Learning OpenStack in a Month

I’ve never been a person to shy away from a technology or educational challenge. When I was presented with AWS as a platform to move forward with in my consulting days I jumped on it. I went from “couch to AWS” within a couple weeks and did my first deployment six weeks after starting my journey.

I wanted to replicate this journey. Jumping in the deep end and having a deadline to learn something well enough to really use it excites me. I also wanted to participate in the vBrownBag tech talks at VMworld 2016. As you could assume from the title of the post I decided that OpenStack is my topic. I have zero knowledge of it and when asked what it was my only response is “It’s a Stack that is Open”.

Last night, 7/18/16, was my start date. Thursday 8/18/16 is my end date. At that point, I have to know OpenStack to a level where I could stand in front of people who really know their OpenStack and talk about their product. My angle will be the journey more than the destination so that takes a lot of pressure away. I have a defense mechanism and can say “no, it wasn’t possible for me to learn OpenStack in a month but here’s how I tried.” I know myself enough to be assured it won’t end that way but I suppose it could.

Day One:

I haven’t made a lot of progress. I know it isn’t only a “stack that is open” but a collection of products with cute names. I think I can run it in a VMware lab and am pretty sure on bare metal but I don’t know for certain. I got the book Learning OpenStack and started that but only got a few pages in before I wanted to take notes and didn’t have my notebook.

I think my subtitle will be “Oh Dear God What did I get Myself Into?”