Re:Invent was Incredible

Last week we introduced our new project,
Rancher.io, at AWS Re:Invent, and it was
amazing. We’d been working on the software for months, talking with
good friends, old customers and former colleagues about what we were
building and wondering how it would be received by users. We were
anxious to share it with new people and eager to get their feedback. We
were also really nervous. Four of us flew out to Vegas, set up our
little booth, tested our demos and organized our piles of stickers and
t-shirts. At 5:00 on Tuesday night, the doors opened and within minutes
our tiny booth was overwhelmed with smart people, asking great questions
about networking, storage, Docker, Rancher, AWS, and more. For the next
48 hours we were constantly busy, talking with some of the most forward
leaning IT minds in the world. Some were new to AWS, but many had been
building technology in the cloud for, 6, 7 or even 8 years. We spoke
with architects that had built massive web services that were already
embracing Docker, and others who were just trying to learn what it was
and how it worked. Overwhelmingly, people were intrigued with the
potential of Rancher. Many were running their apps only on AWS,
and were interested in how Rancher could give them control over
networking and storage for Docker. Others were excited at the prospect
of building a private cloud that was optimized for containers. Some of
the most experienced AWS users were talking about using Rancher to
standardize infrastructure running in multiple clouds, both public and
private. At the same time we were getting feedback on twitter, github,
reddit and elsewhere. We’d spend all day in the booth talking, and all
night responding to emails, tweets and posts.

Definitely on my watch list: http://t.co/RJJbznzhSU – “Portable
AWS-style infrastructure service for Docker“. Let’s see what comes
of it… — Sören Blom (@soblom) November 18,
2014

can’t wait to tinker with rancher.io from
@Rancher_Labs on my
@coreoslinux cluster next! (still
working on @gluster :-D) — Brian
Clements (@brianclements) November 16,
2014

Very cool new #docker
project rancher.io from the http://t.co/NlUhX8P1ij guys.
#aws — Chris Marino
(@chris_marino) November 10,
2014

In the end, our stacks of shirts and stickers long gone, we put away our
booth and eventually headed to the airport. We talked about features
that had been suggested, concerns that had been raised, and how to
prioritize some of the work that lay ahead. Mostly, we just smiled,
thrilled that so many people had been interested in our work. For those
of you that stopped by, thank you so much. If you’re interested in
learning more, please take a look at our
GitHubsite, and give Rancher a
try. We are just getting started, and we’ve got an ambitious road map
of features we are working on. As we make progress we will send out
occasional updates, but if you’d like regular information, please
follow us on Twitter
(@rancher_labs). Thanks so much!
Shannon Williams