Positioning Yourself forthe FutureSome technologies and trends that I recommendwatching or learning

Scott Lowe, VCDX 39vExpert, Author, Blogger, Geek

http://blog.scottlowe.org / Twitter: @scott_lowe

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Before going any further

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• This presentation will be made available online after the event

• In Oct 2012, I gave a presentation titled “Three Technologies Worth Watching or Learning”

• Presentation is available online at <https://speakerdeck.com/slowe/three-technologies-worth-watching-or-learning>

• This presentation is an update to that one• Attempts to answer the question, “How can I best position myself for future trends?”

Some history

• Linux• Network virtualization• OS and application containers• RESTful APIs

Some new technologies to watch/learn (2014 edition)

Linux

• Popping up more and more throughout the data center• Serves as the basis for many products• Inexpensive solution for a variety of issues• Key things:

• Pick a distribution (Ubuntu & Red Hat/CentOS seem to be most prominent)

• Figure out how to do common tasks (DHCP, DNS, firewall, web server, proxy, etc.)

Why Linux?

Network virtualization

• A key part of a cloud/SDDC strategy• I’m doing an NSX deep dive today at 3pm• Key things:

• Some networking basics (learn the language)• SDN (original definition) and OpenFlow• Open vSwitch (OVS)• Network encapsulation protocols (STT, GRE/NVGRE, VXLAN)

Why network virtualization?

OS and application containers

• Lightweight way of providing isolation• Two examples are Linux containers (LXC) and Docker

• LXC primarily targeted at OS containers• Docker primarily targeted at application containers

• Can provide greater scale for the right use cases• Complementary to full machine virtualization (like VMware)

Why OS and application containers?

Dockerfile example

FROM ubuntuMAINTAINER Scott Lowe <address@domain.com>

# Make sure package repositories are correctRUN echo “deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise main universe" > /etc/apt/sources.list

# Update packages and install OpenSSHRUN apt-get updateRUN apt-get install -y openssh-server

# Expose port and run SSH daemonEXPOSE 22CMD [“/usr/sbin/sshd -D”]

RESTful APIs

• The data center is increasingly API-driven• Public cloud services against which IT is being compared are API-driven (AWS, for example)

• Understanding APIs helps understand how to integrate solutions• Key items:

• JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) and XML (eXtensible Markup Language)

• Using cURL to interrogate an API

Why RESTful APIs?

JSON example

{ "result_count": 3, "results": [ { "_href": "/ws.v1/lswitch/3ca2d5ef-6a0f-4392-9ec1-a6645234bc55", "_schema": "/ws.v1/schema/LogicalSwitchConfig", "type": "LogicalSwitchConfig" }, { "_href": "/ws.v1/lswitch/81f51868-2142-48a8-93ff-ef612249e025", "_schema": "/ws.v1/schema/LogicalSwitchConfig", "type": "LogicalSwitchConfig" }, { "_href": "/ws.v1/lswitch/9fed3467-dd74-421b-ab30-7bc9bfae6248", "_schema": "/ws.v1/schema/LogicalSwitchConfig", "type": "LogicalSwitchConfig" } ]}

• OpenStack• Configuration management (CFEngine, Puppet, Chef, Ansible, Salt)

• Object storage (Swift, S3)

Honourable mentions

Questions &answers

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