Brandon Whichard

Episode 106: Is “observability” just “instrumentation”? Or, monitoring sucks? No, you suck.

September 22nd, 2017  |  59 mins 11 secs

The DevOps kids have decided to come up with a new term “observability.” We get to the bottom of the WTF barrel on what that is - it sounds like a good word-project. Also, there’s a spate of kubernetes news, as always, and some interesting acquisitions. Plus, a micro-iOS 11 review.

WHITE PAPER SPECIAL! Kubernetes & container landscapes from Forrester & Gartner

September 1st, 2017  |  1 hr 2 mins

This week, you get a sample of what we're doing over in the Software Defined Talk Members Only White Paper Exegesis Podcast. Normally, you'd have to be an SDT patron to get this, but now you can check it out. if you like it, why not become a patron for as little as a dollar a month - but you, don't be such a cheap-ass!

Episode 105: Kubernetes Rules Everything Around Me, VMworld, Pivotal Container Service

August 31st, 2017  |  58 mins 20 secs

It’s VMworld this week, so there’s fresh news from the Dell Technologies universe to sort through. VMware releases it’s SDDC on AWS scheme and Pivotal announces its container service/stack, Pivotal Container Service (PKS). We discuss both, including a meandering overview of what PKS is and some theory about what enterprises actually want with all that VMware in public cloud. Also, the tragic story of airline and hotel upgrades, like pearls to tired business travelers.

Episode 104: “When I go to the grocery store, I just buy the bananas” - Amazon/Whole Goods, J(2)EE, building your own kubernetes stack

August 25th, 2017  |  1 hr 3 mins

Come Monday, we’ll see what full-on “digital transformation” looks like when Amazon fully owns Whole Foods. Also, Oracle is looking to move JEE to a foundation, closing out a long era of Java stewardship: how will “open source” like this work in a mature market? We also discuss the trend of private equity buying tech firms and GitHib’s write-up of building their own platform with kubernetes and series of small bash scripts.

Episode 102: That thermometer don’t work with my iPhone 7, also, AWS kube’ed & DevOps Thought Lordin’

August 10th, 2017  |  56 mins 24 secs

At long last, Amazon joins the CNCF to work on kubernetes and container related projects. While it's not incredibly clear how strong this embrace is, it's pretty high up there. We also discuss if there's any new topics in DevOps and check-in on the anti-trust in tech meme.

Episode 101: Cloud is just "jigglin’ wires"

August 3rd, 2017  |  1 hr 4 mins

Calling in hot from New Braunfels Texas, we got a country mile’s worth of topics this week: we have container services from Microsoft, a lengthy discussion of how enterprise software companies organize their global sales regions, the possible emergence of a new private cloud meme, and rumors that BMC is no longer in acquiring CA.

Episode 100: “I’ve seen The Hot Dog more times this week than 2FA,” or, is The Hot Dog incremental innovation, or disruptive innovation?

July 20th, 2017  |  1 hr 2 mins

Sniffing out a huge market in hot dog apps, Amazon might start a messaging app. Also, Google has their ant-data gravity device out and Basho seems to be shutting down. We discuss the wonders of Snap’s hot dog app, the mystery of Amazon’s lack(?) of brand allegiance, and giving up on kale.

Episode 99: Private cloud is the Reuben sandwich of clouds, or, Shafer’s Theory of (Private) Cloud

July 14th, 2017  |  1 hr 28 secs

Microsoft will ship it’s private cloud stack, Azure Stack, in September. Will this work? Will people buy it? What could you even put in that cloud? You can feel that pull people have towards private cloud, so we’re looking forward to what happens. On a related topic, by our reckoning, kubernetes to small to have already fallen. Also: the elusive Baltimore accent, Oracle and containers, and recommendations.

Episode 98: “Do I just need some better medication?” or, advertising, antitrust, and talking to strangers

July 6th, 2017  |  57 mins 11 secs

Without advertising, there would be no capitalism, and, if you’re not constantly afraid of the DoJ knocking at your door, you’re probably doing it wrong. Those are two whacky theories about advertising and antitrust, at least. With Matt Ray on vacation, Brandon and Coté talk about The Attention Merchants and the recent Google EU antitrust ruling. We also discuss several other books, and how to talk to non-tech people at parties. Surprisingly, no container talk!

Episode 97: The novel strategy of making money, and investing to do so - Amazon + Whole Foods

June 29th, 2017  |  1 hr 3 mins

Looks like we’ll be getting cheaper organic food what with Amazon buying Whole Foods. What exactly is the strategy at play here, though? Other than the obvious thing of doing online groceries, how is Amazon advantaged here such that others (like Wal-mart), can’t simply do this themselves. We go over these questions and how they related to M&A in general. Plus recommendations and some podcast meta talk.

This episode is sponsored by Casper, who’s looking for some good senior SREs. If you’re into building out and managing infrastructure that keeps code running and makes sure you can sleep soundly at night, check out the job listing, apply, and be sure to mention that you heard about it on Software Defined Talk. According to Glassdoor reviews, it’s a damn fine place to work. You can also just email jobs@casper.com and browse all their openings at casper.com/jobs.

Episode 96: An AWS private cloud strategy, kubernetes aplenty, microservices by yaml, & detailed hot-dog creature analysis

June 2nd, 2017  |  1 hr 7 mins

aws, containers, hot-dogs, kubernetes, privatecloud

The cat-nip of Mary Meeker's Internet Trends report is out this week so we discuss the highlights which leads to a sudden discussion of what an Amazon private cloud product would look like. Then, with a raft of new container related news we sort out what CoreOS is doing with their Tectonic managed service, what Heptio is (the Mirantis of Kubernetes?), and then a deep dive into the newly announced Istio which seems to be looking to create a yaml-based(!) standard for microservices configuration and policy and, then, the actual code for managing it all. Also, an extensive analysis of a hot-dog display, which is either basting itself or putting on some condiment-hair.

Episode 95: Beans, fruit, booze, bathrooms, & ChefConf

May 24th, 2017  |  1 hr 20 mins

Live-to-tape from ChefConf 2017, in Austin, we talk about what's going on in Chef land now, esp. in relation to compliance/policy and Habitat. We also discuss the Texas bathroom bill and Matt Ray's latest trip report on international travel. There's an important update on Coté's bean position as well.

Episode 94: The Donnie Berkholz Episode, "Freedom in health-care: a regular 'heck of a job, Comey' situation," DevOps & security, & Canonical's IPO ambitions

May 16th, 2017  |  59 mins 35 secs

cloud, conjur, cyberark, donnie berkholz, execs, health-insurance, hsa, m&a, openstack, pam, security

In a too rare spate of social commentary, we start talking about the price of hipster avocados in Australia and US health insurance. With one of our favorite analysts moving over the enterprise side, we talk about what it'd be like going through that door. We then wrap up talking about Canonical's IPO talk, related OpenStack market discussion, and then use CyberArk's acquisition of Conjur to discuss the state of privileges access management (PAM). We end, as always, with recommendations, including some CostCo discussion.

Episode 93: Cloud Rules Everything Around Me - Red Hat, Moby, Docker CEO, and Halo Effect’ing The First Cloud Wars

May 4th, 2017  |  1 hr 1 min

cloud, containers, docker, dockercon, execs, red hat, revenue, strategy

Red Hat, Moby, Docker CEO, and Halo Effect’ing The First Cloud Wars. Plus, APAC business travel.

Episode 92: The middle-class metallurgical people - boothing, streaming sportsball, M&As & IPOs

April 9th, 2017  |  51 mins 7 secs

Having something to sell is always key to a profitable business. We explore this life-hack of the business world in discussion Twitter and then Amazon licensing Thursday night football. There's also some brief talk of Akamai buying SOASTA, Cloudera filing to IPO, and the lost dichotomy of agent/agentless.

Episode 91: Container orchestration framework names you can't pronounce, for $500. Or, everything’s coming Up kubernetes.

March 30th, 2017  |  54 mins 49 secs

accenture, cloud, kubernetes, open source, oracle, rumors

We discuss the continual rise of Kubernetes, with Amazon as seemingly the main hold-out. This leads to a not-too-painful discussion of the stat of open source, at least how companies are using it tactically. Then we close out discussing the rumor that Oracle is considering buying Accenture and how the enterprise software plus services model seems to be panning out.