I love diving into numbers – especially when it has something to do with technology conferences.

But before I do that I would to bring to your attention my two sessions that I have submitted for the upcoming summit (Shameless Plug.. )

Me Tarzan, you Jane (or Operators are not Developers)

Welcoming Operators to the OpenStack Jungle.

A year ago I set out on a journey on trying to help the OpenStack developer community understand the other (and sometimes not well understood) side of the OpenStack community, its users.

Users is a subjective term, depending on who you ask - it could mean the end user using an API or a GUI to deploy a new instance but it also includes those who operate the cloud, maintain it and sweat blood an tears to just allow the end-user to do what he wants.

There is distinct separation today between the two entities - but the good part is that they are slowly coming together.

This talk will describe how you an Operator can make a difference - be it small or large - in OpenStack.

The topics we will go over here are:

• Initiatives
• User Committee
• WTE
• ISV
• Monitoring & Logging
• Large Deployments
• ... and many more....

Operator specific activities:

• Ops Tags
• IRC
• Heaven forbid - committing code

Expect some interesting stories, some horror stories but we are all aiming for the same thing.

The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

OpenStack - High Availability (as a Service) - Fact? Fiction (or maybe something in between)?

Installing an OpenStack cloud used to be a complex task. We have evolved over time and made this a lot easier and more palatable for operators. Operating an OpenStack cloud on the other hand is whole different ball game..

Operators want stable systems and resilient systems, and if the infrastructure services can scale that would only be an added benefit.

But today, OpenStack as a result of its culture, and its history, is a collection of parts, pieces and solutions using multiple different technologies, and architectures.

One of the pain points is naturally high availability for the services which are provided today in a number of different ways.

This talk will propose one possible future direction with which this could be addressed.

By providing a central HA service for all OpenStack projects.

This session will describe a proof of concept for such solution showing making use of cloud friendly technologies that can could take the level of operations to whole new dimension.

I did this kind of an exercise for VMworld a few years ago - By the Numbers - VMworld 2013 Session Voting, and I thought it would be interesting to see what the numbers are for this OpenStack Summit.

Of course without some insight as well – the numbers would be quite boring.

There are a total of 1504 sessions that you can cast your vote upon.

That is a huge number of sessions. Perhaps too many. There is no way to go over the list in a defined amount of time. I think that most of the people are going to vote only if they are sent directly to a specific link. Which means this will be targeted votes as a result of someone asking you specifically vote for a specific session. Not really an ideal process but I guess that is the price we all have to pay, as a result of OpenStack becoming more and more popular.

Here are the number of sessions submitted for each track:
(Please Note – these are based on the pure number of submissions – and not what has been accepted. This is not an exact science – there could be a number of reasons why they are ranked like this – but these are my thoughts and ideas on the data below)

What is the most popular track? 

Operations - the one part that the OpenStack community is still struggling to get their input back into the projects. For a number of reasons. Be it inclusion, methodology, culture or mindset.

For me this is / should be (also for everyone that is involved in OpenStack as well) a bright and shiny beacon. Claiming that this is either the most important aspect or the most pressing need that people want to hear about or want to talk about might be going a bit far, but it is way, way up there.

OpenStack Summits should be about the technology, not about how keep the bits and bytes up and running, deployed and working in an efficient manner.

Next up on the list. Community and How to Contribute. Way down there in at the bottom. Is that because people already know how to do it? Because people have given up on trying?

This is something that the community as a whole should invest more in making it part of the culture and making the bar much more accessible to all.

Hands on Labs. The number of sessions proposed as labs is growing. Maybe it is time to think about a centralized solution specifically for the summit?

Neutron (a.k.a. Networking). The hardest part about a cloud is the networking part. I have said this before and will continue to preach it from the rooftops.

I took the liberty of creating a word-cloud of from all the words in all the submissions according to recurrence.

It makes you think..   :)

You have only one more day to vote – go and make your voice heard!

We are down to the wire – last two days to vote for the sessions you would like see at the upcoming OpenStack Summit in Paris.

There are a large number of categories that you can choose from as you can see below:

You will need an account to cast your vote.

It is quite interesting to see that some of the sessions are targeted at how you can migrate your workloads away from VMware and onto OpenStack, something that I think people will be looking into a lot more in the near future.

I also have a few sessions that you can cast your vote – if you so choose..

OpenStack Design Guide Panel

In July, 2014 The OpenStack Foundation brought twelve members of the OpenStack community together at VMware HQ in Palo Alto, California to produce the OpenStack Design Guide in just 5 days.  This panel brings many of these authors together for an open discussion about how to architecture an OpenStack cloud.

Bring your real-world questions and be prepared to talk OpenStack architecture with a panel of experts from across multiple disciplines and companies. We'll be drawing on real architecture and design problems taken from real-world experiences working with, and developing solutions, built on OpenStack. Following a brief introduction, panelists are ready to field questions from both the moderator and audience members and provide ongoing discussion the design process for architecting cloud solutions based on OpenStack.

Cisco's Media Solutions journey to the cloud with OpenStack

This session will go over how the Video Service provider group has added focus to deployment of its platform to support OpenStack. How this has evolved over the past year, the challenges that came up along the way and how these challenges were addressed - and solved.

Moving from a VMware Centric Architect to an OpenStack Architect

I have been designing VMware clouds and architectures for the past 4 years, and have now moved my focus to OpenStack. The change was not a simple one. There are terminology differences, architectural differences, differences in use cases. Differences in considerations regarding storage design, networking, automation, deployment - across almost every single aspect of the solution.

In this session you will learn what kind of change in mindset is needed, how to adapt to different architectural constraints, requirements and technical decisions.

Automated Deployment of OpenStack on Cisco UCS and Nexus

The Cisco OpenStack Installer provides automated deployment of OpenStack core components, as well as monitoring, storage, and high availability components. The release schedule of Cisco OSI parallels the community release. Where possible, Cisco OSI provides unmodified OpenStack code. Every new release of Cisco OSI follows the latest community stable release; however, in some cases Cisco might provide more recent patches that have been accepted into the OpenStack stable branches, but have not yet become part of an OpenStack stable release.

The Cisco OSI code update policy is to contribute code upstream to the OpenStack project and absorb patches into Cisco OpenStack Installer after they have been accepted upstream. Cisco deviates from this policy only when patches are unlikely to be reviewed and accepted upstream in time for a release or for a customer deadline (in such cases Cisco applies the patches to the repositories, submits them upstream, and replaces the local change with the upstream version when it is becomes accepted). Cisco also uses and contributes to modules from other upstream sources including Puppet Labs on StackForge.

In this hands on lab you will learn how to deploy OpenStack with the the Cisco OSI - knowledge that you will be able to take back with you to your organization and utilize for your own deployments.

Bringing Operators, Users and Developers closer together

This session proposal came as a result of a conversation on a blog post with Stefano Maffulli with regards to the acceptance of non-developers into the OpenStack world.

What tools are needed to interact with the developers - and the "developly challenged" people who are now starting to interact with wider OpenStack community. Because of the plethora of tools and the substantial on-ramp and learning curve in order to adapt - non-devs are finding it hard to contribute-voice their concerns or help.

This session will go over the tools used today, which tools should be used and when - and what we can expect in the future

(source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/theresasthompson/2999130055/)

Remember – you are the one who decides what content you want to see – your vote counts!

Last year I asked you Please do not vote for Me! and I still stand by every single word I said in that post last year – nothing has changed.

I would like to re-iterate who I think you should be be voting for and why:

Try not to make this into a popularity contest.
Judge the bloggers on their content.
Judge the bloggers on their writing skills.
Judge the bloggers on their passion.
Judge the bloggers on who they are – not just because they work for company A, B or C.

This year I would even like to take this one step further (and perhaps I might be making a mistake here – but this is the what I feel is right).

Let’s look for a moment at the current top 25 bloggers and where they have been ranked over the past 4 years.

11 of these bloggers have been ranked in the top 25 for past 4 years.
7 of the current top 25 are VCDX’s (which is an amazing accomplishment in its own right)

To all of those on this list - I salute you. I really do! You guys are doing an amazing job, creating content that is up to date, interesting, and informative, is an extremely difficult job. And of course I would say that the overwhelming majority of the people on the entire list of bloggers do not do this for a living – this is a side project, something they enjoy doing – a passion. All of the hard work and investment is well recognized.

Each of the bloggers in the top 25, are leaders in their field, they are speakers at events, guests on podcasts, authors, well recognized in the industry, and have worked extremely hard to achieve what they have accomplished.

It is time to freshen the ranks, accept new blood, and rejuvenate the community.

“How would like to do that?” - I might hear you ask – well actually quite simple.

I would like to see more new and upcoming bloggers enter the top 25. In 2013 there were 6 bloggers who came into the top 25 from either having no rank the year before, or a rank below 25. In 2012 there were a lot less.

It looks like we are on the right track.

That is why I will not be voting for any of the top 25 bloggers from last year – but rather choosing bloggers who are
not so high in the rankings – for the sole purpose
of giving them more exposure. I will stick to my guns and vote for the bloggers, based on the principles I noted above.

It is better for them, and when it is better for them, it is better for the community as a whole, and better for us all. I do not think that the traffic and exposure of the current top 25 will take a substantial hit – because they are already well established, and well known. They will keep on doing what they have been doing for past 4 (or more years) regardless of their ranking, which will keep them at their current level of exposure (and hopefully continue to grow and advance) .

What do you think? Please feel free to leave your comments and thoughts down below.

(Disclaimer: I am one of those people who are below the top 25.
I would do exactly the same even if I was ranked in the top 25).

So the onslaught of "vote for my sessions" has begun.

I like numbers and the interesting information that can be interpreted from those numbers.
VMworld Call for Papers Voting is no exception.

So let's start.

But before that, I would like to stress something. These numbers are what I have extracted from what is publicly available - it could be that the numbers presented below do not make up a full picture (they probably don't) - because there are sessions that could already have been accepted and we know nothing about it.
My thoughts only…

The number of sessions currently up for public voting - 954. Last year there were 1222 - that is a drop of 28%.

My thoughts - either there were less submissions this year, or VMware weeded out more stuff before the voting started this year, or there are many other sessions that have content relating to upcoming features that they were not publicized in the voting process. In any event - it is still impossible to go through a list of ~1000 sessions.

Vendors

To which company do the potential speakers belong?  (and here I took only the Diamond sponsors)

My thoughts - very much expected - although I would have expected that Cisco would have put in more sessions (let the conspiracy theories begin..)

Tracks

The number of sessions in each sub-track of the Infrastructure track are as follows

My thoughts - Cloud and EUC will continue to be a major part of the conference this year and is every year...

Some other interesting little tidbits..

My thoughts - Automation has become a major concern as environments are growing bigger and more complex - you can see that from the numbers above.
Orchestrator - is at least on par if not starting to overtake PowerCLI as the preferred tool for automating - that is why there are so many sessions.
Puppet is still the tool of choice for most VMware professionals - strange though that Chef did not even submit anything - is this the direction for the future - maybe??
And of course vCAC, the new kid on the block - will have to prove itself.

What about Cloud?

My thoughts - Cloud cloud … cloud cloud cloud!! One of the terms that will be used too much at VMworld. But hey… it's VMworld people!!
Hybrid is definitely popular - and that also could be because that is what VMware has named their Public cloud offering. Are you confused yet???
Openstack - is something that VMware are trying to embrace - but is quite a different animal than what VMware is trying to sell as their management layer - it will be interesting to see how this evolves, still to early to say if you ask me.
And the AWS sessions - will be not be Amazon friendly..

Software Defined <insert your term here>..

My thoughts - Software Defined ..<blah>.. is the new buzzword, everyone wants it, everyone is trying to sell it and it will be present in full force at VMworld.
VMware is trying to push NSX - and it shows - just look at the number of sessions, SDS (software defined storage) is also in there - I just did not single it out

Others

My thoughts - Oracle and business critical applications - VMware are continuing to put the emphasis on how well these work on vSphere, an interesting fact though is that most of the presenters for the Business Critical Apps are not VMware people they are customers - which shows it is working and being used.
I would have expected more monitoring/vCOPS sessions.
Maybe finally there will be something new in the Active Directory sessions with the new virtualization features for domain controllers in Windows 2012 - because if not this topic has already been beaten to death….

I would say go out vote (and if you really want, I have a 3 sessions that you can click on) but I am skeptic about how much, if any influence your vote will actually have on which sessions will get in.

The FAQ states..

Influence how? By how much? As long as the process is not transparent - then we will never know.

As a wise man once said … "We are all influentials ! "

(Oops that was individuals - My bad! :) )

<Rant>

Really – I mean it!!

The Twitterverse exploded this morning with @ericsiebert’s announcement:

Voting now open for the 2013 top VMware & virtualization blogs (Read his post – with detailed instructions)

Shortly thereafter started the flood of posts announcing the vote. Over 20 in the last past 12 hours.

“Vote for me …. “ “This is what I did ….” “This is who I voted for… and why… “

WAH!!!!!

Self promotion is a good thing – to an extent.

I have my opinions about the whole process, I have voiced them before publicly on Twitter and also on my blog as well. Here is a post I wrote about this last year - ‘Tis the Season to be Voting …..

What I said there I will stress it again and in bold this time

Try not to make this into a popularity contest.
Judge the bloggers on their content.
Judge the bloggers on their writing skills.
Judge the bloggers on their passion.
Judge the bloggers on who they are – not just because they work in company A, B or C.

During the last year or so I have seen people start blogging or try and “arrange” for themselves positions within the community (becoming a VMTN moderator as a springboard to become a vExpert is such an example) for all the wrong reasons.

To put it in the words of others – who have said it better than me.
Thanks to Rynardt Spies, Christian Mohn and Ricky El-Qasem for sparking this post.

Vote for whoever you want – but do it for the right reasons!!

One more thing – thank you Eric for all the hard work you put into this!!

</Rant>

1222 sessions – That is a lot. How do you wade through that amount?

That is what the filter is there for. So you can filter out the sessions on several criteria – but to do everyone justice – I decided to do this meticulously – and go track by track and note which sessions I chose and why.

The criteria for my choices were:

1. Does the topic interest me?
2. Have I heard the presenter before?
3. Is the presenter also a well known figure?

I went track by track to choose my picks for the sessions I would like to see at VMworld 2012

I have a session up for voting  as well – so please feel free to add it the list below.

It is long list – and I hope it will be useful to you. You can find the spreadsheet here

Just to clarify.. I was not asked to promote any sessions – these are my choices. They are based on my areas of interest – and should not be taken as an endorsement for one session over the other.

I hope you find it useful!