The general availability of Icehouse, the ninth release of the OpenStack Cloud platform, is only a few months away.  Shortly after that will be the convening of the biannual OpenStack Summit in May, which will be held in Atlanta, GA.  This will be my second Summit and my first ever on U.S. soil.  At the Summit in Hong Kong, I had a great time meeting old and new friends while learning more about the breadth and depth of the OpenStack project and community.  In between I had the opportunity to give several talks and to be both a guest and a co-host for The Cloudcast podcast.

As usual, there are some great talks being proposed for the upcoming Summit and I would encourage everyone to vote for the talks that they believe should be presented.  Voting will be open until Monday, March 3rd, at 22:00 UTC.  Please note that you do need to be a OpenStack Community member in order to vote; If you are not currently a member, you can easily register for a free membership via the OpenStack website.

I decided to focus on two areas that I believe will be critical for the continued growth of OpenStack – Cloud Operations (CloudOps) and Community.  The focus, in the early years of the OpenStack project, was decidedly around packaging and deployment with the goal of making OpenStack as easy to stand up and configure as possible in order to drive its adoption.  But I believe that this is the year the Market starts to ask serious questions about how organizations should go about architecting and operating an OpenStack based Cloud.  This is particularly important for organizations who are looking to use OpenStack to build out their private cloud and may not have the in-house expertise and experience to function as a cloud provider to their internal users.  The answers to those question will come, as it always should for an open source project, from the OpenStack community working in co-opetition to provide best-of-breed solutions and tooling.

As part of embracing those two foci, I decided to submit a total of six (6) talks and two (2) panels that hone in on the topics of CloudOps and empowering the Community/Ecosystem.  In addition, I decided to embody my commitment to community by having all six of my talks be joint talks and by helping to organize and hopefully to moderate two panels. And to make sure the community is well represented, I worked with a number of folks to recruit technologists from many different companies to be collaborators; in all, my eight submissions will include eighteen (18) representatives from twelve (12) different companies.

Actual final tally on my #OpenStack Summit talk submissions: 6 joint talks 2 panels 18 presenters 12 companies represented #communty

— Kenneth Hui (@hui_kenneth) February 15, 2014

Details on my proposed talks and panels are below, grouped into two categories, and I would humbly ask readers to please consider voting for some or all of the talks and encouraging others to do the same:

CLOUD OPERATIONS

Title:  Ask the Experts: Storage Considerations for OpenStack

Abstract:  Panel discussion storage options and formats within an OpenStack deployment in enterprises.  Panel members will discuss market awareness, adoption and best practices for storage within OpenStack environments. This panel discussion will be recorded as a “Speaking in Tech” Podcast which is distributed by Europe’s largest tech publication, The Register.

Topics that will be discussed include:

• Discussion and considerations for storage architectures within OpenStack
• What are the considerations and options for data protection and backup?
• What are the critical best practices for block, file and object storage?
• How are enterprises unique from service provider / public cloud providers in their implementation of OpenStack storage options?
• How critical is the abstraction (Software Defined Storage) to the implementation of OpenStack?
• Questions from audience members

Moderators:  Greg Knieriemen (HDS/Speaking in Tech), Kenneth Hui (Rackspace)

Panelists:  Ben Kepes (Diversity), Brian Gracely (EMC/The Cloudcast), John Griffith (SolidFire), Manju Ramanathpura (HDS), Val Bercovici (NetApp)

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Title:  Laying Cinder Block (Volumes): Use Cases and Reference Architectures

Abstract:  Cinder is an OpenStack project that is often overlooked but can be critical in an OpenStack deployment.  In this presentation, serveral OpenStack practitioners will walk through not merely the basics of Cinder, but show how Cinder is being deployed today and review what are the recommended practices and relevant design considerations.  This talk will cover both commodity hardware and third-party enterprise storage solutions that integrate with Cinder.

Speakers:  James Ruddy (EMC), John Griffith (SolidFire), Kenneth Hui (Rackspace)

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Title:  OpenStack in Production: Use Cases and Reference Architectures

Abstract:  There is a general consensus that 2014 could be the year of wide adoption for OpenStack.  But when is it the right time to run your applications on OpenStack?  What are the use cases and where are the reference architectures to show the way? Rackspace has seen tremendous growth in the number of customers and deployments using their OpenStack powered Private Cloud solution.  In this session, 2 Rackspace Cloud Architects will share use cases and reference architectures based on current Private and Hybrid Cloud deployments.  The session will include a discussion on what applications are suitable, as Cloud native applications, for running on an OpenStack Cloud.

Speakers:  Jason Grimm (Rackspace), Kenneth Hui (Rackspace)

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Title:  Scaling Out OpenStack Clouds in the Enterprise

Abstract:  This Panel discussion will focus specifically on scale-out deployment of OpenStack in the enterprises.   The Panel members will discuss their experience deploying and managing scale-out OpenStack data center environments.  The panel will also discuss current operational challenges and where there are opportunities for OpenStack to improve.

Topics that will be discussed include:

• Discussion about software and hardware architectures
• Which applications are best suited for Cloud environments?
• Why scale out? What are the business and technology advantages?
• Challenges encountered on the SW and HW side and lessons learned and best practices for future deployments
• Specific opportunities for OpenStack to improve

Moderator:  Kenneth Hui (Rackspace)

Panelists:  Boris Renski (Mirantis), Caroline McCrory (Piston Cloud), Jan Mark Holzer (Red Hat), Jesse Proudman (Blue Box), Manju Ramanathpura (HDS)

COMMUNITY

Title:  Bridging The Gap: OpenStack For VMware Administrators

Abstract:  As OpenStack continues to grow, Enterprises are beginning to explore and to implement OpenStack as their Cloud platform of choice.  often, these companies have existing investments and expertise with VMware technologies.  In order to prepare for this new world, these people who are familiar with VMware concepts and terminology will need to understand the parallel concepts and terminology in OpenStack.  In this keynote, a VMware veteran who have moved from the VMware space into the OpenStack space will talk about how to bridge the gap between vSphere and OpenStack concepts and.  This session will be valuable for anyone who needs a better grasp of how to talk about both VMware and OpenStack in an enterprise context.

We will also explore the concept of Cloud-native applications and talk about the differences between operating a VMware environment and an OpenStack Cloud platform.  Finally, we will discuss how VMware, as  a company, has been bridging these 2 world by integrating their technologies with OpenStack in both the Havana and Icehouse releases.

Speakers:  Cody Bunch (Rackspace), Kenneth Hui (Rackspace), Scott Lowe (VMware)

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Title:   From Infrastructure Administrator To Cloud Architect

Abstract:  Cloud Computing is one of the fastest growing segments in the Tech industry with a plethora of job openings being posted for Cloud Architects in general and OpenStack Engineers in particular.  If you are currently a server, network, or storage admin, how do make the change to Cloud Computing?  If you are already a virtualization admin, how do you take the next step to becoming a Cloud Architect?  We will talk about the opportunities currently available in both the vendor and end-user space and where we are seeing the biggest needs and strongest growth in the Cloud and OpenStack markets.  We will also explore, with the help of speakers who have made the transition,  what experiences, skill sets, and knowledge domains are required to be a Cloud Architect for a vendor or an end-user.

Speakers:  Cody Bunch (Rackspace), Jason Grimm (Rackspace), Kenneth Hui (Rackspace), Niki Acosta (Rackspace)

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Title:   Getting Started with OpenStack

Abstract:  OpenStack continues to grow exponentially as the de facto standard for open source Cloud platforms.  But how can someone quickly get started with learning this exciting new technology?  This workshop will walk participants through an overview of the OpenStack components and offer practical suggestions and resources for learning OpenStack.  To demonstrate one way to get
started, we will assist workshop attendees to set up a multi-node OpenStack cloud, on their laptops, using Red Hat’s RDO and the
Packstack utility.

Participants will be introduced to a range of cloud functionality including those that were added to the Icehouse release.  During the workshop, participants will have the opportunity to the following:

• Installing OpenStack on their laptops
• Walking through the Horizon dashboard
• Adding new users
• Adding an image to Glance
• Defining networks in Neutron
• Starting a new virtual server
• Creating and attaching Cinder storage volumes to virtual servers
• Storing objects in Swift Using the Horizon Dashboard user interface
• Exploring Ceilometer metrics

Speakers:  Dan Radez (Red Hat), Kenneth Hui (Rackspace), Niki Acosta (Rackspace)

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Title:   We Need You!  Building a Better Cloud Community One Voice At a Time

Abstract:  No matter which Cloud project or product you choose for your IaaS needs, we need more people to participate and to raise awareness of Cloud Computing as a discipline. You don’t need to write code or documentation to lend a hand to the community.  Aaron (CloudStack Evangelist & former VMware vExpert) and Ken (OpenStack Ambassador) will discuss ways to get started in Social Media including Twitter, Blogging, Podcasting, and Video Creation (The Social Media Pyramid) as tools for both personal and community involvement. They will discuss common traits of successful community building citing examples from Open Source Projects, the VMware community vExpert program, as well as the newly founded OpenStack Ambassador program. Learn how to get started and contribute back today!

Speakers:  Aaron Delp (Citrix), Kenneth Hui (Rackspace)

My hope is these talks and panels, if accepted, will be of value in promoting the OpenStack community and in driving OpenStack adoption.  Thank you for you support and I look forward to seeing as many of you as possible in November.  Happy Voting!