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Nutanix Weekly: How a Complete and Open Kubernetes Platform Can Future-Proof Your Business · Nutanix Weekly

00:00:04.650 --> 00:00:21.759 Philip Sellers: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Nutanix Weekly, one of the many podcasts that here at XenTegra, we like to call it Content with Context, and that's because we go on the internet and find the best content, and we try to bring our real-world experiences to it. 3 00:00:21.760 --> 00:00:36.429 Philip Sellers: So, this week on Nutanix Weekly, we're going to be talking about, a topic for future-proofing your business. And, I think that's a timely topic that applies to every business. 4 00:00:36.430 --> 00:00:52.529 Philip Sellers: And, you know, as with every podcast, I'm joined with a few different, panelists, and, happy to have friends on the podcast with me. I'm Phil Sellers, I'm the Practice Director for Modern Data Center here at XenTegra. 5 00:00:52.530 --> 00:01:01.800 Philip Sellers: And I'm joined with Jirah Cox, an architect for Nutanix, long-time Guest of this podcast, 6 00:01:02.200 --> 00:01:05.539 Philip Sellers: kind of our guiding light, maybe? 7 00:01:06.120 --> 00:01:10.160 Philip Sellers: He's the man, the myth, the legend. Jirah, how are you, man? 8 00:01:10.770 --> 00:01:15.170 Jirah Cox: Good, Phil, thanks for having me. I like to think that I future-proof this podcast. 9 00:01:15.170 --> 00:01:19.290 Philip Sellers: Hey, yeah, there we go. Right on brand, right on target. 10 00:01:19.640 --> 00:01:30.490 Philip Sellers: I've also joined with Solutions Architect Andy Green, here at Zentegra. Andy is a former Nutanix, sales engineer. 11 00:01:30.610 --> 00:01:34.030 Philip Sellers: And joined us about 10 months ago? 12 00:01:34.510 --> 00:01:36.730 Andy Greene: 11 at this point. 13 00:01:36.890 --> 00:01:55.180 Philip Sellers: Alright, we're working on that year, and we'll be celebrating that soon on an upcoming episode. Andy, you've been in the field with us for a while now, and helping our customers. Do you get to talk about future-proofing? 14 00:01:55.390 --> 00:01:57.670 Philip Sellers: With customers and their strategies. 15 00:01:58.540 --> 00:02:12.740 Andy Greene: I do, yes. That's a big part of what we do here at Zentegra, right? We always want to understand the strategy for the client, where they are today, where they want to go, and from there, we can start to think about how we can help them get there. 16 00:02:13.280 --> 00:02:22.360 Philip Sellers: Yeah, that's fantastic. Yeah, we definitely want that partnership to be able to talk strategy with our customers, and so, I'm happy. 17 00:02:22.780 --> 00:02:33.919 Philip Sellers: When we find customers that find value in the way that we go to market, it is a little different, but something that we're passionate about. We want to get to know our customers deeply and help them succeed. 18 00:02:34.420 --> 00:02:41.079 Philip Sellers: And I'm also joined with Chris Calhoun. Chris is also a Solutions Architect here at Zentegra. 19 00:02:41.190 --> 00:02:45.479 Philip Sellers: Just celebrated over a year with us, and 20 00:02:45.640 --> 00:02:53.100 Philip Sellers: You know, it feels like you've been here since the furniture moved in, so I like that. 21 00:02:53.850 --> 00:02:57.279 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: Well, that's what I was supposed to do as the furniture mover. 22 00:02:57.280 --> 00:03:00.980 Philip Sellers: And miscellaneous other assignments, right? 23 00:03:00.980 --> 00:03:02.340 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: There you go. Yep. 24 00:03:02.670 --> 00:03:07.480 Philip Sellers: So, as always, I have to ask, Chris, how's your day going? 25 00:03:07.730 --> 00:03:13.189 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: It really is fantastic for today, I can truly say that. So, fantastic! 26 00:03:14.610 --> 00:03:27.030 Philip Sellers: I love Chris on the team, because that kind of enthusiasm is what he brings every single day. And, guys, I'm always happy to get together and talk tech, so… 27 00:03:27.030 --> 00:03:34.680 Philip Sellers: When we're thinking about future-proofing, there's a lot of change going on in the industry right now. 28 00:03:34.680 --> 00:03:43.050 Philip Sellers: Just rapid fire, what do you think of in terms of strategies or technology related to future-proofing? 29 00:03:46.130 --> 00:03:57.049 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: for me, I definitely think of the idea of agility, not getting locked into a solution. You know, obviously with the change over the past year or so from 30 00:03:57.350 --> 00:04:08.210 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: guys thinking, hey, look, we might be VMware customers for the rest of our lives, to now we're looking for an exit strategy, you know? So, I think that with that in mind. 31 00:04:08.910 --> 00:04:23.080 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: that the blog post that we had in the past was around, hey, change adverse versus change acceptance, and understanding that migrating workloads, and it's… it's not all a bad thing, and I think that 32 00:04:23.080 --> 00:04:31.280 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: Change for the better's good, and this is a definite topic of discussion that helps us future-proof, in that knowing 33 00:04:31.340 --> 00:04:38.979 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: where customers, as Andy said, hey, let's understand where you are today, and what does the next 34 00:04:39.060 --> 00:04:42.739 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: 5 to 10 years look like? Or maybe even, next… 35 00:04:42.780 --> 00:05:02.759 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: year look like, so that we can help customers navigate that path forward that's uncertain, in many, many customers' minds of what the future will hold. So I think that this direction and Nutanix as a whole helps to lend itself to that. You didn't ask all of that, maybe you did, but that was… 36 00:05:03.080 --> 00:05:04.300 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: I think I'm done. 37 00:05:04.570 --> 00:05:08.329 Philip Sellers: Andy Jarra, what do you think of? 38 00:05:08.970 --> 00:05:25.459 Andy Greene: I'm gonna go with portability and scalability, right? If we, if we're architected in a way that lets us run the workload wherever it makes sense, and if we can scale up and down dynamically, I think we've done a… we've gone a long way towards making sure that we have a solution that's flexible. 39 00:05:25.460 --> 00:05:30.240 Andy Greene: And can meet those needs as the business continues to grow and evolve. 40 00:05:32.320 --> 00:05:33.950 Jirah Cox: Portability, 41 00:05:34.020 --> 00:05:47.829 Jirah Cox: came to my mind as well, as much as we, you know, hear these days about, you know, hey, it's whatever it was plus AI, like network management plus AI, threat defense plus AI, you know, changing out hardware platforms, changing out software platforms. 42 00:05:47.870 --> 00:06:05.599 Jirah Cox: my mind goes to… what I hear the most about from customers? It's migrations, right? Like, we are in X, and we are moving to Y, right? It is maybe one of the hardest things to future-proof, because given a long enough timeline, you're gonna want to move something, probably, in your environment from somewhere to somewhere else. 43 00:06:05.970 --> 00:06:20.830 Philip Sellers: I think that's fair. I was gonna call foul if somebody didn't say AI, because it's just permutate… permeating? That's the right word… permeating everything that we talk about in IT here lately. So, thank you for bringing that up. 44 00:06:20.870 --> 00:06:22.449 Jirah Cox: That's the value I bring. 45 00:06:22.620 --> 00:06:25.990 Philip Sellers: That, that, there you go, yeah, on top of it. 46 00:06:26.540 --> 00:06:44.739 Philip Sellers: Yeah, the blog post we've got today is Freedom to Innovate. So as we talk about future-proofing, you know, I agree with you, Jairah. A lot of it's migrating. Some of the migration, though, is also in retooling and refactoring applications, maybe recoding them, moving them to a newer… 47 00:06:44.940 --> 00:06:47.570 Philip Sellers: or a cloud-native platform, and so… 48 00:06:47.710 --> 00:06:55.040 Philip Sellers: This blog post is really around how a complete and open Kubernetes platform can future-proof your business. 49 00:06:55.040 --> 00:07:08.039 Philip Sellers: It was written by Dan Cerulli, Senior Director of Product Management for Cloud Native at Nutanix. And Jairah, if I'm not mistaken, didn't Dan come in as part of the acquisition of D2IQ? 50 00:07:08.400 --> 00:07:10.180 Jirah Cox: He did, he did. But. 51 00:07:10.670 --> 00:07:21.739 Philip Sellers: Yeah, absolutely. You know, what's great about Nutanix and where you're at today is you're in a thought leadership position, helping lead and craft 52 00:07:22.000 --> 00:07:35.319 Philip Sellers: the future direction of the cloud-native Foundation, CNCF, and you're a major contributor now through the acquisition of D2IQ and Nutanix Kubernetes platform. 53 00:07:35.460 --> 00:07:42.819 Philip Sellers: You know, for our listeners, and I've heard this a few times, we joked about it before we started recording, but… 54 00:07:43.010 --> 00:07:48.320 Philip Sellers: Tell us what Kubernetes is for someone who's not familiar. 55 00:07:50.110 --> 00:07:55.290 Jirah Cox: I… I think Vyra's definition of Kubernetes is, 56 00:07:55.540 --> 00:08:01.690 Jirah Cox: obviously, fundamentally, it's a container, right? Which we've all heard so much about for containers for applications. 57 00:08:01.720 --> 00:08:19.159 Jirah Cox: It's a way, as a container, right, to ship both the application you want to run, as well as everything it needs, right? So if you need certain kinds of Perl scripts, or Python libraries, or, you know, other bits that you've written that power your app, you can ship all of that together in one thing. 58 00:08:19.220 --> 00:08:29.459 Jirah Cox: My… my gyroism for that is it's… it's the most fashionable way to install applications, right? So, we've… in some ways, we've sort of been, 59 00:08:29.460 --> 00:08:41.399 Jirah Cox: shipping everything that our apps need for the longest time, right? Either, you know, back when the world was young and, you know, dinosaurs ruled the Earth, there were mainframes, right? We wrote the code right there with everything else that they needed. 60 00:08:41.409 --> 00:08:47.650 Jirah Cox: In the 90s, right, we had the rise of the MSI and the EXE installer at Next next finish. 61 00:08:47.780 --> 00:09:06.209 Jirah Cox: there was, you know, a period of time where it was cloned the Git repo, and then customized some variables, and run it in your instance, and then occasionally re-sync back to source. And nowadays, it's docker pull, you know, a certain container, and it's everything you need. So the everything you need. 62 00:09:06.210 --> 00:09:09.250 Jirah Cox: is not necessarily a new motion for IT, 63 00:09:09.250 --> 00:09:23.000 Jirah Cox: the monolithic packaging of it's just one thing, right, that I can push to one place, pull everywhere, and have the infrastructure to run it, that's sort of the promised land, right? The outcome that we want to get to. 64 00:09:23.180 --> 00:09:37.000 Jirah Cox: credit to a coworker of mine who taught me the joke of, you know, Kubernetes is the world's answer to when the developer says, well, it works on my laptop, then operations says, okay, we're shipping your laptop. 65 00:09:37.210 --> 00:09:56.460 Philip Sellers: Yeah, and that's the thing, right? It's about that consistency of it working the same every time. That's what containers are really about, is that consistency, so that you're not changing the container. It is immutable, and… 66 00:09:56.860 --> 00:10:01.509 Philip Sellers: It is the same, no matter where it gets invoked, no matter where it gets run. 67 00:10:01.610 --> 00:10:07.929 Philip Sellers: And Kubernetes is that framework of all the other things outside of that. 68 00:10:08.180 --> 00:10:21.599 Philip Sellers: I've been thinking about this topic and how to convey it for a series of Lunch and Learns that we're working on, and it kind of dawned on me that Kubernetes is sort of like the scaffolding 69 00:10:22.340 --> 00:10:31.099 Philip Sellers: that gets the container all of the other things it needs. So, it's kind of like, you know, building a building. 70 00:10:31.200 --> 00:10:39.160 Philip Sellers: out of containers, and it's the scaffolding kind of around it, because Kubernetes itself is just orchestration. 71 00:10:39.660 --> 00:10:51.660 Philip Sellers: But there are plugins to it, and I love the slide that Nutanix has. It's kind of like a sunburst. And there's 12 different areas, different plugins that you need to make choices around. 72 00:10:51.830 --> 00:11:04.030 Philip Sellers: So that you can observe what's going on, so that you can encrypt or inspect what's going on in the network traffic, so that you can talk to storage, so that you can talk to a network, so that you can load balance. 73 00:11:04.250 --> 00:11:08.240 Philip Sellers: And so, Kubernetes is a modular framework 74 00:11:08.750 --> 00:11:13.849 Philip Sellers: that surrounds the container and orchestrates it. I love… 75 00:11:14.380 --> 00:11:24.530 Philip Sellers: the succinct way that you say it, though, Jairah, it's the fashionable way to deploy applications. That sums it up in a great way, I think, for infrastructure folks listening. 76 00:11:24.950 --> 00:11:29.819 Philip Sellers: You know, this is that… that deadly part of the IT world. 77 00:11:30.060 --> 00:11:36.339 Philip Sellers: That lifts… that lives between… Infrastructure, and developers. 78 00:11:36.900 --> 00:11:47.559 Philip Sellers: And developers really want to code. That's what they're passionate about. That's what they want to do. They don't want to think about load balancing and instances and metrics and… 79 00:11:47.960 --> 00:12:01.050 Philip Sellers: all of this other crazy stuff that Kubernetes allows us in the infrastructure practice to wrap around their code. And that's part of the challenge, and… 80 00:12:01.560 --> 00:12:06.990 Philip Sellers: the opportunity for us in the infrastructure space. So, 81 00:12:07.680 --> 00:12:16.730 Philip Sellers: Jair, I'm gonna throw it back to you one more time. Let's talk a little bit now specifically about NKP as a release and a product from Nutanix. 82 00:12:16.980 --> 00:12:21.440 Philip Sellers: You know, we're talking about… A… 83 00:12:21.630 --> 00:12:26.510 Philip Sellers: framework, a opinionated stack. What does that mean? 84 00:12:27.580 --> 00:12:40.849 Jirah Cox: I think, an opinionated stack means that if you don't have an opinion, you get to use ours by default, right? So, there's not that requirement, that a lot of people perceive or even have tried before in the past. 85 00:12:40.850 --> 00:12:49.710 Jirah Cox: Around, you know, hey, I want Kubernetes, or I need to vend Kubernetes to my application teams in my infrastructure, therefore I have to go become an expert first. 86 00:12:49.820 --> 00:13:06.150 Jirah Cox: right, once I'm an expert, then… then we'll be… then we'll be off to the races, right? Now we can start deploying. That, that opinionated means, guess what? We have… we have an opinion, for what Kubernetes can look like in production. 87 00:13:06.200 --> 00:13:18.319 Jirah Cox: we'll get to the other part here. The open part means that if you have a different opinion than ours, we can change ours, right? We can change it and customize the deployment, and use your preferences instead. This is a great, like, middle-of-the-road approach. 88 00:13:18.660 --> 00:13:36.359 Jirah Cox: Because obviously there's lots of other ways you can run containers, right? You can, of course, take on that whole science project of, I want to do all the integration, all the testing, have a choice from the… if you look at CNCF, right, the whole cloud-native foundation, there's, like, 1,200 different options, right, that you can pick from. 89 00:13:36.360 --> 00:13:45.709 Jirah Cox: Across the entire suite of integrations, where, like you said, Phil, you know, 12… between 12 and, you know, 24 or 30 or so core decisions you make for a given deployment stack. 90 00:13:46.320 --> 00:13:51.049 Jirah Cox: this is why Kubernetes in the cloud took off so well, right? I can just run 91 00:13:51.190 --> 00:14:07.979 Jirah Cox: The container is vended by… or the Kubernetes infrastructure vended by my cloud provider, right? By Amazon, by Azure, by Google, and by doing so, that's all decided for me. Right now, the downside is they get very deeply embedded into their infrastructure, and I can't make a change as easily as I want it to, maybe down the road. 92 00:14:07.980 --> 00:14:20.179 Jirah Cox: Right, or how would I federate, you know, that on-prem with my cloud, infrastructure as well? Gets a little challenging, gets a little, gets a little bit more interesting, maybe, than we want our infrastructure to be. 93 00:14:20.210 --> 00:14:27.010 Jirah Cox: So, you know, I can always use the cloud, I can always use vendor proprietary stuff, I can always go full open source. 94 00:14:27.070 --> 00:14:39.710 Jirah Cox: Right? But where we like… the one thing we like about our strategy at Nutanix is the fact that it's kind of middle of the road there, right? It's all the openness, all the completeness. It is as turnkey as you want it to be, but as customizable as you… 95 00:14:39.710 --> 00:14:51.399 Jirah Cox: As you also often need it to be, right? Sometimes I use an analogy of, like, a kit car that comes assembled, right? You have full permission to tear everything down, change out a component, but also you can just put the keys in and drive. 96 00:14:52.200 --> 00:14:58.730 Philip Sellers: Yeah, that makes sense. So, what you're also saying is that the cloud providers have their own opinionated stack. 97 00:14:59.070 --> 00:15:08.269 Philip Sellers: You know, they have their answers to all of these questions, and sometimes when you get locked into that, that's the only way you're gonna be able to do it. 98 00:15:08.540 --> 00:15:12.030 Jirah Cox: Yeah, we're probably not, unique in the possessing of opinion. 99 00:15:12.030 --> 00:15:12.905 Philip Sellers: Thanks. 100 00:15:14.290 --> 00:15:27.170 Philip Sellers: But that's good, though, so it's an easy button, also. Having an opinionated stack means you don't have to be experts in those 12 different disciplines, you can take the easy route, and that's got value for customers, too. 101 00:15:28.270 --> 00:15:34.590 Jirah Cox: Yep. And some things, like, in that, both categories and stuff, like ingress, mesh, discoverability. 102 00:15:34.750 --> 00:15:40.309 Jirah Cox: Cost governance, observability, disaster recovery, replication and backups. 103 00:15:40.420 --> 00:15:52.350 Jirah Cox: all these different areas where, kind of just like any other application infrastructure, I need answers for how am I going to do these things in a containerized world. The same way I do them in the physical world, in the virtualized world. 104 00:15:52.350 --> 00:16:10.889 Jirah Cox: in the… often in the functions world, for serverless, even sometimes down to, like, my workstations, right? I need to have some kind of observability, for them. So, nothing unique, necessarily, in the containerized space, but something that I do have to have an answer for that might not be my previous tooling that I was used to, before. 105 00:16:11.250 --> 00:16:18.740 Philip Sellers: 100%. So, as we go through the blog here, Andy, I'm gonna throw to you next. When Kubernetes emerged. 106 00:16:18.870 --> 00:16:27.000 Philip Sellers: for IT development, deployments, there were primarily three options, that they cover here in the blog post. What are those 3 options? 107 00:16:27.830 --> 00:16:39.070 Andy Greene: Sure, yeah, first was a proprietary enterprise-grade solution that included everything. But, you know, it was really a monolithic black box that locked you in with a single vendor. 108 00:16:39.070 --> 00:17:01.250 Andy Greene: Second, I think we saw, you know, build your own Kubernetes was always an option, right? You can go out and select your own tools for monitoring, for networking, etc, for application delivery. And then, you know, with that, you've got to manage all of the updates, you've got to manage security, networking, etc. And then finally, we had the public cloud services. And, you know. 109 00:17:01.250 --> 00:17:26.100 Andy Greene: Each of these kind of had its own benefits, advantages, disadvantages, but, you know, the first one that we talked about really wasn't customizable. The second option that we talked about there, it made it impossible for organizations that didn't have the strong Kubernetes skills to deploy their own and make it, you know, work and make it secure the way that they wanted it to be. 110 00:17:26.450 --> 00:17:41.800 Andy Greene: And then finally, I think, you know, using the cloud provider locked you into using cloud provider add-ons as well. So, you know, just… there's a lot of flexibility in having another approach that we can use. 111 00:17:41.980 --> 00:17:42.670 Philip Sellers: Yeah. 112 00:17:42.980 --> 00:17:49.830 Philip Sellers: So, from a Nutanix perspective, this language carries over from D2IQ to NKP. 113 00:17:50.060 --> 00:18:07.330 Philip Sellers: It's billed as complete and open, and so I think we understand the complete piece of things, but to double down on it, it means it's production-ready, it's an enterprise-ready Kubernetes platform that answers all those questions, so that part makes sense. 114 00:18:07.550 --> 00:18:13.400 Philip Sellers: What about open, Chris? What does the open piece of complete and open mean? 115 00:18:13.780 --> 00:18:27.599 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: I think it doesn't pigeonhole you… hold you into specific decisions on technology, in the sense that, you know, and this goes back to Jairin's comments about, hey, 116 00:18:27.920 --> 00:18:30.600 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: If it worked on your laptop as a developer. 117 00:18:30.790 --> 00:18:37.260 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: that's the only frame of reference for the environment. This allows you to have, 118 00:18:37.570 --> 00:18:45.169 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: Freedom of choice for that network, having a vanilla, type setup so that, 119 00:18:45.280 --> 00:19:05.190 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: your environments are open and aren't exclusive to the decisions you make on infrastructure impact the ability to run a specific containerized application. It gives you the choices so that you do have flexibility, like you mentioned in the sunburst of 120 00:19:05.190 --> 00:19:17.580 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: From a security stance, if you as a business or a customer already have specific vendors that you're working with, it gives that freedom and balance of. 121 00:19:17.640 --> 00:19:24.610 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: choices, but also guided experiences, too. So, I think that that's really the best way to kind of summarize that. 122 00:19:25.310 --> 00:19:33.489 Philip Sellers: Yeah, and I think that's… that's true to the spirit of what Kubernetes is. It was created to be an open framework 123 00:19:33.540 --> 00:19:49.309 Philip Sellers: where you could plug things in modularly. And so, really, NKP is that coming to fruition, right? It's got an opinion you can use by default, but it doesn't force that opinion upon you. You can swap out 124 00:19:49.580 --> 00:20:06.259 Philip Sellers: today, or tomorrow or, you know, 5 years ahead when you have more experience and you decide that the default's not the right fit. The other thing I think that's hugely important, and this goes into a little bit of minutiae. 125 00:20:06.340 --> 00:20:24.700 Philip Sellers: is the way that things are controlled and the way that things are created are using open APIs, so there's nothing proprietary here, and that's an important, important thing, because risk comes with that proprietary thing. In its infancy, there's a lot of… 126 00:20:24.810 --> 00:20:26.500 Philip Sellers: Kubernetes. 127 00:20:26.730 --> 00:20:35.979 Philip Sellers: Companies and platforms that came out that had proprietary answers to fill in some of the gaps in the earlier versions. 128 00:20:36.010 --> 00:20:48.109 Philip Sellers: Let's talk a little bit about the risk of closed or less open Kubernetes platforms. Jairah, can you kind of walk us through this and some of the risk factors that come with, 129 00:20:48.970 --> 00:20:53.500 Philip Sellers: I guess a, proprietary Kubernetes platform. 130 00:20:54.550 --> 00:21:08.420 Jirah Cox: Sure, yeah, the article, outlines four of them here. I think they're pretty spot on, right? Big one first is being lock-in, right? So, if I'm… if I'm building any kind of product on top of 131 00:21:08.650 --> 00:21:22.580 Jirah Cox: open source, right? Then it kind of behooves me to kind of add my own special sauce to it, right? And, you know, add my value there. So when I do that, then that becomes something that only my platform has, versus what is the goodness of, like, the upstream open source 132 00:21:22.580 --> 00:21:29.710 Jirah Cox: software itself. So that is then something that probably only people get from me, versus being part of the ecosystem. 133 00:21:29.870 --> 00:21:45.690 Jirah Cox: Right? But another set of that coin is that now, as I'm adding my code to this, then when the upstream, platform, in this case like Kubernetes, ships, I have to take that release, and then now put that in the lab, right? And check all of my code against it for compatibility. 134 00:21:45.690 --> 00:22:00.879 Jirah Cox: that can often lead to limited innovation, right? Or even a slowness of releases, right? Because then it's… it gets harder and harder to follow the actual upstream Kubernetes release there, right? Which, of course, we're very, you know, happy to say we follow upstream releases, with NKP. 135 00:22:03.200 --> 00:22:17.410 Jirah Cox: there's, with that lock-in, right, of course, comes portability challenges, right? Because if you're using my thing, then, by default, if you can't get that somewhere else, then you probably don't have as many options with moving that around. 136 00:22:17.450 --> 00:22:36.190 Jirah Cox: when you want to, and all this can tend towards, some possible silos, right? Because Kubernetes itself is built for openness, and being able to run basically anywhere from, like, quite literally, your watch, your phone, your laptop, a server, a fleet of servers, bare metal at the edge. 137 00:22:36.240 --> 00:22:42.259 Jirah Cox: I don't know, airplanes, you know, dashboards of cars, anywhere you want to. 138 00:22:44.080 --> 00:22:45.349 Jirah Cox: Oh, pardon, what'd you say, Phil? 139 00:22:45.350 --> 00:22:47.659 Philip Sellers: Fast food restaurant down the street. 140 00:22:47.660 --> 00:23:02.349 Jirah Cox: There you go, yeah, exactly, right? Anywhere. The, but if my platform, if I don't certify it to run all those places, well then, you have a subset of places now where you can run my product on top of Kubernetes, right, as more of a proprietary or closed 141 00:23:02.350 --> 00:23:07.919 Jirah Cox: ecosystem, right? So, some of the common challenges that we see kind of across the industry. 142 00:23:08.310 --> 00:23:26.290 Philip Sellers: Yeah, and portability's really one of the main goals, and honestly, I think back, we've been chasing portability for applications for decades. I remember when Java first released, and the gray beard indicator, right? It was supposed to be right once, run anywhere. 143 00:23:26.450 --> 00:23:42.489 Philip Sellers: And unfortunately, Java didn't quite pan out that good, and, you know, there's lots of different reasons and factors, but Kubernetes, again, is trying to let that write-once-run-anywhere sort of concept come to real life. 144 00:23:42.730 --> 00:23:56.860 Philip Sellers: So let's talk a little bit about the benefits for end users. So, let's walk through these. Chris, what is a couple of the benefits for end users? 145 00:23:57.870 --> 00:24:09.780 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: I think, really, what we talked about is that, the open source framework of… of the CNCF, having choices within that that are… 146 00:24:10.310 --> 00:24:22.049 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: cutting-edge technologies that are, I'll say, pre-blessed, in the sense that, gives you completeness in the OpenStack is really something that, 147 00:24:22.500 --> 00:24:35.569 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: without having to wait on specific vendor solutions gives you that freedom of choice early. And I think that that's… that's really the development to future-proof. 148 00:24:35.570 --> 00:24:50.280 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: If you make a decision now that may be wrong, or if you go with a vendor that doesn't see the bigger picture of 1 to 2 to 3 years down the road, then you don't have that freedom, and you are waiting on that vendor for… 149 00:24:50.570 --> 00:24:56.249 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: lagging behind to come up with the next iteration, so I think that that's key, and then… 150 00:24:56.380 --> 00:25:12.279 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: as Andy mentioned earlier, is, application mobility is really a key. Having open APIs and standard interfaces to communicate with your apps going forward is really the way forward. 151 00:25:12.280 --> 00:25:20.369 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: I would… I think that, you know, of course, AI is the trending term, but I think APIs and integration is really, 152 00:25:21.020 --> 00:25:26.570 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: One of the key factors to our agility in being able to 153 00:25:26.800 --> 00:25:37.420 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: help customers with solutions where, in the past, it may be that they were point solutions that didn't integrate. Now, most companies are. 154 00:25:37.630 --> 00:25:45.110 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: pushing for these APIs to interact with their products so that you can have that mobility. 155 00:25:45.630 --> 00:25:55.829 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: And that's just the first two on the list, but there are a few more. Obviously, I'll throw it to whoever's next in the hit list, to go through. 156 00:25:55.850 --> 00:25:56.690 Philip Sellers: Yeah. 157 00:25:56.690 --> 00:26:00.550 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: Why don't you take those? Like, let's talk through some more of the benefits that are there. 158 00:26:01.180 --> 00:26:15.070 Andy Greene: Sure thing. Yeah, unified, hybrid, multi-cloud operations. Using open platforms with APIs, like Chris said, allows you to run Kubernetes across all of your environments. 159 00:26:15.120 --> 00:26:31.270 Andy Greene: Second to that, I would say customization. A modular, you know, open platform lets you mix and match open source and commercial solutions to really customize it to your business needs. So you're not just tied into a single vendor software stack. 160 00:26:31.380 --> 00:26:48.239 Andy Greene: And then finally, you know, lower costs and smaller teams. With unified Kubernetes operations across all of your environments, you need less specialized teams, and so therefore things are just more efficient, and costs should go down with that. 161 00:26:48.520 --> 00:27:02.359 Philip Sellers: Yeah, for someone who's not watched or not super familiar with Kubernetes, something like the open APIs and cluster API may be something that you just glance over, but… 162 00:27:02.760 --> 00:27:11.869 Philip Sellers: being able to talk to and manage all of your clusters and fleets of Kubernetes clusters around the world. 163 00:27:12.250 --> 00:27:13.890 Philip Sellers: In a unified way? 164 00:27:14.190 --> 00:27:16.769 Philip Sellers: That is huge. 165 00:27:16.960 --> 00:27:20.369 Philip Sellers: Cluster API is… is one of the… 166 00:27:20.590 --> 00:27:34.099 Philip Sellers: leveling factors for us. Yes, you could have Kubernetes everywhere, but if you're not all using Cluster API, then that means you're going to have different pieces of tooling, different command lines, different configurations. 167 00:27:34.210 --> 00:27:47.070 Philip Sellers: configuration drift, and so that all equals risk. And you can eliminate that by having a common way of managing all of your clusters everywhere. 168 00:27:47.400 --> 00:27:56.719 Philip Sellers: Cluster API is a huge leveling factor, so I think of Kubernetes as sort of like dial tone, right? Everything… 169 00:27:56.910 --> 00:28:08.560 Philip Sellers: else gets built on top of that. So, it's one of the huge things for us, I think, you know, in terms of being able to assure… 170 00:28:09.070 --> 00:28:15.779 Philip Sellers: that… you can really run anywhere. And that… that piece was always the… 171 00:28:16.060 --> 00:28:27.890 Philip Sellers: the tough thing. Yes, Java let us write once. The run anywhere was somewhat limited, and this is really focused on solving the run anywhere problems. Is that a fair statement, you think, Jairah? 172 00:28:29.020 --> 00:28:44.450 Jirah Cox: It is, I mean, it just… it gives you so many more options, right? Whether… for customizability, right? Like, out of the gate, you know, Kubernetes lets you say, I need a small cluster, I can grow it to a large cluster, I can scale it in response to the need, 173 00:28:44.580 --> 00:28:50.240 Jirah Cox: I mean, there probably is a way that Java could have done that, right? If I got enough Blu-ray players together in one place. 174 00:28:51.020 --> 00:29:02.059 Jirah Cox: you know, got my soldering iron out, I could probably do that, right? And then have that, you know, Java Frankenstein monster available to me, but this is just ready to go, you know, right now. 175 00:29:02.090 --> 00:29:18.620 Jirah Cox: the article even talks about how there's even benefits here for people that ship the software, right? The software vendors themselves, because Kubernetes becomes that lowest common denominator that everyone will agree to, right, and code against, as in, this is what the infra team provides, this is what the application team expects. 176 00:29:18.800 --> 00:29:32.540 Jirah Cox: kind of that great little decoder ring meat in the middle, right, for what are the benefits that come along with that, right? That ship software faster, let the ecosystem grow, and fundamentally, right, support, you know, that openness model. 177 00:29:33.690 --> 00:29:41.040 Philip Sellers: Yeah, 100%. And, you know, it's, it's… It's certainly… around speed. 178 00:29:41.230 --> 00:29:49.749 Philip Sellers: And that's the other thing that you hit on, Chris, at the very first point. Access to CNCF innovation, well… 179 00:29:50.130 --> 00:29:57.570 Philip Sellers: How does it being open… and complete. How does that… tap into… 180 00:29:57.670 --> 00:30:01.100 Philip Sellers: CNCF innovation versus something that's proprietary. 181 00:30:02.820 --> 00:30:06.789 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: It means that, obviously, the open source innovation 182 00:30:06.990 --> 00:30:09.649 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: It's gonna make its way into the… 183 00:30:09.970 --> 00:30:16.000 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: the Nutanix Kubernetes platform even faster. And I think that with that. 184 00:30:16.530 --> 00:30:24.899 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: It doesn't slow you down as a business, and it allows you to continue to make those decisions going forward. 185 00:30:25.240 --> 00:30:29.990 Philip Sellers: Yeah, I mean, something as simple as, you know, what… 186 00:30:30.090 --> 00:30:45.690 Philip Sellers: what goes into the QA cycles when you've got extra software, or software that's not in the open source project, you're just gonna delay getting that innovation out. So, it cuts down on the overall lag. That makes sense. 187 00:30:45.690 --> 00:30:46.710 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: streamline. 188 00:30:46.710 --> 00:31:02.050 Philip Sellers: Yeah. Well, and so that takes us right into the benefits for independent software vendors. Open Kubernetes approach is also vital for the software vendors, and we've got 3 benefits here. So, 189 00:31:02.270 --> 00:31:05.399 Philip Sellers: Chris, do you want to go quickly through those 3 benefits? 190 00:31:05.400 --> 00:31:10.640 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: Absolutely. It's exactly what we just mentioned. Faster route to market. 191 00:31:10.770 --> 00:31:21.290 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: Developing open source components, APIs, ISVs, obviously gets you a quicker launch cycle, with less validation, more streamlining. 192 00:31:21.510 --> 00:31:32.280 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: The ecosystem growth itself. As you start small and continue to grow, if you've built that framework, you… you're… 193 00:31:32.290 --> 00:31:41.899 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: In a more extensible, scaffolding that you mentioned earlier, relating back, that if the structure's solid, you move on quicker and more efficient. 194 00:31:42.060 --> 00:31:48.469 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: Efficiently. And then the open source core model. Obviously… 195 00:31:48.580 --> 00:32:04.260 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: to me, that goes back to a common language, and that's really, to me, setting the expectations for communication, just as a whole between, APIs and open source projects just in general. 196 00:32:04.400 --> 00:32:08.410 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: To me, knowing that you're gonna have, 197 00:32:08.920 --> 00:32:25.329 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: enhanced load balancers, security tools, and observability solutions already in place can help you grow that environment quicker. So I think that that really hits on those three bullet point benefits. 198 00:32:26.420 --> 00:32:29.159 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: Jara, Andy, anything else to add to that? 199 00:32:33.870 --> 00:32:49.049 Jirah Cox: Well said. I think, I think flexibility yields speed. Speed yields, value. With value comes investment. Investment breeds open source, and open source increases flexibility. So it's a, it's a great virtuous circle. 200 00:32:49.680 --> 00:32:50.380 Philip Sellers: Yeah. 201 00:32:50.850 --> 00:32:57.399 Philip Sellers: And, you know, when we talk about this, this is also, you know, from the beginning, talking about future-proofing. 202 00:32:58.960 --> 00:33:17.840 Philip Sellers: you know, modularity is another huge part of future-proofing, so that's the next section of the blog, talking about the power of modularity. Andy, as you think about modularity and how it helps you from a future-proofing standpoint, what kind of sticks out there to you? Like, what… 203 00:33:18.230 --> 00:33:21.319 Philip Sellers: what about Kubernetes helps future-proof you? 204 00:33:22.300 --> 00:33:38.000 Andy Greene: You know, a modular system means that all of your key components, networking, ingress controllers, monitoring, security, all of these can easily be customized or even swapped out for something completely different, so… 205 00:33:38.000 --> 00:33:43.330 Andy Greene: You know, for example, if you start with a very popular open source load balancer. 206 00:33:43.330 --> 00:34:01.719 Andy Greene: but then maybe at a later date, you decide that you want to replace it with another either open or commercial solution. You've got that ability to go in, rip out the one component that you want to replace, replace it with the one that you want to move to, without breaking the entire system. 207 00:34:01.720 --> 00:34:09.010 Andy Greene: You know, it really enables you to tailor those Kubernetes environments, those deployments, to your unique needs. 208 00:34:09.010 --> 00:34:13.270 Andy Greene: Without hindering your ability to change and to adapt over time. 209 00:34:13.909 --> 00:34:22.249 Philip Sellers: So, what you're saying is Kubernetes is kind of like your answer to a 90s sitcom. And just bear with me here for a minute. 210 00:34:22.759 --> 00:34:28.179 Philip Sellers: So, it means that if a joke doesn't age well, you can just swap it out for another joke. 211 00:34:29.550 --> 00:34:31.010 Andy Greene: Pretty much, yes. 212 00:34:31.010 --> 00:34:38.169 Philip Sellers: Jairah's giggling. I'm enjoying it on the other end. 213 00:34:38.170 --> 00:34:39.229 Jirah Cox: That's a Taiwan example. 214 00:34:39.239 --> 00:34:42.719 Philip Sellers: Like, where are you going with this? Crazy man. 215 00:34:43.539 --> 00:35:01.429 Philip Sellers: But that's… that's it. I mean, future-proofing is all about that, so today's best of breed, you know, we want to be able to move to tomorrow's best of breed, because nothing's standing still here in our ecosystem. Everything's constantly evolving, so… 216 00:35:01.429 --> 00:35:12.029 Philip Sellers: We want to be able to adopt that as quickly as possible, and so what you're hearing is open Kubernetes and an open Kubernetes distribution is the way to facilitate that. So… 217 00:35:13.329 --> 00:35:32.129 Philip Sellers: as we kind of wrap up what's here in the blog, open's not just a technical decision, it's a strategic one. And so, as we've talked about these different things and the ability to leverage open, modular, very close to the open source community. 218 00:35:32.129 --> 00:35:42.149 Philip Sellers: all of that becomes speed and advantage to you and your organization. So, I think that's a great way of kind of wrapping up what we're talking about. 219 00:35:42.349 --> 00:35:50.179 Philip Sellers: you're delivering a Kubernetes platform that's open and complete, it's production-grade ready, it's supported. 220 00:35:50.379 --> 00:35:52.899 Philip Sellers: But it's also modular and flexible. 221 00:35:53.069 --> 00:35:56.299 Philip Sellers: And all of that equals future-proof. 222 00:35:58.119 --> 00:36:00.089 Philip Sellers: Any final thoughts, guys? 223 00:36:05.610 --> 00:36:11.750 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: I think to Jara's point, obviously, the fashionable way to, install 224 00:36:13.190 --> 00:36:23.889 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: workloads these days, it's not only fashionable, but it's streamlined. And I think that that's really the power of the platform. 225 00:36:24.090 --> 00:36:29.770 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: And I think it just fits well with folks that want every bit of those 226 00:36:29.890 --> 00:36:35.799 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: ilities that we talked about. Agility, flexibility, how about that? Illities. 227 00:36:36.920 --> 00:36:46.360 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: And I think it just makes sense for those businesses, because, Nutanix helps with that. You know, it gives you that, 228 00:36:46.490 --> 00:37:01.959 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: framework platform. We… I even heard a customer, speak today that mentioned, hey, look, we want to… we want a good, solid platform as we transition away from VMware, that we know that as we make decisions for our future. 229 00:37:02.130 --> 00:37:08.830 Chris Calhoun | XenTegra: it's future-proof, and that's what I heard today, and I think that this is the strategy going forward, so I think it makes sense. 230 00:37:09.940 --> 00:37:29.219 Jirah Cox: I think it tied back to how we opened around, you know, those eternal problems of IT, one of them being just the never-ending migrations, right? And so it presents a path for deployment that also makes those future migrations, which we just know are an inevitability, that much easier and that much more streamlined. 231 00:37:30.930 --> 00:37:46.160 Andy Greene: Yeah, I think it's really just key to embracing the future, right? Embrace flexibility, embrace scalability, and then through that, we can unlock new opportunities, and we can grow. And I think that's what future-proofing is really all about. 232 00:37:46.740 --> 00:37:47.430 Philip Sellers: Yeah. 233 00:37:47.940 --> 00:37:53.909 Philip Sellers: And, you know, as we also said at the top of the episode, we were talking about AI. 234 00:37:54.010 --> 00:37:58.259 Philip Sellers: And almost exclusively, AI runs in containers. 235 00:37:58.470 --> 00:38:05.399 Philip Sellers: It's not a universal truth, but overwhelmingly, when we talk about large language models and a lot of 236 00:38:05.560 --> 00:38:10.790 Philip Sellers: AI innovation, those applications are written in containers, which means 237 00:38:10.960 --> 00:38:29.439 Philip Sellers: Sooner or later, if you're being talked about AI, you're also going to be talking about Kubernetes, and so we think it's an important topic. I do want to put this out. At the end of the blog post, there is a section where you can click to watch an on-demand webinar. 238 00:38:29.440 --> 00:38:40.210 Philip Sellers: to learn 7 simple steps, or 7 steps to simplify Kubernetes adoption, I highly recommend that you find the blog post. It's out on Nutanix.com slash blog. 239 00:38:40.310 --> 00:38:54.640 Philip Sellers: Title of it, again, is, Future Proofing, excuse me, Freedom to Innovate, How to Com… How a Complete and Open Kubernetes Platform Can Future Proof Your Business. Again, that link is at the very bottom of the post. 240 00:38:54.640 --> 00:39:02.630 Philip Sellers: Guys, thanks for joining me and having an interesting discussion around this. I hope for everyone listening that 241 00:39:02.630 --> 00:39:16.640 Philip Sellers: maybe you walk away today and think a little bit more, or know a little bit more about Kubernetes, maybe it's a little more approachable to you. But we're always here, also, to help, so reach out if there's ever anything we can do. 242 00:39:16.650 --> 00:39:29.259 Philip Sellers: If you're being approached about AI, if you're being approached about, Kubernetes, we're here to help, and definitely all want to help you, so, please reach out, and 243 00:39:29.440 --> 00:39:36.189 Philip Sellers: Thanks for listening today. I hope that you have a great day, and we will catch you on the next episode.