While working at Cisco I developed a project called KUBAM: A simple bare metal provision tool for UCS. I updated the kubam.io page and am now offering support for $500 / node per year. I couldn’t do this at Cisco because I could never get it officially recognized by the powers that be. That is nothing against them, they have their own agenda and objectives they are trying to achieve. I’m excited to work on a few new features that will help improve usability. KUBAM will continue to support UCS only as I have no other plans to support any other servers. This focus helps me to get the most out of the UCS APIs and bring greater value to the offering. I will probably do little advertising to start out only a mention here on this blog as well as the updated home page.
Since leaving Cisco last February I’ve oscillated between amazing happiness to be creative and setting my own path as well as longing for the old days when I could be with so many great people and bask in the safety of a giant warm corporation. However, the freedom and ability to work on projects I’m passionate about have above all given me greater sense of purpose and drive to improve my craft. I’m fortunate enough that money is still coming in and we have a long runway. I’m more confident now that I’ve made the right decision.
Over these next few months my goals for KUBAM are to do the following:
- Improve documentation. Right now the docs sit at an old Cisco page, but they need to be retired and updated with more streamlined information.
- Improve OS installation methods and add more samples. We were able to add Windows last year (I remember sitting on a beach in Castelldefels writing the Windows code) and Ubuntu in January (Frantically trying to finish before I left Cisco for a customer to use), but those methods can be improved with a little research.
- Improve the GUI. I’ll probably rewrite it. I appreciate all the work that Lara and Michael did for it while I was at Cisco but I think we need to rethink the workflow and probably add a little more back in.
I’ve appreciated all the people who have reached out to me about KUBAM and given constructive feedback and encouragement. It’s a fun project and I enjoy working on it!
As far as what else I’ve done these last 6 months I can briefly write them here:
- Recorded a Kubernetes on Bare Metal class for Pearson. This took a ton of work and we’re still going through the editing process. It’s pretty painful for me to watch myself in front of a camera but I’m told I don’t come off too bad and I hope others will gain from it.
- Created a new service called Zenabi Data Services. (ZDS). The aim of the service is to provide a streamlined way for people to upload data and automatically get data science results. I’ll update more on that as time goes on. The MVP of ZDS is that you can enter your Google Ads credentials and ZDS will automatically run your ad campaigns using AI. So far we’ve seen incredible return on ad spend (ROAS) on our customers and we’re just getting started!
All in all it’s been great stuff! I hope whatever your professional goals and projects you are working on you are enjoying and if I’ve met you in the past I hope our paths cross soon again!
