Tag Archives: Conferences

Applications that Fix Themselves

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I know that in my last blog post I said I would be talking (and probably announcing) the FaultSet functionality planned for the next release of the ScaleIO Framework. As all things in the world of technology and software, things don’t always go as planned. So today I am here to talk about some stuff relating to the Framework that will be in my speaking session entitled How Container Schedulers and Software Defined Storage will Change the Cloud at SCaLE 15x this Saturday March 4th at 3pm in Ballroom F of the Pasadena Convention Center.

SCaLE 15x Logo

This new functionality at face value seems straight forward but the implications start to open the doors to next level thought kinda stuff. Ok ok ok. I may have oversold that a little, but the idea itself is still pretty cool and I am super excited to talk about here.

Just make it happen. I don’t care how!

Just this week, I released the ScaleIO Framework version 0.3.1 which has a functionality preview **cough** experimental **cough** for a couple of features that I think is cool. The first feature, although not as interesting, will probably be the most useful immediately to people that want use ScaleIO but was turned off from the installation instructions… starting from a bare Mesos cluster, you can provision the entire ScaleIO storage platform in an highly available 3-node configuration from scratch and have all the storage integrations, like REX-Ray and mesos-module-dvdi, installed automatically.

Easy Street

In case you missed it… without having to know anything about ScaleIO, you can deploy an entirely software-based storage platform that will give your Mesos workloads the ability to persist application data seamlessly, that is globally accessible, and make your apps highly available. This abstracts the complexities of the entire storage platform and transforms it into a simple service where you can simply consume storage from. As far as any user is concerned, the storage platform natively came with Mesos and the first app you deploy can consume ScaleIO volumes from day one. If you want more details on how to make that happen, please check out the documentation.

The Sky is Falling!! Do Something?!?!

I think the second functionality preview **cough** experimental **cough** in the 0.3.1 release has perhaps the most compelling story but may be less useful in practice (at least for now). I have always been fascinated by this idea that applications, when they run into trouble, can go and fix themselves. We often call this self-remediation. In reality, that has always been a pipe dream but there is some really cool infrastructure in the form of Mesos Frameworks that make this idea a possibility.

It's not going to happen

So this second feature comes from my days as both a storage and backup user… where I get the dreaded storage array is full notification. This typically entails getting another expander shelf for your storage array (if you are lucky enough to have expansion capability), populate disks in the expansion bay, and then configure the array to accept this new raw capacity. In the age of Clouds and DevOps, anything is possible and provisioning new resource is only as far as an API call away.

Anything is possible

The idea is that as our ScaleIO storage pool starts to approach full, we can provision more raw disks in the form of EBS volumes to contribute to the storage pool. Since we exist in the cloud or in this case AWS that is only an API call away. That is exactly idea behind this feature… to live in a world where applications can self-remediate and fix themselves. Sounds cool yea?!?! If you are interested in more information about this feature, I urge you to check out the user guide, try it out, provide input and feedback! And if you happen to be at SCaLE 15x this week, I will be doing this exact demo live! BONUS: You can watch that video demo that was performed at SCaLE here:

Where to go next…

So I hope the FaultSet functionality is just around the corner along with the support for CoreOS, or what they are now calling Container Linux, since a lot of the stuff coming out of Mesos and DC/OS is now based on that platform. Let us know if you want more surrounding Mesos and the ScaleIO Framework by hitting me up in our {code} community slack channel #mesos. Additionally, if you are in the Los Angeles area this week, I would highly recommend stopping by SCaLE 15x in Pasadena, catch some of the sessions, and stop by the {code} booth in the expo hall to continue the conversation.

LinuxCon ContainerCon Japan: Extended Edition

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My recap of LinuxCon ContainerCon Japan just went live on the EMC {code} Blog and it talks about some of the things that happened at the conference as well as talks about some key takeaways. I definitely encourage you to go and take a look at the article. This happens to be my first blog post on the official EMC {code} Blog. Yay!

On to the Fun Stuff

It has been some time since I have been to Japan, but going back was a lot of fun. Below is a not so serious look at Japan outside of the seriousness of the conference.

Walking through one of Japan’s many multi-story electronic stores, I found a $1300 Rice Cooker. Yes, that amount isn’t a typo. I hope that thing washes my car too for that price.

The $1300 Rice Cooker

We found this Okinawan restaurant and found this guy parked outside.

Dragon Holding Some Sake

And in that bar, I got an opportunity to try Habushu which is a Japanese Liquor made with a snake in the bottle (picture below). Yes, there is a snake inside. No joke. Habushu is named after the habu snake, Trimeresurus flavoviridis, which belongs to the pit viper family and is closely related to the rattlesnake and copperhead. (according to wikipedia)

Habushu Liquor

On our last night, we visited the world famous Golden Gai in Shinjuku. It is roughly six alleys connected together that has over 200 tiny shanty-style bars. Each bar is large enough to hold 5-8 people max with most of the ones we saw being about the size of a 5ft x 7ft room.

Golden Gai in Shinjuku

Last but not least, when you are tried of eating conference bento boxes everyday and you need a change… you get KFC. That also isn’t a joke either. By the way, KFC is waaaaay better in Japan than in the states. Just saying!

KFC

Looking Back at EMC World 2016

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Wow! How quickly a week can go by. Like many of you, EMC World 2016 was my first time in attendance and it also happen to be the first time I have been given the opportunity to be a presenter for a larger audience. I though the experience exceeded my expectations and based on some of the preliminary numbers and feedback that we have been getting on the sessions the EMC {code} team had presented, a good number of you agree the sessions content and presentations were of value to you. Thanks again for attending the sessions and providing your feedback.

Couldn’t make it this year?

For those that couldn’t make it out this year, a number of people in {code} have starting posting the materials and slide decks for our sessions. Official EMC World slide decks should be posted in the coming weeks, but there have been a large number of requests to get a hold of the material ASAP and many of us on the team have been happy to oblige. As for my sessions, you can find the materials below.

Introduction To Mesos & Mesosphere

Here is the session material for Introduction To Mesos & Mesosphere (Monday May 2 at 8:30) which just as the title says is a Apache Mesos 101 type session.

You can download the “Introduction To Mesos & Mesosphere” powerpoint presentation HERE. The video of the demonstration used at the end of the session highlighting Mesos using persistent external storage can be found on YouTube below:

The source code for the MVC Web Application written in Golang can be found in my GitHub repo. The two projects used in demo were RestServer and RestClient.

To launch the MVC Application with external persistent storage, you first need to have each of your Mesos Agent/Slave nodes running Mesos DNS and configured for persistent external storage using this Guide. Once you have those prerequisites in your Mesos Cluster, you can find the Marathon JSON files to launch tasks here. To start up the application, perform the following:

Start PostgreSQL:
curl -k -XPOST -d @postgres-mvc.json -H "Content-Type: application/json" YourMarathonIP:8080/v2/apps

Start RestServer:
curl -k -XPOST -d @restapi.json -H "Content-Type: application/json" YourMarathonIP:8080/v2/apps

Start RestClient:
curl -k -XPOST -d @ui.json -H "Content-Type: application/json" YourMarathonIP:8080/v2/apps

Deep Dive With Mesos & Persistent Storage For Applications

Here is the session material for Deep Dive With Mesos & Persistent Storage For Applications (Tuesday May 3 at 3:00) which covered the importance of Apache Mesos Frameworks and the powerful capabilities that 2 layer scheduling provides in your Datacenter and Mesos cluster.

You can download the “Deep Dive With Mesos & Persistent Storage For Applications” powerpoint presentation HERE. The video of the demonstration used at the end of the session highlighting the Elastic Search Mesos Framework using persistent external storage can be found on YouTube below:

To launch the Elastic Search Framework with external persistent storage, you first need to have at least a 3 Agent/Slave nodes in your Mesos cluster and each of your Mesos Agent/Slave nodes configured for persistent external storage using this Guide. To start the ElasticSearch scheduler, you can find the Marathon JSON files to launch task here. To start up the Scheduler, perform the following:

Start ElasticSearch Scheduler:
curl -k -XPOST -d @elasticsearch.json -H "Content-Type: application/json" YourMarathonIP:8080/v2/apps

If you want to run some of the advanced ElasticSearch functionality used in the demo, you can find additional information in this file here.

What’s Next…

After recharging for a bit, we have already started on our post-EMC World plans and deliverables. Hopefully this will bring a forth a bunch of interesting ideas and projects for the community. To keep up to date with the things that I will be working on, please follow me on Twitter at @dvonthenen. If anyone has any questions about the EMC World presentations, you can always catch me on the {code} Community Slack channel.