Re:Invent was Incredible


Last week we introduced our new project, Rancher.io, at AWS Re:Invent, and it was amazing. We’d been working on the software for months, talking with good friends, old customers and former colleagues about what we were building and wondering how it would be received by users. We were anxious to share it with new people and eager to get their feedback. We were also really nervous. Four of us flew out to Vegas, set up our little booth, tested our demos and organized our piles of stickers and t-shirts. At 5:00 on Tuesday night, the doors opened and within minutes our tiny booth was overwhelmed with smart people, asking great questions about networking, storage, Docker, Rancher, AWS, and more. For the next 48 hours we were constantly busy, talking with some of the most forward leaning IT minds in the world. Some were new to AWS, but many had been building technology in the cloud for, 6, 7 or even 8 years. We spoke with architects that had built massive web services that were already embracing Docker, and others who were just trying to learn what it was and how it worked. Overwhelmingly, people were intrigued with the potential of Rancher. Many were running their apps only on AWS, and were interested in how Rancher could give them control over networking and storage for Docker. Others were excited at the prospect of building a private cloud that was optimized for containers. Some of the most experienced AWS users were talking about using Rancher to standardize infrastructure running in multiple clouds, both public and private. At the same time we were getting feedback on twitter, github, reddit and elsewhere. We’d spend all day in the booth talking, and all night responding to emails, tweets and posts.

Definitely on my watch list: http://t.co/RJJbznzhSU - \“Portable AWS-style infrastructure service for Docker\“. Let’s see what comes of it... — Sören Blom (@soblom) November 18, 2014

can’t wait to tinker with rancher.io from @Rancher_Labs on my @coreoslinux cluster next! (still working on @gluster :-D) — Brian Clements (@brianclements) November 16, 2014

Very cool new #docker project rancher.io from the http://t.co/NlUhX8P1ij guys. #aws — Chris Marino (@chris_marino) November 10, 2014

In the end, our stacks of shirts and stickers long gone, we put away our booth and eventually headed to the airport. We talked about features that had been suggested, concerns that had been raised, and how to prioritize some of the work that lay ahead. Mostly, we just smiled, thrilled that so many people had been interested in our work. For those of you that stopped by, thank you so much. If you’re interested in learning more, please take a look at our GitHubsite, and give Rancher a try. We are just getting started, and we’ve got an ambitious road map of features we are working on. As we make progress we will send out occasional updates, but if you’d like regular information, please follow us on Twitter (@rancher_labs). Thanks so much! Shannon Williams

快速开启您的Rancher之旅