OpenStack Summit Vancouver '18: Vote for Speakers

The next OpenStack Summit takes place again in Vancouver (BC, Canada), May 21-25, 2018. The "Vote for Presentations" period started. All proposals are up for community votes. The deadline for your vote is will end February 25 at 11:59pm PST (February 26th at 8:59am CET)

I've submitted two talks this time:

• How to store billions of mails in your Ceph cluster
• OpenStack Vanilla and Distributions - Distinctions and Statistics

As always: every vote is highly welcome! And don't forget to search for other interesting proposals around Ceph, NFV and OpenStack as e.g. the as always expected to be excellent presentations from Florian Haas [1][2][3].

OpenStack Summit Sydney - Slides and Videos

Back from the OpenStack Summit in Sydney. It seems all my sessions were recorded this time. Here you can find the slides and videos:

• Multicloud requirements and implementations: from users, developer, service providers (Panel Discussion) [video]
• Email Storage with Ceph (Lightning Talk) [slides | video]
• Vanilla vs OpenStack Distributions - Update on Distinctions, Status, and Statistics (Talk) [slides | video]

OpenStack Summit Sydney - librmb presentation

Presented today about the librmb project at the OpenStack Summit in Sydney. You can find the slides from the Lightning Talk on github and a video record of the session is available here.

Sydney OpenStack Summit - Started

Today the OpenStack Summit started in Sydney with the keynotes. This time the keynotes are only on the first day, which is really nice since it's only a 3 days event - more time for the presentations.

This time I have every day a presentation or panel discussion:

• Multicloud requirements and implementations: from users, developer, service providers (Panel, Mon 6 , 2:20pm-3:00pm, step in for Kurt Garloff from T-Systems)
• Email Storage with Ceph (Lightning Talk,  Tue 7 , 9:15am-9:25am)
• Vanilla vs OpenStack Distributions - Update on Distinctions, Status, and Statistics (Presentation, Wed 8 , 9:00am-9:40am)

OpenStack Sydney: Turning one into two

Last week I started to update/prepare the slides for my Lightning Talk ("Vanilla vs OpenStack Distributions - Update on Distinctions, Status, and Statistics") at the OpenStack Summit in Sydney (November 6-8, 2017). But then  I have been asked by the Summit Speaker Support to present on the same topic also in a 40 min slot. No problem, but I didn't like to speak twice about the same. I asked to use the Lighning Talk for another topic on Ceph: "Email Storage with Ceph". 

Since they accepted, I will speak in two sessions on different topics. If you are interested, check the schedule. See you in Sydney!

OpenStack Summit Sydney: Vote for Presentations

The next OpenStack Summit takes place in Sydney (Australia), November 6-8, 2017. The "Vote for Presentations" period will end in less than a day. All proposals are still up for community votes. The deadline for your vote is will end August 3th at 11:59pm PDT (August 4th at 8:59am CEST).

I have submitted this time one proposal:

• Vanilla vs OpenStack Distributions - Update on Distinctions, Status, and Statistics - One year ago in Barcelona we have taken a look behind the curtain of OpenStack Vanilla and the products of the four major OpenStack distributions. Let’s have an update and deeper look into it. You have the agony of choice if it comes to the question: Vanilla or an OpenStack distribution. It will highly depend on your usecase, technical requirements, resources and organization. This presentation will not only highlight differences between these choices but also between the distributions and their offerings. There is more to take a look at than only the OpenStack product itself as e.g. different hypervisor, Ceph, the base distributions and support. This time we also include new topics like SDN, NFV, Container and Managed Cloud. And for sure we will have a lot of new and updated statistics on community contribution and market share. This talk will cover besides Vanilla also at least RedHat, SUSE, Ubuntu/Canonical, and Mirantis OpenStack.

As always: every vote is highly welcome! And don't forget to search for other interesting proposals around Ceph, NFV and OpenStack as e.g. the presentations from Florian Haas [1][2][3].

opendev: OpenStack Foundation failed to learn the lesson

Yesterday I got an invitation to the opendev conference (September 7-8, 2017) from the OpenStack foundation. The conference is about edge computing. 

While the topic itself is very interesting I was surprised that the opendev will be held in the U.S. (San Francisco, CA). I thought the foundation would have learned a lesson from the Boston summit this year. And as far as I understood it they decided to have currently no summits in the U.S. anymore until the political climate changed to allow risk free travel for all community members (see Kurt Garloff's talk at DOST around 8:45min). But it seems this applies only to the summits, very inconsistent! Some people would call it slightly duplicitous.

In light of the OpenStack Foundation's decision I'm still proud about the Ceph community. They decided with a clear statement to not held any event in the U.S. that requires travel for community members from foreign countries while there is the risk to potentially suffer harassment, digital privacy violations, or rejection at the border.

Reminder: OpenStack Summit Sydney - CFP Deadline

A short reminder: the "Call for Presentations" deadline for  the next OpenStack Summit in Sydney, Australia (November 6-8, 2017) is less an a day away. 

If you would like to present in Sydney submit your proposal till July 14, 2017 at 11:59pm PDT (July 15, 2017 at 6:59am UTC).

OpenStack Summit Boston: Vote for Presentations

The next OpenStack Summit takes place in Boston, MA (USA) in May (8.-11.05.2017). The "Vote for Presentations" period started already. All proposals are now again up for community votes. The period will end February 21th at 11:59pm PST (February 22th at 8:59am CEST).

This time I have submitted a proposal together with WDLabs:

• Next Generation Hardware for Software Defined Storage - Software Defined Storage like Ceph has changed the storage market dramatically in the last few years. While software has changed, storage hardware stayed basically the same: commodity servers connected to JBODs utilizing SAS/SATA devices. The next step must be a revolution in the hardware too. At the Austin summit the Ceph community presented a 4 PB Ceph cluster comprised of WDLabs Converged Microservers. Each Microserver is built by starting with an HGST HE8 HDD platform and adding an ARM and DDR running Linux on the drives itself. WDLabs provided access to early production devices for key customers such as Deutsche Telekom for adoption and feedback. This talk will provide insight into our findings running a Ceph cluster on this platform as a storage provider to OpenStack.

This period the voting process changed again unique URLs to proposals seems to work again. So if you would like to vote for my talk use this link or search for the proposal (e.g. use the title from above or search for "Al-Gaaf"). As always: every vote is highly welcome! 

As the last times I highly recommend to search also for "Ceph" or what ever topic your are interested in. You find the voting page here with all proposals and abstracts. I'm looking forward to see if and which of these talks will be selected.

OpenStack Summit Barcelona Presentation

Yesterday I conducted my talk at the OpenStack Summit in Barcelona. You can find the presentation here: "Vanilla or Distributions: How Do They Differentiate?" and the video from the session on the OpenStack Foundation youtube channel. 

Any feedback would be welcome, please don't forget to rate the presentation in the OpenStack Foundation Summit app.

OpenStack Summit Barcelona

Today the OpenStack Summit started in Barcelona, Spain, with the keynotes.

Looking forward to my talk later today: Vanilla or Distributions: How Do They Differentiate? and a interesting summit the next days.

OpenStack Summit Barcelona: Vote for Presentations

The next OpenStack Summit takes place in Bacelona (Spain) in October (25.-28.10.2016). The "Vote for Presentations" period started on 26.07.2016. All proposals are now up for community votes. The period will end August 8th at 11:59pm PDT (August 9th at 8:59am CEST).

I have submitted this time two proposals:

• OpenStack and Ceph @ Converged Microservers - On the Austin Summit the Ceph Community and WDLabs presented about running a 4 Petabyte Ceph cluster on ethernet attached Converged Microserver He8 drives. WDLabs provided access to early production devices for key customers for early adoption and feedback. This talk will provide insight into our experience with running a Ceph cluster on these devices as a storage provider for our OpenStack environment.
• Vanilla or distributions: How do they differentiate? - If it comes to OpenStack there is always the question: vanilla or a distribution. You have the agony of choice, it will highly depend on your usecase and organization. We will take a look behind the curtain of the OpenStack products. What should you know about the offerings? Is there anything you may should evaluate before you choose a solution? There is more to take a look at than only the OpenStack product itself if you include also e.g. KVM and Ceph. What about the base distributions and support?

This period the voting process changed slightly. Based on community feedback, unique URLs to proposals are no longer available. So if you would like to vote for these talks, you have to search for them (e.g. use the title from above or search for "Al-Gaaf"). As always: every vote is highly welcome. I recommend also to search for "Ceph" or what ever topic your are interested in. You find the voting page here with all proposals and abstracts. I'm looking forward to see if and which of these talks will be selected.

OpenStack Summit Barcelona: Call for Speakers

Barcelona (Spain) will be the venue for the next OpenStack Summit this October (25.-28.10.2016). The "Call for Speakers" period started. You can submit your presentation here. The deadline to fill your application is July 13, 2016 at 11:59 pm (PDT) / July 14 8:59 CEST.

In May there was a long discussion in the community about changing the selection process for the presentations, especially about if there should be a voting at all. The process changed slightly compared to Austin, checkout the current selection process.

Deutsche OpenStack Tage 2016

Tomorrow the German OpenStack Days 2016 (Deutsche OpenStack Tage) will start in Cologne. I will give a talk on Ceph and OpenStack about "OpenStack at 99,999% availability with Ceph".

It seems the event is already sold out completely, but as far as I know the presentations (mostly conducted in German) will be recorded and available after the conference. If you have already a ticket, have a interesting OpenStack conference in Cologne!

OpenStack Summit Austin - Start

Today the OpenStack Summit starts in Austin, TX. Sitting right now in the keynote hall with live music and wait for the keynotes to begin. This time my talk wasn't selected. Nevertheless I expect a great summit with numerous interesting sessions and locking forward to meet with other fellows and partners from the OpenStack and Ceph communities.

OpenStack Mitaka Bug Smash - Nuremberg

Today is the second day of the Global OpenStack Bug Smash for the upcoming Mitaka release. I attended to the local meeting here in Nuremberg at the SUSE office. 

The last two days I took a look at some cinder bugs that are related to Ceph RBD bug reports and pushed some fixes (e.g. for #1508340 and #1489134). 

If you are interested to help improve the next OpenStack release: take a look at the open bugs and check if you can help fixing them. You can find more information in etherpad or especially for the Nuremberg meeting here.

Vote for Presentations - OpenStack Summit Austin 2016

The first OpenStack Summit this year will take place in Austin (TX, US) from April 25-29, 2016. The "Call for Speakers" period ended some days ago and now the community voting for presentation started and will end 17th February, 11:59 PST (18th February 7:59 UTC / 08:59 CEST). 

I've submitted this time one talk this time:

• "From Hardware to Application - NFV@OpenStack and Ceph" - This talk will provide insight into NFV cloud specific hardware and data center design, preferred setup and requirements to OpenStack and Ceph and also important design implications and requirements for applications and developers on this platform. 

You can vote, if you are interested to see my talk at the summit, every vote is highly welcome. The full abstract can be found at the voting page.

There is a long list of interesting Ceph related talks, simply use the search field on the voting page. I may provide a list in an additional post later as last time.

OpenStack Summit Austin: CFS period extended

Just a small update on the Call for Speakers for the OpenStack Austin summit. The submission period was extended. The new deadline is February 2nd, 2016,11:59 PM PST (February 3rd, 8:59 CEST). You can find more information about the submission and speaker selection process here.

OpenStack Summit Austin: Call for Speakers

The next OpenStack Summit will take place in Austin, TX, US from April 25-29, 2016. The Call for Speaker period is still open and will close on February 1st , 2016, 11:59 PM PDT (February 2nd, 08:59 CEST). You can submit your presentations here. 

The process to submit a session proposal changed a little bit since the last summit. You have to provide more information like "What should attendees expect to learn?", "What is the problem or use case you’re addressing in this session?", "Why should this session be selected?", but also links to former presentations. And you can submit no more than 3 proposals. Personally I have to say: This is really an improvement, especially if this information also ends up in the voting process! 

I myself work currently on a proposal to speak about "From Hardware to Application in a OpenStack and Ceph NFV cloud". I hope we will see many interesting proposals for Ceph related talks!

Linux-Stammtisch Munich

For all Ceph interested people in Germany, especially Bavaria: There will be a Linux-Stammtisch next week on 24.11.2015 in Munich. I will present about "Ceph - Overview, Experiences and Outlook". If you are interested, the meeting starts at 19:00 (CET) at the Paulaner Bräuhaus. You find more information and can register here.

There will be also a talk held by Andreas Pöschl from BMW. The topic is: "Erfahrungen bei der Integration von Open Stack in eine Enterprise-Umgebung". And for sure there will be time for networking and beer after the talks and discussion.