EMC {code} — What’s it all about

July 29, 2016

When you hear “EMC” you most likely think storage, you most likely don’t think open source or devops.  That’s where EMC {code} comes in.

Started nearly two years ago and championed by executive sponsor Josh Bernstein, this group of developers, evangelists and community activists is focused on enabling developers and on making EMC more relevant in the open source and devops communities.

For a high-level overview take a listen to Josh as he lays out the group’s goals and objectives.

RackHD and REX-Ray

As Josh mentions in the video above, two of EMC {code}’s key projects are RackHD and REX-Ray.  RackHD provides hardware management and orchestration services while REX-Ray delivers a vendor agnostic storage orchestration engine.  In the next video, shot at DockerCon, Josh does a double click and takes us through REX-Ray and RackHD.

But wait, there’s more

REX-Ray and RackHD are just two of the dozens of projects you can find on the EMC {code} page, including the unikernel project UniK as well as Polly which handles volume scheduling for container schedulers.

It’s all about the community

A huge part of EMC {code}’s efforts revolve around community development and developer support.  This final video stars EMC {code} developer advocate and community manager, Jonas Rosland who talks about his roll and his perspective of EMC {code}.

To learn more about EMC {code} and to get involved, check out the links below.

Extra credit reading

Pau for now…

Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Barton George

Ubuntu comes to the Windows desktop — OpenStack summit

April 26, 2016

Recently an announcement was made that took a lot of people by surprise.  Canonical and Microsoft announced that Ubuntu was now able to run on the Windows desktop.

Ubuntu Goes to Microsoft’s Windows 10 Bash – LinuxInsider

Dustin Kirkland was the main man on the Canonical side who drove this.  I caught up with Dustin at the OpenStack summit to learn more about this seemingly strange move by Microsoft.

Take a listen

Some of the ground Dustin covers

  • Ubuntu and Azure and the Microsoft partnership
  • Microsoft approached Canonical about bringing Ubuntu to the Windows desktop (looking to attract developers using Linux)
  • The Microsoft kernel team has built the Windows subsystem for Linux – Translates Linux systems calls to Windows system calls – Canonical asked to deliver the userspace
  • When users type bash they end up in an environment which is essentially Ubuntu minus the kernel
  • What have been the reactions to this move from the various constituents

Extra-credit reading

Pau for now…

1 Comment | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Barton George

Installing Debian 8 on a Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition

January 3, 2015

Over the break, Eric Mill put together great step-by-step instructions showing how to install Debian 8 (Jessie) on a Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition.  Eric also had some great things to say about the laptop and program themselves:

Dell calls their program Project Sputnik, and it is managed by a friendly team of Linux engineers inside Dell who partner with Ubuntu to ensure that your computer will Just Work with Linux.

The Dell XPS is also used by multiple Debian team members, so your pain points will be theirs, and they’re likely to quickly fix things.

Supporting Dell’s program is a wonderful thing to do, and it’s also just a great goddamned laptop.

Check out Eric’s Instructions and away you go!  Installing Debian 8 on a Dell XPS

Pau for now…

2 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Barton George

SXSW: Our final Dev/Tech meet up

March 13, 2012

As I mentioned in my last several entries, during SXSW Michael Cote and I, on behalf of Dell, organized a series of mini meet-ups focusing on developers, tech and social media folks.  These were relaxed informal affairs with the idea of getting people together to learn what they were up to and for us to let them know what had been keeping us busy.

The final meet up was held on Sunday evening at the Hilton bar, Finn and Porter.  Here is a mini-montage from the event:

I asked the folks to say who they are, where they’re from, who they work for and what they hope to get out of SXSW.

The line-up

Extra-credit reading

Pau for now…

1 Comment | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Barton George

DCS systems, solutions and MDC steal show at Dell sales kick-off

February 1, 2011

Every year at the end of January Dell holds a giant kick-off meeting for our enterprise and public sales forces.  The event, which has been held in Las Vegas the last two years, is a four-day happening consisting of keynotes, sessions and a full-scale expo where the sales team can touch and learn first-hand about the latest and greatest in Dell solutions and offerings.

Setting up the DCS Modular Data Center on the expo floor

At last year’s sales kick-off, the Data Center Solutions (DCS) group had our big coming out party, letting the sales force know that we would be expanding beyond our elite custom system business, with a specialized PowerEdge C line and a set of cloud solutions.

This year the systems and solutions have been out in the market for a little while and we were able to share actual case studies with the attendees showing how our systems and solutions have been able to solve real customer problems.  The big new addition to the DCS line up was our Modular Data Center (MDC) which, until just a few months ago, was reserved only for a very small group of select customers.

Gearing up for day two of both duty at the DCS booth.

As you can tell from the picture above, the MDC took up a big part of our booth.  It served to house our PowerEdgeC servers and host a selection of our cloud solutions:

Additionally, to provide a peak at what PowerEdge C systems we have up our sleeve, we had several units in an uber secret whisper suite.

Our overall message at the booth was that although these components can be used individually, if you want to run “the world’s most efficient hyperscale data center” you’ll want to combine these optimized solutions and systems with the MDC into one hyper-efficient, integrated system.

Well received

Now as a member of the DCS team I may be a little biased but I really think we had the coolest booth there 🙂  It was great to hear comments from the sales force such as “this is awesome!” and “why didn’t I know about this?!”

We’ll have to start now to figure how we will top this next year.

Extra-credit reading

Pau for now…

Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Barton George

Rackspace’s CTO on the promise of OpenStack

November 18, 2010

Yesterday morning at the Web 2.0 summit out in San Francisco I sat in a session led by RackSpace‘s CTO John Engates.  After the session finished I grabbed some time with John to learn more about his thoughts on OpenStack, the open source cloud platform that Rackspace, along with NASA helped  kick off.

Some of the ground John covers:

  • How OpenStack directly addresses some of the most common reservations people have about the cloud.
  • How OpenStack is like Android.
  • (1:50) NTT’s interest in, and commitment to, OpenStack for the Japanese market.

Extra-credit reading:

Pau for now..

1 Comment | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Barton George

Chatting with Eucalyptus Co-founder about OpenStack

November 11, 2010

Continuing in my series of videos from the OpenStack design summit this week in San Antonio, here is an interview I did yesterday with Eucalyptus systems co-founder Graziano Obertelli.

Eucalyptus allows enterprises to set up open source infrastructure-as-a-service private clouds.  Eucalyptus is also one of the key ingredients in the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud that is being certified to run on Dell’s PowerEdge C systems as part of our cloud ISV program.

Here is what Graziano had  to say:

Some of the ground Graziano covers:

  • What goals do the Eucalyptus team have for the summit
  • They’ve recently hired a community manager – Mark Atwood
  • What are their goals for their next release

Extra-credit reading:

Pau for now…

8 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Barton George

Accenture’s thoughts on the OpenStack Cloud Platform

November 10, 2010

Another of yesterday’s featured speakers at the OpenStack design summit was Accenture partner, Joe Tobolski.  Joe is part of Accenture labs which looks at emerging technologies and he is responsible for assets and architecture as part of Accenture’s global cloud program.

I sat down with Joe in the cafe downstairs and got his thoughts on why OpenStack would be attractive to enterprises as well as how the Accenture team was participating in the summit.

Extra-credit reading:

Pau for now…

1 Comment | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Barton George

PowerEdge C powers OpenStack Install Fest

November 10, 2010

Yesterday morning I made the drive down to San Antonio for OpenStack’s second design summit (and first open to the public).  If you’re not familiar with OpenStack, its an open source cloud platform founded on contributed code from Rackspace and NASA’s Nebula cloud.   The project was kicked off back in July at an inaugural design summit held in Austin.

The project has picked up quite a bit of momentum in its first four months.  Attending this week’s 4-day conference are close to 300 people, representing 90 companies, from 12 countries.  The event is broken into a business track and design track (where actual design decisions are being made and code is being written).

Powering the Install Fest

For the project Dell has sent down a bunch of PowerEdge C servers which have been set-up upstairs on the 5th floor.  OpenStack compute has been installed on the two racks of servers and are up and running.   Tomorrow, coders will get access to these systems during the install fest.   During the fest attendees will each be given a virtual machine on the cloud to test and learn about installing and deploying OpenStack to the cloud.

I got Bret Piatt, who handles Technical Alliances for OpenStack, to take me on a quick tour of the set-up.  Check it out:

Featuring: Brett Piatt, PowerEdge C1100, C2100, C6100 and C6105

Extra-Credit reading:

Pau for now…

3 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Barton George