I have been playing around with Windows Azure again, as it has gotten really solid and feature rich in the last year. So much so that it’s provided reasons for me to use it versus some of the default go to providers. One of the things that I’ve found immensely useful is the brain dead simple application deployment for Node.js using Github and Windows Azure.
Also, if you’d like to see other videos I’ve put together and see new videos I’ll be publishing, follow my Vimeo Account at https://vimeo.com/channels/shreddingcode/. This video is kind of a sneak peak of a full episode of the Shredding Code series I’m putting together. So follow my Vimeo or subscribe to the blog to catch the premiere episode and subsequent episodes I’ll be producing.
Once you get a Riak image going, remember there’s the whole community and the Basho team itself that is there to help you get things rolling via the mail list. If you’re looking for answers, you’ll be able to get them there. Even if you get everything running smoothly, join in anyway and at least just lurk. 🙂
The RTFM value factor is absolutely huge for Riak. Basho has a superb documentation site here. So definitely, when jumping into or researching Riak as software you may want to build on, use for your distributed systems or the Riak Key Value Databases, check out the documentation. Super easy to find things, super easy to read, and really easy to get going with.
So give Riak a try on Windows Azure via the VM Depot. It gets easier by the day, and gives you even more data storage options, distribution capabilities and high availability that is hard to imagine.
New Relic & The Rise of the New Kingmakers
In other news, my good friends at New Relic have released a new book in partnership with Redmonk Analyst Stephen O’Grady @, have released a book he’s written titled The New Kingmakers, How Developers Conquered the World. You may know New Relic as the huge developer advocates that they are with the great analytics tools they provide. Either way, give a look see and read the book. It’s not a giant thousand page tomb, so it just takes a nice lunch break and you’ll get the pleasure of flipping the pages of the book Stephen has put together. You might have read the blog entry that started the whole “Kingmakers” statement, if you haven’t, give that a read first.
I personally love the statement, and have used it a few times myself. In relation to the saying and the book, I’ll have a short review and more to say in the very near future. Until then…
Cheers, enjoy the read, the virtual images and happy hacking.
Tonight I spoke at the PADNUG Meetup in Hillsboro, a suburb of Portland, Oregon. The ladies and gentlemen of PADNUG are a great crew, so I actually go out of my way to the suburbs to speak there. Tonight was an exceptionally good experience with a great talk, lots of back and forth between everyone there and great conversations continued late into the night at the local suburban watering hole. All in all a good topic of conversation and one that needs brought to more teams.
Continuous Delivery
How does this fold into my work on PaaS (Platform as a Service) and IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)? Easy, with the cloud computing capabilities of PaaS and IaaS it makes continuous delivery a no brainer. At least 50% of the effort to get continuous delivery setup is already done with these technologies. Over the next few weeks I’ll be writing a lot about these technologies and the enablement of continuous delivery through these technologies. Just as important as the technology, I’ll also be talking about the processes, ideals and lean thinking that have birthed this tech.
In my presentation I covered a lot of these ideas and efforts. For now, here’s my slide deck with all the information to contact me. If you’d like me to pop into your town and present on these topics, just let me know and we’ll see about me getting onsite.
Coming up on the 20th I’ll be presenting some of this material plus a very hands on demo at the Software Craftsman’s meeting is Seattle titled “Coding in the Cloud, Kick Ass Continuously“. So if you live in the Seattle or are just in the area, drop in!
This first one is of Effective UI a company out of Denver, Colorado. You’re probably asking yourself, why are they at a cloud conference? I asked the same question and they brought up a really good point. Most cloud computing interfaces are horrible. I have to agree, most are or at least have been pretty bad. User experience is fundamental to a good adoption and usability of the customer base, a solid user interface is the cornerstone of this experience.
Effective UI
I’m stil tripping on this one. I’m totally stoked that Windows Azure is providing Linux support. I however can’t stop laughing about how cold it must be in hell. For over a decade Microsoft oft repeated that it would be a “cold day in hell” before they where involved with, used, sold, or offered a Linux product of any kind. Now they offer Linux VMs on Windows Azure and employees of Microsoft actively and openly contribute to the Linux kernal! Â Truly awesome, and a little shocking.
SUSE offered on Microsoft’s Windows Azure
Jaspersoft, the open source BI Solution Company. A few people asked me about BI solutions and such for the cloud and for big data. Jaspersoft is one of the leading companies in this part of the industry. They even have the capability to build their service into a PaaS. Â Ok, I’ll admit I don’t exactly know what they mean by that, but it sounds really cool. Maybe I need to have a conversation with them about this and see about working on extending this PaaS BI Service?
Jaspersoft – Open Source Business Intelligence
I also had to give some Postgresl love. They even had their elephant mascot hanging around! Does anyone know what the elephant’s name is? Beers on me to whoever gets it.  😉  For anyone looking to get an RDBMS running in the cloud, Postgresql is easily one of your best options. Don’t even start thinking about Oracle these days…  no seriously, don’t.
I’ve been diligent and started a search of Platform as a Service Providers, so far my list includes:
EngineYard
Heroku
AWS Beanstalk
Windows Azure
AppFog
Tier3
CloudFoundry
OpenShift
IBM PaaS
Google App Engine
CloudBees
Who else is there? Help me out in creating a list of every possible offering we can find! Â Cheers! Please leave a comment or three below with any I’ve missed. Â Thanks!
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