Google Cloud Switzerland Launch

Switzerland is the 6th region in Europe (europe-west6) and the 19th region of the Google Cloud Platform worldwide to offer computing, storage, big data and network services. It is connected to Google’s well-equipped, secure and private network to provide global access to all services of the Google Cloud Platform.

Launch Event and Google Cloud Services Platform

Of course, this has to be celebrated with a big launch event in Zurich. The VSHNeers are on site at StageOne and follow interesting talks and speakers such as Urs Hölzle – one of the first 10 Google employees – who talks about the Google Cloud Services Platform. With the Google Services Platform (GSP), companies can create their own applications and cloud services that can be operated both on-premise and in the Google Cloud. Other IT professionals from SAP, Google, Credit Suisse and Balgrist University Hospital will be leading the day.

VSHN and Google Cloud / GKE

As the first Kubernetes Certified Service Provider (KCSP) in Switzerland, we are of course already very familiar with the Google Cloud and GKE (Google Kubernetes Engine).
We are pleased to announce that Google is now offering a Swiss Cloud. The decision is a very positive statement for the location Switzerland, which makes us as a Swiss company happy and many of our customers have been waiting for. For all those who already work with Google Tools and the Google Cloud, the step of a Swiss Google Cloud is of course very exciting for VSHN as a Managed Service Provider with many Swiss customers.
We are looking forward to the further development of how the Swiss Google Cloud will be accepted and how Zurich will continue to assert itself as a European IT heavyweight in the international environment.

Press

The Swiss press reports in detail about the Google Cloud Switzerland Launch:
https://www.netzwoche.ch/news/2019-03-12/googles-cloud-startet-in-der-schweiz-aber-nicht-fuer-alle
https://www.computerworld.ch/business/cloud/google-cloud-eroeffnet-schweizer-region-1689821.html

About VSHN – The DevOps Company

VSHN AG is the leading Swiss partner for DevOps, Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift and 24/7 Cloud Operations. VSHN helps software developers run their applications agile and 24/7 on any infrastructure while relieving the burden on IT operations.
Since 2014, we are serving more than 1000 servers in 20 different clouds as well as on-premises at customer locations with a total of more than 66’000 services for 300 different customers and partners. We are ISO 27001 certified and work to the strict FINMA guidelines to ensure the security and confidentiality of customer information at all times.
With APPUiO.ch, we have created a Red Hat OpenShift based Swiss container platform, where we can offer Managed Services as a PaaS solution (Platform-as-a-Service) on any infrastructure: public, dedicated, private and on-premises.
At VSHN, we believe in openness and transparency, so we let you decide where to store your data (we call this multi-cloud strategy). Either locally in your own data center (on-premise) or at a cloud provider location of your choice. Take a look at our services and learn more about our services and how we can possibly support you. Follow us on Twitter (@vshn_ch and @APPUiO) and don’t miss any news.

Get 20% off KubeCon / CloudNativeCon tickets

You also want to go to KubeCon from May 20 – 23 2019 in Barcelona?

As a CNCF member, we can offer you a 20% discount on the official corporate ticket price.

What do you have to do?

There is no catch – simply fill out the form below and we will send you a discount code immediately.
[hatchbuck form=”KubeCon-2019-Discount”]
 

How much is a ticket and where can I order?

Tickets for the KubeCon and CloudNativeCon can be ordered on the official website. Do not forget to enter our discount code during the order process.

About KubeCon and CloudNativeCon 2019 in Barcelona

The flagship conference of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation will gather users and technology savvy people from leading open source and cloud communities from May 20 to 23, 2019 in Barcelona, ​​Spain. Be part of theKubernetes, Prometheus, OpenTracing, Fluentd, gRPC, containerd, rkt, CNI, Envoy, Jaeger, Notary, TUF, Vitess, CoreDNS, NATS, Linkerd, Helm, Harbor and etcd community and meet with like-minded people four days long, to promote the know-how and further development of cloud computing.
The conference continues to record strong growth: In 2019, more than 6’000 participants are expected to attend KubeCon and CloudNativeCon Europe in Barcelona.
Here you can find a roundup of the last KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2018 in Seattle.

VSHN is official sponsor of KubeCon and CloudNativeCon

We support the Cloud Native Computing Foundation by sponsoring KubeCon and CloudNativeCon 2019 in Barcelona, we are official CNCF member, organize the CNC meetups in Zurich and we are the first Kubernetes Certified Service Provider (KCSP) in Switzerland. Visit us at our booth at KubeCon and CloudNativeCon 2019 in Barcelona!

About VSHN – The DevOps Company

VSHN AG is the leading Swiss partner for DevOps, Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift and 24/7 Cloud Operations. VSHN helps software developers run their applications agile and 24/7 on any infrastructure while relieving the burden on IT operations.
Since 2014, we are serving more than 1000 servers in 20 different clouds as well as on-premises at customer locations with a total of more than 66’000 services for 300 different customers and partners. We are ISO 27001 certified and work to the strict FINMA guidelines to ensure the security and confidentiality of customer information at all times.
With APPUiO.ch, we have created a Red Hat OpenShift based Swiss container platform, where we can offer Managed Services as a PaaS solution (Platform-as-a-Service) on any infrastructure: public, dedicated, private and on-premises.
At VSHN, we believe in openness and transparency, so we let you decide where to store your data (we call this multi-cloud strategy). Either locally in your own data center (on-premise) or at a cloud provider location of your choice. Take a look at our services and learn more about our services and how we can possibly support you. Follow us on Twitter (@vshn_ch and @APPUiO) and don’t miss any news.

CNC-Meetup #2 2019

Our second Cloud Native Computing Meetup took place on Thursday Feb 21 in the Swisscom Tower in Zurich. Many thanks to Swisscom for providing the great premises and to Nine for sponsoring the Apéro.

As official member of the CNCF and first Kubernetes Certified Service Provider (KCSP) VSHN supports the Cloud Native Computing Foundation with the organization of the CNC-Meetups in Zurich and sponsors the KubeCon & CloudNativeCon Europe 2019 in Barcelona in May.

From the 15th floor of the Swisscom Tower you have a wonderful view over Zurich. 

Agenda and Talks

Gerd König, Managing Director at SCIGILITY: “EKS: K8s on AWS, Holy Grail or Holy moly?”

Peter Bittner, DevOps Engineer at VSHN: “Avoid The Vendor Lock-In Trap With App Deployment”

Peter’s slides can be reviewed here:

Conclusion

Many thanks to the speakers for the interesting talks and the sponsors for the fantastic location and the nice Apéro. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did and we would be happy to see many of you again at the next Meetup. So long and stay cloud native!

Next CNC meetup

The next meetup will take place on Thursday May 9 2019, we are already looking forward to it and are looking for speakers. Contact us at http://cnc-meetup.ch if you want to hold a talk. Thanks a lot and see you soon.

Container Stack 2019 at FIFA World Football Museum Zurich

On January 30th and 31st 2019, the Container Stack, a two-day event on Kubernetes with one day of workshops and one day of conference, took place for the first time at the FIFA World Football Museum Zurich. VSHN was co-sponsor of the event.

Led by industry professionals, the conference brought together users and representatives of the ecosystem and the CNCF community. A good mix of user reports from experts from the pharmaceutical, banking, media and research sectors, as well as representatives of the global Kubernetes and CNCF ecosystems, presented their experiences and approaches to the challenges of large native cloud architectures.

Impressions from Container Stack

Experts from the fields of Networking Layer, Storage Layer, Packaging Layer and Professional Services have shared their know-how and brought their global expertise closer to the audience. Our VSHNeers were also there and our Head of DevOps Tobias Brunner held a Lightning Talk on Kubernetes Distributions.

Tobias Brunner: Kubernetes Distributions – The road to production

https://speakerdeck.com/tobru/container-stack-lightning-talk-kubernetes-distributions
The following speakers attended the Container Stack:
Sebastien Goasguen from Triggermesh.

Ricardo Rocha from CERN.

Alexis Richardson from Weaveworks.

Ara Pulido from Bitnami.

Romain Chalumeau from Merck.

Other speakers included Pierre-Yves Ritschard from Exoscale, Catalin Cirstoiu from the Pictet Group, Jeffry Molanus from OpenEBS and Liz Rice from Aqua Security.

Knative meetup at VSHN

Between the Container Stack Workshop on Wednesday and the conference on Thursday, VSHN organized a Knative CNCF meetup at short notice. Mark Chmarny (TPM Serverless, Google) and Sebastien Goasguen (Founder, Triggermesh) spoke about Knative, the Kubernetes framework to build, deploy, and manage serverless workloads. Impressions including a video recording of the meetup can be found here.

Conclusion Container Stack 2019

The VSHNeers were enthusiastic about the first edition of the Container Stack. Exciting talks, top speakers and an interested audience. In any case, we would be happy if the Container Stack would take place again next year. Many thanks to the organizers.

What is Kubernetes and who is CNCF?

After Linux, Kubernetes is the largest open source project in the world and the de facto standard for container orchestration and the management of distributed applications. Kubernetes automates the setup, operation and scaling of containerized applications and is a project of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). VSHN is the first Kubernetes Certified Service Provider (KCSP) in Switzerland.

About VSHN – The DevOps Company

VSHN AG is the leading Swiss partner for DevOps, Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift and 24/7 Cloud Operations. VSHN helps software developers run their applications agile and 24/7 on any infrastructure while relieving the burden on IT operations.
Since 2014, we are serving more than 1000 servers in 20 different clouds as well as on-premises at customer locations with a total of more than 66’000 services for 300 different customers and partners. We are ISO 27001 certified and work to the strict FINMA guidelines to ensure the security and confidentiality of customer information at all times and we are the first Kubernetes Certified Service Provider (KCSP) in Switzerland.
With APPUiO.ch, we have created a Red Hat OpenShift based Swiss container platform, where we can offer Managed Services as a PaaS solution (Platform-as-a-Service) on any infrastructure: public, dedicated, private and on-premises.

Follow us and don’t miss any news

At VSHN, we believe in openness and transparency, so we let you decide where to store your data (we call this multi-cloud strategy). Either locally in your own data center (on-premise) or at a cloud provider location of your choice. Take a look at our services to see how we can possibly support you. VSHN supports the Cloud Native Computing Foundation by sponsoring KubeCon and CloudNativeCon 2019 in Barcelona, we are official CNCF member and we are the first Kubernetes Certified Service Provider (KCSP) in Switzerland. You can find our next events like the next CNC-Meetup here.
Follow us on Twitter (@vshn_ch and @APPUiO) and subscribe to our newsletter and don’t miss any news.

Inside Channels Forum on Jan 31st 2019

On Jan 31st 2019, the Inside Channels Forum 2019 with the big players of the Swiss ICT industry took place in the Kultur- and Kongresshaus in Aarau. VSHN was there and our CTO Aarno held a Transformation Talk.

Channel-Transformation 2019

The Inside Channels Forum 2019 was dedicated to the topic “Channel Transformation”. The ICT industry is undergoing radical change both worldwide and in Switzerland. Previous businesses are disappearing or becoming smaller and all players must become more agile. ICT service providers, cloud providers, resellers, consultants and system integrators must adapt to the changing requirements of the market. The Inside Channels Forum 2019 addressed the question of how companies can be made fit for change.
In the completely filled hall, future topics such as artificial intelligence and digital transformation were discussed.

VSHN at Inside Channels Forum 2019: Aarno’s Transformation Talk

VSHN was also there and Aarno Aukia, founder and CTO of VSHN – The DevOps Company, gave a transformation report speech with the topic: “How we made the entry into the IT business with DevOps, Cloud and Docker” (in German).

Below is a recording of Aarno’s Talk. Have fun watching.

And here can can view the slides of Aarno’s transformation talk:
https://www.slideshare.net/AarnoAukia/transformation-report-vshn-ag-the-devops-company

Many thanks to the organizers of the Inside Channels Forum

Many thanks to the organizers of the Inside Channels Forum, inside-channels.ch. We enjoyed it a lot and will gladly come again next year, especially because of the IPA-as-a-Service! 🙂

About VSHN – The DevOps Company

VSHN AG is the leading Swiss partner for DevOps, Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift and 24/7 Cloud Operations. VSHN helps software developers run their applications agile and 24/7 on any infrastructure while relieving the burden on IT operations.
Since 2014, we are serving more than 1000 servers in 20 different clouds as well as on-premises at customer locations with a total of more than 66’000 services for 300 different customers and partners. We are ISO 27001 certified and work to the strict FINMA guidelines to ensure the security and confidentiality of customer information at all times and we are the first Kubernetes Certified Service Provider (KCSP) in Switzerland.
With APPUiO.ch, we have created a Red Hat OpenShift based Swiss container platform, where we can offer Managed Services as a PaaS solution (Platform-as-a-Service) on any infrastructure: public, dedicated, private and on-premises.

Follow us and don’t miss any news

At VSHN, we believe in openness and transparency, so we let you decide where to store your data (we call this multi-cloud strategy). Either locally in your own data center (on-premise) or at a cloud provider location of your choice. Take a look at our services to see how we can possibly support you. VSHN supports the Cloud Native Computing Foundation by sponsoring KubeCon and CloudNativeCon 2019 in Barcelona, we are official CNCF member and we are the first Kubernetes Certified Service Provider (KCSP) in Switzerland. You can find our next events like the next CNC-Meetup here.
Follow us on Twitter (@vshn_ch and @APPUiO) and subscribe to our newsletter and don’t miss any news.

Between the Container Stack workshop on Wednesday Jan 30th and the conference on Thursday Jan 31st 2019, we organized a Knative CNCF meetup at VSHN. Mark Chmarny (TPM Serverless, Google) and Sebastien Goasguen (Founder, Triggermesh) spoke about about Knative, the Kubernetes framework for building, deploying, and managing serverless workloads.

Despite the short notice (we planned the meetup 1 week in advance) we had a full house at VSHN. And with all the people on the waiting list, we could have filled the room almost twice.

Watch the recording

But for those who couldn’t join the meetup, we recorded the talks with an introduction to Knative, demos, and the Q&A session. Have fun watching.

Thank you for a great CNC meetup

Many thanks to all attendees and especially to our speakers Mark Chmarny and Sebastien Goasguen for their great talks and their short term commitment.

We would be happy to have you as speakers at a Meetup again!

Cloud Native and Kubernetes

VSHN supports the Cloud Native Computing Foundation by sponsoring KubeCon and CloudNativeCon 2019 in Barcelona, we are official CNCF member and we are the first Kubernetes Certified Service Provider (KCSP) in Switzerland. You can find our next events like the next CNC-Meetup here.

Next CNC meetup

The next CNC-Meetup will take place on Thursday, February 21st 2019, we are already looking forward to it and are still looking for one more speaker. Contact us at http://cnc-meetup.ch if you want to hold a talk.
Follow us on Twitter (@vshn_ch and @APPUiO) and don’t miss any news.
Thanks a lot and see you next time!

Knative Meetup on Wed. Jan 30th 2019 at VSHN

Between the Container Stack workshop on Wednesday Jan 30th and the conference on Thursday Jan 31st 2019, we have Mark Chmarny (TPM Serverless, Google) and Sebastien Goasguen (Founder, Triggermesh) with us in Zurich to talk about Knative, the Kubernetes framework for building, deploying, and managing serverless workloads.
We’ll have an introduction to Knative, a few demos, a Q&A session, and some socializing with drinks afterwards.

Join the Knative Meetup

If you want to attend in the Knative Meetup, you can register here.

Cloud Native and Kubernetes

We support the Cloud Native Computing Foundation by sponsoring KubeCon and CloudNativeCon 2019 in Barcelona, we are official CNCF member, organize the CNC meetups in Zurich and we are the first Kubernetes Certified Service Provider (KCSP) in Switzerland. Visit us at our booth at KubeCon and CloudNativeCon 2019 in Barcelona!
You can find our next events like the next CNC-Meetup here.

20% Discount on KubeCon / CloudNativeCon 2019 Tickets

Do you also want to attend the KubeCon / CloudNativeCon 2019 in Barcelona?As a CNCF member, we can offer you a 20% discount on the official corporate ticket price.

About VSHN – The DevOps Company

VSHN AG is the leading Swiss partner for DevOps, Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift and 24/7 Cloud Operations. VSHN helps software developers run their applications agile and 24/7 on any infrastructure while relieving the burden on IT operations.
Since 2014, we are serving more than 1000 servers in 20 different clouds as well as on-premises at customer locations with a total of more than 66’000 services for 300 different customers and partners. We are ISO 27001 certified and work to the strict FINMA guidelines to ensure the security and confidentiality of customer information at all times.
With APPUiO.ch, we have created a Red Hat OpenShift based Swiss container platform, where we can offer Managed Services as a PaaS solution (Platform-as-a-Service) on any infrastructure: public, dedicated, private and on-premises.
At VSHN, we believe in openness and transparency, so we let you decide where to store your data (we call this multi-cloud strategy). Either locally in your own data center (on-premise) or at a cloud provider location of your choice. Take a look at our services and learn more about our services and how we can possibly support you. Follow us on Twitter (@vshn_ch and @APPUiO) and don’t miss any news.

Zurich Cloud / Big Data / Serverless Week 2018

This year’s Zurich Cloud / Big Data / Serverless Week takes place in the week of Mon. 17th – Fri. 21st December 2018 at Technopark Zurich. In this week, Zurich will become a hotspot for learning about the latest advances in cloud applications and serverless computing technologies.

UCC & Cloud-Native Day

On the first two days, the 11th International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing (UCC) takes place – an expert event centered on research and innovation with several sub-events. Already on the 17th, the “cloud-native day”, multiple presentations about cloud-native applications including an input from the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) are scheduled.

UCC Cloud Challenge sponsored by VSHN

VSHN not only is a CNCF member organizing events such as the CNC meetup in Zurich, but also a proud supporter of the UCC Cloud Challenge in which on the 19th two finalists will compete by showcasing their complex cloud-based system architectures. The winner can look forward to an APPUiO sponsorship and will be able to advance their system using the APPUiO container platform, which VSHN is sponsoring.

The UCC Cloud Challenge 2018 will take place on December 19th at 11.30am at Technopark room BASIC, Technoparkstrasse 1, 8005 Zurich, Switzerland.

A panel discussion and poster presentation will complement this “cloud challenge day”. A registration to UCC and the complementary big data conference is possible for the whole week or with day-passes. VSHN is able to grant a 30% discount on daypasses to its partner companies.

Update: winner of the UCC Cloud Challenge 2018

Congratulations to Andrey Brito of the Federal University of Campina Grande (UFCG, Brazil) for winning the UCC Cloud Challenge 2018 and the CHF 1’000.- APPUiO voucher with his contribution Secure End-to-End Processing of Smart Grid Data. The solution is a joint project by Andrey Brito, Christof Fetzer, Stefan Köpsell, Marcelo Pasin, Pascal Felber, Keiko Fonseca, Marcelo Rosa, Luiz C. Gomes Jr., Rodrigo Riella, Charles Prado, Daniel Rötter, Márton Sipos, László Nagy, Marcell Fehér and Peter Pietzuch.

Congratulations to Andrey and his colleagues!

But of course also a big thank you to Ciarán Bryce from the HEG-Genève for his 2nd place and his very interesting contribution Security Governance as a Service on the Cloud and of course to all other participants who contributed to the UCC Cloud Challenge and proposed a solution.

For more information see: http://events.cbmi.htw-berlin.de/ucc18-cloudChallenge/

European Symposium on Serverless Computing and Applications (ESSCA)

On December 21st, the European Symposium on Serverless Computing and Applications (ESSCA) will draw enthusiasts and professionals around the topic of FaaS to a full-day event. Serverless applications are becoming more popular, and you can already today run them on the APPUiO cloud via Kubeless, Snafu or the future KNative. Therefore, we are looking forward to discuss your FaaS requirements during the event while many experts are present. Starting with parallel tutorials in the morning, the further sessions combine industry and research talks. Regular tickets are available from 50 CHF, and for attendees registered to UCC, even a free contingent is available.

Information, program & registration

Find more information about the events, the program and registration information on the respective websites:

• 11th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing – UCC 2018
• 5th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Big Data Computing, Applications and Technologies – BDCAT 2018
• European Symposium on Serverless Computing and Applications – ESSCA 2018
• First International Workshop on Cloud-Native Applications Design and Experience – CNAX 2018

About VSHN – The DevOps Company

VSHN AG is the leading Swiss partner for DevOps, Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift and 24/7 Cloud Operations. VSHN helps software developers run their applications agile and 24/7 on any infrastructure while relieving the burden on IT operations.

Since 2014, we are serving more than 900 servers in 20 different clouds as well as on-premises at customer locations with a total of more than 62’000 services for 300 different customers and partners. We are ISO 27001 certified and work to the strict FINMA guidelines to ensure the security and confidentiality of customer information at all times.

With APPUiO.ch, we have created a Red Hat OpenShift based Swiss container platform, where we can offer Managed Services as a PaaS solution (Platform-as-a-Service) on any infrastructure: public, dedicated, private and on-premises.

At VSHN, we believe in openness and transparency, so we let you decide where to store your data (we call this multi-cloud strategy). Either locally in your own data center (on-premise) or at a cloud provider location of your choice. Take a look at our services and learn more about our services and how we can possibly support you. Follow us on Twitter and don’t miss any news.

CNC-Meetup #4 2018

Our fourth Cloud Native Computing Meetup 2018 took place on Thursday November 22nd at Tocco in Zurich. A big thank you Tocco for sponsoring the Apéro and for the very nice room!
As official member of the CNCF VSHN supports the Cloud Native Computing Foundation with organizing the CNC meetups in Zurich.

Agenda and Talks

Henri Dubois-Ferriere, Technical Director at Sysdig: “General overview of Prometheus“

David Schweikert, Cloud native Engineer at AdNovum Informatik AG: “Kustomizing your Kubernetes deployments“ – David’s slides:
https://speakerdeck.com/schweikert/kustomizing-your-kubernetes-deployments

Pavol Loffay, Software Engineer at Red Hat: “Introduction to Jaeger and OpenTracing and tracing in Service meshes“ – Pavol’s slides:
https://www.slideshare.net/PavolLoffay/jaeger-and-opentracing-cloud-native-computing-cncf-meetup-zurich

Denis Rosa, System Engineer at Couchbase: “Building Autonomous Microservices“

Conclusion

A big thank you to the speakers for the interesting topics and that you took your time! The feedback from the participants was consistently positive, which was also shown by lots of questions after your talks. 🙂
We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did and we would be happy to see many of you at the next Meetup.

Next CNC Meetup

The next and first meetup in 2019 will take place on Thursday February 21st, 2019 – we are already looking forward to it and are looking for speakers and a sponsor for a room (for about 100 people) and the Apéro. Sign up at  http://cnc-meetup.ch if you want to sponsor or take part as a speaker.

FutureStack is the event for modern teams looking to update on topics such as digital customer experience, application performance, and dynamic infrastructure.

This rich, practice-oriented day is aimed at anyone interested in modern technologies and IT perspectives. News and recommendations in the areas of cloud, DevOps and digital transformation are in the focus.

FutureStack is organized by New Relic.

VSHN at FutureStack

FutureStack18 had the motto “Accelerate to the Future” and took place on November 21, 2018 at RUNWAY 34 near Zurich Airport. Our VSHNeers Peter and Markus were there to get an overview and Peter also gave a talk on the DevOps track.

Agenda and talks

In addition to customer experience reports from New Relic users, there was a cloud track on cloud migration and usage and a DevOps track.

Speakers included:

• Carlo Pacifico, VP CEU, NEW RELIC
• Matthias Imsand, FOUNDER, AMANOX SOLUTIONS AG
• Benedikt Unold, CIO, COMPARIS.CH AG
• Frank Dornberger, SENIOR SYSTEMS ENGINEER, CarRentals.com
• Peter Bittner, DEVOPS ENGINEER, VSHN AG
• Simon Youssef, CO-FOUNDER, NEON

A few impressions of the talks:

Peter Bittner: DevOps & modern software development

Our VSHNeer Peter spoke about DevOps & how to develop software today.

You can view the slides of Peter here:

Conclusion

DevOps was number one topic at FutureStack18. Software development and operations today simply have to work hand in hand to meet dynamic and agile demands.

The reports of the various cloud journeys and experiences of the speakers, how they migrated from monolithic applications to cloud architectures and how to save time and money from the very beginning of the development through good monitoring were extremely interesting.

Many thanks to New Relic for the successful event, the exciting talks and the opportunity to hop into the flight simulator. We had a lot of fun! 

Thank you very much and see you next time.

IDEAS WORTH EXPLORING

This year’s Red Hat Forum will be held on September 11, 2018, at the Arena Sihlcity in Zurich. Around 700 technology leaders, IT experts, developers, and partners engage in a dialogue on development, IT operations, and automation and how the cloud, container technologies, Platform-as-a-Service, and agile processes drive digital transformation.

Keynotes at Red Hat Forum

Keynote speakers at the Red Hat Forum 2018 include:

• Jim Whitehurst, CEO, Red Hat
• Julius Ganns, VP Digital & Strategic Innovation, Vorwerk
• Dr. Thomas Beck, CTO, Avaloq Group AG
• Roland Bieri, Head of Cloud, Swisscom AG
• Dr. René Fitterer, CTO, SAP (Schweiz) AG

Breakout sessions and APPUiO

In the breakout sessions experts from Acceleris, IPT, Adfinis SyGroup, ATOS, Puzzle & Adcubum, Camptocamp, Netcloud, adesso, HPE and of course Red Hat talk about Cloud, PaaS, OpenShift and Everything as a Code. In breakout session 2, our partners Matthias Summer (Adcubum) and Thomas Philipona (Puzzle ITC) will describe how Adcubum will revolutionize the insurance industry with the Swiss container platform APPUiO.

Join us at Red Hat Forum 2018

VSHN will be present with APPUiO at the booths of Puzzle ITC, Microsoft and Avectris and we would be very pleased about your visit. Get your seat today. Participation at the Red Hat Forum is free. We look forward to exciting discussions with you!

APPUiO

With APPUiO.ch, we created the Swiss container platform based on Red Hat OpenShift, where we provide managed services on a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) on any infrastructure: public, dedicated, private and on-premises. Reliable open source concepts such as Docker and Kubernetes allow you to develop, operate and scale your application according to your needs. With APPUiO, your applications can be operated both on public clouds as well as on in-house data centers. The platform was originally built by the two IT specialists Puzzle ITC and VSHN AG to professionalize internal IT. Today, APPUiO is already used in production by several customers and supported by a strong community.

Auch dieses Jahr war VSHN an den DevOpsDays 2018 in Winterthur!
Als Teil der weltweiten DevOps Bewegung wird sie bereits regelmässig in verschiedenen Ländern durchgeführt, am 2. und 3. Mai 2018 fand sie bereits zum zweiten mal in der Schweiz statt.
Die weltweiten Konferenzen werden unabhängig voneinander unter dem Dach von devopsdays.org durch lokale Teams organisiert und betreut. So hat jede Veranstaltung wieder ihren ganz eigenen Charme hat.
Wir sind stolz darauf, dass Tobias Brunner als Mitglied des Organisationsteams mitgewirkt hat, und wir als Goldsponsor unseren Teil dazu beigetragen haben. Ein weiteres Dankeschön gilt unserem Daniel Steudler, der die tollen Fotos gemacht hat.
Hier findest du ein paar Impressionen von den zwei gelungenen Tagen im Kulturzentrum in Winterthur!

Auch dieses Jahr war Marco Fretz wieder am Icinga Camp in Berlin (08.03.2018) und berichtet.
Begonnen hat für mich das #icingacamp bereits am Mittwoch Abend: Nach der Landung in Berlin, einen kurzen Abstecher ins Hotel, dann auf Twitter gelesen, dass ein Tisch in einem Restaurant reserviert sei, 10min zu Fuss und da war ich. Gleich hat man bei Bier und deftigem Essen bekannte Gesichter getroffen und auch gleich weitere Icinga-Fans kennengelernt.
Ausgeschlafen ging es dann am Donnerstag mit Kaffe und Frühstück, gefolgt von der Eröffnung und einem Update zum Icinga-Projekt und der Community von Bernd Erk, los. Sogar unser Icinga Meetup in Zürich am 23.03. wurde erwähnt.

#icingacamp Berlin was just awesome, you rock 🤘
Many thanks to our sponsors @netways @ThomasKrennAG @AzitSystems @linuxmagazin @admagz and our speakers @mickem @NicolaiBuchwitz @blook2nd @gethash @bobapple @dnsmichi Eric & Tom!

See you at #osmc & next year 😘 pic.twitter.com/QndsmB66co

— Icinga (@icinga) March 9, 2018

Tech-Talks

Im Talk von Blerim (Icinga), der die fiktive Geschichte des Sysadmins “Dave” erzählte, ging es darum, wie viele einzelne Tools wie Logging, Alerting, Metrics, Grafiken, etc. erst richtig mächtig werden, wenn man das ganze miteinander kombiniert und integriert. Das hat er vor allem anhand von Icinga2, Elastic Stack und Grafana gezeigt. Mir hat besonders gefallen, wie hilfreich es ist, wenn man Icinga-Events wie “Service Critical” z. B. direkt über den Graph des Server Loads drüber legt und so Ereignisse mit den Metriken korrelieren kann.
Nicolai Buchwitz widmete seinen Talk dem Virtualisierungstool Proxmox VE (PVE) und dessen Integration in Icinga2, dies einmal mit der automatischen Konfiguration via Icinga Directory Import und anderseits mit einem allround-check-plugin (check_pve) für Icinga, welches dank der mitgelieferten Icinga2 Command-Definitionen die wichtigsten Aspekte einfach von PVE überwachen kann.
Gestärkt vom tollen Mittags-Buffet und nach interessanten Gesprächen mit Icinga-Fans und Icinga-Devs ging es im Vortrag von Michael Medin um sein Projekt NSClient++, dem Monitoring Client für Windows, der, wie es ausschaut, immer mächtiger wird, und übrigens auch unter Linux benutzt werden kann. Für Windows-User waren sehr interessante Neuheiten dabei, wie z. B. das Senden von Event Logs direkt an Elasticsearch oder das automatische Verteilen von Scripts, welche die Funktionalität von NSClient++ erweitern können.
Die Vorträge von Michael Friedrich (Integrationsmöglichkeiten von Icinga2 mit InfluxDB, Graphite, ES, Graylog, Dashboard, etc.) und Thomas Gelf (Icinga Director) waren für mich begrenzt interessant, da die Vorträge sehr ähnlich mit denen von der OSMC im November waren, über die ich ebenfalls einen Blogpost geschrieben hatte. Beim Beispiel, wie man kaputtformatierte Excel Host-Listen via Director importiert, mussten dann doch die meisten lachen – solche Anforderungen solls ja in der Praxis geben.

Now Thomas Gelf is talking about Automated Monitoring over here at #IcingaCamp in Berlin pic.twitter.com/cdh1SjSVsh

— Icinga (@icinga) March 8, 2018

Der Vortrag zu “Netways Web Services” fand ich auch spannend. Sebastian Saemann (Netways) erklärte das Setup mit Docker/Mesos/Marathon, welches hinter NWS steckt, und wie sie “Icinga as a Service” auf dieser Plattform betreiben. Bei NWS kann man sich kinderleicht einen Icinga2-Master inklusive Graphite, Grafana, Director, etc. einrichten oder einen Icinga2-Satelliten konfigurieren, der dann Teil des eigenen Icinga2 Clusters wird – ganz ohne ein einziges CLI command einzugeben.
Im letzten Vortrag plauderte Eric Lippmann (CTO Icinga) etwas aus dem Nähkästchen und ging darauf ein, was sich so bei der Icinga2-Entwicklung tut. Besonders spanned hier die Entwicklung in Richtung IcingaDB, welches das alte, überholte Icinga2 IDO DB Schema ablösen soll. Es wird wohl aber nicht eine eigene DB werden, sonder eher ein neues DB-Schema für MySQL/Postgres plus zusätzlich ein KVP-Store wie Redis für die live-Daten, nur historische Daten sollen zukünftig in die neue SQL DB. Das Ganze steckt aber trotz bereits länger andauernder Entwicklung immer noch in den Kinderschuhen, verständlich, kein einfaches Unterfangen, wenn man sich die technischen Abhängigkeiten aller Komponenten auf die IDO DB genauer anschaut.

What‘s evolving in #icinga with our own Eric 🤘 #icingacamp pic.twitter.com/jHCczPU1bt

— Icinga (@icinga) March 8, 2018

Weitere neu Entwicklungen sind die IcingaApp für Android und iOS inklusive Push Notifications, Reporting Features mit anpassbaren Templates und Filtern für Icingaweb2 und ein Notification Manager (NoMa), der ein vereinfachtes verwalten von Notification Contacts und Schedules direkt in Icingaweb2 bringen wird.

The mockups for reporting with #icingaweb2 look promising 😀😀 #icingacamp pic.twitter.com/dgrYdRRsyy

— Nicolai Buchwitz (NicolaiBuchwitz@mastodon.social) (@NicolaiBuchwitz) March 8, 2018

Afterevent Beering

Nach dem letzten Vortrag und der Verabschiedung machten sich dann ein Teil der Besucher zusammen mit den Netways/Icinga-Leuten auf die Suche nach einer Bar, die spontan genug Platz für uns hatte. Im Murphy’s Irish Pub eingefunden konnten wir dann noch länger über Icinga2- und Monitoring-Themen diskutieren, bis es dann beim Bier und Essen immer etwas weniger technisch wurde.

Fazit

Trotz ein paar grösserer Probleme mit meinen Rückflügen von Berlin, ein sehr lohnenswerter Event und Ausflug nach Berlin. Man knüpft neue Kontakt zu Icinga2-Entwickler und anderen Benutzern und spricht direkt über aktuelle Probleme, Verbesserungen und neue Ideen.

Rund 80 geladene Gäste feierten Ende November das einjährige Jubiläum von APPUiO im Bogen F in Zürich. Nebst spannenden Kundencases blickten wir auf ein bewegtes erstes Jahr zurück und enthüllten die neusten Features der Container Plattform. Abgerundet wurde der Nachmittag mit einer heissen Suppe passend zum Schneegestöber vor der Tür, einer süssen Geburtstagstorte und dem einen oder anderen Bier.

„In kurzer Zeit haben wir viele verschiedene Unternehmen aus unterschiedlichen Branchen für APPUiO begeistert. Wir sind sehr zufrieden mit dieser Entwicklung und sehen weiterhin grosses Potenzial“, sagt Thomas Philipona, Gründungsvater von APPUiO, vor den geladenen Gästen am Jubiläumsevent in Zürich. Das Angebot von APPUiO wurde im vergangenen Jahr optimiert. So gibt es attraktive Angebote für Entwickler, die kurzfristig standardisierte Entwicklungsumgebungen in der Cloud suchen, aber auch für Kunden, die eine eigene OpenShift-Plattform nutzen und dabei nichts mit dem Setup und dem Betrieb zu tun haben wollen. „Hier stehen wir gerne als OpenShift-Experten mit unserem Know How zur Verfügung.“

Neue Features

Im vergangenen Jahr wurden diverse neue Features entwickelt. Es wurde beispielsweise ein Self Service Portal lanciert, über das die Projekte auf Knopfdruck angelegt, vergrössert, gelöscht und verwaltet werden können. Die Kosten der Public Platform werden stündlich berechnet und man bezahlt nur, was auch effektiv genutzt wurde. Zudem wurde eine hybride Cloud mit Cluster auf AWS integriert und verschiedene Managed Services wie 3Scale ins Angebot aufgenommen. Der Austausch in der Community wird mit diversen Events unter Gleichgesinnten sowie einem direkten Draht zum APPUiO-Team über den Community Chatgefördert.

Die Container Plattform wird auch in Zukunft stetig weiterentwickelt: Das Bezahlen mit Kreditkarte, TCP (non-HTTP) Services, Database as a Service, Two-Factor Authentication, Hybrid Migrationen des Workloads, Monitoring as a Service, Backup as a Service, ein Start-up-Pricing sowie weitere interessante Features sind geplant und können in der Roadmap aktiv mitgestaltet werden.

Spannende Kundencases

Praxisnah und an konkreten Beispielen orientiert, präsentierten HRM Systems AG, Adcubum AG und Amazee.io, wie sie APPUiO in ihrem Unternehmen einsetzen. Alle Präsentationen des Nachmittags können hier angeschaut werden.

Einblick in den spannenden Nachmittag gibt es auch hier: Fotos, Video