New to Team Aptira
The biggest news at Aptira this week is we have some new crew on the team! I welcome on board Sina Sadeghi our Cloud Engineer. Sina comes to us with a wealth of OpenStack production experience on NeCTAR’s world leading deployment and he’ll be pulling our OpenStack Public Cloud out of beta in the coming weeks, as well as heading our Piston Enterprise OpenStack engineering and support team. I also welcome on board Luke Collins as Sales Director. Luke is charged with business development for Aptira, and as such will be charged with growing our business right across our product range, from our traditional hosting products, right through our OpenStack cloud deployment and consulting business, establishing vendor relationships, and to establishing Piston Enterprise OpenStack as the defacto private cloud operating system for SMB and enterprise.
Beijing APAC OpenStack event report
It’s been a big couple of weeks for Aptira. The weekend before last I was in Beijing for the OpenStack APAC conference, it was officially the biggest OpenStack event yet! This is half the main room.
Along with Tom Fifield from NeCTAR, it was a pleasure to join a discussion panel with representatives of the OpenStack User Groups from China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and the USA.
We also had some great dinners with many of the attendees, everyone had a great time. Boris from Mirantis has written a great account of his visit and experiences which we all shared at http://www.mirantis.com/blog/apac-openstack-conference-update/
Cheng from COSUG has blogged the event at openstack.org, uploaded a bunch of photos to Flikr, and he links to the slides as well. I’m told there will be videos posted at some stage. https://www.openstack.org/blog/2012/08/openstack-won-unprecedented-popularity-in-asiapacific/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/85376316@N02/sets/72157631160199442/
Hobart Puppet and Chef Code Dojo
Last Friday I went to Hobart for the first OpenStack Code Dojo. Not having been in a code dojo before I was unsure of what to expect, but my fears of looking like a n00b due to my elementary Python skills were soon cast away. The morning started off with Nan Liu and Matt Ray being beamed in from PuppetLabs and Opscode respectively to give us all a run down on where Puppet and Chef is at. Photos are at http://aosug.openstack.org.au/photos/10338012/#151469192
Then we went for a great lunch at the Ball and Chain Grill in Salamanca Markets. http://aosug.openstack.org.au/photos/10338012/#151469622
The afternoon was spent on the dojos, Led by Chef Dojo Steve Androulakis, we took a dive into Chef by stepping through what needs to be done to deploy a VM entirely with Chef from scratch. Following this, Puppet Dojos Russell Sim and Clint Walsh then took us through the same steps with Puppet. The goal was to spin up 100 VMs to produce a random number.
Naturally afterwards we met at the Birdcage Bar at the Wrest Point Casino for a post event beer.
The Dojo is a great fun event and the Hobart day was a trial run for many more to follow, there’s another big 2 day one on in Melbourne on September 24 and 25, which is unfortunately already sold out with 35 attendees and 20 on the wait list but I assure you there will be MOAR in Melbourne and all around the country! It’s great to be working with NeCTAR and ANDS on these events that benefit all of us. Thanks to David Flanders at ANDS for his efforts getting ANDS, NeCTAR, AOSUG and the Research institutions around the country together.
Check http://nectar-ands.eventbrite.com/ for details of upcoming events, and I will be cross posting the Eventbrite events at http://aosug.openstack.org.au.
PyCon Australia in Hobart
Last weekend I attended PyCon, and it was great to meet so many talented Python enthusiasts and check out what’s what in the Python world. With my “Hello World” Python experience a lot of content was way over my head, but there was much of it that was comprehendible and I can count myself as Python fan now, but still a long way from contributing to the OpenStack code base, unless someone wants Hello World on a welcome screen for Horizon.
Aptira and OpenStack in the News
During the week the good folks at OpenStack put out a global great press release about OpenStack in Australia, mentioning us, and our friends at Haylix and NeCTAR, you can read it at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/8/prweb9824216.htm
OpenStack Mini-Conf announced for Linux Conf in January!
We’ve had an OpenStack Mini-Conf confirmed for Linux.conf.au in late January. This will be a big event at a big event and I know many people have submitted OpenStack oriented props to Linux.conf.au so we will have an outstanding line up. I’m arranging an information web site for the mini-conf where we’ll be taking proposals for talks, workshops and the like. Some of the already submitted props for the main conference tracks will make it to the main event, and details of those that dont will be considered for the Mini-conf. I’d like to put together a committee from our User Group to evaluate and nominate the submissions, so please contact me if you’d like to be part of the committee. I’m not yet sure of sponsorship and such and how that works but will post details on the mini-conf site when it goes live. Because of the significance of Linux Conf, we will have support from the OpenStack Foundation to hold this event.
Cheers
Tristan
