally, but quickly drilled down into Infrastructure as Code meets Governance as Code focused discussion. Understanding that intersection is critical to building something that is both automated and governable.

The topic explored how we audit controls for systems. We also need to make sure that when we build infrastructure, it’s following our policies. The challenge here is making sure that what we’ve automated is conforming to our governance.

Image: www.pexels.com/photo/group-of-pe…tructure-2100942/
Transcript: otter.ai/u/-vI03TkWcLpvTIBRrrKE9DugYvw

Power Distribution And Green Infrastructure

We conceptualize data centers as core infrastructure components in today’s discussion about green infrastructure.

In our discussion about data centers as an industrial load that have peaks and valleys in demand, we dive into the grid as a connected system. We discuss how storage can disrupt the way power is generated and distributed, not only in the United States, but also around the world.

Distribution systems play a huge role in green infrastructure, just like networks. The way we assume that networks are available and robust, we have made the same assumption about power generation in the world to run these data centers.

These topics are all tied together, and you will see a lot of insights and similarities in how we solve and build green infrastructure.

Transcript: otter.ai/u/3W7DIwICzz1fhNR4MofvJvAzOGI
Image: www.pexels.com/photo/utility-tower-2402438/

Rob’s Hot Take:

In the June 2nd episode, Rob Hirschfeld emphasizes the importance of distribution in discussions about creating greener data centers. Recognizing how power is generated, its localities, and dealing with infrastructure peaks and valleys are crucial components. The shift from centralized to decentralized infrastructure, both for power and data centers, plays a key role in reducing reliance on distribution systems, enhancing resilience, and addressing interconnected challenges. Join ongoing conversations about green infrastructure at the2030.cloud to explore these complexities further.

Defending Against Complexity With Exercise

How do you manage complexity? Something we talk about a lot in Cloud2030 is how challenging it is to understand complexity, measure it and cope with it.

Richard Cooke wrote a paper called “How Complex Systems Fail,” (how.complexsystems.fail) and in it he talks about complex systems having strong defense mechanisms against failure. That’s what we talked about today. How do we build defense mechanisms for complex systems, not by making them simpler, but by exercising them and testing them?

We discuss the importance of testing, validation, and layer of abstraction and testing the layers in this conversation. If you deal with complex systems, this discussion will be fascinating and actionable.

Transcript: otter.ai/u/SP-z7OAJWAmJlql8Dh62rNk2hlo
Image: www.pexels.com/photo/man-woman-m…ng-young-4058411/

Rob’s Hot Take:

In the May 24th DevOps lunch and learn, Rob Hirschfeld delves into the concept of making complex systems defensible by exercising and testing them thoroughly. Emphasizing the importance of shared automation and collaborative efforts within communities, he cites examples like Kubernetes and OpenStack as complex systems made more defensible through widespread testing and shared code. While complexity cannot be eliminated, actively exercising systems enhances their defensibility. Join the ongoing discussions and explore the intricacies of complexity management at the2030.cloud.

Distributed Ledger Drives Distributed Infrastructure

How is data center infrastructure adapted to edge distributed ledger technology workloads?

We think through if those demands (blockchain, proof-of-stake coins, etc) are changing the way we look at data center infrastructure, and the short answer is yes. We also explore the impacts of the type of workloads that we’re running and how we distribute them, rather than the type of equipment that we need to buy.

This conversation quickly becomes one about what we want to do with our infrastructure, not what the infrastructure is.

Transcript: otter.ai/u/KcT3ZF8ELbg5M3FrZmTSL7ycpX8
Image: www.pexels.com/photo/vehicle-on-the-road-3593923/

Rob’s Hot Take:

In the May 24th Cloud 2030 Podcast episode, Rob Hirschfeld explores how distributed ledger technologies like blockchains could impact application design and workload distribution across infrastructure. The discussion shifts from the impact on data centers to the potential for distributed applications that are more portable, capable of running in smaller data centers. While acknowledging missing pieces in building such applications, the conversation highlights the opportunity for more portable and cost-effective workloads. Join the comprehensive discussions at the2030cloud to delve deeper into this transformative intersection of distributed ledgers and infrastructures.

Why Jenkins in DevOps?

What kind of orchestration systems does the industry use for infrastructure, automation and controlling day to day operations?

In today’s episode, we talk about infrastructure pipelines at the tooling level, and specifically the use of Jenkins and other CI pipelining tools for ops and orchestration. We dig into why and how you would do this, and what pieces are missing from the system. That conversation leads us into larger day to day challenges.

If you are doing infrastructure ops and DevOps automation, you will get a lot out of this session.

Transcript: otter.ai/u/dbTdHdYTIt5bU1G8SFghKSijhU0
Image: www.pexels.com/photo/barista-wit…d-tattoo-6205639/

Rob’s Hot Take:

In the May 19th Cloud 2030 Podcast episode, Rob Hirschfeld delves into the intersection of payment systems, PCI V4, NFTs, blockchain, virtual reality, and the metaverse. The discussion highlights the often overlooked XRP or ripple specification, enabling banks to transfer funds outside the SWIFT system, introducing alternative ways for banks to exchange fiat currency with significant impacts on credit, microtransactions, and blockchain conversions. The episode emphasizes the importance of understanding seemingly esoteric elements that can shape the future landscape and influence how it evolves. Explore the full conversation for insights into this intriguing combination of PCI, V4, Kryptos, and the Metaverse.

Green Data Centers

What’s going on with green data centers, why does it matter, and how do we think about it in a wider context? In this short conversation, we discuss green data centers and creating carbon neutral infrastructure.

This isn’t just about servers using electrons – the actual conversation about making our infrastructure carbon neutral includes thinking about all of the components that go into our infrastructure.

We also have an upcoming series of conversations on green data centers and carbon neutral infrastructure.

Transcript: otter.ai/u/IYsPlr4r570MmOOW3WWLjenDlWk
Image: www.pexels.com/photo/clear-light…ray-rock-1108572/