We talk about current events, the acquisition of data stacks and the closing of the HashiCorp acquisition by IBM. Later, we dive into the productivity of AI and what's going on - are companies really getting the benefits that they expect from AI chat bot integrations and what the challenges are? We touch base on a little bit of something more infrastructure focused, where I give a preview of work I've been doing on separating Kubernetes virtualization from Kubernetes development use cases, which is something that we will be talking about more in the future. References: https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/microsoft-just-put-this-controversial-notepad-feature-behind-a-paywall https://www.ibm.com/new/announcements/ibm-to-acquire-datastax-helping-clients-bring-the-power-of-unstructured-data-to-enterprise-ai-applications https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ioc3r70HNLM https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dhinchcliffe_major-agentic-ai-news-for-cios-this-week-activity-7303122989498138624-jR2R/ 20250227

The cloud2030 Tech Ops series is an ongoing discussion for us to create what I think of as 200 level content for tech and operations leaders, exploring really complex, deep topics in a thoughtful way to really extend your knowledge base and capabilities in the data center and infrastructure space. Today's episode talks about gitops and immutability, and what we're doing here is connecting together the operational concepts between controls and desired state communications and how that gets executed in infrastructure in an operations sense. Rather than a developer approach, this takes an operations approach. So if you are interested in how to manage immutability and what that means in infrastructure, this discussion is for you.

In this episode, we dive deeper into the new architectural trends for infrastructure designers in this coming decade, which is a transition from virtualization platforms first like VMware into containerized platforms first. But this time, we talk through the use of virtualization in containerized systems - keeping VMs but with what changes are necessary to make a containerized virtualization platform dominant instead of a virtualized virtualization platform. Reference: https://kubevirt.io/user-guide/architecture/ https://www.redhat.com/en/technologies/cloud-computing/openshift/virtualization

We discuss Symbolic AI via LLMs for advanced reasoning in manufacturing and real-time analytics. Key points included leveraging symbolic representations and algebraic equations, utilizing knowledge graphs to improve model accuracy, and exploring agentic AI frameworks with specialized agents working together using swarm intelligence principles to tackle complex problems like anomaly detection and process optimization. The group also discussed the challenges of building trust in AI systems and the importance of capturing and storing questions and answers to build a knowledge base.

We revisit edge infrastructure and the motivations behind building and managing edge infrastructure with an unusual take. In this case, we ask ourselves if all of these edge devices are becoming more software defined or becoming more standardized, off the shelf component tree. And will that change how we look at managing and running edge infrastructure? Will we shift compute and operations processes into these ever smarter devices? The answer is going to surprise you. Transcript: https://otter.ai/u/tGIcIC1bijvaW4OkJNm9YCEBdOE?utm_source=copy_url

We explore the certificate issue in which secure boot is potentially compromised because of certificates that have been compromised in ways they could be easily used as for an attack vector. This is a very significant flaw and something that should be on your purview and radar to fix. We're going to talk about what the issue is, why it's important, how secure boot works, and what you can do to mitigate this problem in your own infrastructure. This is a really important episode for anybody running or managing desktops, data centers or infrastructure of any type. Transcript: https://otter.ai/u/59uYpJpra5SutJOpEB_bPZ2CUqI?utm_source=copy_url

Today we go back to our book club and talk about Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg. It's really foundational work that has elements pulled into a lot of other books that we've already discussed, and I think it’s essential for people who are looking to be better leaders. It’s also great to learn how to communicate with more empathy, to frame and phrase questions and engagement that explains your feelings, needs and intents, and hear other people's needs. If that sounds a little bit too foo-foo for you, bear with me. This is a really, really, really powerful communication technique. Transcript: https://otter.ai/u/2p1NpJOZbuLxixQVOKETzFZWk8A?utm_source=copy_url

We dive deep into the current state of the venture capital (VC) market, exploring the significant shifts and challenges faced by entrepreneurs and investors alike in the post-COVID landscape. Key topics discussed include: The decline in the allure of VC funding and the impact of "pump and flip" models The market volatility and caution among venture firms due to economic factors The changing focus of VCs towards sectors like healthcare, fintech, and deep tech The challenges in building sustainable, billion-dollar companies The rise of corporate venture capital and strategic investments The potential for rational valuation adjustments and market consolidation The importance of clearly articulating the problem being solved and achieving product-market fit The conversation provides valuable insights for founders navigating the evolving VC ecosystem, as well as investors seeking to adapt their strategies to the changing market dynamics. Join Rob and Rich as they explore the future of VC and the strategies needed to succeed in this dynamic landscape.

We dive deep into the technical details of BootC - a Red Hat-led technology that uses container-like definitions to describe machine boot processes. BootC is an important development, especially as companies embrace containers and seek a unified approach to machine configuration. RackN CTO, Greg Althaus, provides an in-depth overview of how BootC works, its key capabilities, and the potential benefits and challenges for operations teams. They explore topics like BootC's relationship to containers, the concept of immutability, different deployment methods, and the operational considerations around managing BootC at scale. This conversation offers a balanced, non-Red Hat perspective on BootC, highlighting both its technical merits and the significant operational work required to successfully adopt and integrate it. Listeners will come away with a nuanced understanding of this emerging technology and the factors organizations should weigh as they evaluate BootC for their infrastructure.

This episode explores the challenges of processing events and logs in technical operations. The discussion covers the importance of understanding the intent and purpose of building systems downstream from eventing and logging systems. Key topics include the trade-offs between real-time and delayed event processing, the principle of least privilege, and strategies for handling event buffering and dropping. The conversation also touches on security concerns related to event and log data. The episode concludes with plans for future discussions on adding events and logging to scripts to make them more useful.