Previously, I promised to provide some insight into the 2023 CloudStack Collaboration Conference (CCC). The first thing to say is that I enjoyed the conference a lot. Although it was only the second time LINBIT had attended CCC, we already feel right at home there.
During the conference, we learned that Rohit Yadav, VP of Engineering at Shape Blue and VP of Apache CloudStack, runs LINSTOR/DRBD in his home lab, which has proven to be a good fit for him and his wife (isn’t that the most challenging client? Our own partner? Brave Rohit!).
We spotted references to LINBIT on the slides of a few use-case talks, like the presentation from American Cloud. Rene gave an overview and status update on the LINSTOR driver in CloudStack. I did a DRBD deep dive. Interested people came to our table, and we participated in compelling discussions about such topics as failover automation in CloudStack in combination with LINBIT SDS.
One of the more intriguing aspects of the conference was noting how CloudStack is doing compared to OpenStack and OpenNebula. It was evident that CloudStack has reached a noteworthy level of maturity and stability as more vendors come prepared with products ready to integrate with CloudStack. Last year, Storpool and LINBIT debuted. This year, Dell joined the fold with PowerFlex, the former ScaleIO SDS product combined with Dell hardware. Needless to say, LINBIT SDS, as an Open Source technology, fits a lot better with CloudStack than the other two options.
Back in the day, I attended several of the huge OpenStack conferences. They had over 5000 attendees, and the unfortunate side-effect was that three-quarters of the people had no idea what OpenStack was. In conversations, people often said, “I have no idea what I am doing here – my boss sent me.” Thankfully, things have evolved since those days, and the event is in such a better place today. The hybrid CCC had about 300 engaged attendees, with everyone knowing spot-on where they were and why they were there. I much prefer a smaller, more intimate event over a bloated one.
Shifting gears, I want to turn your attention to LINBIT-related news. Our latest video, Deploy a High-Availability (HA) Nagios XI Cluster Using DRBD, Pacemaker, & Corosync. walks you through how to set up a Nagios XI installation with DRBD. Nagios XI is an industry-standard for infrastructure monitoring and intelligence gathering installed and used by millions worldwide.
We also published the self-explanatory Deploy a Highly Available MariaDB Service Using LINSTOR & DRBD Reactor. If you take the opportunity to watch the video, you will find several useful links in the video description.
Regarding new blog posts, Minimize Downtime During System Maintenance outlines how DRBD keeps your systems running during maintenance. The post highlights the benefits of offering customers and users a smooth, uninterrupted experience.
We also recently published Filling the Gap: LINBIT SDS in Amazon EKS. In this blog post, you will learn how LINBIT SDS seamlessly integrates with Amazon EKS, see our step-by-step guide to prep EC2 for LINBIT SDS, and easily create a LINSTOR operator in EKS.
Regarding new software updates, LINSTOR Operator v2.3.0 and v1.10.8 are here. We will also get a DRBD release before Christmas when the RDMA transport will finally be ready for prime time.
