Volunteering at the LinuxTag 2012

Today I spent almost all the day helping the LinuxTag crew. They needed someone to help with transportation and I own a trailer and had a day of vacation. IT turns out that the LinuxTag - like all trade shows - comes with a lot of stuff and the people who help also need something:

Shopping for the LinuxTag

And this is actually not all of it, just to help the volunteers and project members and booth staff.

Besides lugging lots of boxes and crates I actually learned a lot about the LinuxTag today: It is all completely done by volunteers, most of whom actually take vacation days to organize the event!

If you like the LinuxTag please come and join the effort and sign up to help at the LinuxTag: http://www.linuxtag.org/2012/de/mitmachen.html

PaaS and DevOps

In his blog DevOps is DOA Tom Mornini writes that DevOps is already outdated in the face of PaaS offerings. His opinion is not entirely surprising as he is CTO and co-founder at EngineYard, a large PaaS vendor.

Interstingly most people seem to disagree with his opinion (for example here, here and all of the comments at Tom's blog). I also believe that he missed the main advantage of DevOps which is IMHO that DevOps actually supports knowledge-driven teams while PaaS requires one to trust in the service quality of the PaaS vendor with little to no way of influencing that.

So, if you don't want to increase the amount of knowlegde in your organization then PaaS is a good way to go and then you maybe really don't need a DevOps approach. Just wait a while and find some of your developers turned into ops because in the end even in a PaaS world somebody needs to maintain the automation that is used to feed the PaaS hosting.

But, if you want to increase the total amount of knowledge in your organization and if you want to enable your teams to take more responsability for what they are doing and for what comes out in the end then please do look into DevOps as a way to share responsability between all tech teams involved in your enterprise. And if your tech teams decide together to use PaaS then this also might be a good thing because they decided it together.

Package Management Overview

In his recent blog post about Package Management Systems, Diomidis Spinellis gives sound advice about using packages for software management:

"The breadth of modules you can reuse is nothing short of amazing, making it a crime to start writing code before you investigate what packages you can reuse. Whatever your need, there’s likely to be a package that you can effortlessly link with your application. Promisingly, the structure that package managers bring both to the tools we use in our development process and the libraries we reuse in our products ties nicely with the recent move emphasizing development operations (DevOps) as an integration between software development and IT operations. Orderly and organized package management is a key element of a well-run software production process. Maintaining a list of an organization’s recommended packages allows teams to share best practices and avoids package incompatibilities. So, if your business allows it, join a package management ecosystem, enjoy the fruits of other people’s labor, and contribute back to the community."

This very neatly fits in with using RPM for everything which we are doing now at ImmobilienScout24.

See also his notes on companies adopting OSS.

Silicon Berlin Update

It has been a while since my first Silicon Berlin blog post. I tried to put the essence of my understand of Silicon Berlin into a few lines:

Silicon Berlin is a label or brand that hopes to unite Berlin web companies to make Berlin a better place for web companies. It can serve as a label under which a community of web companies and IT people can act together. Silicon Berlin - beeing a true community effort - is not owned by anybody and can be used by anyone interested to further their goals with regard to making Berlin more attractive for web companies and for people who like to work in web companies.

Please comment and let me know your opinion.

My most recent activity is my first public Silicon Berlin talk at the 5th Berlin DevOps meetup.

Here are a few new related articles, events and links:

• Silicon Allee Breakfast Meetup on 2012-02-07
• Warum Berlin das neue Silicon Valley ist, Berliner Morgenpost, 2012-01-29
• „Berlin – das Silicon Valley Deutschlands?“ Event on 2012-01-18
• Silicon Allee is always worth a visit
• Berlin Startup Guide by Deutsche Startups has a lot of interesting Berlin info
• Silicon Berlin (auf Deutsch) at the ImmobilienScout24 engineering blog

Please join our Silicon Berlin Google+ and Silicon Berlin Facebook pages.

This is now the new Silicon Berlin logo:

Thanks a lot to Boris Borchert for his creativity! If you have never been to Germany, this is how town signs look in Germany.

5th Berlin DevOps Meetup

See Berlin DevOps homepage for group info.

"Continuous Delivery – the tech parts" by Jens Bräuer


Very interesting talk about the technical details of automating a complete server environment with AWS, RPM, YUM, MCollective, Puppet and Jenkins.

Some things I noted:

Amazon S3 <-> YUM Integration (use S3 as YUM repo backend)

• https://github.com/jbraeuer/yum-s3 and https://github.com/NumberFour/yum-s3-plugin
• Use createrepo baseurl to point to actual RPM location in S3

Using a distributed HTTP-based document store as a YUM repo backend to solve the availability problem sounds like a really good idea.

Software packages bring their own monitoring and load balancer configuration


He also recommended http://mmonit.com/monit/ for monitoring and http://haproxy.1wt.eu/ for load balancing. Their software packages bring their own monitoring and load balancing configuration that is dropped into /etc/monit.d and /etc/haproxy.d. Each server monitors itself with monit and a central Icinga instance monitors the monit processes on all servers. MCollective collects the HA-proxy configuration from all servers and delivers it to the actual load balancers. They see it as a benefit that the developers also write the load balancer configuration for their services. I find this very cool and impressive!


Access his slides here.


"Scalarium running on Scalarium" by Jonathan Weiss, Peritor


This talk is about EC2 & Eucalyptus cluster management. See http://www.scalarium.com/ for the full marketing info.

Jonathan explained in detail how they bootstrap an initial Scalarium instance with Capistrano which is then used to bootstrap a second instance. These two instances can then manage each other which provides true redundancy.

And of course Peritor is hiring, like everybody else :-)

The discussion after the presentation was very interesting. This is the 3rd or 4th Scalarium presentation I have seen and I like it more with each time. I think they really build an interesting technology there that turns AWS into a reliable and managable platform.

“Silicon Berlin” and “Velocity Europe post-mortem” by Schlomo Schapiro, ImmobilienScout24


This was my talk:

Silicon Berlin at the Berlin DevOps Meetup

View more presentations from Schlomo Schapiro.

This talk helped me to understand that we need a short definition of the Silicon Berlin idea. Here is my first attempt at writing a short pitch, please comment to improve:

Silicon Berlin is a label or brand that hopes to unite Berlin web companies to make Berlin a better place for web companies. It can serve as a label under which a community of web companies and IT people can act together. Silicon Berlin - beeing a true community effort - is not owned by anybody and can be used by anyone interested to further their goals with regard to making Berlin more attractive for web companies and for people who like to work in web companies.



See the following for more information about the topic:

• Silicon Berlin Update
• Silicon Berlin bei ImmobilienScout24 auf Deutsch
• Original Silicon Berlin blog post
• Silicon Berlin G+ page

If you don't like the name, logo or anything else, please drop me a line (or comment) with an alternative suggestion.


Thanks a lot to everybody who came and took part in the discussion.

CloudCamp Gent 2011

I am at the CloudCamp Ghent and can share some notes.

VMware Cloud Foundry

http://www.flickr.com/photos/70260750@N08/6376439699/

• Lode Vermeiren, VMware.
• Talk on Slideshare
• Long part about VMware products and history that are cloud related.
• It got actually interesting once he started to demo stuff.
• The good part was that it was very authentic (e.g. not all parts where working).
• The bad part was that there was not so much to see, just some basic "upload my simple Hello World app"
• The speaker distributed USB Keys with a VM and registration codes for the Cloud Foundry service.
• Look at http://cloudfoundry.com/micro and use the cloudcampgh code for instant access (till November 26^th). Without the code invites might take a couple of days to activate.

Combell Cloud Cases

• Company is sponsor, this is a short sales pitch
• Quite refreshing in its brevity

"Devops in the Cloud" is a pleonasm

http://www.flickr.com/photos/70260750@N08/6376521145/

• Andrew Shafer (Reductive Labs / CloudScaling)
• Thesis: Clouds exist only due to DevOps
• On the question "did you solve the configuration management problem" he suggested packaging it and referred to our package deployment :-)
• As his laptop did not work he started an interesting discussion about clouds, devops and corporate mindset
• Bottom line:
• Total automation
• Short feedback loops between everybody involved
• I think that this talk about DevOps and Cloud fits the subject: Prying the Cloud Open: Dell Crowbar & OpenStack, it also fits the OpenStack theme of the CloudCamp OpenStack workshop.
  

Microsoft Cloud Strategy

• He started by announcing a "commercial break" before the coffee break. +1 for self-humor.
• Eventually, every regular product should be available as a cloud service.
• Office365 is just the start
• Nothing really useful. But thanks to Microsoft for sponsoring this event.

Manage Non-Cloud Dev & Test Environment With a Cloud Hat On

Source: http://www.facebook.com/patrick.debois

• Patrick Debois, devopsdays.org and others.
• Download the talk from Slideshare.
• Telling his story that brought him to the cloud.
• His presentations was either plain b/w graphics or really nice cloud photos like

Source: http://www.collthings.co.uk/2008/06/10-very-rare-clouds.html

• Quote: "Buy a new laptop every year" - The cost of a new laptop is much less than the loss in productivity due to ressource limitations. +1 that.
• Interesting: Pay attention how the focus and understanding changes and evolves when going from local to cloud.
• Abstraction through cloud libraries: Jclouds, Fog, Boto
• Trick: Reuse the same workflows internally and in the cloud.
• One cannot always do everything in the cloud, but you can shape your internal IT as a cloud
• Here developed a good discussion
• Challenges: Orchestration - No good and integrated solution available.

Cloud and Security A match made in heaven?
Sorry, it got too dark for my crap phone to take photos.

• Stefan Avgoustakis, Cisco
• Look at a vendor-neutral guide for cloud security from cloudsecurityalliance.org at https://cloudsecurityalliance.org/research/initiatives/security-guidance/
• Core issue is security for Virtualization, look at http://www.rationalsurvivability.com/blog/
• At the core of Ciscos solution is
• Take the switch/firewall into the Virtualization → create a single distributed switch that spans the entire Virtualization
• Provide XML APIs to control the virtual switch
• Same thing for all virtualization products
• But, he is just explaining in detail the motivation behind the Cisco Nexus 1000V product line which implements a Cisco switch within a VMware vSphere and (soon) Microsoft Hyper-V farm.
• I asked about Open vSwitch, but Stefan could not tell much about Open vSwitch and these aspects.

Challenges of Running and Scaling Cassandra in the Cloud

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/acunu_london/5343106364/]andy.ormsby

• Andy Ormsby
• Cloud challenges:
• Performance of single node (significantly) less that physical server
• Availability, stuff breaks
• Apache Cassandra tries to answer these challenges
• OK, this seems to be a Cassandra 101 talk. If you missed this one then try this Slideshare search.
• As usual, the stories not written on the slides make the talk worthwhile.

I better don't write abou the telenet vendor talk, but I would rather use this opportunity to thank them vor sponsoring the event.

A Practical Introduction to OpenStack

Source: http://www.facebook.com/dysinger

• Tim Dysinger, CloudScaling
• Sorry, did not manage to write much here.
• Look at the OpenStack OSCON 2011 page for a list of great talks.

---

That was the last "official" talk, now off to the break-out sessions. Let's see what we get today. Unfortunately half or more than half of the people left and did not stay for the break out sessions.

The topics where:

• Private Cloud
• Identity Management
• Auto Scaling
• Orchestration

Interesting discussion, not too many people. Hallway tack is always one of the hightlights of an event.

---

OpenStack Workshop

I also attended (and this was the main motive for the trip) the OpenStack workshop that occured on Monday before the CloudCamp and on Tuesday. The workshop was held by Tim Dysinger and Andrew Shafer (see above).

The first day focused on building infrastructure, Tim introduced us to vagrant and Chef. The idea was to use vagrant to manage VirtualBox VMs and Chef to configure the VMs to run OpenStack. Tim provided a vagrant project on GitHub which we used to deploy the VMs.

Unfortunately the first workshop day went by with playing around on vagrant and Chef without touching anything OpenStack-related. I must say that I did not know vagrant before and it is a really cool tool. However, this "exposure" to Chef did not convince me to use Chef at work.

The second day shifted focus to actually deploying OpenStack and in the end we just followed the starter guide on the project homepage.

Bottom line is that I learned a lot, met new and interesting people. I hope the next workshop will focus more on OpenStack and less on Chef recipes.

Silicon Berlin

What do these companies have in common?

(bought by Nokia in 2006)

(bought by Ebay)

Well, they are all in Berlin!

Berlin is one of the most vibrant places on earth where new web companies settle and thrive. Berlin attracts not only people from Germany but from all over the world. Especially English speakers are welcome in Berlin and find a lot of like-minded people here.

Investors are flocking to Berlin and almost every day or week we seen new start ups. Even the big players are coming now, as the recent press reports (sorry, mostly in German):

• NEUES GOOGLE-INSTITUT: Investoren sehen Berlin als nächstes Silicon Valley (Berliner Morgenpost 2011-10-26)
• Amazon kommt mit AWS nach Berlin (2011-11-10)
• STARTUP-METROPOLE UND SILICON VALLEY-PENDANT: Wann begann die Berlin-Euphorie? (2011-11-10)
• BERLIN - Europas Silicon Valley (DRadio Wissen 2011-11-11)
• Berlin: The birth place of the next Facebook? (techcrunch, 2011-10-24 in English)
  5 Gründe, warum aus Berlin das nächste Facebook kommt (t3n, German translation)
• Berlin ist das Silicon Valley Europas (Tagesspiegel 2011-10-20)
• Europe's Silicon Allee - Berlin on the Road to Becoming a Start-Up Mecca (SPIEGEL 2011-04-11 in English)
• Forget Silicon Valley (exberliner, 2011-11-16)

Also earlier reports mention Berlin as the European Silicon Valley:

• Why Berlin Needs To Become Europe’s Silicon Valley (2010-05-12) Scroll down and read the comments!
• Berlin ist die Start-up-Hauptstadt Deutschlands (2009-05-20)

Berlin also happens to have the most startup companies in Berlin, as deutsche-startups.de found out:

Source: Originally by deutsche-startups.de, now found on internetworld.de and frische-fische.de.
I was not able to determine about which year this statistics are, so take it for illustration.

Velocity Conference Linking Silicon Valley and Silicon Berlin

But the event that really links the Silicon Valley to Silicon Berlin is the Velocity Web Performance and Operations Conference, that leads the WebOps community in the Silicon Valley. In November 2012 the Velocity Europe came to Berlin for the first time with a great success both in numbers and quality content.

About 40% of the Velocity attendants where from Germany, we don't yet have a number on the participants from Berlin. The conference managed to bring the culture and feeling of the Silicon Valley to Berlin. I never met so many people from the various German communities at a single event as I did at the Velocity!

In my opinion the Velocity is an important step in linking Berlin to the Silicon Valley to support the development of a vibrant Web community in Berlin. I hope the next Velicity EU will be again in Berlin, everybody I talked to also thinks the same.

Update 2011-11-22: Added more links to Tagesspiegel and  techcrunch
Update 2011-12: Silicon Berlin bei ImmobilienScout24
Update 2012-02: See Silicon Berlin Update  and report about Silicon Berlin talk at Berlin Devops meetup.

Google Apps - Marketplace Addons you really need

I migrated my domain to Google Apps and would like to share some of my experience.

One of the great features is IMHO the Enterprise Marketplace where you can find lots of really useful (and even more of useless) Apps to add to your domain. Here is a selection of apps I tried or at least noticed.

Must Have

• Doodle integrates really nice into Google Apps and fulfils all dreams about scheduling meetings or asking several people about their opinion on something

Useful

• Lucid Charts has a free account which is more than sufficiant for most simple drawing needs. The shape library is rather simple, e.g. no floor plan shapes. Diagrams are limited to 60 objects each.
• PresentOnlineNow gets the job done with regard to online presentations and comes for free for up to 10 participants in a meeting room. Only downside is that screen sharing does not work from Linux. Positive is that the participants don't need to install anything, it requires only Flash.

Might Be Interesting

These apps seem interesting, I did not yet have time to check them out:

• Organizer is the cure for Email overload
• Bookmarks Version 2 (FREE) centralizes bookmark management and sharing, free version covers 500 bookmarks per domain.
• Exxtensions allows to send a Fax from Google Docs (and possibly also local files in the future). Prices seem competitive. BEWARE: THEY SEND AN EMAIL TO ALL DOMAIN USERS! I talked to the support and the promised that the next release (early 2012) would include customizable Sender ID which is currently missing. The support thanked me for voicing my opinion but did not state when they would stop to send unsolicited emails.
• Sherpa Tools might be interesting to manage shared contacts. Did not try it out because it does not work on Apps For Free (according to the reviews).
• Shared Groups. Reviews sound good and really affordable at 10€ per year. Did not try because eventually I don't need shared contacts for a family domain (yet).
• Lend-Items: Keeping track of items on loan. Free plan allows adding 100 items to your catalogue.
• SurveyAngle: Online surveys, forms, polls, and questionnaires.
Gbridge: Free instant VPN for everyone using Windows. With Desktop and File sharing.
• Gliffy Diagrams and Flowcharts also offers a free account but seems more restricted compared to Lucid Charts. OTOH it has some really nice shapes like for a floor plan. Unfortunately with the floor plan one cannot set the sizes precisely.
  
  

Things That Looked Good but Did Not Work Well

• Shared contacts. Even if you get them filled in it is no big help.
• iClippy promises to solve all screen shot problems but fails to support Linux and is limited to 800x600 in the free plan

VEU 2011 Birds of a Feather was great - see you all next year!

I would like to thank everybody who helped with the Birds of a Feather event yesterday.

It was really great, at the start we had about 30 people and managed to fill up all the talk slots and also had a few discussions.

Till the evening some more people arrived so that we where about 70 for the dinner.

The party was also joined by participants of the CouchConf, which happened to be on the same day.

I hope that everybody enjoyed it and will be back next year.

Velocity Europe 2011 Birds of Feathers

The Velocity Europe 2011 is coming closer, only two weeks to go!

If you have not yet signed up, do so now and use the discount code veu11pcy to get 20% discount off the regular price. The code can be entered on the Velocity registration page.

We managed to put together a Birds of Feathers event just on the afternoon before the velocity. This will serve as a warm-up to the Velocity and provide the open space that the main Velocity does not have this time. Meet the vibrant Berlin web community at the Betahaus, a well-known location for start up companies.

Attendance is free for Velocity attendees! As is the dinner & party after the event :-)

Go to the Velocity Eruope 2011 Birds of Feathers event page at veubof2011.eventbrite.co.uk to see all the details and sign up, the event is limited to 150 participants.