Wednesday, August 30, 2017

The Cloudcast #309 - Secrets Management for Microservices

Brian talks with Seth Vargo (@sethvargo, Director of Technical Advocacy @HashiCorp) about the evolving security footprint of modern applications, the increasing needs for secrets management with microservices, the challenges of managing encryption, how to maintain highly available environments, and the evolution of Pittsburgh as a tech city.

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Show Notes
  • Topic 1 - Welcome to the show. Tell us about your background as a technologist and author.
  • Topic 1a - And since we’re going to talk about Vault, give us the basics of the Vault platform.
  • Topic 2 - Let’s start with the basics. Why are we seeing so many more discussions about secrets management with microservices vs. legacy applications?
  • Topic 3 - What are the core challenges that microservices applications face with regard to secrets? Is it key management, or key rotation or encryption of secrets, or something else?
  • Topic 4 - Since secrets are so central to microservices, and critical to normal operations, how do you make sure that a platform like Vault is highly available? Or what happens if it goes out of service?
  • Topic 5 - If we’re talking about microservices, the conversation typically evolves to deploying them, which leads to discussions about container schedulers. Can you talk about the challenges that schedulers have with secrets and how Vaults helps to manage those challenges?
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    Friday, August 25, 2017

    The Cloudcast #308 - Can VMware cross the Cloud chasm?

    Brian talks with Keith Townsend (@ctoadvisor, The CTO Advisor) and Stu Miniman (@stu, Wikibon | theCUBE) about the upcoming VMworld 2017 event, VMware’s relevance in a cloud-centric world, the Dell merger 2yrs later and the advice they would give Michael Dell or Pat Gelsinger.

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    Show Notes
    • Topic 1 - Welcome back to the show, both of you. What’s new in your worlds and what trends are on your radar these days?
    • Topic 2 - A couple weeks ago The Register forecasted that VMworld is a shrinking event and a stark contrast to the growth of AWS re:Invent. From your perspective, what’s the state of the VMware ecosystem these days?
    • Topic 3 - With Dell being private but VMware is still public, and their stock being up about 2.5x since the merger ($40-100), is there any sense of how money is flowing within VMware (e.g. R&D) vs. flowing over to pay Dell’s debts?
    • Topic 4 - You both get access to the VMware executive team during the week of VMworld. What questions do you wish you could ask them, but it’s not appropriate during the interview or Q&A formats that exist?
    • Topic 5 - Can you explain VMware’s “Cloud Strategy” to us?
    • Topic 6 - HCI (HyperConverged Infrastructure) is growing very quickly and all the vendors now have an HCI play (Nutanix, DellEMC VxRail, HPE Simplivity/Nimble, Cisco SpringPath, Red Hat HCI, etc.). Does the market need this many similar offerings? Which one of these is non-existent in 3-4 years?
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      Wednesday, August 16, 2017

      The Cloudcast #307 - Cloud Careers, After the Whispers

      Brian talks with Amy Lewis (@commsninja), John Troyer (@jtroyer) and Matthew Broberg (@mjbrender) from the Geek Whisperers podcast (@geek-whisperers) about the closing of their podcast/community, the evolution of cloud careers, and lessons learned from community interaction.

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      Show Notes
      • Topic 1 - for us to talk to all of you together. Let’s start by talking about what Geek Whisperers was, and then why mom & dad have new hobbies.
      • Topic 2 - A lot has changed since you started, back in 2012. HW to SW. On-Prem to Cloud. Open Source. Vendor communities to lack of vendor trust. What are the big trends that wish you had a better grasp on?
      • Topic 3 - What does a 2012 Whisperer tell a colleague on career advice vs. a 2017 Whisperer?
      • Topic 4 - Do you buy into the idea that technology is moving much faster these days? And if so, have you found any good tips or tricks to staying ahead of it, no matter what part of the tech industry someone might work in (tech, sales, management, etc.)?
      • Topic 5 - What types of things worry you about our industry at this time?
      • Topic 6 - What are you hopeful about for either people in the communities you engage with, or for the next generation of folks that will have technology all around them?
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        Friday, August 11, 2017

        The Cloudcast #306 - PaaS Adoption from Around the World

        Aaron and Brian talk with Thurupathan Vijayakumar (@ThuruTweets, Solutions Architect | Developer | Microsoft Azure MVP) about cloud deployments in Asia, the business drivers for using public cloud services, the challenges of data sovereignty, and how companies are managing their organizations to align to microservices.

        Show Links:

        Show Notes
        • Topic 1 - Welcome to the show. You’re our first guest from Asia, joining us from Sri Lanka. Tell us about your background and the types of technology projects you’re working on today.
        • Topic 2 - Recently you wrote a book about building cloud applications on Azure. Can you talk about what attracted you to use Azure (vs. AWS or other clouds) - discuss some of the types of applications you’re building.
        • Topic 3 - You have an interesting perspective having worked with companies from multiple parts of the world. Can you give us some perspective on trends in Asia vs. other areas? What business demands are driving their technology decisions?
        • Topic 4 - How do the companies you work with manage data sovereignty and the location of public cloud data centers?
        • Topic 5 - What are some of the core technologies that you’re using these days? How much do you use native Azure services vs. containers vs. other technologies? How are you keeping up with learning those technologies?
        • Topic 6 - As you’re beginning to focus on microservices architectures, how are you finding global customers adapting to what that means within their internal IT cultures and processes?

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        Friday, August 4, 2017

        The Cloudcast #305 - Last Week in AWS

        Aaron and Brian talk with Corey Quinn (@QuinnyPig, Cloud Economist/Last Week with AWS) about the complexity of AWS bills, the rapid expansion of AWS services, the challenges of “best practices” and the biggest AWS trends and mistakes.

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        Show Notes
        • Topic 1 - Welcome to the show. Tell us about your background and how you decided to get into the “saving money” or  “economics of technology” business?
        • Topic 2 - AWS is sort of a strange technology company to explain to someone that comes from traditional IT, in that they just release new features randomly. So it’s sort of like a SaaS, but it’s also like a big toolbox. Your newsletter helps, but how do you find that people are to keep up with the randomness of all the features?
        • Topic 3 - Do you think that AWS eventually gets too complicated for the broader market?
        • Topic 4 - Beyond the issues around costs/pricing, what are the big AWS trends that you’re tracking, or that your clients are using to improve their businesses?
        • Topic 5 - What are some of the big mistakes that companies make in using various AWS services, whether they are cost-related or security-related or availability/performance-related?
        • Topic 6 - Let’s play a quick speed round before we end the show. Give us a sense of pace of growth for each of these AWS services:  
        - Lambda
        - Big Data (Dynamo, Redshift, Kinesis)
        - IoT
        - Snowball or Snowmobile (raw data movement)
        - ECS (containers)
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