10 Things I Learned Shipping an Ancient Data Center to AWS (Part 1)

By John Fahl, IOD Expert
When we got to the consulting gig, they told us they wanted to do DevOps. They said they wanted to be like <insert “awesome streaming video provider” here>. What they had was several data centers filled with several servers using OSs older than 10 years (some even 20+ years old).
They also relied on some real relics like NIS (yup…this is still a thing …), had deep vendor lock-in, massive old, stagnant clusters, manually built applications (most having been created a decade earlier), and armies of contractors overseeing it all.
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Just a Few AWS Tricks I Learned on the Way

By John Fahl, IOD Expert
Once you work with AWS long enough, you realize it changes all the time.
Some things that were difficult last year are now easy.
Who remembers ELB IPs moving on you? Normally, when you use a CNAME (like you’re supposed to) it doesn’t matter, but I’ve moved a few apps that used hardcoded IPs in old applications. Now, you can just abandon the legacy ELB and use their NLB for that issue. NLB and ALB were big improvements over traditional ELB.
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6 re:Invents Later, AWS Is Still the Only Serious Cloud Player

By Ofir Nachmani, CEO, IOD
It’s beautiful here in Vegas. It always is.
But headed into my sixth AWS re:Invent, I have to admit, I wasn’t convinced the event was going to be as spectacular as the scenery. Sure 43,000 attendees is impressive — the number grows every year. And yes, Amazon has a reputation for surprising us with announcements of new innovations. But, after working with AWS since 2008 and writing thousands of articles about the cloud giant, as well as those seeking to compete with them, I wasn’t sure anything they would introduce would be showstopping for me.
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It’s Time to Bring re:Invent to Europe

By Ofer Prossner, VP, Operations, IOD
November is here, and the word on everyone’s lips in our nice little-but-getting-bigger-every-day industry community this month is AWS re:Invent 2017. Of course, IOD will be represented at re:Invent, but as the IOD management team member based in Europe, I have to say it’s quite the schlep getting from Berlin to Vegas.
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I’ve Got a Plan for reInvent 2017. Do You?

By Maish Saidel-Keesing
I am no IT conference novice. I’ve attended several VMworld events over the years (last year, together with over 25,000 other IT professionals). But even though I’ve been in this business for quite a while — since the days when cloud was known as “virtualization” — I haven’t been to re:Invent before.
This year, I knew it was time.
Over the years, as virtualization evolved into cloud, my skills and knowledge evolved, too: from hardware to VMware to cloud (with VMware) and then open-source cloud (with OpenStack), then containers, Docker, and now, most recently, the major public cloud providers. My day job the past year has been focused solely around complex deployments in AWS. How could I miss re:invent 2017?
So, I’m headed there next month. Yet, despite all my years attending VMWorld, I know re:Invent is definitely a conference in its own class. It requires advanced preparation in order to make the best of it.
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An Interview with Bernard Golden: How VMWorld Stacks up Against reInvent

By Ofir Nachmani, IOD CEO
I have known Bernard Golden for years, and it is always a pleasure to chat with him and hear his views about the enterprise IT industry, in general, and, of course, about cloud trends. Over the last decade, I’ve found that interviewing experts and influencers (whether at a conference or remotely) has proven to be both educational and beneficial. This conversation with Golden recently over Skype also gave me lots to think about, especially one month before AWS re:Invent 2017.
The purpose of the interview was to get his takeaways from the VMworld conference in August, which hosted close to 24,000 IT professionals. We discussed the atmosphere at VMworld, VMware’s attempts to stay relevant in the face of AWS’s rapid development, the current state of the ecosystem, and more.
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RHCE, MCSE, CCNP … When Should I Stop Pursuing IT Certifications?

By Petar Marinkovic, IOD Senior Expert and Mentor
When you are a freshly employed junior in IT, a few certification acronyms look nice on your CV. You don’t have too many projects under your belt, so passing a couple of Microsoft, Cisco, or AWS exams will definitely help you in pursuing and obtaining positions that will kickstart your career. But, when should you stop? When is enough enough? And once you’ve decided it’s enough, and you have more free time, what’s the best way to spend that time in a way that will support your continued growth?
I have to admit, I was a member of the “certification” cult.
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I Love the Cloud: My Never-Ending Journey with AWS

[GUEST POST] I started exploring the cloud computing world around 5 years ago, and I must admit that my initial understanding of the cloud was a disaster. At first, it was difficult to find a comprehensive definition, but I finally settled on one from the National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST). It clearly defined the cloud’s attributes and models, and removed my doubts regarding what falls under the cloud umbrella. The experience that I had finding this definition made me realize that I wanted there to be an easier way for others to find it, as well. Therefore, I decided to create my own list of cloud guidelines. This was a turning point in my cloud journey, as it pushed me to teach many students and IT professionals about cloud computing.
Stumbling upon AWS is inevitable when discovering the cloud, and just as with the cloud, my first interaction with AWS was not simple, either. I remember the moment of “Eureka!” that came after I was finally able to launch an EC2 instance and deploy a simple application. Sometimes, I laugh at the sheer joy I experienced from such a small achievement, but I realize that this was a stepping stone in my AWS journey and my love for Amazon. I am now able to manage bigger AWS cloud infrastructures, and I’ve consulted for and successfully designed various Amazon projects. I’ve conducted sessions on how to scale applications and how to make scalable applications using Amazon.
I see that two things have remained steady over the past few years: continuous innovations at AWS and my love for AWS. AWS has always kept me motivated to learn new things with its consistent new offerings, and I’d like to share the reasons that I believe make it the immense influence on the cloud that it is today.
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