TCP Talks

Justin Brodley & Jonathan Baker

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TECHNOLOGY

Join Justin Brodley and Jonathan Baker on TCP Talks our show where we interview industry leaders, vendors, and technologists about Cloud Computing, Robotics, Finops, and more.

9 AUG

The Cloud Pod Puts a Hex-LLM on all these AI Announcements

The Cloud Pod Puts a Hex-LLM on all these AI Announcements Welcome to episode 270 of the Cloud Pod Podcast – where the forecast is always cloudy! Jonathan, Ryan, Matt and Justin are your hosts today as we sort through all of the cloud and AI news of the week, including updates to the Crowdstrike BSOD event, more info on that proposed Wiz takeover (spoiler alert: it’s toast) and some updates to Bedrock. All this and more news, right now on the Cloud Pod! Titles we almost went with this week: The antivirus strikes back The return of the crowdstrike The cloud pod is worth more than 23B The cloud pod is rebranded to the AI podcast The cloud pod might need to move to another git provider Amazon finally gets normal naming for end user messaging Amazon still needs to work on it’s end user messaging The CloudPod goes into hibernation before the next crisis hits EC2 Now equipped with ARM rests A big thanks to this week’s sponsor: Follow Up 01:33 In what feels suspiciously like an SNL skit, CrowdStrike sent its partners $10 Uber Eats gift cards as an apology for mass IT outage As you can imagine, Twitter (or X) had thoughts. Turns out they were just for third party partners that were helping with implementation. 2024 Economics wants to know – what are you going to do with only $10 with Uber Eats? Crowdstrike: Preliminary Post Incident Review Moving on to the actual story – The Preliminary Post Incident Review (PIR) is now out for the BSOD Crowdstrike event we talked about last week. Crowdstrike reports that a Rapid Response Content Update for the Falcon sensor was published to Windows hosts running sensor version 7.11 and above. The update was to gather telemetry on new threat techniques that targeted named pipes in the kernel but instead triggered a BSOD on systems online from 4:09 – 5:27 UTC. Ultimately, the crash occurred due to undetected content during validation checks, which resulted in an out-of-bounds memory read. To avoid this, Crowdstrike plans to do a bunch of things: Improve rapid response content testing by using testing types such as Local developer, content update and rollback, stress, fuzzing, fault injection, stability and content interface testing. Introduce additional validation checks in the content validator to prevent similar issues. Strengthen error handling mechanisms in the Falcon sensor to ensure errors from problematic content are managed gracefully. Adopt staggered deployment strategies, starting with a canary deployment to a small subset of systems before further staged rollouts Enhanced sensor and system performance monitoring during the staggered content deployment to identify and mitigate issues promptly. Allowing a granular section of when and where these updates are deployed will give customers greater control over the delivery of rapid-response content updates. Provide notifications of content updates and timing Conduct multiple independent third-party security code reviews Conduct independent reviews of end-to-end quality processes from development through deployment 04:37 Jonathan – “I think part of the blame was on the EU, wasn’t it, against Microsoft, in fact, for making Microsoft continue to give kernel level access to these types of integrations. Microsoft wanted to provide all this functionality through an API, which would have been safe. They wouldn’t have caused a blue screen if there had been an error. But in the EU, there were complaints from antivirus vendors. They wanted direct access to things in the kernel rather than going through an API.” 08:57 Delta hires David Boies to seek damages from CrowdStrike, Microsoft after outage David represented the US Government against Microsoft in a landmark antitrust suit, as well as the likes of Harvey Weinstein and Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos. Seriously – why doesn’t this guy have his face all over LA billboards? 12:23 Cyber-security firm rejects $23bn Google takeover Lite

54 min
26 MAY

TCP Talks: The evolution of Finops & Why you should attend Finops-X

Summary – Finops X In this conversation, Joe Daly and Rob Martin from the FinOps Foundation discuss the latest developments in the FinOps space and Finops-X. They talk about the evolution of FinOps practices, the growth of the FinOps community, and the importance of the Focus project, which aims to standardize billing data from different cloud providers. They also discuss the adoption of FinOps practices by SaaS companies and the future of the FinOps space. The conversation covers the updates and changes in the FinOps framework, including the addition of allied personas and the simplification of domains and capabilities. It also discusses the upcoming Finops-X conference and the value it provides for attendees, including deep and concrete content, networking opportunities, and career advancement. Keywords FinOps, FinOps Foundation, FinOps X conference, podcast, cloud providers, Focus project, billing data, cloud-agnostic, tool agnostic, open source project, SaaS companies, FinOps framework, allied personas, domains and capabilities, Finops-X conference, deep content, networking, career advancement, Finops-X Europe Takeaways FinOps practices have evolved to focus on making processes more operational and improving decision-making in businesses. The FinOps Foundation has seen significant growth, with over 100 members, including major cloud providers. The Focus project, an open billing standard, aims to consolidate billing data from different cloud providers and enable more effective cost allocation. The adoption of FinOps practices by SaaS companies is increasing, with a focus on consumption-based licensing management. The future of the FinOps space includes expanding the Focus project to include sustainability data and additional usage-based data. The FinOps framework has been updated to include allied personas and simplified domains and capabilities. Finops-X conference provides valuable content, networking opportunities, and career advancement for attendees. Finops-X Europe conference in Barcelona offers a focused event for the European market. The conversation also mentions the importance of small businesses attending the conference and the success stories of attendees. Sound Bites “How do I make these processes much more operational? How do I affect the broader decision-making going on in my business?” “The Focus project… will consolidate or specify how billing data should come from the different cloud providers.” “The Focus project… essentially handles the data ingestion problem that has plagued a lot of organizations early on.” “The two big changes that happened this year were the addition of a lot of allied personas.” “We’ve simplified those down into four key domains.” “What other things are you guys excited about for Finops-X?” About Joe Daily & Rob Martin Joe Daly is a Director of Community for the FinOps Foundation, which is kind of like sitting at the largest lunch table in Middle School, but with less vaping. He’s had illustrious careers as a CPA (the Statute of Limitations has past for all tax returns he prepared and he has let his CPA expire), Corporate Taxation, IT Finance & Accounting, IT Portfolio Management, a regrettable stint as Manager of Server Operations, and has started two teams that perform what has come to be known as FinOps. He lives in Columbus, OH and enjoys copying off Rob. Go Captains! Rob Martin is a FinOps Principal at the FinOps Foundation, which is kind of like being a Middle School Principal, but with less vaping. He’s had illustrious careers at Accenture, the US Department of Justice, Amazon Web Services, and Cloudability, and less lustrious jobs at a few other places. He now spends his time collecting, developing, and distributing FinOps content among the huge global community of people who deliver value from cloud. He lives in Leesburg, VA, and enjoys games (including the Fin

37 min
7 MAY

TCP Talks with Rackspace CTO of Public Cloud - Travis Runty

For this special edition of TCP Talks, Justin and Jonathan are joined by Travis Runty, CTO of Public Cloud with Rackspace Technology. In today’s interview, they discuss being accidentally multi cloud, public vs private cloud, and cloud migration, and best practices when assisting clients with their cloud journeys. Background Rackspace Technology, commonly known as Rackspace, is a leading multi-cloud solutions provider headquartered in San Antonio, Texas, United States. Founded in 1998, Rackspace has established itself as a trusted partner for businesses seeking expertise in managing and optimizing their cloud environments. The company offers a wide range of services aimed at helping organizations navigate the complexities of cloud computing, including cloud migration, managed hosting, security, data analytics, and application modernization. Rackspace supports various cloud platforms, including AWS, Azure, and GCP, among others. Rackspace prides itself on its “Fanatical Experience” approach, which emphasizes delivering exceptional customer support and service. This commitment to customer satisfaction has contributed to Rackspace’s reputation as a reliable and customer-centric provider in the cloud computing industry. Meet Travis Runty, CTO of Public Cloud for Rackspace Technology Beginning his career with Rackspace as a Linux engineer, Travis has spent the last 15 years working his way through multiple divisions of the company, including 10 years in senior and director level positions. Most recently, Travis served as VP of Technical Support of Global Cloud Operations from 2020-2022. Travis is extremely passionate about building and leading high performance engineering teams and delivering innovative solutions. Most recently, as a member of their technology council, Travis wrote an article for Forbes – Building a Cloud-Savvy Workforce: Empowering Your Team for Success – where he discussed best practices for prioritizing workforce enablement, especially when it comes to training and transformation initiatives. Interview Notes: In the main show, TCP has been talking a lot about Cloud / hybrid cloud / multi-cloud and repatriating data back to on prem, and today’s guest knows all about those topics. Rackspace has had quite a few phases in their journey to public cloud – including building a data center in an unused mall, introducing managed services, creating partnerships with VMware, an attempt to go head to head with the hyperscalers, and then ultimately focusing on public cloud and instead partnering with the hyperscalers. Rackspace has both a focus on private and public cloud; when it comes to private cloud they focus mainly on VMware and OpenStack, whereas in the public cloud side, Rackspace partners with the hyperscalers to assist clients with their cloud journey. Quotes from today’s show Travis: “We want to make sure that when a customer goes on their public cloud journey, that they actually have a robust strategy that is going to be effective. From there, we’re able to leverage our professional services teams to make sure that they can realize that transformation, and hopefully there *is* a transformation, and it’s not just a lift and shift.” Travis: “A conflict that we continuously have to strike the balance of is when do we apply a cloud native solution, and where do we apply the Rackspace elements on top. The hyperscalers technology is the best there is, and we’re probably not going to create a better version of “x” than AWS does – nor do we want to.” Travis: “We favor cloud native. Every single time we’re going to favor the platform’s native solution, unless the customer has a really really strong opinion about being vendor locked. Which sometimes they do. And if that’s the case we can establish a solution that gives them that portability. But for right now, the customers are generally preferring cloud native solutions.”

40 min
11 APR

Sonrai Security with Sandy Bird

A bonus episode of The Cloud Pod may be just what the doctor ordered, and this week Justin and Jonathan are here to bring you an interview with Sandy Bird of Sonrai Security. There’s so much going on in the IAM space, and we’re really happy to have an expert in the studio with us this week to talk about some of the security least privilege specifics. Background Sonrai (pronounced Son-ree, which means data in Gaelic) was founded in 2017. Sonrai provides Cloud Data Control, and seeks to deliver a complete risk model of all identity and data relationships, which includes activity and movement across cloud accounts, providers, and third party data stores. Try it free for 14 days Start your free trial today Meet Sandy Bird, Co founder of Sonrai Security Sandy is the co-founder and CTO of Sonrai, and has a long career in the tech industry. He was the CTO and co-founder of Q1 Labs, which was acquired by IBM in 2011, and helped to drive IBM security growth as CTO for global business security there. Interview Notes: One of the big questions we start the interview with is just how has IAM evolved – and what kind of effect have those changes had on the identity models? Enterprise wants things to be least privilege, but it’s hard to find the logs. In cloud, however *most* things are logged – and so least privilege became an option. Sonrai offers the first cloud permissions firewall, which enables one click least privilege management, which is important in the current environment where the platforms operate so differently from each other. With this solution, you have better control of your cloud access, limit your permissions, attack surface, and automate least privilege – all without slowing down DevOps2. Is the perfect policy achievable? Sandy breaks it between human identities and workload identities; they’re definitely separate. He claims, in workload identities the perfect policy is probably possible. Human identity is hugely sporadic, however, it’s important to at least try to get to that perfect policy, especially when dealing with sensitive information. One of the more interesting data pieces they found was that less than 10% of identities with sensitive permissions actually used them – and you can use the information to balance out actually handing out permissions versus a one time use case. Sonrai spent a lot of time looking at new solutions to problems with permissions; part of this includes purpose-built integration, offering a flexible open GraphQL API with prebuilt integrations. Sonrai also offers continuous monitoring; providing ongoing intelligence on all the permission usage – including excess permissions – and enables the removal of unused permissions without any sort of disruptions. Policy automation automatically writes IAM policies tailored to access needs, and simplifies processes for teams. On demand access is another tool that gives on demand requests for permissions that are restricted with a quick and efficient process. Quotes from today’s show Sandy: “The unbelievably powerful model in AWS can do amazing things, especially when you get into some of the advanced conditions – but man, for a human to understand what all this stuff is, is super hard. Then you go to the Azure model, which is very different. It’s an allow first model. If you have an allow anywhere in the tree, you can do whatever is asked, but there’s this hierarchy to the whole thing, and so when you think you want to remove something you may not even be removing it., because something above may have that permission anyway. It’s a whole different model to learn there.” Sandy: “Only like 8% of those identities actually use the sensitive parts of them; the other 92 just sit in the cloud, never being used, and so most likely during that break loss scenario in the middle of the night, somebody’s troubleshooting, they have to create some stuff, and overpermission it . If we control this centr

40 min
12/04/2023

Security & Observability with DataDog's Andrew Krug

Andrew Krug from Datadog In this episode, Andrew Krug talks about Datadog as a security observability tool, shedding light on some of its applications as well as its benefits to engineers. Andrew is the lead in Datadog Security Advocacy and Datadog Security Labs. Also a Cloud Security consultant, he started the Threat Response Project, a toolkit for Amazon Web Services first responders. Andrew has also spoken at Black Hat USA, DEFCON, re:Invent, and other platforms.. DataDog Product Overview Datadog is focused on bringing security to engineering teams, not just security people. One of the biggest advantages of Datadog or other vendors is how they ingest and normalize various log sources. It can be very challenging to maintain a reasonable data structure for logs ingested from cloud providers. Vendors try to provide customers with enough signals that they feel they are getting value while trying not to flood them with unactionable alerts. Also, considering the cloud friendliness for the stack is crucial for clients evaluating a new product. Datadog is active in the open-source community and gives back to groups like the Cloud native computing foundation. One of their popular open-source security tools created is Stratus-red-team which simulates the techniques of attackers in a clean room environment. The criticality of findings is becoming a major topic. It is necessary when evaluating that criticality is based on how much risk applies to the business, and what can be done. One of the things that teams struggle with as high maturity DevOps is trying to automate incident handling or response to critical alerts as this can cause Configuration Drift which is why there is a lot of hesitation to fully automate things. Having someone to make hard choices is at the heart of incident handling processes. Datadog Cloud SIEM was created to help customers who were already customers of logs. Datadog SIEM is also very easy to use such that without being a security expert, the UI is simple. It is quite difficult to deploy a SIEM on completely unstructured logs, hence being able to extract and normalize data to a set of security attributes is highly beneficial. Interestingly, the typical boring hygienic issues that are easy to detect still cause major problems for very large companies. This is where posture management comes in to address issues on time and prevent large breaches. Generally, Datadog is inclined towards moving these detections closer to the data that they are securing, and examining the application run time in real-time to verify that there are no issues. Datadog would be helpful to solve IAM challenges through CSPM which evaluates policies. For engineering teams, the benefit is seen in how information surfaces in areas where they normally look, especially with Datadog Security products where Issues are sorted in order of importance. Security Observability Day is coming up on the 18th of April when Datadog products will be highlighted; the link to sign up is available on the Datadog Twitter page and Datadog community Slack. To find out more, reach out to Andrew on Twitter @andrewkrug and on the Datadog Security Labs website. Top Quotes “I think that great security solutions…start with alerts that you are hundred percent confident as a customer that you would act on” “When we talk about the context of ‘how critical is an alert?’ It is always nice to put that risk lens on it for the business” “Humans are awesome unless you want really consistent results, and that’s where automating part of the process comes into play” “More standardization always lends itself to better detection”

28 min
24/03/2023

Evolution of NoSQL with Couchbase CTO, Ravi Mayuram

In this episode, Ravi Mayuram highlights the functionality of Couchbase as an evolutionary database platform, citing several simple day-to-day use cases and particular advantages of Couchbase. Ravi Mayuram is CTO of Couchbase. He is an accomplished engineering executive with a passion for creating and delivering game-changing products for startups as well as Fortune-500 industry-leading companies. Notes Couchbase set out to build a next-generation database. Data has evolved greatly with IT advancements. The goal was to build a database that will connect people to the newer technologies, addressing problems that relational systems did not have to solve. The fundamental shift is that earlier systems were internally focused, built for trained users but now the systems are built directly for consumers. This shift also plays out in the vast difference in the number of consumers now interacting with these systems compared to the fewer trained users previously interacting with the systems. One of the key factors that sets Couchbase apart is the No-SQL Database. It is a database that has evolved by combining five systems; a Cache and Key-value store, a Document store, a Relational document store, a Search system, and an Analytical system. Secondly, Couchbase performs well in the geo-distributed manner such that with one click, data is made available across availability zones. Lastly, all of this can be done at a large scale in seconds. Regarding the global database concept that Google talks about, a globally consistent database may not be needed by most companies. The performance will be the biggest problem as transaction speed will be considerably low. Couchbase does these transactions locally within the data center and replicates them on the other side. The main issue of relational systems is that they make you pay the price of every transaction no matter how minor, but with Couchbase, it is possible to pay only the cost only with certain crucial transactions. Edge has become a part of the enterprise architecture even such that people now have edge-based solutions. Two edges are emerging; the Network edge and the Tool edge where people are interfacing. Couchbase has built a mobile database available on devices, with sync capability. As a consumer, the primary advantage of bringing data closer to the consumer is the latency issue. Often, data has to go through firewalls and multiple steps which delays it but this is the benefit of Couchbase. The user simply continues to have access to the data while Couchbase synchronizes the data in the back. One of the applications of Couchbase in healthcare is insulin tracking. With many devices that monitor insulin which must work everywhere you go, Couchbase Lite does the insulin tracking, keeps the data even in the absence of a network, and later syncs it for review by healthcare professionals. This is also useful in operating rooms where the network is not accessible. The real benefit is seen when the data eventually gets back to the server and can be interpreted to make decisions on patient care. The Couchbase Capella Service runs in the cloud and allows clients to specify what data should be sent to the edge and what should not be. This offers privacy and security measures, such that even in the loss or damage of a device, the data is secure and can be recovered. To effectively manage edge in devices, a lot of problems must be addressed to make it easier. One of the concerns for anyone coming into Couchbase Capella is the expense of data extraction from the cloud, however, Couchbase is available on all three cloud providers. Also, with Couchbase, there is no need to keep replicating data as you can work on the data without moving it, which largely saves costs. Other use cases for Couchbase include information for flight bookings, flight crew management systems, hotel reservations, and credit card payments. To learn more, visit the Couchbase website. There is also a free trial for

38 min
02/03/2023

Revolutionizing Observability with New Relic featuring Daniel Kim

Revolutionizing Observability with New Relic In this episode, Daniel explains a new strategy towards observability aimed at contextualizing large volumes of data to make it easier for users to identify the root cause of problems with their systems. Daniel Kim is a Principal Developer Relations Engineer at New Relic and the founder of Bit Project, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to making tech accessible to under-served communities. His job is basically to get developers excited about Observability, and he hopes to inspire students to maximize their potential in tech through inclusive, accessible developer education. He is passionate about diversity and inclusion in tech, good food, and dad jokes. Show Notes First, it is important to differentiate between monitoring and observability. Monitoring is basically when a code is instrumented to send data to a backend, to give answers to preconceived questions. With Observability, the goal is to monitor your system so as to later ask questions that were not in mind during the instrumentation of the system. Hence, if something new comes up you can find the root cause without modifying the code. There are so many levels of things to check when troubleshooting to find the cause of a problem, and this is where observability comes in. There are different use cases for logs, metrics, and traces; Logs are files that record events, warnings, or errors however logs are ephemeral which means there is increased risk of losing a lot of data. A system needs to be in place to move logs to a central source. Another issue with logs is that it is poorly structured data. Logs are good to have as the last step of observability. Metrics and traces can however help to narrow down where to search in the logs to solve an issue. Metrics are measurements that reflect the performance or health of your applications. They give an overview of how the systems are doing but tend to not be very specific in finding the root cause of a problem; other forms of data have to be adopted to get a clear picture. This is where Traces come in. Traces are pieces of data that track a request as it goes through the system. Because of this, they can identify the root cause of an error or bottlenecks slowing down the system. However, they are very expensive and as such sampling is used when tracing but this reduces the accuracy of traces. Correlating information from logs, metrics, and traces gives a full clear picture for debugging to be carried out successfully. A lot of New Relic customers strive to get more pieces of data to get errors faster. To balance the right data at the right time with the right cost, the first step when collecting large amounts of data is to find out how your organization is leveraging the data. A quick audit of the data to identify useful data is helpful. This can be done monthly or quarterly. Unstructured logs are difficult to aggregate In the cloud native space, being able to be compatible with as many people as possible will determine the winners because there are many projects people use in production. Projects that are compatible with many other projects are the way forward. APM is still very useful to understand application performance and in the future, data from all sources will be correlated to figure out the cause of a problem. Getting value very early from the system involves having a solid infrastructure and installing APM. The real power of full stack observability is getting data from different parts of your stack so you can diagnose what part of your system is going wrong. Leveraging AI to make sense of large amounts of data for engineers is going to be a huge plus. A lot of vendors claim that their alert systems will automatically generate all alerts for you but this is not true because they would not know your team’s needs. It is ultimately up to your team to set up alerts that create an observability strategy. Those who invest time into setting this up get the most ROI

26 min
15/02/2023

A New Approach To Spatial Simulations With Rahul Thakkar

Spatial Simulations with AWS SimSpace Weaver In this episode, Peter sits with Rahul Thakkar to discuss the revolutionary AWS SimSpace Weaver, highlighting its unique function and applications across several industries. Rahul Thakkar is the Director and General Manager of Simulation Technologies at Amazon Web Services. Before AWS, he held multiple executive roles at Boeing, Brivo, PIXIA, and DreamWorks Animation. He is an inventor, and global technology executive with a background in cloud computing, distributed and high-performance computing, media and entertainment, film, television, defense and intelligence, aerospace, and access control. His film credits include Shrek, Antz, and Legend of Bagger Vance. In 2002, he was part of the team that won an Academy Award for Shrek as the Best Animated Feature. Again in 2016, at the 88th Annual Academy Awards, Thakkar received a Technical Achievement Award. Notes AWS SimSpace Weaver enables customers to run extremely large-scale spatial simulations without having to manage any of the underlying infrastructure. It also removes the complexity of state management of entities as they move about the simulation. Previously, carrying out such simulations would be done sequentially, in a cumbersome manner over years but now it can be done in parallel in weeks. Different organizations have tried out this functionality for several scenarios and the results have been amazing. This value was largely made possible due to the approach of working with customer feedback. Rahul’s interest in the cloud came much later in his career which started initially in the R&D department of the Motion Picture industry where he created many of the complex graphics in movies. He later moved into a small start-up that was developing technologies for satellite imagery and mapping, and from here he moved to aerospace. Generally, he observed the problem that it is very expensive for companies to maintain their infrastructure when dealing with simulations. It also would drain resources and distract from the main focus of the company. Eventually, knew he had to use AWS, and now he works with them. All the other primitive tools within AWS are being consumed to build the service. There is also the ability to write to S3 so that customers can write the simulations out. This helps customers to remember how the simulation played out. Relating this new service to the metaverse, Rahul believes that when it comes to the metaverse, each organization has its vision of what it should be. However, AWS built the tools to empower these organizations to build their metaverses. Despite the possibility of having competition from Azure or GCP, the focus of AWS would remain on the customer and their needs, innovation on their behalf. Identifying new problems that the service would be very applicable for is a great challenge that AWS relies on customers for, to help AWS envision where they want to go with the service. There are definitely many companies running simulations but it is hard to predict how many would migrate to the AWS SimSpace Weaver because it is still a new product. Nonetheless, a lot of industries are interested in this new service. These include smart cities, organizations ranging from local to federal or international, logistics and supply chains, large-scale event planning, or any situation where there is a need to simulate a large problem with digital replicas of the real world. Top Quotes “The fact that we worked from the customer backwards is something that allowed us to deliver the kind of value that they’re getting right now with AWS SimSpace Weaver” “Each one of these organizations have their own vision of a metaverse”

32 min

See All (25)

Join Justin Brodley and Jonathan Baker on TCP Talks our show where we interview industry leaders, vendors, and technologists about Cloud Computing, Robotics, Finops, and more.

Creator

Justin Brodley & Jonathan Baker
Years Active

2020 - 2024
Episodes

25
Rating

Clean
Show Website

TCP Talks

TCP Talks

Episodes

The Cloud Pod Puts a Hex-LLM on all these AI Announcements

TCP Talks: The evolution of Finops & Why you should attend Finops-X

TCP Talks with Rackspace CTO of Public Cloud - Travis Runty

Sonrai Security with Sandy Bird

Security & Observability with DataDog's Andrew Krug

Evolution of NoSQL with Couchbase CTO, Ravi Mayuram

Revolutionizing Observability with New Relic featuring Daniel Kim

A New Approach To Spatial Simulations With Rahul Thakkar

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