The Cloudcast (.net) - Episode 4 - “DevOps & Developing New IT Skills”
Date: March 23, 2011
Guest: Nick Weaver (@lynxbat) - "Nickapedia" blog (http://nickapedia.com)
Overview: Aaron and Brian start the show by talking about trends in the news around building new Data Centers and new Cloud Management offerings.
Companies building Data Centers
http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/stor/2011/032111stor1.html (HP)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/21/dell_building_data_centers_in_ten_countries/ (Dell)
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/03/21/twitter-completes-data-center-expansion/ (Twitter)
http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/stor/2011/032111stor1.html (HP)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/21/dell_building_data_centers_in_ten_countries/ (Dell)
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/03/21/twitter-completes-data-center-expansion/ (Twitter)
More Entries in the Management Game
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/08/nimbula_launches_cloud_operating_system/
http://www.redmonk.com/cote/2011/03/08/your-very-own-openstack-cloud-quick-analysis/
Then we talk a little bit about Brian's experience at Cloud Connect 2011.
- Is there too much division between the Public and Private Cloud camps and are end-users (customers) getting confused?
- Tons of "cloud management" vendors - Is this a good thing or a bad thing?
- Developers and Application groups are often driving any moves to Cloud and with that is a concept called DevOps. What is it? James Urquhart wrote about this recently - http://news.cnet.com/8301-19413_3-20044335-240.html
One of the biggest challenges for infrastructure-centric IT people is to begin wrapping their heads around this concept. They do servers, storage, networks, virtualization - the plumbing that applications run on. They aren’t developers. But if that is potentially the future, how might those people begin looking at evolving their skills?
Nick works at EMC as a vSpecialist, but we brought him on today because he’s got experience with this concept from his IT operations days. While there are others that do this as a full-time role, we thought it would be interesting to get his experience in straddling the lines between basic development and IT operations/infrastructure.
Q: What’s currently in your ninja toolbag?
Q: Virtualization and Cloud are moving technology really quickly, forcing people to learn or relearn alot of skills. How are you keeping up with all the changes?
Q: On your blog you’ve talked about how (previous job) you looked at changing the way your company ran operations to be more agile. Can you take about that transition, what worked and failed and the skills needed by the team?
Q: Many of the side projects you work on for EMC aren’t obvious to be storage-related, but often tools that solve unique challenges. Do you find it difficult to get people to understand the power of APIs and automation (internally, with customers, etc.)?
Q: Do you see customers starting to adopt some of the same transitions you went through with your previous job, or is this still a very new concept in IT?
Q: Any good references you’d suggest for people that want to explore this?
Nick works at EMC as a vSpecialist, but we brought him on today because he’s got experience with this concept from his IT operations days. While there are others that do this as a full-time role, we thought it would be interesting to get his experience in straddling the lines between basic development and IT operations/infrastructure.
Interactive Cloud - Nicholas Weaver(@lynxbat) from Nicholas Weaver on Vimeo.
Q: What’s currently in your ninja toolbag?
Q: Virtualization and Cloud are moving technology really quickly, forcing people to learn or relearn alot of skills. How are you keeping up with all the changes?
Q: On your blog you’ve talked about how (previous job) you looked at changing the way your company ran operations to be more agile. Can you take about that transition, what worked and failed and the skills needed by the team?
Q: Many of the side projects you work on for EMC aren’t obvious to be storage-related, but often tools that solve unique challenges. Do you find it difficult to get people to understand the power of APIs and automation (internally, with customers, etc.)?
Q: Do you see customers starting to adopt some of the same transitions you went through with your previous job, or is this still a very new concept in IT?
Q: Any good references you’d suggest for people that want to explore this?
