Cloudy with a chance of chameleons

Last week, Denver hosted the very first Open Infrastructure Summit. Over 2,000 attendees from all around the world visited the Colorado Convention Centre with an express aim to collaborate, network, share and learn (and maybe pick up some swag from the sponsors!). The infamously unstable Colorado weather lived up to its reputation, welcoming us at the weekend with warm sunshine and blue skies, and then rapidly dropping temperatures with snow, then proceeding to rain and finally back to sun again at the end of the week.

Collaboration without boundaries

The theme of the conference was introduced by Jonathan Bryce in his keynote – collaboration without boundaries. This collaboration is one of the things that has always drawn me to open source, and was in clear evidence throughout the event – in the exhibition hall and in the sessions. Companies that ostensibly compete co-presented sessions, with a great example being Alexandra Settle from SUSE and Stephan Finucane from Red Hat presenting Working with Documentation, the OpenStack Way. In the exhibition hall, competing companies companionably chatted with each other, while the PTG saw individuals from all around the open source world collaborating together on code, documentation, special interest groups and more.

The SUSE Spa

This event saw the SUSE Spa pay Denver a visit. Our message was simple but powerful – software-defined infrastructure, and open infrastructure in particular doesn’t have to be stressful. This is something that SUSE have been doing for over 25 years now – starting with making Linux easier for enterprises, and since have extended into Ceph, OpenStack, Kubernetes, Cloud Foundry and more. All backed by SUSE Support, and with the knowledge that everything we offer is fully open source (as you’d expect from the open, open source company).

John, Andrew and the team were demonstrating how easy it is to deploy SUSE CaaS Platform (Kubernetes) on top of SUSE OpenStack Cloud on a bare metal environment, and how you could then use SUSE Cloud Application Platform for application delivery across not just this platform, but others including public cloud, too.

In addition to this, the SUSE Spa staff were giving away goodies to help relieve stress at your desk, ranging from USB massagers, to foot massagers, shiatsu back and shoulder massagers and even a massaging chair cover. We also had a massage therapist at our booth to give chair massages to attendees – this proved to be very popular, giving attendees the chance to get off their feet and to have a delightful back, shoulder and neck massage. The plush Geeko chameleons were also one of the prizes on the SUSE Spa, with attendees queueing to get hold of one to take home to their desk/child/pet!

Cloud Nine

SUSE OpenStack Cloud 9 was pre-announced on April 2^nd at SUSECON in Nashville, and was made available to customers on the first day of the Open Infrastructure Summit, April 29^th. This is a very exciting time for us as it sees the HPE Helion OpenStack technology that we purchased in 2017 being fully incorporate into SUSE OpenStack Cloud with just a single, SUSE-branded release. This makes it easier for customers using earlier versions of HPE Helion OpenStack to upgrade to the latest iteration of SUSE OpenStack Cloud. It also introduced a new Day Two UI for customers selecting the Cloud Lifecycle Manager installation path, which has been designed to simplify post-deployment cloud operations, giving companies greater business agility to react quickly to changes in the market or in customer demand.

Airshippin’ across the universe

One of the pieces of big news announced in Denver was the release of Airship v.10, one of the pilot projects that the OpenStack Foundation announced in May 2017. This was eagerly anticipated as it makes it simpler for businesses to deliver cloud lifecycle automation via containers on bare metal. SUSE have been actively involved in the Airship project for a while now, have been contributing code upstream, and it will be a key part of our plans for future releases of SUSE OpenStack Cloud. We’ll be releasing a tech preview of a containerized OpenStack environment later this summer that uses Airship for lifecycle management – watch this space for details of how to get involved in the tech preview.

Try before you buy

Why not download the latest version of SUSE OpenStack Cloud and try it free for 60 days to see how you find it? If you’re concerned that your internal IT team might not have the time or skillset to set this up, then speak to the SUSE Support Team about SUSE Select Services. A 12-month, fixed-price service offering that can help you to jumpstart your SUSE OpenStack Cloud deployment, it also includes ongoing support and knowledge transfer to help your IT team learn what they need in order to build and operate a SUSE OpenStack Cloud. The SUSE Spa will be visiting Shanghai for the Open Infrastructure Summit in November, so if you’re attending that, please pop over to see us and learn about how SUSE can take the stress out of SDI for you and to admire our bright green Crocs (which were quite a talking point in Denver!).