Hey everyone! I am Michael Cade and I am a Senior Technologist at Veeam. Recently, I have shifted my focus to Kasten by Veeam. This means you will be seeing a lot more of me around here and across the cloud native community. My main focus will be on Kubernetes, Cloud Native and the Kasten K10 platform. But with my community hat on, I will also help Kasten educate and enable the community, so it can be better prepared for this big and fast Kubernetes wave.
We have a lot of work to do over the next few months and I wanted to share some of the key events and milestones below:
I come from the infrastructure and storage space with a focus around virtualisation and data management. But since a year or two, that focus has somewhat shifted to learning the cloud native approach. This is something I have been documenting over on my personal site, and I will continue to share my journey to help others who are in the same situation.
Kubernetes Learning Curve
I don’t think technologists ever finish learning as about once per decade there is a major shift in infrastructure technology. Many businesses have already adopted Kubernetes or at least have this in mind right now, which means that a lot of folks will have to prepare for this shift as well.
From my learning curve through the virtualisation years, you cannot learn everything through books, blogs or even online tutorial videos. The key to learning is experience, ideally in an environment as close as possible to production and solving real-world problems.
There are lots of ways to consume Kubernetes and get hands-on. The easiest option is to run it in the public cloud as Google, Microsoft, AWS, and many others provide Kubernetes as a service. It just takes a few clicks to deploy your Kubernetes cluster. Those public cloud providers are going to make sure this service is maintained and will be looking after certificate rotation, versioning, and patching. They typically include storage offerings and all the stuff under the cluster will be managed for you.
You can also deploy your own Kubernetes cluster, either by bootstrapping from scratch (Kubernetes the Hard Way, Kelsey Hightower), or by using both options will give you more insight into the make up and architecture. But deploying your own cluster also means that the tasks that the service provider would provide in the public cloud, now lands on your shoulders.
But, it doesn’t end there. We have many more paths to consider: Networking, Storage, Security, Observability and of course Backup and Recovery. There will be a lot more content coming about how I am navigating this learning journey along with the resources that I am using here on my personal site.
Cloud Native Data Management Day EU 2021
I am really looking forward to this event. The event is a co-located community event and part of KubeCon + CloudNativeCon EU 2021. It is designed to bring together various stakeholders in the Kubernetes storage, application backup and mobility community to discuss, learn and share current challenges and solutions around cloud data management. We are planning multiple tracks where we will have community, technical and industry sessions focusing on customer case studies, technical solutions, education, and community from the field sessions. We will have industry experts across storage, data services and backup vendors sharing their practical knowledge.
KubeCon + CloudNativeCon EU 2021
Then we have the major event for Europe 2021 focusing on Kubernetes and Cloud Native, here is where the wider community, adopters and technologists collide to learn and listen about all things Kubernetes and Cloud Native.
I was lucky enough to attend KubeCon last year and I found it amazing how many new and innovative vendors were in this space, the wide eye opening of understanding this world outside and alongside the virtual infrastructure world I had been part of for many years. This year it will only be bigger and more spectacular to be part of it.
Kasten will have technical sessions scattered throughout the agenda to help you understand how Kasten can help you and your business be successful. See you there!
A community first technologist for Kasten by Veeam Software. Based in the UK with over 16 years of industry experience with a key focus on technologies such as cloud native, automation & data management. His role at Kasten is to act as a technical thought leader, community champion and project owner to engage with the community to enable influencers and customers to overcome the challenges of Cloud Native Data Management and be successful, speaking at events sharing the technical vision and corporate strategy whilst providing ongoing feedback from the field into product management to shape the future success.
