Going to PuppetConf, DevOps IT Automation

Next week is PuppetConf.

PuppetConf is the one can’t-miss annual conference for the IT industry, and it’s taking place
August 22-23 in San Francisco. The best minds in IT will be meeting at PuppetConf 2013 to
discuss leading-edge thinking in DevOps, cloud automation and continuous delivery. By
attending, I’ll have access to:
 Educational sessions and hands-on experience. With two full days of keynotes,
presentations and hands-on labs, I’ll learn how IT professionals are using Puppet
Labs technologies to deliver business results faster, with higher quality and greater
efficiency.
 Product research and analysis. The tradeshow will give me access to 40-plus
sponsors - a great opportunity to see what’s available in the rapidly changing IT
marketplace. I’ll be able to choose from more than 70 sessions led by IT thought
leaders on new tools, methods and strategies that can help our company gain a
competitive advantage.
 Networking with industry experts. More than 1,600 sysadmins, architects,
engineers, developers and IT managers will convene at PuppetConf. Informal, lively
discussions between these professionals offer excellent opportunities to learn how
smart people are solving difficult IT problems. More than 120 Puppet Labs
employees will also be on hand to answer questions and offer insight into future
product developments.

I am looking forward to catch up with many of the DevOps thought leaders.  Here are the speakers.

Where is the data center innovation? Sustainable vs. Disruptive

One of my data center friends after 5 years left one of the big data center operators to join another of the big data center operators.  He is one of the guys who knows how to drive innovation.  One of the reasons why I think I would change if I was in his shoes is whether you want to make the change from an organization that defines innovation as sustainable vs disruptive.

Clayton Christensen is credited with the concept of disruptive innovation. 

The term disruptive technologies was coined by Clayton M. Christensen and introduced in his 1995 article Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave,^[4] which he co-wrote with Joseph Bower. The article is aimed at managing executives who make the funding/purchasing decisions in companies rather than the research community. He describes the term further in his book The Innovator's Dilemma.^[5] Innovator's Dilemma explored the cases of the disk drive industry (which, with its rapid generational change, is to the study of business what fruit flies are to the study of genetics, as Christensen was advised in the 1990s^[6]) and the excavating equipment industry (where hydraulic actuation slowly displaced cable-actuated movement).

Many people don't understand the two different types of innovation - disruptive vs. sustainable.

 Sustaining innovations are typically innovations in technology, whereas disruptive innovations change entire markets.

The vast majority of people innovate in technology, but sometimes innovation requires a new market.

A common comment from I hear at data center events is this is the same stuff we have heard in the past.  When are we going to hear something new.

The demand for something new in the data center industry is growing.  The smart innovative people are collecting to work on it.  There is a good chance it will be disruptive, not just an update of the existing technology marketed as innovative.

Another IT Automation Tool gets funded - AnsibleWorks

3 weeks ago I was talking to an IT Operations friend and we were chatting about IT Automation Tools.  He said he used Ansible.  Why didn't he use PuppetLabs or Chef?  He runs servers in a remote secure environment and using SSH with no agents would work to drive automation.  Wandering around OSCON I talked to a few Ansibleworks staff and now GigaOm's Barb Darrow reports on the company being funded. 

AnsibleWorks gets $6M to open source IT automation

by Barb Darrow

7 HOURS AGO

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SUMMARY:

Ansible performs both configuration and deployment management across platforms and now has funding to expand its already impressive toehold.

Here is the elevator pitch.

The company’s sales pitch is that devops and systems administrators want something more “holistic” than Opscode Chef or Puppet Labs’ Puppet (see disclosure) configuration management tools to do their jobs. AnsibleWorks says it focuses both on up-front configuration management and the actual deployment itself.

In the same way that the data center industry is a small world.  The IT automation operations is a small one too.

DeHaan, who also spent time at Puppet, started work on Ansible 18 months ago and the company claims to have garnered more than 300,000 users since then, including Aerospike, AppDynamics, Basho Technologies, Care.com and Gawker Media. The first commercial version of the enterprise product, AWX, came online last month and is available free for use on up to 10 nodes.

Barron's Investor's Soapbox post references Intel's 2X increase in Intel data center business

Barron's has a guest post that references Intel's intent to double its data center business.

Maxim Group

Intel's management has reiterated its commitment to double their Data Center business, currently about 21% of sales but 45% of profit dollars, over the next few years.

...

With its multiprong strategy, Intel is outspending all its server competitors combined. The company will offer both scale-up architecture with high single-thread performance as well as scale-out platform for lighter weight jobs that emphasizes power efficiency, integration and low cost. It is unlikely that any other company can offer the breadth of products to compete with Intel in all server market segments. Intel's 14nm products have raised the bar for competitors across multiple segments. As such, Intel is expected to remain the dominant processor supplier for the near future.

-- Ashok Kumar

Intel has announced its intent to reinvent the data center.

A great electrical mechanical system to learn from, Apollo Navigation system

I am sitting watching on SciHD channels broadcast of the Moon Machines - Navigation Computer video.  You can watch the video here on Youtube.

Here is more about the Navigation System.  We take for granted knowing your location.  Location is an immutable fact  except when you can't figure out where you are.  It's called being lost.  

Sextant, Apollo Guidance and Navigation System

Date manufactured: 1960's, Kollsman Instrument Company

Description: Between December 1968 and December 1972, a total of nine Apollo spacecraft carried human crews away from the Earth to another heavenly body. Primary navigation for these missions was done from the ground. As a backup, and for segments of the mission where ground tracking was not practical, an on-board inertial navigation system was used. Astronauts periodically used a sextant to sight on stars and the horizons of the Earth and Moon to align the inertial system, and to verify the accuracy of the Earth-based tracking data.