News

DevOpsDays Zurich

DevOpsDays Zurich has now become a fixed date in our calendar and cloudscale.ch was once again there in 2022 as a sponsor. Prepared and spontaneous topics from the wide field of DevOps were addressed and expanded in different formats, including e.g. classic talks as well as open spaces. Oliver Goetz's talk was particularly relevant from today's perspective, covering the (further) development of a cloud-based smart metering system that coordinates energy suppliers and users. The presentation included MVPs and a small, physically reconstructed model.

OpenInfra Summit

In early June, one of our engineers took the night train to the OpenInfra Summit at the Berlin Congress Center on Alexanderplatz, where the Chaos Communication Congress has also been held in the past. Under the last corona restrictions, about 1000 participants from around the world engaged with OpenStack, Kubernetes, containerization and developments surrounding CSI. Insights were also provided into confidential computing and encrypted workloads. It goes without saying that interpersonal relations were not neglected at the three-day conference with plenty of opportunities to develop and maintain contacts.

OpenStack Ops Meetup

Following the OpenInfra Summit, the one-day OpenStack Ops Meetup also took place in Berlin. The main focus of the moderated sessions were discussions with other operators of private and public OpenStack clouds, which centered on, for example, extremely practical matters that are on the agenda everywhere: from applying the regular upgrades, to challenges associated with growth, and to various deployment approaches. Here again, the closing dinner provided further opportunity for personal discussions, where suddenly you might find yourself talking to a Swedish cloud provider.

Swiss Python Summit

Python plays a key role at cloudscale.ch, as the language that not only most of our own software is written in, but also for example OpenStack. We took an appropriately large delegation to Swiss Python Summit with its wide-ranging program on the OST Campus in Rapperswil-Jona. Memorable talks included "Automating teaching about automation in Python" by Florian Bruhin and, of course, "Rust for Python Developers" by our own Dave Halter. In glorious weather conditions we also met many familiar faces, including some from Coredump Hacker- und Makerspace in Rapperswil-Jona.

Cloud Native Day

On a beautiful autumn day, Cloud Native Day was held on Bern's Mount Gurten, and cloudscale.ch was once again involved as a sponsor. At the two-track event, Kubernetes and cluster APIs were two of several key topics. Florian Forster went beyond pure containers in his talk. Taking the example of ZITADEL, an open source identity provider that can also be used for single sign-on with our cloud control panel, he spoke about his practical experience of switching to "serverless". Cloud Native Day ended with the after-party, which even the onset of rain could not dampen.

Dataspace Switzerland

This year, in addition to these events with a more technical focus, cloudscale.ch was also a partner of Dataspace Switzerland, the series of events by swiss made software. June was all about the Swiss Confederation's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), current threats such as ransomware, IoT, the American CLOUD Act and, last but not least, the "human factor". The main focus of November was the new data protection law. It became clear that almost all companies still have things to do before the legislation comes into force on 2023-09-01, and practice-focused talks showed how to make sure the next steps on this journey are successful.

Ansible Zürich Meetup

After a year's break, it was time again in late November for the Zurich Ansible community to get together for the meetup not far from our office. In their presentations, three speakers provided an insight into best practices and offered tips on using Ansible for experienced and less experienced users. Shop talk then continued over American hot dogs, waffles and drinks, also with some employees of Red Hat, the company that has long been behind the popular automation tool.

The wide range of events and the active participation show that IT and cloud are not merely technical matters. Whether you are a user of a complex system or an engineer, personal discussions help you to keep your eye on the ball and to drive technology forwards together. Do you know of an event that should not be missed? Please let us know as we are already looking forward to interesting discussions in 2023.

See you soon!
Your cloudscale.ch team