KubeCon 2019 Q&A: MacStadium Will Showcase Orka, a New Virtualization Layer for Orchestrating macOS at Booth S80

October 16, 2019

KubeCon 2019 Q&A: MacStadium Will Showcase Orka, a New Virtualization Layer for Orchestrating macOS at Booth S80

Written by David Marshall

Are you attending KubeCon 2019 in San Diego in November? If so, I invite you to add MacStadium to your MUST SEE list of vendors.

KubeCon 2019 is shaping up to be a fantastic event! And the number of sponsoring vendors at this year's show is extremely impressive as the show continues to grow in scope and size! One of the companies that will be on VMblog's MUST SEE list this year at the event is MacStadium. MacStadium is the leading provider of Apple Mac cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), offering bare metal Macs and private cloud solutions for organizations of all sizes.

Read this exclusive pre-show interview between VMblog and MacStadium to learn what they have planned for the upcoming KubeCon North America 2019 event and why you need to visit their booth.

VMblog: As a KubeCon 2019 sponsor, how can people find you at the show?

MacStadium: MacStadium is proud to be a Silver sponsor of KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2019. Visit the MacStadium team in booth S80 at the Sponsor Showcase in the Sails Pavilion.

VMblog: What are some of the reasons why you believe a KubeCon attendee should add you to their MUST SEE list?

MacStadium: For the first time ever, MacStadium has enabled the use of Kubernetes container technology features inside a Mac build environment. If you're part of a development team that requires macOS (i.e., Xcode or Safari) and would like an easy-to-use virtualization layer that can be seamlessly added into your existing workflow, you'll want to check out Orka by MacStadium.

VMblog: Can you give VMblog readers a sneak peek as to what you will be showing off at your booth? What should attendees expect to see and hear at your booth?

MacStadium: At the MacStadium booth, we will be showing off Orka, our new virtualization layer built specifically for orchestrating macOS in a cloud environment using Kubernetes on genuine Apple Mac hardware.

Orka (which stands for Orchestration with Kubernetes on Apple) brings powerful containerization and orchestration tools like Docker and Kubernetes to iOS and Mac app developers and the DevOps teams that support them. Orka was recently launched in August, so we're excited to share this new technology with KubeCon attendees for the first time.

VMblog: Thinking about your company, give readers a few reasons why your product or service is considered unique.

MacStadium: Since iOS, iPad, watchOS, tvOS, and Mac apps can only be compiled and tested on macOS, which only runs on genuine Apple Mac hardware, developers need access to a large pool of Macs to run their CI-driven development pipelines. For this reason, Mac dev teams have been unable to use orchestration tools like Kubernetes that are not natively built for Apple hardware.

But with Orka, Apple OS development teams can use the same container technologies they do for non-Apple workloads. Because it's built on Kubernetes, Orka provides access to standard tools like KubeCTL, KubeDashboard, Autoscaling, etc. to drive Mac infrastructure with built-in tools that you already have.

VMblog: How does your company and product fit within the container or cloud ecosystem?

MacStadium: As the leading provider of enterprise-class Mac infrastructure-as-a-service, MacStadium provides Mac private cloud environments in data centers across the US and Europe. By combining Orka virtualization and MacStadium infrastructure, building Mac apps in the cloud is just as easy and powerful as using AWS, Azure, or GCP. Orka brings the simplicity and scalability of large cloud providers to developers building for Apple devices.

VMblog: If an attendee likes what they see and hear at your booth... what message about your product can you send them back with to sell their boss on your technology?

MacStadium: It's time to get those Macs out of your closet or out from under your desk! Don't waste valuable time, energy, and resources managing Macs in-house - move your iOS and Mac build environment into the cloud. With a secure, reliable, and scalable Orka private cloud from MacStadium, developers and DevOps teams can spend less time dealing with operating systems, managing servers, or installing applications, and spend more time building great apps with the tools they already know and love.

VMblog: Is this your first time sponsoring KubeCon? What about this event grabbed your attention?

MacStadium: This is the first year that MacStadium has sponsored KubeCon + CloudNativeCon. With Orka launching earlier this year, we knew that KubeCon would be "the place to be" to introduce Orka to DevOps engineers and app developers that are looking for a way to integrate Kubernetes into their Mac and iOS CI workflows.

VMblog: What are you looking forward to most at this year's event?

MacStadium: We're excited to join other KubeCon sponsors in contributing to such a great event dedicated to Kubernetes and CNCF-hosted projects. MacStadium is not new to the cloud ecosystem, but Orka is our first solution built on Kubernetes, so we are really looking forward to meeting everyone and getting feedback about how you are developing your Mac and iOS apps. Hopefully Apple OS dev teams will find value in building and testing their apps on Orka.

Published in KubeCon + CloudNativeCon 2019

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David Marshall

David Marshall has been involved in the technology industry for over 19 years, and he's been working with virtualization software since 1999. He was able to become an industry expert in virtualization by becoming a pioneer in that field - one of the few people in the industry allowed to work with Alpha stage server virtualization software from industry leaders: VMware (ESX Server), Connectix and Microsoft (Virtual Server).

Through the years, he has invented, marketed and helped launch a number of successful virtualization software companies and products. David holds a BS degree in Finance, an Information Technology Certification, and a number of vendor certifications from Microsoft, CompTia and others. He's also co-authored two published books: "VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center" and "Advanced Server Virtualization: VMware and Microsoft Platforms in the Virtual Data Center" and acted as technical editor for two popular Virtualization "For Dummies" books. With his remaining spare time, David founded and operates one of the oldest independent virtualization news blogs, VMblog.com. And co-founded CloudCow.com, a publication dedicated to Cloud Computing. Starting in 2009 and continuing all the way to 2016, David has been honored with the vExpert distinction by VMware for his virtualization evangelism.