This post is part of the Open Mic series that spotlights a technical contributor from across our global community to celebrate OpenStack’s 3rd birthday.
John Garbutt is a Software Developer at Rackspace working mostly on Nova. His first experience of OpenStack was back in December 2010 when he joined the Citrix Cloud Integration Group. From being on of the lead developers on Project Olympus, he then moved on to concentrating on how XenServer integrates with OpenStack. He is now leading the XenAPI Nova sub-team. His twitter handle is @johnthetubaguy
1. What do you do when you’re not obsessing over and working with OpenStack?
As you might expect, given my IRC handle of johnthetubaguy, I play the Tuba in a brass quintet, brass bands, wind bands and orchestras.
2. What’s the most critical feature you think cloud software needs to be widely adopted over the next year?
OpenStack needs to better deliver easier ways to deploy cloud applications using best practices. Things like Heat and RedDwarf are really taking us in the right direction.
3. What do you think are the benefits of the open, community-driven approach to development?
I love the great feedback from other smart developers, and the spirit of collaboration within the community. I not sure I would ever believed how well all these people who are competitors in the market place really work well together to deliver a common experience. Sure, we are not 100% of the way there yet, but everyone seems to be aiming in the right direction.
4. Describe an interesting OpenStack deployment that you were part of, and why others ought to know about it. What made that project work?
How could I not mention Rackspace Open Cloud? Cloud servers on 1000s of XenServer hosts, spread across several continents, on-demand private networks, link those servers to your traditional managed hosting, and linking that into your private cloud. Amazing stuff, and that is why I moved to work at Rackspace!
5. What other open sources projects do you think work well with OpenStack, and why?
XenServer. It powers the Rackspace cloud, is fully open source, like OpenStack, and it really works well. Even large book stores choose Xen to run their clouds. But then I would say that because I studied at Cambridge University where the Xen project was started, where it was designed for the cloud, before the term cloud existed.
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