KumoScale Software Insights: A Look Back at KubeCon 2020

A Look Back at KubCon 2020

That’s a wrap!  KIOXIA was a sponsor of the recent KubeCon conference, where we highlighted our KumoScale software – which was built to deliver excellent storage performance, resilience, and efficiency using NVMe® over Fabrics (NVMe-oF™) technology.  As we all continue to adjust to the new reality of “virtual” conferences (we’re getting better at it), it was encouraging to see such strong attendance at our booth from people all over the world. We’re all learning new ways to hang out and connect online. 

KubeCon is focused on gathering adopters and technologists from leading open source and cloud native communities to further the education and advancement of cloud native computing.  Since KumoScale software focuses on providing a fast, networked storage service for on-prem cloud architectures, it was the perfect venue to announce a suite of new KumoScale features optimized for Kubernetes® deployments. 

First, KumoScale software offers connectivity to Kubernetes clusters via a CSI driver, which is now available on the CNCF repo.  Also, KumoScale control services now run under their own private Kubernetes cluster, conferring all of the management flexibility and security that K8s delivers for containers to NVMe-oF storage volumes.  In addition to NVMe-oF block storage, KumoScale software can now serve shared-file and objects by hosting those services in containers running on KumoScale storage nodes, making it a unified cloud-storage solution.  And finally, KumoScale software can now simultaneously serve storage to many ‘consumer’ clusters, even when they don’t all use the same provisioning framework. That is, multiple Kubernetes, OpenStack ®, and bare-metal installations can now share a single KumoScale storage node.

A few comments on virtual conferences.  This format presents new challenges for our industry and I have experienced both pros and cons.  On a positive note, virtual keynotes and sessions provide a convenient way to access content on your own schedule, even months after the show.  It’s similar to the difference between watching a movie in a theatre at a set time vs. streaming at home.  For the expo and booth experience, I find the virtual format a bit more impersonal.  While people tend to engage face to face when entering a physical booth, in a virtual booth more people tend to browse on their own and don’t always engage in a chat session. So it’s a bit more difficult to understand what problems visitors have and what solutions they are looking for.  Also, I miss the serendipitous connections made while walking the show floor or grabbing lunch.  Hoping to get back to in-person conferences sometime in 2021!

Thanks to all the attendees who joined us online at KubeCon.  Be sure to visit our dedicated KumoScale software website at www.kumoscale.com for more product information or to sign up for a free software trial.


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Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of KIOXIA America, Inc.

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