Explore, collaborate, and innovate at OpenInfra Summit 2023! 

Explore, collaborate, and innovate at OpenInfra Summit 2023! 

As the world continues to embrace the power of open-source technologies, this year’s OpenInfra Summit in Vancouver, Canada promises to be an interesting gathering of visionaries, experts, and enthusiasts from around the globe. From cloud computing and containerization to networking and storage, the OpenInfra Summit, hosted by the OpenInfra Foundation is the ultimate platform for sharing knowledge, fostering collaboration, and exploring the limitless possibilities of open infrastructure.  

Last year we attended the OpenInfra Summit in Berlin, where we held many interviews with some of the key players in the OpenInfra Foundation and open source world. These interviews offer valuable insights and perspectives from industry leaders, adding depth to the conversations surrounding open infrastructure. Having recorded and uploaded the video to our YouTube channel you are able to rewatch them through the following link:  https://www.youtube.com/@FairbanksOpenSource/videos 

Having that said, the OpenInfra Summit of 2023, is expected to be a vibrant ecosystem of thought-provoking keynotes, insightful panel discussions, hands-on workshops, and interactive demonstrations. Whether you’re a seasoned professional, a curious newcomer, or an organization seeking to harness the transformative potential of open infrastructure, this summit offers something for everyone. 

To offer a glimpse into the exciting lineup of talks, we have compiled a selection of sessions that have captured our attention. These talks delve into various aspects of open infrastructure, promising to inspire and educate. In that light, and we have listed some the talks that seem particularly interesting to us. You will find the overview below.  

Day 1 

‘’OpenStack as a sandwich, running Kubernetes below and above the IaaS layer’’ presented by Andrew Karpow from SAP America  

SAP’s internal private cloud built on OpenStack, the converged cloud, is now running for about 6 years and has been very growing ever since. It is now managing PiB of RAM and over a million CPU cores. 

OpenStack proved to be the right tool to ensure scalability and extensibility on the long run.  

But recently, container-based orchestration got more important and shifted the majority of workload on their IaaS platform. It is therefore a good thing that the converged cloud was built from the beginning with Kubernetes in mind. SAP America’s stack runs completely on top of Kubernetes, and with Gardener they have a fully managed Kubernetes cluster available for customers with the ease of a click. 

Andrew will show how the converged cloud developed since its initial release, which container-related services have been built around Vanilla OpenStack and what changes they needed to incorporate to keep up with their growth. 

‘’OpenStack Services on Red Hat OpenShift’’ presented by Mario Bracho and Chris Jones from Red Hat 

OpenStack services: What goes on behind the scenes and what does it actually look like? Check out how OpenStack services have turned into OpenShift operators. Speed up and simplify the deployment of services that make up the Red Hat OpenStack Platform. Computing, networking, and storage are now done from within the OpenShift console. 

With the latest version of the Red Hat OpenStack Platform, integrated with Red Hat OpenShift, service providers will be able to operate, scale, upgrade, and manage their private clouds more easily. See and hear directly from the product and engineering teams about what the new architecture will look like, how to implement it, and what benefits to expect, whether it’s powering 5G, edge, or anything in between! 

Check out how workloads running today in the Red Hat OpenStack Platform can benefit from this upcoming modernized approach. You’re already running virtualized and containerized workloads, shouldn’t your infrastructure include the best of both worlds? 

‘’Developing and deploying for multiple Kubernetes clusters on OpenStack’’, a hands-on workshop hosted by Michael Tillman and Eric Gregory from Mirantis 

OpenStack implemented on Kubernetes allows for a large array of open source tools to provide transparency. And, as more organizations using OpenStack understand the benefits of cloud native architecture, the demand for creating new software as containerized applications running on Kubernetes will only grow. In this hands-on presentation the hosts give participants the opportunity to perform an exercise demonstrating each of these capabilities. 

First, you will spin up a devstack-style environment on a cloud instance with access to the Horizon console. It also provides access to Lens, which enables you to explore the details of an OpenStack deployment. A number of exercises will be available. Secondly, you will work through the steps of provisioning Kubernetes clusters instances on top of OpenStack and perform simple exercises on the clusters you have built. 

‘’Storage business continuity and disaster recovery with Ceph and OpenStack’’ presented by Enrico Bocchi and Luis Fernandez Alvarez from CERN  

The Storage Group at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) operates several Ceph clusters providing block, file, and object storage, totaling more than 100 PB of raw capacity. Ceph is a critical component of the IT infrastructure and it provides, together with the OpenStack compute cloud, CERN users with central IT services and a large-scale computing and storage infrastructure for scientific data analysis. 

The storage infrastructure is being rationalized and restructured to offer solutions in the context of business continuity and disaster recovery. In this presentation, they will report on RBD snapshots and mirroring improvements, on how CephFS Manila shares are backed up to S3 (and in the future to tape) via a restic-based backup orchestrator, and on the instantiation of storage services spanning different computing centers. 

Day 2 

‘’State of LOKI’’ presented by Ildiko Vancsa from the OpenInfra Foundation  

Ildiko will kick off a segment with multiple speakers talking about the power of deploying the OpenInfra standard: Linux, OpenStack, Kubernetes Infrastructure (LOKI). 

‘’The cloud journey you DON’T want to take’’ presented by Krzysztof Janiszewski and Julio Villarreal Pelegrino from Red Hat 

The adoption of a private cloud platform like OpenStack can bring many benefits to an organization, including increased agility, scalability, and cost savings. However, the journey to implement and effectively utilize such a platform can be complex and fraught with challenges. In this presentation they will outline some of the common mistakes being made during the OpenStack adoption journey, and offer suggestions on how to avoid them. 

During this presentation they are also going to discuss everything from understanding the organization’s needs, estimating time and resources required, planning deployment/installation, migration processes and operational needs of a production deployment. They also explain how by avoiding the common pitfalls, organizations can more smoothly navigate the OpenStack adoption journey and reap the full benefits of a private cloud platform. 

‘’Kubernetes on OpenStack’’ presented by Michał Dulko and Matthew Booth from Red Hat 

A forum conversation of current experiences, best practises, pain points and feature requests around running Kubernetes on OpenStack.  

Topics they will touch upon include:  

  • Deployment architectures 
  • Deployment methods 
  • Use of hardware accelerators in kubernetes workloads 
  • Network constraints 
  • Common failure modes 

Expected participants include: 

  • OpenStack developers 
  • Kubernetes developers 
  • Operators 

Matthew and Michał work on OpenShift on OpenStack for Red Hat and are contributors to cloud provider OpenStack and Cluster API Provider OpenStack. 

‘’The future is here, how advances in hardware are changing the landscape for cloud computing’’ presented by Christian Huebner from Mirantis 

For years the limitations in cloud design were found mostly on the hardware side, with slow storage, high CPU cost, and expensive networking gear. 

Recently the picture has radically changed. Magnetic storage became obsolete. High core count CPUs are common. Everything is bound together with much faster networking. GPUs and smart NICs have left the status as niche products.  

However, these improvements pose new design challenges. Bottlenecks have not disappeared but are found in unexpected places. Finding the sweet spot of hardware design, cloud size, resilience of applications to node failure, and storage optimization still depends on the skill of the architect.  

Christian will discuss approaches to design for large and small OpenStack clouds, software defined storage, and latency sensitive cloud workloads. A foray into budget conscious design will help the participant build more with less and to determine how greenfield deployment and reuse fare in terms of TCO and risk management.

Day 3   

‘’Self-service LOKI applications for non-technical users’’ presented by Matt Pryor and John Garbutt from StackHPC 

Azimuth is an open-source, application-focused platform that empowers non-technical users by allowing them to self-provision applications on LOKI, from web-based remote desktops to complex multi-node systems and Kubernetes-based applications, using a simple web interface. 

Non-technical users within an organisation often have to rely on administrators to deploy and manage the applications that they need to do their job, leading to a delay in the user becoming productive and a support burden on the administrator to perform repetitive tasks. 

Here Matt and John show how Azimuth utilises LOKI and open-source automation tools to allow users to deploy and manage curated applications with just a few clicks, and how the Zenith application proxy provides secure, SSO-authenticated access to these applications. They will also demonstrate how applications can be optimised to take advantage of modern hardware when required, such as GPUs and accelerated networking, transparently to the user. 

Conclusion   

You can also find a full overview of the OpenInfra Summit’s schedule through the following link: https://vancouver2023.openinfra.dev/a/schedule?_ga=2.244841605.1614338655.1686050424-910909518.1686050424

In conclusion, the OpenInfra Summit 2023 is set to be an inspiring event that brings together open-source technology enthusiasts, experts, and visionaries from all corners of the globe. This summit, hosted by the OpenInfra Foundation, serves as a global platform for sharing knowledge, fostering collaboration, and exploring the boundless possibilities of open infrastructure. Are you planning on attending? Let us know in the comment section.  

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