This presentation is an update to a presentation from October 2012 titled "Three Technologies Worth Watching or Learning," and was first presented in Sydney, Australia, in February 2014.

1. Positioning Yourself for
the Future
Some technologies and trends that I recommend
watching or learning
Scott Lowe, VCDX 39
vExpert, Author, Blogger, Geek
http://blog.scottlowe.org / Twitter: @scott_lowe

2. Your name is familiar...

3. Before going any further
• Get
involved! Audience participation is encouraged and
requested.
• If
you use Twitter, feel free to tweet about this session (use
@VMUGSydney, @MyVMUG or hashtag #VMUGSydney)
•I
encourage you to take photos or videos of today’s session and
share them online
• This
presentation will be made available online after the event

4. Some history
• In
Oct 2012, I gave a presentation titled “Three Technologies
Worth Watching or Learning”
• Presentation
is available online at <https://speakerdeck.com/
slowe/three-technologies-worth-watching-or-learning>
• This
presentation is an update to that one
• Attempts
to answer the question, “How can I best position
myself for future trends?”

5. Some new technologies to
watch/learn (2014 edition)
• Linux
• Network
• OS
virtualization
and application containers
• RESTful
APIs

6. Linux

7. Why Linux?
• Popping
• Serves
up more and more throughout the data center
as the basis for many products
• Inexpensive
• Key
solution for a variety of issues
things:
• Pick
a distribution (Ubuntu & Red Hat/CentOS seem to be
most prominent)
• Figure
out how to do common tasks (DHCP, DNS, firewall,
web server, proxy, etc.)

8. Network
virtualization

9. Why network virtualization?
•A
key part of a cloud/SDDC strategy
• I’m
doing an NSX deep dive today at 3pm
• Key
things:
• Some
• SDN
networking basics (learn the language)
(original definition) and OpenFlow
• Open
vSwitch (OVS)
• Network
encapsulation protocols (STT, GRE/NVGRE, VXLAN)

10. OS and
application
containers

11. Why OS and application
containers?
• Lightweight
• Two
examples are Linux containers (LXC) and Docker
• LXC
primarily targeted at OS containers
• Docker
• Can
way of providing isolation
primarily targeted at application containers
provide greater scale for the right use cases
• Complementary
to full machine virtualization (like VMware)

12. Dockerfile example
FROM ubuntu
MAINTAINER Scott Lowe <address@domain.com>
# Make sure package repositories are correct
RUN echo “deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise main
universe" > /etc/apt/sources.list
# Update packages and install OpenSSH
RUN apt-get update
RUN apt-get install -y openssh-server
# Expose port and run SSH daemon
EXPOSE 22
CMD [“/usr/sbin/sshd -D”]

13. RESTful APIs

14. Why RESTful APIs?
• The
data center is increasingly API-driven
• Public
cloud services against which IT is being compared are
API-driven (AWS, for example)
• Understanding
• Key
APIs helps understand how to integrate solutions
items:
• JSON
(JavaScript Object Notation) and XML (eXtensible
Markup Language)
• Using
cURL to interrogate an API

15. JSON example
{
"result_count": 3,
"results": [
{
"_href": "/ws.v1/lswitch/3ca2d5ef-6a0f-4392-9ec1-a6645234bc55",
"_schema": "/ws.v1/schema/LogicalSwitchConfig",
"type": "LogicalSwitchConfig"
},
{
"_href": "/ws.v1/lswitch/81f51868-2142-48a8-93ff-ef612249e025",
"_schema": "/ws.v1/schema/LogicalSwitchConfig",
"type": "LogicalSwitchConfig"
},
{
"_href": "/ws.v1/lswitch/9fed3467-dd74-421b-ab30-7bc9bfae6248",
"_schema": "/ws.v1/schema/LogicalSwitchConfig",
"type": "LogicalSwitchConfig"
}
]
}

16. Honourable mentions
• OpenStack
• Configuration
management (CFEngine, Puppet, Chef, Ansible,
Salt)
• Object
storage (Swift, S3)

17. Questions &
answers

18. Thank you!
Don’t forget to rate this session and provide feedback (via mobile
app, inside the program guide, or via link sent to your e-mail)