>> From Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts, it's the CUBE. Covering VTUG Winter Warmer 2019. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. >> I'm Stu Miniman, and this is theCUBE's coverage of the VTUG Winter Warmer 2019. Just had Rob Ninkovich from the New England Patriots on the program. And, happy to bring on the program, one of the co-leaders of this VTUG event, Chris Williams. Whose day job is as a cloud architect with GreenPages, but is co-leader here at VTUG, does some user groups, and many other things, and actually a CUBE alum, even. Back four years ago, the first year-- >> That's right. >> -that we did this, we had you on the program, but a few things have changed, you know... You have a little less hair. >> This got a little longer. A little less here. >> More gray hair. Things like that. We were talking, >> Funny how that works out. you know, Rob was, you know, talking about how he's 35, and we were, like, yeah, yeah, 35, I remember 35. >> A child. (laughing) >> Things like that. Just wait til you hit your 40's and stuff starts breaking. >> Oh, so much to look forward to. >> So, Chris, first of all, thank you. We love coming to an event like this. I got to talk to a few users on-air, and I talked to, you know, get a, just, great pulse of what's going on in the industry. Virtualization, cloud computing, and beyond. So, you know, we know these, you know, local events are done, you know, a lot of it is the passion of the people that do it, and therefore we know a lot goes into it. >> I appreciate it, thanks for having me on. >> Alright, so bring people up to speed. What's your life like today? What do you do for work? What do you do for, you know, the passion projects? >> Ah, so the passion projects recently have been a lot of, we're doing a Python for DevOp series on vBrownBag. For the AWS Portsmouth User Group, we're also doing a machine learning and robotics autonomous car driving project, using Python as well. And for VTUG, we're looking at a couple of different tracks, also with the autonomous driving, and some more of the traditional, like, VMware to CAS Cloud Hybrid training kind of things. >> Excellent, so in the near future, the robots will be replacing the users here, and we'll have those running around. >> I have my Skynet t-shirt on underneath here. >> Ah, yes, Skynet. (laughing) You know if you Tweet that out, anything about Skynet, there's bots that respond to you with, like, things from The Terminator movies. >> I built one of them. >> Did you? (laughter) Well, thank you. They always make me laugh, and if there's not a place for snark on Twitter, then, you know, all we have left is kind of horrible politics, so. >> That's true, that's true. >> Great, so, yeah, I mean, Cloud AI, robotics, you know, what's the pulse? When you talk to users here, you know, they started out, you know, virtualization. There's lots of people that are, "I'm rolling out my virtualization, "I'm expanding what use-cases I can use it on, "I might be thinking about how cloud fits into that, "I'm looking at, you know, VmMare and Amazon especially, "or Microsoft, how all those fit together." You know, what are you hearing, what drives some of those passion projects other than, you know, you're interested in 'em? >> So, a lot of what my passion projects are driven, it's kind of a confluence of a couple of different events. I'm passionate about the things that I work on, and when I get into a room with customers, or whatever like that, or with the end users, getting together and talking about, you know, what's the next step? So, we as users, as a user group and as a community, we're here to learn about not just what today is... what's happening today, but, what's going to keep us relevant in the future, what are the new things coming down the pipe. And, a lot of that is bending towards the things that I'm interested in, fortuitously. Learning how to take my infrastructure knowledge and parlay that into a DevOps framework. Learning how to take Python and some of the stuff that I'm learning from the devs on the AWS side, and teaching them the infrastructure stuff. So, it's a bi-directional learning thing, where we all come together to that magical DevOps unicorn in the middle, that doesn't really exist, but... >> Yeah, I tell you, we've had this conversation a few times here, and many times over the last few years especially, is that, there's lots of opportunities to learn. And, you know, >> Too many. >> is your job threatened? And, the only reason your job should be threatened, is if you think you can keep doing, year after year, what you were doing before, because chances are either you will be disrupted in the job, or if not, the people you're working for might be disrupted, because if they're not pushing you along those tracks, and the tools and the communities to be able to learn stuff is, I can learn stuff at a fraction of the cost in faster times. >> Yep. >> Might not learn as much, but I'm saying I can pick up new skills, I can start getting into cloud. You know, it's not $1000 and six months to get the first piece of it. >> Exactly. >> It might be 40 to 60 hours online. >> Yep. >> And, you know, cost you 30 to 100 bucks, so, it's... >> Yeah, the lift in training, is a lot easier because, you're basically swiping your credit card, and with AWS, you have a free tier for 12 months, that you can play with and just, you know, doodle around, and then... And figure things out. You don't have to buy a home lab, you don't have to buy NFR license, or get NFR licenses from Vmware. But, the catch to that is, you do have to do it. There's a... remember Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? >> Of course. >> Remember the dad was doing the toothpaste tubes, he was the guys screwing the toothpaste tubes onto the machines. At the end of the story, he got, you know, automated out of a job, because they had a machine screwing the toothpaste tubes on. And then, at the end, he was the guy fixing the machine that was screwing the toothpaste tubes on. >> Right. >> So, in our world, that infrastructure guy, who's been deploying manually virtual machines, there's a piece of code, there's an infrastructure code, that will do that for them now. They've got to know how to modify and refactor that piece of code, and get good. And, get good at that. >> Yeah, you know, I've talked to a couple of people, we talk about, you know, there's big, you know, vendor shows, and then there's, you know, regional user groups and meet-up's, and the like. Give us a little insight into, you know, let's start with VTUG specifically, and, you know, what you're doin' up in the Portland area. Would love to hear some of the dynamics now, you know, it feels like there's just been a ground swell for many years now, to drive those, you know, local, and many times, more specialized events, as opposed to bigger, broader events. >> Yeah, it's interesting, because we like the bigger, broader events, because it gets everybody together to talk about, things across a broad spectrum. So, here we have the infrastructure guys, and we have the DevOps guys, and we have a couple of Developers, and stuff like that. And so, getting that group think, that mind share, into one room together, gets everybody's creative juices flowing. So, people are starting to learn from each other, that the Dev's, are getting some ideas about how infrastructure works, the infrastructure guys are getting some ideas about, you know, how to, how to automate a certain piece of their job. To make that, you know, minimize and maximize a thousand times, you know, go away. So, I love... I love the larger groups because of that. The smaller groups are more specialized, more niche. So, like, when you get into a smaller version, then, it's mostly infrastructure guys, or mostly Dev's, or some mixture thereof. So, they both definitely have their place, and that's why I love doing both of them. >> Yeah, and, you know, what can you share, kind of, speeds and feeds of this show here. I know, it's usually over a thousand people >> Yep. >> You know, had, you know, bunch of keynotes going on. You know, we talked about The Patriots, in, you know, quite a number of, you know, technology companies, people that are the, kind of, SI's or VAR's in the mix. >> Yeah, so, we had, I think, 35 sponsers. We had, six different keynotes, or six general sessions. We talked about everything from Azure to AWS, to Vmware. We covered the gamate of the things that the users are interested in. >> You had... don't undersell the general sessions there. (laughing) There was one that was on, like, you know, Blockchain and Quantum computing, I heard. >> Yep, yep. >> There was, an Amazon session, that was just, geekin' out on the database stuff, I think, there. >> Yes, yeah, Graph tier, yep. >> So, I mean, you know, it's not just marketing slideware up there, I saw a bunch of code in many of the sessions. >> Oh yeah, yeah. >> You know, this definitely is, you know, I was talkin' with the Amazon... Randell earlier, here on the program, and said that-- >> The Amazon Randall. (laughing) >> Yeah, yeah, sorry, Randall from Amazon, here. >> He's a very large weber. >> Gettin' at the end of the day, I've done a few of these, but, you know, remember like, four years ago, the first, like, cloud 101 session here? >> Yeah, yep. >> And, I was like, you know, I probably could have given that session, but, everybody here was like, "Oh, my gosh", you know, I just found out about that electricity. >> Right. >> You know, that, this is amazing. And, today, most people, understand a little bit more of... We've gotten the 101, so, you know, I'm getting into more of the pieces of it, but. >> Yeah, it was really gratifiying because, the one that he gave was, all of the service, all of the new services, of which, there were like, more than 100, in 50 minutes or less. And, he talks really, really fast. And, everybody was riveted, we... I mean, people were coming in, even up until the last minute. And, they all got it. It wasn't like, what am I do... what am I going to do with this? It's, this is what I need to know, and this is valuable information. >> Yeah, we were having a lunch conversation, about, like, when you listen to a Podcast, what speed do you listen on? So, I tend to listen at about one and a half speed, normally. >> Me too, yep. >> You know, Frappe was sayin', he listens at 2x, normally. >> Does he really? >> Somebody like, Randall, I think I would, put the video up, and you can actually go into YouTube, and things like that, and adjust the speed settings, I might hit, put him down to 0.75, or something like that, >> Yeah, absolutely. >> Because absolutely, you know, otherwise, you can listen to it at full speed, and just like, pause and rewind, and then things like that. But, definitely, someone... I respect that, I'm from New Jersey, originally, I tend to talk a little faster, on camera I try to keep a steady pace, so that, people can keep up with my excitement. >> I do, I speed up too. He actually, does this everyday. He flies to a new city, does it once a day. So, he's, he's gotten... This is like rapid fire now. >> Alright, want to give you the final word, you know, VTUG, you know, I think, people that don't know it, you go to VTUG.com, A Big Winter Warmer, here. There's The Big Summer one, >> The Summer Slam. >> With the world famous, you know, Lobster Bake Fest, there, I've been to that one a few times. I know people that fly from other countries, to come to that one. What else should we know about? >> So, we're about to revamp the website, we've got some new and interesting stuff coming up on there. Now that, we also have our slack channel, everybody communicates on the backhand through that. We're going to start having some user content, for the website. So, people can start posting blog articles, and things of that nature, there. I'm going to start doing, like a little, AW... like learn AWS, on the VTUG blog, so, people can start, you know, ramping up on some of the basics and everything. And, and if, that gains traction, then, we'll maybe get into some more advanced topics, from Azure, and AwS, and Vmware of course, Vmware is always going to be there, that's... Some of the stuff that Cody is doing, Cody Jarklin is doing, over at Vmware, like the CAS stuff, where it's the shim layer, and the management of all the different clouds. That's some really, really cool stuff. So, I'm excited to showcase some of that on the website. >> Alright, wow. Chris Williams, really appreciate you coming. And, as always, appreaciate the partnership with the VTUG, to have us here. >> Thanks for havin' me. >> Alright, and thank you as always for watching. We always love to bring you the best community content, we go out to all the shows, help extract the signal for the noise. I'm Stu Miniman, thanks for watchin' The CUBE. (energetic music) (energetic music) (energetic music)

>> From Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts, if the queue recovering Vita Winter warmer, twenty nineteen Brought to you by Silicon Angle media. >> Hi. I'm stupid men. And this is the cubes coverage of V tug Winter warmer. Twenty nineteen here. A Gillette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots. Happy to welcome to the program. A community member, Someone I've known for many years at this point. Jonathan Frappe here. Who's with V Brown bag? Thanks so much for joining us from >> Thanks for having me. >> All right, so, you know, I watched this event, and when it started, it was, you know, originally the V mug for New England. And then it became vey tug And one, there's some of the politics stuff which we don't need to go into, but part of it was virtual ization and cloud. And what's the interaction there and what will users have to do? Different. And part of that is jobs. And one of the reasons I really wanted to bring you on is, you know, you started out heavy in that virtual ization base and you've been going through those machinations. So maybe just give our audience a little bit about, you know, your background, some of the things skill sets. You've got lots of acronyms on your on your you know, resume as it is for certification. You've done. So let's start there. >> Sure. So my background. I started this help desk. I did Windows two thousand Active Directory, administration and Exchange Administration all on site and moved into Mohr server administration. And when the empire started to become a thing, I was like, Wow, this is This is a game changer and I need to sort of shift my skill set. I understand the applications of music. I've been supporting him. But virtualization is going to change change That so started to shift there and saw a similar thing with Public Cloud and automation a cz, That same sort of next step beyond infrastructure management. >> All right. And you've had a bunch of certification. The real off a few. You know what? Where are you today? What? What have you added gives a little bit of a timeline. >> My first certification was a plus which come to you seemingly has come around and joined the ranks of posting toe linked in for everybody. So a plus was my first one. EMC PM, CSC on Windows two thousand. Took a little bit of a break in back into it. Bcp five era so four, five years ago. Cem Cem. Other of'em were Certs NSX Cloud see Emma and most recently, the solution's architect associate for a Ws. >> OK, great, in when you look at the kind of virtual ization and cloud, it's not like you thirst, which one day and said, Okay, I no longer need the VM were stuff. I'm going to do the cloud tell us a little bit about you know what led you to start doing the cloud and you know how you you know how your roles that you've had and you know the skill set that you want to have for your career. You know how you look at those. >> So for me, it is about being able to support what my business is doing. And sometimes the right answer's going to be VM, where sometimes it's going to be physical. Sometimes it's going to be containers or public cloud, or, you know, new fancy buzzwords like server lists. And I've always in my career tried to support what where, what application we're delivering to get the business, the information they need. So for me to do that properly, I need to be well versed across all of that infrastructure so that when when it's time to deliver something in public cloud or time to deliver something in the container, I'm ready to go when you do that. >> Yeah. What? What? What's the push and pull for some of the training bin? Is this something that you've seen? You said, like Veum, where you saw it, like, Oh, my gosh, I need to hop on that. You know, I remember back to those early days I remember engineers I worked with that were just like, this thing is amazing. That was like preview motion, even. Yeah, but you know, just what? That that impact we've seen over the last, you know, ten to fifteen years of that growth has there been times where the business is coming said, Hey, can you go learn this? Kaixian orders have been you driving most about yourself. Uh, >> it's it's been both. There are times when the business has come and said, Hey, we would really like to take advantage of virtual ization or public cloud. And it from a technology perspective, there may have been other factors that would impact the ability to do that. So that's why for me. I tried to sort of stay ahead of it when, you know virtual ization was taking off and everything I had was on physical servers. I knew I needed to have the VM where peace in my pocket so that when the business was ready and when other things like compliance, we're ready for it. We could move forward and sort of advanced that same thing with Public Cloud. Now that that's Mohr prevalent and sort of accepted in the industry a lot more cos they're moving in that direction. >> Yeah, and you know, what tips would you give your Pierre if they're a virtual ization person? You know, how are the waters in the cloud world is there are a lot of similarities. Is it? You know, do I have to go relearn and, oh, my gosh, I need to go learn coding for two years before I understand how to do any of this stuff. >> I think it's helpful. Tto learn some level of coding, but do it in an environment that you're comfortable in today. So if you're of'em were admin today, you know there's power, see Ally and be realized orchestrator and and even if you're on via Mars Cloud platform there's there's some basic power shell on bass scripting you could do in the cloud Automation. Get comfortable with the environment, you know. And then as that comfort grows when you move Oh, look, there's power shell commandments for a ws. If that's the route, you go so oh, already understand the format and how I how I glue those things together so you could get comfortable in the environment you're in today and sort of get ready for whatever that next step is. >> Yeah, I've always found I find it interesting. Look at these ecosystems and see where the overlaps and where two things come together. You know, I actually worked with Lennox for about twenty years. So I you know, back when I worked at Emcee the storage company and I supported the Lenox Group and Lennox was kind of this side thing. And then you kind of saw that grow over time and Lennox and virtual ization. We're kind of parallel, but didn't overlap is much. And then when we get to the cloud, it feels like everybody ended up in that space and there were certain skill sets that clinics people had that made it easy to do cloud in certain things that the fertilization people had that made it easy do there. But we're kind of all swimming in the same pools. We see that now in the, you know, core bernetti space. Now I see people I know from all of those communities on, but it's kind of interesting. Curious if you have anything you've seen in kind of the different domains and overlapping careers. >> Yes, you. For me. I think what's help is focusing on how the applications the business uses consumed, what some of the trends are around, how you know whether finance or marketing teams are interacting with those applications. If I know how the application works and what I need to do something to support it, the concepts aren't going to be vastly different. If I know how Exchange's install their sequel servers install, there's some custom application is insult. I could do that across the VM, where environment native US environment and should it supported into Docker by leveraging Cooper Netease. >> All right, so you've mentioned about the time the application, can you? How has it changed your relationship with kind of the application owners as you go from, you know, physical, virtual, the cloud. >> I don't think it should change much. The problem probably the biggest shift that you have is that at some point now, things are out of your control. So when I've got a server sitting in my data center that I can walk down the hallway to if something's not working, I have access to it. If there's an application down in the public cloud, or there's an A Ws outage or any public cloud provider outage, I have to wait. And that sort of I think the thing that I've seen business struggle with the most like, well, it's down, go fix it. It's like, I can't get to it right now, and I'm probably not driving to Virginia, Oregon to go reboot that server for Amazon. >> Whoever absolutely big shift we've seen right is, you know a lot of what I is. It I am managing is now things that aren't in my environment. You know, there was my data centers. My might have had hosted data centers where I'd call somebody up, you know, you know, tell the Rex paper person to reboot the servers or it's right, it's in the public cloud. In which case it's like, OK, what tools. What can I trouble shoot myself? Or is there some, you know, out of that I'm not aware of, you know, is affecting me. Yeah, >> it's Ah, it's a good shift to have for a infrastructure person because we're really getting to the point now. I think the tails, the scales have tipped to focusing more on delivering business value versus delivering infrastructure. The CFO doesn't necessarily think or care that spinning up a new V m faster is cool. They care about getting their application to their team so that they could do their work. So I think taking, you know, going to public cloud or going to other platforms where that's removed it sort of forces you to move to supporting supporting those business applications. >> So I'm curious it every time we have one of these generational shift time. Time is like, Oh, my gosh, I'm going to be out of a job on the server ID men Virtualization is going to get rid of me. I'm a virtual ization Had been cloud's going to get rid of me. This whole server listing will probably just get rid of all the infrastructure people I've read article yesterday was called the Creeping Apocalypse a CZ what they called it. But, you know, you know what you saying is there general fear in your peers or, you know, do you just, you know, dive in and understand it and learn it? If you could stay, you know, up with or a little bit ahead of the curve, you know you're going to keep employed. >> I would say that there's a mix there. Some people, even just a few months ago, some some folks I talked to and they were just sort of breaking into automation and like how they can automate deploying their applications in their legitimate concern, was I won't have a job anymore and sort of the way I looked at that was my job's going to change. I don't spend my entire day administering Windows two thousand active directory boxes any more. So I need Yes, I need to shift that and start thinking about what's next. If I can automate the routine task, you know, deploying an application, patching and application, bringing things up and down when there's some sort of failure than I, uh, I'm going to naturally grow my career in that way by getting rid of the boring stuff. >> Yeah, and I've been here in this argument against automation for decades now, and the question I always put two people is like, Look, if I could give you an extra hour a day or an extra day a week, do you have other projects that you could be doing or things that the business is asking for? That would be better. And I've yet to find somebody that didn't say, Yeah, of course, on DH. What are the things that you're doing that it would be nice to get rid of, You know, other people is like I love the serenity of racking and stacking cabling stuff. And nothing gets people more excited than beautiful cables in Iraq. I thought yesterday I saw people like going off about here's this data center with these beautiful, you know, rack, you know? So with the cable ties and everything, but I'm like, really, you know, there's more value you can add absolutely out there. So >> automate yourself into your next job. It is sort of the way I think I like to think about it. It's not a meeting, >> so let's you know, just look forward a little bit, you know? There's all these waves, you know, Cloud been a decade data was talking to keep downs in this morning on the Cube on we said, you know, when he talks to users, it's their data that super important applications absolutely is what drives, uh, you know, my infrastructure, but it's the data that's the super important piece. So you know, whether it be, you know, you're a I or, you know, you figure various buzz word of the day I ot You know, data is in the center. So what do you looking forward to is? Are there new search or new training that that are exciting? You are areas that you think you're Pierre should be poking out to help try to stay ahead of the curve. >> Yeah, and back to my earlier point about leveraging the thing you know today and how to sort of grow your career. And that next skill set is how I can look at data and make. I understand what's going on around that. So maybe maybe today that's taking some stats from any SX. I hosted an application and correlating that data together on help. You underst Yes. And you know what that means for the applicator action before or use their calls in. And that's going to help you grow into sort of this new realm of like, machine learning and big data. And in analytics, which I think is really the next thing that we're going to need to start doing as Mohr and more of that infrastructure shifted away into surveillance platforms and things that were not worried about How can I understand? How can I take that data? Transform it, use it, correlated together to, you know, help make decisions. >> Alright, on final thing, give us update on our friends at V Brown bag. So, you know, we talked Well, I always say, you know, when we go to V m world, it's like we're there. I'm trying to help kind of balance between the business and the technology. You want to go a little deeper and really geek out and understand some of these things. That's where you know the V brown bag. You know, people are going to be able to dig in with the community in the ecosystem. There was the V and V brown bag for virtual ization. But he brown bags doing much more than just traditional virtualization today. You know what? What? What's on the docket? >> Eso upcoming This year, we're gonna have some episodes around Python so helping add men's get to know Python start to get comfortable with it, Which would be a great language to a automate things that maybe you're doing today in your application, but also to be able to take data and and use Python, too. Manage that data extract value out of that data so that you can help make decisions. So look for the throughout this year and, you know, learn new things. >> All right, Jonathan, from pure pleasure to talk with you on camera after talking to off camera for many years. Thanks so much for joining us. All right. And we appreciate you joining us at this virtual ization and cloud user event. Ve tug Winter warmer. Twenty nineteen on student a minute. Thanks for watching the cue