Guest: Kendall Nelson (LinkedIn, Twitter)
Organization/Foundation: OpenInfra Foundation (Twitter)

In this episode of TFiR Let’s Talk recorded at the KubeCon in Detroit, Swapnil Bhartiya sits down with Kendall Nelson, Senior Upstream Developer Advocate at OpenInfra Foundation , to discuss the compatibility of OpenStack and Kubernetes, how they are being used together in many industries, and the touch points between the two global open source communities.

Key highlights from this video interview:

• OpenStack is often perceived as incompatible with Kubernetes. In reality, a Kubernetes cluster has to be run somewhere and OpenStack has become a lead layer in that stack. According to a 2022 user survey, 80% to 85% of OpenStack deployments have Kubernetes running on top of them.
• OpenStack and Kubernetes are used together in numerous industries, such as telcos and the automotive industry. Nelson tells us that there are different ways the two technologies integrate.
• Part of Nelson’s role is to make sure the 2 communities are connected. At the recent OpenInfra Foundation’s Project Teams Gathering, they invited the Kubernetes Steering Committee to join them. Kubernetes members also participated in the OpenStack Technical Committee‘s discussions to share knowledge and discuss pain points.
• Nelson shares her experiences attending the KubeCon and CloudNativeCon and the similarities in conversation between Kubernetes and the OpenStack communities. The Kubernetes community is thriving and is now becoming more stable and attending each other’s events helps in the transition.
• The use of OpenStack has grown substantially in the last year, from 25 million cores running in production globally to over 40 million, according to a recent OpenStack survey. Nelson says they are seeing new use cases and trends toward hybrid cloud and public cloud.
• OpenStack Zed was released last October, which included 2 new projects: Venus (log aggregation) and Skyline (improved web UI).

The summary of the show is written by Emily Nicholls.