Vish Ishaya will be giving the opening keynote at LOPSA-East this year. I caught up with him to talk about his keynote, OpenStack, and how he got his start in tech. The conference is May 2-3, 2014 in New Brunswick, NJ. If you haven't registered, do it now!
Tom Limoncelli: Tell us about your keynote. What should people expect / expect to learn?
Vish Ishaya: The keynote will be about OpenStack as well as the unique challenges of running a cloud in the datacenter. Cloud development methodologies mean different approaches to problems. These approaches bring with them a new set of concerns. By the end of the session people should understand where OpenStack came from, know why businesses are clamoring for it, and have strategies for bringing it into the datacenter effectively.
TL: How did you get started in tech?
VI: I started coding in 7th Grade, when I saw someone "doing machine language" on a computer at school (He was programming in QBasic). I started copying programs from books and I was hooked.
TL: If an attendee wanted to learn OpenStack, what's the smallest installation they can build to be able to experiment? How quickly could they go from bare metal to a working demo?
VI: The easiest way to get started experimenting with OpenStack is to run DevStack (http://devstack.org) on a base Ubuntu or Fedora OS. It works on a single node and is generally running in just a few minutes.
TL: What are the early-adopters using OpenStack for? What do you see the next tier of customers using it for?
VI: OpenStack is a cloud toolkit, so the early-adopters are building clouds. These tend to be service providers and large enterprises. The next tier of customers are smaller businesses that just want access to a private cloud. These are the ones that are already solving interesting business problems using public clouds and want that same flexibility on their own infrastructure.
TL: Suppose a company had a big investment in AWS and wanted to bring it in-house and on-premise. What is the compatibility overlap between OpenStack and AWS?
We've spent quite a bit of time analyzing this at Nebula, because it is a big use-case for our customers. It really depends on what features in AWS one is using. If just the basics are being used, the transition is very easy. If you're using a bunch of the more esoteric services, finding an open source analog can be tricky.
TL: OpenStack was founded by Rackspace Hosting and NASA. Does OpenStack run well in zero-G environments? Would you go into space if NASA needed an OpenStack deployment on the moon?
When I was working on the Nebula project at NASA (where the OpenStack compute project gestated), everyone always asked if I had been to space. I haven't yet, but I would surely volunteer.
Thanks to Vish for taking the time to do this interview! See you at LOPSA-East!
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