Screaming in the Cloud

More and more enterprises and on-prem applications are moving to the Cloud. Therefore, flexibility, agility, time-to-market, and cost effectiveness need to be created to address a lack of visibility and control. Today, we’re talking to Archana Kesavan, senior product marketing manager at ThousandEyes. The company offers a network intelligence platform that provides visibility to Internet-centric, SaaS, or Cloud-based enterprise environments. Our discussion focuses on ThousandEyes’ 2018 Public Cloud Performance Benchmark Report. Some of the highlights of the show include: Purpose of Report: Reveals network performance and architecture connectivity for Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud (GCP), and Microsoft Azure Report gathered more than 160 million data points by leveraging ThousandEyes’ global fleet of agents that simulate users’ application traffic Data collected during four-week period was ran through ThousandEyes’ global inference engine to identify trends and detect anomalies Internet X factor when calibrating network performance of public Cloud providers; best-effort medium that has no predictability and is vulnerable to attacks AWS’ performance predictability was lower than GCP Cloud and Azure leveraged their own backbones to move user traffic Certain regions, such as Asia, were handled better by GCP and Azure than AWS Customers should understand value of long-distance Internet latency when selecting a Cloud provider Determine what the report’s data means for your business; conduct customized measurements for your environment   Links: ThousandEyes ThousandEyes on Twitter ThousandEyes’ Blog 2018 Public Cloud Performance Benchmark Report Amazon Web Services (AWS) Google Cloud Microsoft Azure AWS Global Accelerator for Availability and Performance re:Invent DigitalOcean .

If you’re looking for older services at AWS, there really aren’t any. For example, Simple Storage Service (S3) has been with us since the beginning. It was the first publicly launched service that was quickly followed by Simple Queue Service (SQS). Still today, when it comes to these services, simplicity is key! Today, we’re talking to Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec, vice president of S3 at AWS. Many people use S3 the same way that they have for years, such as for backups in the Cloud. However, others have taken S3 and ran with it to find a myriad of different use cases. Some of the highlights of the show include: Data: Where do I put it? What do I do with it? S3 Select and Cross-Region Replication (CRR) make it easier and cheaper to use and manage data Customer feedback drives AWS S3 price options and tiers Using Glacier and S3 together for archive data storage; decisions and constraints that affect people’s use and storage of data Feature requests should meet customers where they are, rather than having to invest in time and training Different design patterns and best practices to use when building applications Batch operations make it easier for customers to manage objects stored in S3 AWS considers compliance and retention when building features Mentorship: Don’t be afraid of the bold ask Links: re:Invent AWS S3 Amazon SQS AWS Glacier Lambda CHAOSSEARCH .

Do you have to deal with data protection? Do you usually mess it up? Some people think data protection architecture is broken and requires too many dependencies. By the time a business needs to backup a lot of data, it’s a complex problem to go back in time to retrofit a backup solution for an existing infrastructure. Fortunately, Rubrik found a way to streamline data protection components. Today, we’re talking to Chris Wahl and Ken Hui of Rubrik. Some of the highlights of the show include: Transform backup and recovery to send data to a public Cloud and convert it to native format   Add value and expand what can be done with data - rather than let it sit idle Easy way for customers to start putting data into the Cloud is to replace their tape environment; people hate tape infrastructure more than their backups Necessity to backup virtual machines (VMs) probably won’t go away because of challenges; Clouds and computers break Customers leaving the data center and exploring the Cloud to improve operations, utilize automation Business requirements for data to have a level of durability and availability People vs. Technology: Which is the bottleneck when it comes to backups? Words of Wisdom: Establish an end goal and workflow/pathway to get there Links: Rubrik Chris Wahl on Twitter Chris Wahl on LinkedIn Ken Hui on Twitter Ken Hui on Medium Amazon S3 IBM AS/400 Amazon EC2 Instances Azure Virtual Machine Instances re:Invent DigitalOcean .

Do you have some spare time? Can you figure out an easier way to do something? Then, why not build some software?! Today, we’re talking to Ian Mckay of Kablamo, an Amazon Web Services (AWS) consultancy. He is the author of Console Recorder, which is a browser extension that records your actions in the Management Console to convert them into SDK code and infrastructure as code templates. Some of the highlights of the show include: Timeline to build Console Recorder Infrastructure as Code: How to code repeatedly without starting over and take ownership of what you built by hand AWS vs. Individual Achievements: People asked AWS for years to create something to record console click-throughs that Ian did in his spare time Console Recorder support for any browser that exports Web extensions Sharp edges of what’s expected of Console Recorder to speed up development Management Console’s unreadable responses require reverse engineering Console Recorder: Recommended use cases and areas How to alleviate security concerns with Console Recorder Changes to Management Console that may break things Ian’s past, present, and future projects and products Words of Wisdom: If you don’t like something, just fix it yourself Links: Ian Mckay on Twitter AWS Console Recorder Kablamo AWS CloudFormation Terraform MediaLive Jeff Barr re:Invent CDK Google Cloud Platform AWS Management Console AWS RDS AWS Lambda DigitalOcean .

A Manager README is a document designed to establish clarity between a manager and those who report to them. These documents are especially useful for onboarding content. For example, if you have someone new starting on your team, there's so many things you need to share with them - pieces of advice and guidance that help them to make the best decision about what to do in specific situations. A Manager README sets some expectations in advance to make things easier and reduce friction and anxiety for team members. Today, we’re talking to Matt Newkirk, who manages Etsy’s localization and translation group. He explains that even if your company has an intensive onboarding program and review process, some things are still left out. A Manager README is a helpful and proactive piece of content that prompts conversations about how people perceive things. Some of the highlights of the show include: Avoid writing READMEs that are extremely self-centered/arrogant READMEs clarify what to do until a relationship is established between the manager and their employee Get feedback early on to make sure that what you include in the document is helpful; it should reflect reality and be discussed Share README with your manager to make sure you’re both on the same page about team philosophies and expectations README is a living document that needs to be updated occasionally because things change README adds context; it’s not designed to make employee feel like they’re back in school and panicking because they’re not prepared Manager README - Not Matt’s best selection of terminology Who’s the best boss you ever had? Why? They can be a force that shapes your life and career from the right perspective Philosophy of Management: Don’t do what terrible managers have done; be transparent about strategic reasons for priorities changing Links: Matt Newkirk Matt Newkirk on LinkedIn Matt Newkirk on Twitter Share your Manager README Etsy Etsy’s Job Openings Shane Garoutte on LinkedIn Kubernetes Everbridge Digital Ocean .

Would you like access to unlimited retention of your data within your Amazon S3, which costs far less than online storage on disc? Well, the next time you’re at re:Invent, visit CHAOSSEARCH’s booth. Today, we’re talking to Pete Cheslock, vice president of products at CHAOSSEARCH and former vice president of operations at Threat Stack. CHAOSSEARCH helps people get access to their login event data using Amazon S3. Some of the highlights of the show include: re:Invent - Year of the Pin: People go nuts for conference swag and were collecting pins as if they were gold Scan Your Badge and Drip Emails: Annoying and passive-aggressive marketing trends meant to be spontaneous and interesting Need a job? Corey’s looking to hire a “Quinntern” to use a tag email address to gather conference swag at the next re:invent; if interested, contact him    Corey and Pete’s Swag Rules: Something you want or can use, continues to be valuable, no sizes, no socks Densify Drama: Conference flyer to generate leads failed, created complaints Track and analyze data, but don’t use it to invade privacy or become creepy Las Vegas: Right place for conferences, such as re:Invent? Rather than focusing on going to conference sessions, make meeting and talking to people doing interesting things your priority Midnight Madness Event: Only place Corey could do stand-up Cloud comedy re:Invent 2019: Plan appropriately, identify what you want to get out of it, register ASAP to get a nearby hotel, and schedule meetings with AWS staff Links: Pete Cheslock on Twitter Pete Cheslock on LinkedIn CHAOSSEARCH Threat Stack AWS Amazon S3 Amazon Elasticsearch re:Invent Corey Quinn’s Newsletter Corey Quinn on Twitter Corey Quinn’s Email Sonian Acloud.guru Densify Oracle Apache Cassandra DigitalOcean AWS re:Invent 2018 - Keynote with Andy Jassy AWS re:Invent 2018 - Keynote with Werner Vogels AWS re:Inforce VMware Dreamforce Kubernetes Datadog .

Have you ever had high expectations about a new software product? Did you think it was going to be spectacular? Instead, did it become less about solving a problem for you and more about reaching a bunch of billable consultants? The dynamics of open source communities and the Cloud platform can make or break software products. Today, we’re talking to Andrew Clay Shafer, who was a notable voice during the days of OpenStack. He had high hopes for OpenStack, which was an effort to bring a democratized solution of Cloud computing to anyone’s data center. He describes the importance of understanding the challenges associated with open source projects in order for them to be successful. Some of the highlights of the show include: Open source is not a business model; capture value for customers, or they’ll go with a different solution Openness/Closure: Every open source project has its own community dynamics Losing sight of level of expertise for profitability and easy path to useage Whether to become a product or service company - difficult to be both effectively or go from being one to the other; build partner relationship, focus, and say “no” Lack of awareness about AWS Outposts admitting public Cloud is no longer a viable business model Amazon relentlessly focuses on what its customers want and tries to keep promises about what it can and can’t do Cloud Native: Not where you run, but how you run; confining variables Self-fulfilling prophecy to under deliver when you make the bad decision to under source IT across the board Cloud Native, DevOps, SRE: Buzzwords that equal one thing and work together Dilemma of not building everything and buying some things, but you can’t buy everything; humans like to shop and go with the easiest option Links: Andrew Clay Shafer on Twitter Andrew Clay Shafer on LinkedIn Puppet Re:invent OpenStack Eucalyptus Docker Redis MongoDB Confluent Kubernetes AWS Outposts AWS Ground Station AmazonBasics Simon Wardley Maslach Burnout Inventory Datadog .

You can't make money selling to developers! The bottleneck of getting business requirements and creating business value used to mean waiting for the next waterfall release. That’s not the case anymore in the venture community. There’s programmatic access to infrastructure and DevOps/agile developments that offer super-fast cycle times. Now, the bottleneck is about how fast your developers can move and how much they can get done. Today, we’re talking to Joseph Ruscio, general partner at Heavybit Industries, which is an accelerator for seed-stage companies and focuses on developer-first products. Tools and products that get you more leverage out of your developers are incredibly valuable. Some of the highlights of the show include: Measuring maturity of startups’ engineering teams by looking at SaaS list - what products they have in place and how many are using out-of-house vendors Customers don’t care how curated or artisan a piece of your stack is, they only care that it works Not all claims (scales infinitely or never fails) are true when it comes to products on the market, so people are skeptical Heavybit focuses on helping businesses build a bottoms-up, grassroots community around its products and a disciplined inside/direct sales motion Build vs. Buy: Whatever people try to do themselves is a costly, pale imitation of something they can buy Advice for New Entrepreneurs: Never compete with AWS on hosting compute because it will obliterate and Amazon is great at plumbing, terrible at painting AWS’s version of your product won't be as sophisticated; continually work on it to deliver a more seamless product and customer success experience Measure downtime/outages in terms of dollars by using monitoring tools that deliver more holistic, integrated, comprehensive experience than CloudWatch Starting a company is easier; even if you're the 800-pound gorilla in the category you created, keep innovating and building or Amazon’s coming after you Azure, unlike GCP, has ability to meet customers where they are, rather than telling them where they should be Understand the problem your customer is trying to solve and understand how far out of their current comfort zone they're willing to go to solve that problem Software exists to create business value; it doesn't matter what it's written in or how it's hosted, so some systems will be around for a long time Links: Joseph Ruscio on Twitter High Leverage Podcast Heavybit Industries Heavybit Library Serverless Framework Pagerduty Stripe Circle Lightstep LaunchDarkly Treasure Data Replicated AWS Twilio Librato re:Invent MongoDB Kubernetes Rackspace New Relic SolarWinds CloudWatch GCP Azure SimpleBB Datadog Digital Ocean .

Matty Stratton, from PagerDuty, shares tips for building conference talks, like using failure stories to relate and avoiding creating something new for every event. Preparation is key and the audience wants you to succeed. Humor can be tricky, so make things memorable by showing good ideas by showing bad ideas.

Do you understand how tabs work? How spaces work? Are you willing to defeat the JSON heretics? Most people understand the power of the serverless paradigm, but  need help to put it into a useful form. That’s where Stackery comes in to treat YAML as an assembly language. After all, no one programs processors like they did in the '80s with raw assembly routines and no one programs with C. Everyone is using a higher-level scripted or other programming language. Today, we’re talking to Chase Douglas, co-founder and CTO of Stackery, which is serverless acceleration software where levels of abstraction empower you to move quickly. Stackery has an intricate binding model that gives you a visual representation - at a human logical level - of the infrastructure you defined in your application. Some of the highlights of the show include: Stackery builds infrastructures by using best practices with security applications What's a VPC? Way to put resources into a Cloud account that aren’t accessible outside of that network; anything in that network can talk to each other Lambda layers let developers create one Git layer that includes multiple functionality and put it in all functions for consistency and management Git is an open-source amalgam of different programming languages that has grown and changed over time, but it has its own build system Stackery created a PHP runtime functionality for Lambda; you don't want to run your own runtime - leave that up to a Cloud service provider for security reasons Should you refactor existing Lambda functions to leverage layers? No, rebuild everything already built before re-architecting everything to use serverless Many companies find serverless to be useful for their types of workloads; about 95% of workloads can effectively be engineered on a serverless foundation Trough of Disillusionment or Gartner Hype Cycle: Stackery wants to re-engage and help people who have had challenges with serverless Is DynamoDB considered serverless? Yes, because it’s got global replication Puritanical (being able to scale down to zero) and practical approaches to the definition of serverless Links: Stackery JSON AWS Lambda Aurora Serverless Data API Hype Cycle Secrets Manager YAML S3 GitHub GitLab AWS Codecommit Node.js WordPress re:Invent Ruby on Rails Kinesis Streams DynamoDB Docker Simon Wardley Datadog .