Okay, I yeah, I think I think we're live now. So Let's find out a little bit about KubeCon and we'll jump into this extreme of cloud native live It's more than just open source It's about Connecting with people. It's about being part of the community It's about sharing what you know and helping others KubeCon is the best place to get hooked into the community and learn from everybody and let me tell you people This is just the beginning Cool. So welcome everyone to this week's episode of cloud native live where we dive into the code behind cloud native I'm Bill Mulligan and I work at CNCF Every week we bring you a new set of presenters to showcase how to work with cloud native technologies They'll build things they'll break things and they'll answer your questions So join us every Wednesday at 3 p.m. Eastern time and this week We have Michael and Cherise and they're here to talk to talk to us about Kubester and also just as We talked about in the video join us for the KubeCon cloud native con virtual at EU May 4th The 7th to hear the latest from the cloud native community And just to note this is an official live stream of the CNCF and as such it's subject to the CNCF code of conduct Please don't add anything to the chat or questions that would be in violation of that code of conduct Basically, just respect all your fellow participants and presenters and with that I'll hand it over to Michael and Cherise for to kick off today's presentation Yeah, thanks Bill. Yeah, so just a bit of a brief introduction. So I'm Michael Cade I'm a senior global technologist here at custom by Veeam Yeah excited to get into what Kubester is and how it works.  Sure. I'm Cherise. I work at casting by Veeam as well as a software engineer there. I'm glad to present Kubester to you guys Yeah, I think a bit of an introduction to What Kubester is is a handy little tool that allows us to well identify Validate and evaluate our Kubernetes storage. So taking Taking those potential Hard tasks, especially for the platform operators the new guys to Kubernetes Bringing taking that that potential hard tasks bringing that into an easy Really easy tool or handy set of tools and running that against our Kubernetes storage Whether that's day zero or or even existing clusters and giving us some information or giving us some validation about that about that storage so One of the key parts here is that it's going to give you It's going to one it's going to identify the storage that you have available within your storage And we'll get into what that demo looks like shortly It's going to validate in this particular instance It's going to validate against your the the CSI driver is configured correctly. I The snapshot functionality is up and running and working And then from an evaluation point of view It's going to enable us to benchmark your storage or this particular storage class against flexible IO so another open source project that enables us to Get some benchmarking Stacked out of your out of your storage and Yeah, why not let's jump into its duration and actually jump into a demo just to show Show everyone what what it is and how it how it looks? Sure thing. Um, I want to let me share my screen Let me see my screen Not too small That's good So, I mean kind of where Cube sure came about is You know, we've had customers and the customers generally have are like new to Kubernetes and have tough time kind of figuring out Their storage options and so we kind of built this tool in-house and then realize that maybe there is a Benefit to the community and the community could actually cease Use this tool and gather some insights onto their storage. So You know, I downloaded the tool here Cube sure and You know, normally what somebody would do when they want to see what storage they have is they'd run something like cube cuddle get storage class Storage class right and it would tell you storage classes that you have on your cluster. This is digital ocean cluster. So it has You know one storage class deal block storage and this is a driver or the provisioner But that doesn't tell you a whole lot But if you run cube stir on this cluster instead It does a little bit more it the first thing, you know, it checks you that you have a valid Kubernetes version Some RBAC check check gives the API layers enabled. I mean accessible some warnings here that come with The CSI CSI drivers changing because yeah, it's been rapidly changing in the recent year or two And now we have more information about our driver, right? Initially, we just had a storage class But now, you know, we headline it with saying this is the provisioner that you have on the cluster Points out that the CSI driver It'll also tell you, you know, some additional information about the driver itself. What what kind of features it supports And that points out a storage class Which is what we saw earlier, but also that there's a volume snapshot class here, right and Once you have both of those you should be able to take a volume snapshot and Hopefully restore from that volume snapshot, right? So it's a cube stride again has those checks or has the ability to validate Whether your your provisioner setup takes snapshots correctly, right? Digital ocean does a good job of when you create a cluster it sets up all this infrastructure for you correctly But for a lot of provisioners, it's not always straightforward to set up that and that kind of Snapchat and capability Many steps involved. They have to install many different types of objects and then even after all that You still may have some errors. It's if you're new to Kubernetes. It's really hard to kind of debug these errors So we thought this would be a handy tool to kind of validate that. So let's let's go ahead and run this check CSI check Just to look at the options that we have here We do create So in order to run this check, you know, what are the things that you normally do you create an application, which is a pod in a PVC then you take a snapshot of it and That creates a volume snapshot Object, right and then eventually you can restore using that one essential object So then you know the cleanup flag that to clean up cleanup those Those specific objects and then you can always write in a different namespace that's not default And then yeah, so I mean the more required things are in storage class in the volume snapshot class So let's run this check really quick We also have a question that chat from Carlos shirt Is there any application for this tool to backup at CD? So this is not a backup. No, no, there isn't a backup Functionality, it's not a backup tool. It's more of a tool to validate your storage, right? It's not necessarily a backup tool on its own Yeah, that's your question Carlos. Yeah, hopefully that's useful Carlos, but I think This is another area where we thought from a custom by beam point of view or a custom point of view is that by someone coming in that wasn't affiliated to the storage vendors and the storage market it actually allows us to Create something that that is more universal across all storage arrays, but also public cloud storage But yeah, this isn't really focused on on the backup of of anything It just like Sarish says it validates that the CSI driver is configured correctly and that's what we're going to get to and show that but Yeah, it's not it's not a backup tool say Okay, so Maybe I have a question that might help the audience understand a little bit more Could you maybe explain like why someone would need to benchmark their storage in their club? Yeah, you go you go no you go ahead So I was gonna say around so benchmarking storage isn't a new thing and it's not definitely not a new thing for Storage in general whether it was whether it's cloud native today, whether it's cloud whether it's Virtualization whether it's physical Benchmarking our storage for particular workloads has always been a bit of a dark art and a challenge and Like there's no reason why anyone today in fact that was the way to do this is you would go and create your own application you would create your own set of Tools to be able to go and run this this test and I think what we've found is that it's a very manual process and it unless you Know the depths of both Kubernetes and how you create a pod you create a PVC you create a Persistent volume you attach it and then allow your application to run Then that becomes of it becomes even more of a challenge I think the other the other element to that is that we're obviously there's a lot of people coming into into this space That are traditional platform operators coming from a virtualization point of view Storage point of view that maybe don't know Kubernetes to be able to spin up That that pod and the PVC etc. And this is just taking one of those tedious potentially long-winded processes away and automating that process for you and I'll get into a little bit more about the challenges later on as well in between Sarich's demo around things like making sure that we choose the right storage, especially when you've got the We've got so much choice. It's kind of overwhelming a little in that you've got different various different types of storage I think this also helps Narrow down that choice. It's great to have that choice. We're not complaining about that But being able to choose the right storage option for the workload that you need is is important and to do that as fast as possible because Ultimately, if you're especially in the public cloud is well, you're you're paying for that storage And if it's over over provisioned under provisioned Obviously under you're not gonna have the performance that you need over provisioned Well, you're definitely gonna be paying more money or over the odds for that. So There's a few more challenges in there and I'll get to them But I think if we jump back into the demo series, then I think you're probably gonna answer some of those as well So, yeah, and we'll get back to that Yeah, so let's go ahead. Sorry, there's also like two more questions in the chat I don't know. We can also answer them as we're going if this is something yet you have coming up. So Um, no, we can answer these I see the one from Rajesh saying they're in limitations The limitation. They're not really any of the limitations to do the CSI Snapshot restore check. We obviously needed a CSI driver And then in terms of running the FIO check As long as it's on Kubernetes and it's a Kubernetes Provisioner storage provisioner, then we should be able to run the the FIO test against it So so yeah, there's no real limitations. It's just Kubernetes Has to be Kubernetes But yeah, what's the other question on here? I Don't know whether it's possible to connect sand storage in Non-premise data center or object storage buckets from the public cloud to my Kubernetes cluster Is this something this project could help with or is that outside the scope? This is outside the scope But if you were able to connect a sand storage to a Kubernetes cluster, then you would be able to Validate its performance and whatnot using kubecture, right? I won't help you actually connect it But but yeah, I can definitely definitely help you validate that it that you've seen the performance that you want Yeah, and I think it might have been a broader broader question from Deepak as well is that Is it possible to connect to a non-prem sand storage in like in one location to a public cloud? Kubernetes cluster say in AWS or in Microsoft AKS or something along them lines and I guess the answer is yes if there's connectivity in place, right? That's the that so it can be done There's some storage vendors out there that offer close to cloud type type offerings, but yeah, this tool is not going to Get that configuration for you. It's not you're gonna require that direct connect type type situation that connectivity but what cubes to can do is well validate that it's been configured correctly from a CSI point of view and And just give you the the forefront that is actually there and configured as a as a storage class within your within your cluster Cool. No, the question is keep on coming in like fast. So pretty popular. Yeah Um, just keeps to extend beyond the standard CSI benchmarking checks, maybe something that is available like out of the box When what do you mean by CSI benchmarking checks, let's put it that way because are you trying to benchmark? So the benchmark kind of benchmarking that that keeps your does is Like storage Performance, right? It's a performance benchmarking So whether it's CSI or a native entry provisioner You know, it's still all just storage and we treat it treat them all the same But is there anything more specific Sumon that you had about CSI benchmarking checks? I guess we can get back to that But I mean FIO is a test that we run Cool. And yeah, maybe you want to like dive back into the demo and I'll answer some of the questions that they have Of course, um, so yeah, let's uh, like I said where we left off was we wanted to run a check to see if You know We can take a snapshot and restore from a snapshot so that basically checking if this provisioner set up correctly And now so you see that the first thing it is is doing is creating an application to create a pvc and it's creating a pod it's waiting for this pod to You know become become live and then once it's live I'll take a snapshot and you should see a volume snapshot object getting created here um, and like I said, these these are not very, you know If you're used to kubernetes, they're not very complex things. These are things that kubernetes operators do on a day-to-day basis Taking a snapshot restoring the application, but if you're new to the the landscape It can seem like a bunch of different steps just to validate that you can take a snapshot correctly, right? So, you know, hopefully this creates that, you know One command tool that creates an application takes a snapshot and restores it and then validates, you know, that Um, the data that was in the application originally is still there on a restore, right? So it kind of does that end-to-end workflow without You know all the various steps that it takes to do that um So, um so that's That's just the csi check tool. We also have The fio tool, right and Let's go ahead and run that on The same storage class, right? Um Again creates a pvc creates a pod And i've seen this test take about um Maybe around Like 40 seconds or so So yeah, so we the pod spun up and essentially the pod the application here is an fio application, right? And uh, we have a 100 gig pvc And it's running this fio test and you know the default fio test that we have here Um, it does 4k random reads and writes and then 128k random reads and writes. So it's actually four separate tests and um You will see the output in a second Uh, well So it shows you that it took to take around 30 seconds around this test. Um The four different jobs that it ran and you know, let's maybe keep note of these numbers, uh somewhere here um Let's just Just say around, you know, 1900 uh read iops Uh, 1300 write iops at 4k, right?  Um, and I have another cluster here. Let's see I'm switching over to my gke cluster And now we can run custer again here Carlos fio center flexible io flexible io tester So Again, this is you know, it looks a lot like what we had in digital ocean shows you the kubernetes version Uh, our back checks are okay Aggregate api layers working correctly But here I have two different provisioners. I have the csi provisioner And then I also have the entry provisioner. You'll see the csi provisioner has a volume snapshot class um And you know the entry provisioner doesn't have that kind of functionality. So you want to see that there Um And you know in this case, you know, we ran we ran it on a csi provisioner last month started on the entry provisioner at this time We're on ssd. Hopefully it's the fastest Storage option they have um, again, we can follow it along. Uh, it's creating a pvc 100 gig pvc it'll create the Um pod and then it'll run the test And I've seen this test run about a minute in in the past. Um, I can add some questions in the meantime, but um See Yes, it's starting to run the test Yeah, I guess one question that I have is Like why would I benchmark my storage in the cloud? Like what is this kind of information? Does it give me? Sure, um So like if you had an application, right? And maybe it's writing some information writing something to a database right Storing maybe uh, some some records to a database, right? You want to know if you know your storage can handle the bandwidth of your application Maybe you have thousands of users. Can it can it actually handle thousands of users writing data to your database at the same time? right And that's something that you know, you need to figure out what your Uh, IO requirements are to your storage and then you can How to figure out the right kind of storage to use for that, right? So maybe this will help you say hey, you know I cannot use slow storage like slow standard Spinning this any flash like high-speed flash storage and you know, you maybe want to benchmark that That's kind of that's a use case. That's a use case. I'm sure there's other use cases out there, but I'll talk to my head That's when I could think of Um, does that can answer your question? Yeah, absolutely I think it totally makes sense. You don't want to have something that that doesn't work for your application and give a bad user experience Seems like we have a couple more questions um in the chat now too So the first one is from j warner could be a silly question the benchmark function. Is this optimized equals HD parm but for the cloud Um, I'm not sure what HD parm is. Um It's not necessarily going to optimize your storage at all It it's just to to validate that your storage is fast enough For your application or it's suitable for your applications, but it's that way Yeah, so They said there's the Linux command HD parm. I don't know if you're familiar with that I'm not familiar with that but uh fio is also I don't have it um but uh, no, it's it's actually simulating the fio application um here, maybe if I can post a link to fio Yeah, if you just send it to me I can post it on the screen Sure. Yeah, that's what i'm gonna do Yeah, I think I think um HD parm is more aligned to like art 64 type frameworks But so it runs similar things but gives back Like information of disk does a varying amount of Like spindle tests. It's not really the same. Maybe there's a bit of an overlap with fio So it could be seen as similar, but yeah, I think it's like 64 or arm 64 um Yeah, cool. There's a couple more questions in the chat now Is there a way to benchmark volume provisioning attachment with kubester? Maybe compare multiple csi implementations from the same storage provider Yes, um So, I mean, if I understand the question correctly, you're saying Is there a way to um run fio with kubester or check if the snapshot Functionality is working because you can do both and you can do them with multiple csi Providers, whatever csa providers you have in your cluster, right? Um, so yeah to answer your question. Yes, it's possible Cool, and it looks like we also have an update. Um from joe about hd palm is more about getting the hardware parameters of the physical Hard drive. Um, so it looks like that's more on the hardware side where it kubester is more on like the software side Is that right? Yeah, kubestrian on the software side. Yep. Um, I Joe, I'll I'll take a look at hd palm and you know, see if there's some sort of, you know Benefit that kubester can provide using hd palm, right and that's part of um Part of it or it's still kind of in its infancy and we kind of want to see What other tools we could add to this little toolbox to make it? You know A kind of a a go-to for all storage storage needs in the cloud, right? A little toolbox Yeah, cool. Um There's another question. Um, can we simulate load testing using kubester? um If you have an fio configuration that simulates a load test you You might be able to maybe I don't really understand the question but But I hope that answers it Yeah, and I can um send a link uh the the link is here in the conversation if people are Looking for it And I can drop it. Yeah, this is a It's a direct link to the fio um, so cool, um If you want to get back to demo really quick You'll see here that we have You know the iops that we're seeing here are nowhere near what you know, we experienced with Digital ocean, right and it doesn't mean that google is is worse by any means. It's just that maybe we haven't configured it correctly, right? um, and What you'll notice is that if you look at google's um storage I feel if you look at here, let me maybe I can post a link. I'll tell you that um Yeah here. I'll see so And this is from google and it tell you how to you know get the most performance out of your um Out of your storage and what they say is if if you um Use bigger volume sizes. You're going to see better ios, right? So, you know fio. Sorry our kubster test has the ability to Do Um It has the ability to to specify a size.  Let's try something bigger Let's do 300 um and see kind of what that gives us instead Instead of the hundred gig size This one actually runs a little bit quicker than um the previous one because Like I said, the the bigger the volumes in google the better performance you're going to see This one takes about 40 seconds I think that's another thing to mention saris as well, right is that okay. So this is going to be testing The the blocks that the io is testing against iops within the storage that's available to you within your kubernetes storage But also so as saris just said by changing the size of the persistent volume or persistent volume claim That dictates what iops is available to you But also think about the underlining node Architecture the compute nodes that you use that can also dictate or change depending on what cloud you're in they change on What what storage performance is unlocked? So saris has done an awesome cncf blog on on like it's not a comparison But it just goes to show that overwhelming choice that we have out there from a computer and storage point of view And that no one's a winner in in across the Best performance, but it does show that there's so much options here. So many options here And yeah, I just I just sent you the link. Um, yeah, you posted it out there It's linked to the blog and I kind of you know go through the same kind of test Of along like, you know the four different cloud providers digital ocean Gke azure and aws And you know just kind of compare and contrast and kind of see How tweaking little things here and there between the different providers gives you, you know, much different like end results Right and yeah, like it's hard for you to if you're jumping in to make that decision Of which one to choose without having a tool like this that can quickly, you know Run some sort of a test and get you some metrics that that means something to your application, right? um oops Yeah, it's let's see. So There you go So it seems like there's a question from a user on linkedin. What are the best storage Back up third party solutions for aks and azure and it seems like you could use cubes to help figure out Um, like exactly what your application parameters are and like which storage is best to meet the needs of that application. Is that right? Yep, precisely um, yeah, so like I said there isn't It's hard to say. What is the best storage without knowing what your application is, right? um And say it really depends on your application and your budget and then you can pick what storage works for you um No, deepak. I'm not right writing. Uh 300 gigs of dummy data. It's it's a 300 gig volume and I think um So I I think the the file sizes here are two gigs. So it's two gigs of dummy data on a 300 gig volume Um, but the size of the volume itself dictates the kind of performance you're going to get at least with google, right? Yeah, that's a that's a good point though as well. Um and Out of the box cubes to use is like so the default fio test is a random read and random write at 4k block size As well as 128k block size, but you can there's a there's a huge library repository of fio configuration files that you can kind of bring to the bring to test Uh as well, um Yeah, yeah, so so that so it's a rich there showing what the fio configuration file is so if you know that your workload works in a 8k block size or You need to walk back the file system or in a reverse manner. You know that it's a sequential write All of these changes could be could be modified in your own fio configuration file So you can run that against the storage as well Yep Um, let's see. So we want to run it against our same ssd storage class Um, let's make it the same 300 gig volume. So it's fast and then Uh, let's see. I think it was minus f and then Basic verify Let's see So so yeah, I mean you don't have to use our um You know default test really comes down to your application, right? So it's kind of know your applications Uh fio need like signature or what what that looks like What your what your um load looks like in terms of an fio file You can pass in that fio configuration here and then, you know, we'll run that particular fio test So it's running this particular test on that storage class on a pvc of size 300 gigs Let's see. I think this one takes about 30 seconds or so So what else we can also, you know write all this output to uh Out as a json. So if for some reason you wanted to scripting where you wanted to run multiple fio tests or Whatever whatever your needs are you could easily, you know Get this output back as a parsable json file and then, you know, maybe right collect some data that way or If you actually try to make some pretty graphs or something like that to kind of showcase something about your data, then That's what you can do. So yeah, this is uh, you know a different IO pattern and you're seeing Much more different results, right? Like I said, it really comes down to what your application is and if you figure out what your application needs are then You know the stool can be very helpful Yeah, we just posted some of those examples for fio as well. Um that you can you can run on there um I was going to cover some of the ah, okay, so there's a There's another question. Do you plan to have a crd and a controller for cubes so that it runs directly into Okay, it's cluster and is declarative um Yeah, there there were plans of that initially For now, this is like I said, it's infancy and it's what it is right now. It's just uh executable But yeah down the line we could make it a crd CRD base, you know operation um Yeah, these are all kind of things that we have in our pipeline. Uh, we also kind of want wanted to make this more of a A community-based tool. So we really wanted to get um Like people kind of pitching in like running their own fio tests and telling us What their results are so maybe like a leaderboard or something which other people can go and Get a better understanding of how other people's storage is performing, right? We kind of wanted to we're hoping to kind of move in that direction where we have more of a community involvement with it or community participation um But yeah, like I said right now, it's infancy We just want to see if it's actually useful for people before we take that next leap and And do some cooler stuff with it Yeah, so maybe if people want to get involved like how can they do that or how can they try it out or test it out? um I'd suggest start off going to cubes your i o installing it and running it and um, yeah, we also Again, we're open source. So go to our github page. There's links on that for that on the website as well. Um, and yeah Work the repo, uh, feel free to make some changes Yeah, visit us at github as well And maybe I'll already I go ahead But can you tell us a little about like the roadmap or where you see like the project going? Sure, um, like I said the first a few things are Additional tests that may be useful, right? there's Some people want to be able to benchmark their object storage. So that was something that I was looking into This is persistent storage. It's not the same as object storage. So You know, maybe we could kind of foray into that venture into that a little bit. Uh, but yeah, like I said The other bigger thing thing is to make this a more community driven project have like like I said some sort of a a leaderboard or some sort of A place where people can come because you know, we don't want to run the same test 100 times 100 different people are in the same 200 times if you can just go look say, hey, I have that exact type of Uh infrastructure. I can see what kind of results I'm going to see Uh, it makes that decision making process easier, right? Um, obviously we'd like, you know To get more involvement from some of the bigger storage vendors. Maybe have them Write specific Fio tests like that say, hey, if you're looking for a certain type of application, this is an fio test that Would benefit you and you should run run this particular test for example Um, so yeah, I mean, there's there's a couple different ways that we've been trying to Uh, a couple different options on our roadmap. Um Like I said, we're still kind of seeing what what's the most important need right now and then moving on from there Yeah, I would I'd just add to that point as well. So we should round the uh So we mentioned storage providers storage vendors that obviously make sense but also like database Vendors as well. Like if they have a they're going to have a better understanding of what they're What their database looks like at load? Obviously, that's not going to Uh reflect on every single individual customer of theirs but if we can if we can team up with database vendors storage vendors and get a much Wider view of what that application looked or what that database requirements look like And you start putting fio specific tests around that to understand what that looks like and then have a A library of these results. I think that becomes very useful And I've been calling it over the over the last week that this has been released Is this is really that easy button to understanding your kubernetes storage really is So as serish kind of Very easily went through it's a super simple way of being able to test against your your storage But it's a lot quicker than having to manually go and create pods create pbcs create pbs Then understanding actually how the application is going to run against those This is literally download to your mac os to your linux box to your windows box from github And get going that's that's as simple as that and then yeah to go back to the roadmap point the other the other Thing would be nice. I think around that leader like leaderboard would be something around Like vision. How do we visualize? How do we make that that output that cli output? How do we visualize that? How do we put that into some sort of visualization so that we can compare and see it Much easier than having to scroll through endless command line type text And yeah there to that point there was um You know right now I just give you the fio results, right? Like maybe down the line we could do some more analysis on the fio results, right say that hey, you know your Tell tell the customer or tell the user why What is impacting their performance and maybe you have? Um a bottleneck, you know because of the storage size or something like that, right? So I mean that requires a little bit more understanding of the storage and the results of the fio test itself, but Down the line we could see ourselves giving you more A more descriptive output than just these are your fio results Cool, and it looks like there's Actually people trying it out right now Um as we're on this so I got this error message when Cubester pulled the image failed to pull image user cannot be authenticated with the token provided Give a quick way to allow cubester to pull The image it's a live debugging Yeah, um I wonder what image it's struggling to pull because kubester I I believe the images that are all publicly available. I think they're docker hub Um Is it gonna be authenticated with the token provided? Hmm. It's kind of hard to tell without a little more more details. Um Uh Boon to a twitch, uh, do you want to you know? Maybe add some more details to our github a pretty github issue and add some more details there and I'll help you debug that time Yeah, definitely Yeah, and it's cool to cool to see people are actually trying it out like as we're as we're live right Now It's pretty cool Cool. Yeah, so I think if you create that issue on github, you'd be happy to help you out. Um, and then I guess going back Um, Going back to like the leaderboard a little bit Just checking if you see like any fluctuations in regards to the IOPS over time from different cloud providers So if we do benchmarking and like have like a leaderboard, would it change over time? Would it continually update? What have you seen so far? Well, like I said right now, we don't have enough data To see if there's been any like trends, but I'm sure if like the cloud providers Um, I mean they have so many different offerings, right? Like it's not always Like they like hey, I have one type of storage and one type of node. They have Nodes optimized for storage or they have faster storage slower storage. So Yeah, you I mean you will see them like the cloud providers offering faster or better Storage options as you know, they they progress as well. So Yeah, you'll definitely see fluctuation in what cloud providers often offer All right, they're trying to be competitive amongst each other as well, right? I am I just posted the the slack as well. It could be a good good area to start that debugging process as The other thing I was going to mention was around Um, obviously CSI especially in the public cloud. I've been playing a lot around I think Saris you mentioned it like digital ocean out of the box is CSI first they They deploy with CSI. You don't have any entry provisioner, which we know is Going to become the norm. Um, I think it's the next version of kubernetes Maybe even the next one, but it's very much CSI first as we as we move forward And it and it potentially won't take that configuration route or I would say the pain points as a new beta to this world is the CSI driver implementation having to having to install the driver is a is a A little bit of a challenge at the moment. It's a manual task at the moment. So Clearly on the error there, but there's a there's a there's a task that you have to go through And I found that cubes does a really good kind of full stop to understand even whether there's something wrong. So In Saris's demo, he shows you all the good stuff that it says okay that the CSI snapshot was was successful And he could restore back to a clone I've seen many more of the errors that come with that where the snapshot wasn't successful Um, and it's just really really short sharp to the point Let me know what it is And and then we go and troubleshoot that and it's generally going to be down to you Probably your I am or your secret credentials that that um at least in AWS and again probably user error, but I think that as we're in that transition period of CSI becoming the norm This is going to be an awesome tool moving forward and it's not just for that day zero cluster rollout. It's going to be kind of to to the last question around Do we see IOPS fluctuating? Well, this is something that we should keep checking because At the end of the day, you're paying for that service that storage on the cloud provider You keep using kubester to validate that you're getting the resource that you you should be getting right No, definitely Is there anything else you two want to show today? um I was going to kind of show the same thing. I've got an AWS cluster that I could jump in but it's going to be very much the same Same stuff that saris has shown. So I don't know if we need to go in there Um, I think the other thing again saris might have touched on it is around So as long as you've got kubectl access to you to your cluster That's where kubester will run. It will use the kubectl context to run these tests in So if you don't have kubectl kubester is not going to work um Also, if you if you've got many different contexts like saris showed Is you're going to have to jump manually between those? Before you can before you can run kubester against the other The other clusters, but yeah, I think I was just going to show kubester.io as a as the first resource because on there um Is a very brief description kind of what we touched on at the very beginning around identifying Validating and evaluating your kubernetes storage and hitting the easy button And kind of touching on that csi challenge that that I just touched on Then a short demo from saris on or how to use it And then some steps on where to grab where to grab the source Source files so you can install it on the on the os that you want to run it on and then a few Brief instructions on how to how to get started and run that um Then I've also shared around the flexible io the configuration like the the ready made community driven fio configurations um Yeah, I think That they'd be and then also the slack that that we've just started. So it's very Fresh in there. This is only this has only been rolling out like since the The first of april so it's really really new and uh, yeah looking forward to the To the feedback from the community and and driving What what this could be I think yeah, it'll be be fun Anything you'd add saris at all Uh, no, I think you covered most of it. Yeah, like like you said, we're I'm excited to put it out there I started to have people actually using it and you know really hope it benefits people and they they can You know see its value and Eventually contribute to it, right? Um So yeah, I'm looking forward to that. Um, I can't I think you're all A classic like Yeah Clearly I got to go back to purgatory like okay one more one more round of lockdown just so you can figure out mutes again Okay Thanks everyone for joining the latest episode of cloud native live it was super great to have both michael and Sheree To talk about kubester. I'm really excited to see how this project grows and the community that comes up around it And really seeing like those benchmarks. Um, so we can track story performance over time and see if what you pay For is what you actually get. Um, I also really loved all the interaction that we have from the audience I think this is really tons of questions coming out Super excited to see that even like people trying it live like as the session is going Like super fun to see it interaction Um, and yeah, looking forward to see the audience again Just a reminder we bring you every single week the latest cloud native code every wednesday at 3 p.m. Eastern Um, yeah, and if you haven't gotten your ticket yet for kubecon, uh, then there's a code for you to do it So, uh, see you around the cloud native community. Thanks


Hello, this is Brian Rowe from LS Ntap here with a new series going over tech tips. The first tech tip that I'm going to bring you today comes from Northwest Justice Project where LS Ntap is housed. It is for an installer that we use here in-house, a web-based installer for updating software. The site name is ninite-n-i-n-i-t-e dot com. Basically, what the site lets you do is install several pieces of software onto a computer at once. It downloads a single installer with none of the annoying add-ins or extra things that you don't want from installers. Just basically choose which pieces of software. I've pre-chosen some software here that commonly use Chrome, Firefox, Skype, and VLC, which I highly recommend. It's a great video player, some of the codexes that allow us to play different types of video. Flash, Java, click all of those, hit get installer. After you click installer, it will bring you to a page where you can optionally join an email list, but you don't actually have to give up any of your private information in order to use this service. Just download a single file. I'm going to take that file, put it here on my desktop. After it's done downloading, you run it and it goes through and installs every piece of software that you have included. Click run here, preparing setup. Now, normally this would take about 15, 20 minutes to install all of the pieces of software that I downloaded, but since I've done this a few times today in preparation for this video, it runs through and lets you know that everything is up to date. After it's done being installed, after you close it, it will give you other messages such as restart. If needed, this is an extremely easy way to update several pieces of software at once without getting any of the extra spam or toolbars, that type of jump. I'd like to say thanks to James, part of our tech staff here at Northwest Justice Project that showed me this a few weeks ago.


Hi friends, welcome back to my channel and a very special welcome if you're new here. My name is Jen. I'm a certified weight loss and nutrition coach and I'm on WW personal points. Happy Saturday, it is Saturday. So that means it's grocery haul day. I shopped at two stores and I have some new food finds fall inspired.  Subscribe if you're not because I upload a grocery haul every Saturday and five videos per week. Check out the description box down below for nutrition coaching. I cannot recommend personalized calories and macros enough. That is how I've lost well over a hundred pounds and I have one-on-one coaching for accountability as well. Links, discounts to my favorite things and don't forget, come on over, join our Facebook group. We would love to have you. So let's jump in to the grocery haul. So this week's grocery haul, I went to Sprout and I went to Kroger, which is fries by my house. So let me show you what I picked up from both stores. Starting with Sprout, I grabbed the big, huge pack of the all-white shredded chicken. I need this for dinner recipe and then this is a go-to for us. We love to have this on hand for quick, easy meals. It's affordable, it's shredded, it's zero points on WW because it is all white meat chicken. And then I saw this little cutie here over in their pumpkin spice area, which of course I had to go to. This is from the brand Nuno's, Naunos. I've never heard of it. It's a yogurt and it is pumpkin spice. So I'm sure it's going to have a decent amount of points because it looks like it has a decent amount of sugar, but I'm excited for this. I thought that it would make a really good dessert. And you know, I have to try everything I can. That's pumpkin spice. I picked up the Siggy's non-fat plain Greek yogurt for my yogurt bowls. This is probably my favorite. This is the one from Costco, which by the way, I've went through that entire huge container from Costco. So when I get back from my trip from Hawaii, I'm going to be making my Sam's Cleberon and my Trader Joe's Fall haul. So I'm going to buy probably two big Greek yogurts at Sam's Club, but this will get me by for this week until I head out for my trip. Some of these sprouts, pasture raised eggs, these are some of the best eggs. They have a nice orange yolk, which is exactly what you want in an egg. And right now they're on sale for $3.99 a dozen. Another pumpkin spice find is from Super Creamer. So you guys know I like the Super Coffee. I have not tried the pumpkin one that I picked up in last week's haul. I'll probably have that today, but I saw that they had the Creamer and it has only five calories and a tablespoon and it even has a gram of protein and really zero everything out. Zero sugar, zero fat. So I want to try it just for, you know, something different that's pumpkin spice. And I also spotted this. I am so busy leading up to my trip that I thought this would just be really convenient for a lunch or a dinner. This is from the brand Cedar Lane and this is their protein bowl. There is 22 grams of protein in here. It has chicken, brown rice, quinoa, zucchini, red onion, shawarma sauce and tahini yogurt sauce. I love tahini and the whole bowl is 310 calories and actually has pretty good ingredients and you can't beat 22 grams of protein. And then I did pick up a double pack of raspberries and a big thing of blueberries just for some fruit for the week and then some green onions for a dinner recipe. That is everything from Sprout. So let's jump in to Kroger or fries. I grabbed a bag of the Jimmy Dean Turkey Sausage Crumbles. This is actually for my meal prep on Monday, my breakfast meal prep, just an FYI and I'll share this in future videos as well. So in case you happen to forget or miss this one, I will not have a meal prep next Monday. So this coming up Monday is in two days. There'll be a meal prep the following Monday. I'll be in Hawaii. So there will not be a meal prep. So definitely don't miss out on this Mondays. We have some really good recipes. I'll be sharing my dinner recipes and what's on my menu for meal prep at the end of the grocery haul. I also picked up another pack of the little cheese bits and meat sticks. This was on sale again for $6.99, which is a really good deal. We loved this last time. We ate all of it up before the expiration date. It's chopped up, ready to go, super convenient. I grabbed a pack of mild chili mix because I am making chili in my meal prep. Lots of canned goods. I needed a can of tomato sauce and a can of diced tomatoes. Two cans of beans. I actually wanted kidney beans, but they didn't have any organic. So I grabbed chili beans because it's going in chili anyway. So I thought that that would be an even better option. And then of course, two cans of pumpkin because we have another pumpkin recipe in meal prep. And I have a really fun fall video coming your way as well. So I needed lots and lots of canned pumpkin. Two packages of sourdough English muffins. Troy's been making breakfast sandwiches a lot. So I picked up two packages. These are literally the softest English muffins and they're on sale right now at Kroger.  This is for, I think, two different dinner recipes this next week. Containers of my favorite cottage cheese. If you have not tried the good culture, please try it. It is so good. I mean, hands down the best I've ever had. I had a coupon for these, so I grabbed not one, but two. A gallon of skim milk for Troy.  I need this for a recipe. And for produce, some sliced mushrooms, three bell peppers, two green, one red, and then a pack of shredded green leaf lettuce. So that is everything from fries. So let's jump into my meal plan for dinners and what you'll see in Monday's meal prep. So here is what is on the menu for the week. So Saturday out to dinner. Sunday I am making creamy gnocchi soup. I ended up not making it last week, so I have everything on hand for that. One day I'm going to make an Italian hot dish which is kind of like a baked pasta.  Tuesday's leftovers, Wednesday's the spaghetti night. Thursday I'm doing Korean barbecue beef taco. So we're gonna do taco Thursday instead of taco Tuesday. And then Friday we'll finish up any leftovers from earlier in the week. And here's what you'll be seeing in Monday's meal prep. I'm super excited for these three recipes. For breakfast I'm making a sausage and hash brown bake. I've been doing sweet breakfast so it is time for a savory one. And then for lunch I'm actually making chili in my instant pot. And then I am making pumpkin snicker doodle cookies. Also very excited for that. So make sure you're subscribed and your bell's turned on so you don't miss Monday's meal prep. Thank you for joining me for this week's WW grocery haul. I can't wait to try the fall pumpkin spice things that I picked up. I am always on the hunt for all things pumpkin spice. And of course if you enjoyed the grocery haul give it a thumbs up. Subscribe if you're not because again I do a grocery haul every Saturday and I upload five videos per week. Don't forget to check out the description box for nutrition coaching, links, discounts to my favorite things and come join our Facebook group. We would love to have you. Happy Saturday and I'll see you in tomorrow's video. Bye.


My name is Bill Dipscomb and I'm a senior research scientist in the Climate and Global Dynamics Laboratory at NCAR. I joined NCAR recently in 2017. Before that I was a scientist at Los Alamos National Lab where I worked a lot with NCAR people for many years. My research here is mostly on land ice, specifically the Greenland Antarctic ice sheets, and how they interact with the climate and could change in the future. Well, I'll be talking about ice sheets and sea level, so specifically how it is that the Greenland Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass and are likely to continue to lose mass and raise sea level all over the world. Well, there's hundreds of millions of people around the world who live very close to sea level whose lives would be disrupted if sea level keeps going up. And we know sea level is rising, but we don't know how much and how fast in the future. And the more we can inform people about how fast sea level is going to rise and what they can expect, the better they can make good decisions and plan. I'd like people to understand how ice sheet works, what their dynamics is, how they interact with the climate, and how, although for the last two or three million years, ice sheets have changed for natural reasons. Changes in the Earth's orbit, for example. The changes that are happening now have a different trigger, and a lot of ways are more concerning and could be larger and more severe than the past changes.


Okay so thank you all for sticking around the whole day and thank you for participating. It's been a wonderful day and we're happy to say we had a strong role in it and show of hands how many people had the chance to get out front to the UTSA students and take a look at their work. Wonderful work right? How about a round of applause for them? So actually I want to read each of their names off and then we can give them another round of applause as a thank you. For the downtown group Sarah Esserly, Gilbert Morales, Nicholas Post, and Renee Zamora. Could you stand up? And for the five points group, Kristen Ramirez, Carla Burrell, Kristen Flores, and Ryan Kirby. And for the Gardendale group that was Kimberly Hopkins, Betsyta Paulette, and Nicole Thompson. And so you guys can keep standing because the conference has selected you as the winners. So if you if you want to if you want to come around and one of the gifts we'd like to give is a copy of Autograph copy of Chuck's book Thoughts on Building Strong Towns. Well good afternoon and wasn't that delightful? I am delighted to see students and young people really being in the right place for the future of San Antonio. My name is Bilal Oates and I'm delighted to be here this afternoon with you to share this wonderful wonderful panel. It's called the final panel but it's really the best panel so thank you for hanging around. We've heard so much today that's exciting and you know one of the questions that I heard David asked Mr. Bigelow Perry our last presenter was how do residents know about this? What can we do? Well guess what? Awareness. You know conferences like today make a difference and I really want to commend Metro Health for hosting this public health in the built environment and a special shout out to David Clear for an outstanding outstanding. Our panelists today require no introduction because they've been our keynote speakers, our focus group, our plenary speaker presenters, a moderator, our host Dr. Thomas Schlenker. The only one that has not been introduced is Dr. Richard Tangelman. I'd like to say a little bit about him. He's the director of the Center for Urban and Regional Planning Research at the University of Texas at San Antonio. He is a registered architect and urban and regional planner with more than 40 years extensive and varied experience at architecture, urban and regional planning, housing, urban design and economic development and we're very pleased to be here at UTSA for this conference. All of our speakers here have contributed so much but as a final discussion we'd like to frame this in a concept that's called the social determinants of health because that seems to weave and integrate silos into a way that we can understand and explain how health disparities, based on all the things that we've learned today. Robert Wood Johnson and in partnership with the Wisconsin School of Public Health has been really activating this model of social determinants of health because they weren't the ones that really started it. It was something that was developed for the World Health Organization in order to explain health disparities. But Robert Wood Johnson and the Wisconsin School of Public Health have done an excellent job of applying it to improve communities and community health. And they tell us something that we know intuitively and that we heard today from our presenters in many, many, many ways. For example, air quality, water quality and the built environment account for about 10% of the influence on health outcomes and socioeconomic factors such as education, income, social disruption account for about 40% of health outcomes. Good or bad. Human behaviors such as tobacco use, diet and exercise, alcohol use, high risk sexual behavior and violence account for between 30 and 40% of health outcomes and only 10 to 20% is attributed to healthcare, which we often think of as the one that we talk about when we talk about health outcomes and only about 10 to 20% is attributed to healthcare which the model identifies as access to care and the quality of care. So from a social determinant perspective, recently the Wisconsin School of Public Health with Robert Wood Johnson released the county health rankings and Bear County was ranked 69th out of 239 counties in the state of Texas. And that was an overall improvement from the 2010 rank of 78th. So that's very good for us in this last 2014 release. Bear County's score for the physical environment improved dramatically. And I think we know why. We've heard about what has gone on in San Antonio in these last couple of years. The clinical care ranking also improved as did our overall morbidity ranking. So given that we understand the social determinant model very naturally, because you know when Ivy Taylor started the afternoon proceedings, she hinted at saying that there was a difference between SIP codes and people's longevity actually was different if you lived in this SIP code or that SIP code. And why? Because of the framework that I just talked about. These things can make a difference. Where you live does make a difference. So given that information that I've shared with you on what factors play important roles in impacting health, along with the perspectives and ideas that we've heard today, I would like to ask you, the panelist, can you identify one significant way in which San Antonio can continue to improve its health outcomes through the built environment? And so let's begin with Dr. Thomas Schlinger. And you know, I'm going to ask you, each panelist will have about five minutes to respond to the question. And then we're going to have time to hear from you. But I'm going to ask if everyone will remain seated, because it'll take a long time for people to come back and forth to the podium. So if we begin with Dr. Schlinger, then we can go down the row and hear from everyone. Thank you, Pilar. Glad to begin the discussion. This has been a long day, but such an exciting and stimulating day. We've all been bombarded with great ideas and concepts and visuals and it's almost overwhelming, it's too much and but it helps to be in this kind of setting where we are. And I do want to thank UTSA for hosting this in their beautiful downtown campus, because just being here is so conducive to the project that we're all about. We have this beautiful indoor space that's open and conducive to talking and looking at posters and projects and works of art. We have the beautiful outdoor space where most of us had lunch today on the benches, talking with each other. I noticed walking down the hall that we have fabulous staircases in this building. They're the kind of staircases that invite you to walk up them and down them. They're not hidden in some corner. And so I did. I walked up to the library and walked through the library and the library looks out on the inner courtyard where we all had lunch. So it's an integrated kind of urban setting that is perfect for us. And I'm hoping this kind of relationship continues between various city departments and metro health, UTSA and then the designers and the builders and the architects that are creating our city, recreating our city as we speak about it. I think that one thing that I remember from today even though all the presentations were absolutely fabulous, some of the best things I got were between presentations out in the lobby talking to people. And one thing that John Dugan, the San Antonio City planner said to me is that he thinks it's all about connecting. Connecting the various great ideas that we all have that come from different disciplines. Connecting the concept of clean air, clean water, inviting physical space for physical activity, good nutrition, economic development and social justice. An all-inclusive kind of community. The challenge is not having a good idea because there are a million of them sitting in this auditorium. It's connecting them together in a way that creates the community that we all want to live in. And for me, a very good example and a great symbol of that here in San Antonio was presented by one of my favorite people who live here and his name is Dante Jones and you might have noticed him because he was dressed in orange as he always is because he leads a bicycle group called Dante's Roll Models that takes children and families on bicycle tours starting in their neighborhoods but then going anywhere and everywhere in San Antonio and opening up new vistas to them, new ways of thinking and new parts of town that they would have never seen any other way except in this terrific collective physical activity of riding their bikes together following this orange clad figure with the boom box playing great jazz and rhythm and blues and a little trailer behind his bike and to me that's sort of a physical connectivity that connects one neighborhood with another neighborhood and brings people into new areas where they can explore and get new ideas that symbolizes connectivity in general, the challenge that we all face to have our ideas converge and to result in connected development that will serve us all. Thank you so much Dr. Schenker and if I can answer for you as well, one of the things most significant things that you can do for next year's, please host this conference again I think it's been extraordinary. Can I ask John Simmerman to please give us his perspective on the most significant things San Antonio can do to move forward? Yes, thank you very much. One of the great things that I love to do when coming into a city is take a few extra days to explore and as you could probably tell I do it by bicycle. So I did have a couple of days to explore and really get a sense as to what's happening on the ground and I want to really commend and applaud all of you, the city of San Antonio, you're making inroads, you're making strides in addressing the challenges that you have. It's no big surprise. Your built environment is a challenge but you're not alone. You're right there with the rest of the United States. When you look at the social determinants of health and you look at the communities that are underserved and you've got issues and challenges there, the three P's that come out are the pathways, your proximity and programming. So starting with programming I'm so glad to hear the story of Dante's group and that aspect of integrating fun, integrating exploration and taking it to the level of the community and exploring in their neighborhoods and then expanding beyond the neighborhoods and making what could seem to be quite scary like riding your bike from the airport to downtown. It's a little less scary. Crazy. This was a piece of cake compared to Los Angeles to Long Beach but in all seriousness it should be fun. We should be able to laugh a little bit and have a good time and play the boombox as we're going through the neighborhoods and be able to see the potential that's there. So there's a fourth P, the potential and your potential is very very encouraging of what you have out there. So when I look at the pathways and the connectivity to these neighborhoods, again I had it up on one of my slides where I said accessibility equates to the equality that we're looking to create. So when I was heading on my trip down to the missions and I'm using the bike path down there I'm taking note of what are the neighborhoods like and so I'm going through neighborhoods that are clearly underserved. A couple of trailer parks and some other things. The fact that they now have an easy way to be able to get activity into their lives and very critical here, be able to use physical activity to get downtown. Absolutely amazing. And then the next, that second P that I mentioned was proximity and that's when we start taking note and taking accounting of the activity assets that you have in addition to the pathways and the connections to those pathways, what about access to other open space, other parks, other community programs, things of that nature and really starting to address with those three things, the connectivity through the pathways, the programming with the outreach, and then the proximity to the other assets in the built environment. That's really critical. I applaud the great strides that San Antonio is making and keep up the good work. Thank you. Thank you so much. What would you say is the most significant point that you can continue to improve? Well, I think, you know, to me, I think the conversation has to get down to the individual level and the block level. We can have great policies that are really embraced by people. They're not going to amount to as much. So to me, like for all of you in the room right now, I've got just a few things that I would recommend you do. First, go home and make it a point over the next week to meet your neighbors.  I think that we all have a responsibility to meet and know our neighbors. And not just, you know, I'm not saying get up in their business or anything or invite them into your house, but I'm saying, you know, you should know their names, you should know a little bit about them. You should chat with them. These are the people that you need in your life. These are the passive people that can, you know, let the UPS guy in and, you know, watch your kid for the five minutes that you've got to run and do something. These are like the very base social bonds that we've kind of let go.  And I think we all could benefit from doing that. Beyond that, there's just some certain base things that I think we can do to start to get in touch with the communities that we live in. And we can model this behavior as John said earlier for others. Go for a walk. Go for a bike ride.  What a despotic environment. I can't imagine any of you walking that on a routine basis and being okay with it, right? I think we have to intentionally engage with the spaces around us. Because right now we passively engage with them from, you know, the back of the steering wheel. And if we want to know them and understand them intimately, we have to actively engage and we have to be present. And then the last thing that I would say, I've got a book recommendation for you. There's a book called The Lean Startup, a very popular book in the business world. But the principles that I think are most important apply really well to this because the central tenet of the book is to ask the question, what is the next smallest step we can take to get us moving towards success? What's the next smallest thing we can do to bring us closer to our goal? A lot of times we're paralyzed because we look at the problems that face us and they look just insurmountable. We have to change the ordinances. We have to change the streets. We need a new engineer. We need, you know, a different business community. We start to list off like all the things that are wrong and all the things that we think need change and they're so huge and they're so fundamental. Forget about it. Forget about it. If everybody in this room just concentrates on like what is the next smallest step I can take to make the place that I live and the place around me a little bit better, it would be game changing for this city. So The Lean Startup, I would read it, embrace the concepts and see what you can do to apply them in your place. We have a saying at Strong Towns which is keep doing what you can to build a strong town and the idea there is that not all of us will be president not all of us will be mayor. Not all of us want to be in positions of power but all of us have the capacity to do that next smallest thing to move the ball ahead and that's what you need to do. Thank you so much and that's really huge and it seems like the next small thing was to meet your neighbor. Wow. That seems like something that we really need to do. That's pretty easy to do. It's not a huge bar but we'd all benefit from it. We would all benefit from it. Don, how would you answer that question for San Antonio to move this community forward? Well, first I'd like to say I thought I was the eye candy in the group when you passed over me and so I'm glad that you came back around. No, actually I had you listed here in order of how I was following you so it was not discriminatory. Well, I'm the city's new chief sustainability officer and the link between sustainability and the built environments and healthy communities is very clear. I'm also since I'm the new guy in town I can still sort of play dumb a little that I'm still learning the ropes but the time that I've been here I definitely see it almost seems like there's multiple San Antonio's. There's at least two that I'd like to talk about. We have the inner core, we have inner city neighborhoods where there's high poverty, there's high crime, there's significant health problems and then we have the sprawling communities outside the loops which have different issues and they both require different interventions. I think with the inner city neighborhoods we really need to sort of take a look at policy how we implement infrastructure projects. We need to start creating places in those communities once again. We need to start revitalizing them using mixed income mixed use neighborhoods, better access to education and jobs and again it's really is about connections re-knitting those neighborhoods back in with the rest of the city. In terms of the suburban areas, there's a saying in the planning field it's the land use stupid. It's just how we're building these communities. They're single use pods.    So we have your residential pod, your institutional pod. You can't go anywhere without a car and so there's two things I think we can do. One is really look at how we're growing going forward, taking a look at policies, zoning codes, build more complete neighborhoods and then for existing suburban neighborhoods really looking at things like sprawl repair. How can we start rebuilding communities within these existing sprawl neighborhoods to allow for town centers just to grow, to allow for safe trips by bike or car to shops, to schools and incrementally trying to repair what we built. Thank you, Doug. He reminds us that we have multiple communities here in San Antonio, multiple San Antonio's and we need to remit them and I like that word. Dr. Tangum, what do you propose would be the most significant thing we could do for San Antonio? Thank you. I'm the old guy. I was born in San Antonio and went to school here and so I bring a different kind of perspective having seen the city really being radically transformed and really in the last 60 years. And I think the most critical challenge that this city faces, then what most American cities are facing is how to deal with the rapid change that's coming. Demographically by 2060 the city, our state demographers telling us and others too that the population could double in size so we could go from over 1.3 million to 2 plus who knows how many people. Now the real impact is I look at San Antonio in an earlier point in time, back in 1940, right before 1940 the city limits were 36 square miles and you had a little over 250,000 people. And so the population density at that time is about 7,000 people per square mile. Now today we have, I have to write it down so I make sure I got my figures right, we have 473 square miles but John is annexing additional portions, I'm not sure if my figure is correct, but basically our density then has dropped to 2,923 people per square mile. Now this is telling in many ways. When I go back to San Antonio in 1940 I got a glimpse of it as a small boy. It was, we were looking at really walkable, complete neighborhoods at that time. Up until 1933 San Antonio had a great trolley system that had 90 miles of track that connected all sections of the city so you could easily get around anywhere. And if you lived in a neighborhood you really didn't need a car. You basically could walk to a market, all the school tour and walk to school. You could walk to a pharmacy. Food was grown in truck gardens around the city. There were fruit and vegetable vendors that passed through the neighborhoods that had circuits. So we were eating well, we were health here. And in that 60 years there's been a major transformation. We've lost our connectivity with each other. In fact if any of you have read the article by Richard Florida in Atlantic cities San Antonio now ranks number one in terms of being America's most income segregated large metro area in the United States. So we have a point I'm trying to make, I'm not trying to prick the balloon here, but we've got some major problems we need to tackle and if we don't basically start dealing with the kinds of development patterns we have today, by 2060 that land area that we're looking at if we continue the sprawl pattern could be over a thousand square miles essentially. So there's the challenge. If we want a healthy city we're going to have to really get serious about making the city more compact, more efficient and pay attention to our network and system of moving people about in a more humane way that's equitable to all age groups. Wow, that's a very provocative response. We're looking at rapid change, rapid growth, population density, but I think one thing to note is the discussion that where we were many years ago and what we've become and where we need to go sounds like a similar place. It's your turn now. What questions do you have of the panel? Can I make one quick comment just about in regards to growth I think it's interesting because one of the comments that I've heard today in chatting with people out in the hall etc. was we're going to have all this growth and it's almost like well the growth is our savior, right? We can make some mistakes and the growth will just cover it up. I mean we talked about the illusion of wealth beginning this morning. I think it's important to note the path that you're on does not seem to be Detroit's path where you had this huge population contraction in this large area with not enough people. But San Bernardino California went bankrupt shortly a little bit before true Detroit did. San Bernardino over the last two decades had a 420% population increase huge huge amounts of growth. The question is not about growth it's exactly as it was framed down there it's about how do we build this place productively. I also think that the challenge that you have demographically is that the growth that you're going to have is not the growth that San Bernardino had which tended to be slightly upper middle class, people who were moving to the city with some affluence. Your demographics are going to be, you know, have much broader range than the narrow band that they had there. I don't think that that's a bad thing. I think that that's actually a really good thing but it means that your policies and your approach have to change because segregating people into different pods by income is a really really destructive way to build the city. My question is about mass transit and the limits that we have in our ability to expand mass transit right now. San Antonio is growing and I don't know how we can possibly become a healthy city without expanding our mass transit options, our public transportation system and I'm distressed by the political opposition that's on the horizon. Some of it from groups that are not staked in San Antonio and they're for reasons that don't have anything to do with San Antonio's health and well-being as a city and I'm just wondering especially for those of you that have experience with other cities of how do you handle this? What are your thoughts about the role of mass transit in a sustainable and healthy city and what we can do with this tide that's coming and VIA has an argument to make and they've got, there's a lot at stake and I'm just curious what your take is on that. Oh, do you want to stay away from that one? I'm new here. We'll let the activity guy jump in on this one. So what I'm going to do is relate this back to a situation that I'm very familiar with because I use mass transit continuously when I'm in Boulder. I am car free in Boulder so if I'm not on my little folding bike or one of my other bicycles that I have, I am actually taking public transit so the bus system in Boulder is fantastic if you've not had a chance to study it or understand a little bit about what it's like to have a hip happening bus system, transit system, this is it. It serves all income levels and it's one of these vibrant, it's a really neat thing to be able to interface with a transit system where you are able to permeate into all the different income levels and the reason it's able to do so is because it is effective. They've got good routes, good timing schedules, they've really approached it scientifically so that it is convenient and guess what? I get an awful lot of walking in to be able to get to mass transit and be able to take advantage of that comprehensive route system that it has. When I was attending the conference for Smart Growth and New Partners conference down in Denver, yep. I was able to ride the RTD from Boulder all the way down to Denver on an express bus. So if you want to have an impact on being able to have transit work in a more suburbanized slash urban interface, you're going to have to be able to make it significant and it's got to be a program that works and the money's got to pencil out, but you can't just do, you know, kind of do transit. Another great system that I'm familiar with is in Honolulu that has one of the most vibrant bus systems. And yes, I can't forget about light rail and the fact that that's one of the things that in Denver, you know, they're being quite aggressive with trying to get the lines in place throughout Denver, but quite frankly, you know, light rail is extremely expensive so you may have an interface that takes place between the bus and any light rail lines that you have that are spurs. So that's, you know, from my perspective, Laura, I hope that helps a little bit. Really the key successes again are the number of stops, the routes, and the fact that it is considered cool to ride the bus. I'm frequently on the bus with high schoolers getting around throughout town. So that to me is significant that it's not something where just the poor people are riding. I thought you were going to say earlier that you rode your bike from the Denver airport into downtown Denver. That would have been incredible. I think that there's a couple things on transit that are really re-important.  There's a sense amongst many that transit is the solution, the magic bullet. And I'm not suggesting you were suggesting that, but I want to make it clear that especially here in San Antonio we need to walk before we run. And literally, I'm saying we need to be able to walk.  Like, how do you get to the bus stop? What sense is there in putting in, you know, an expensive, expansive system when like literally you just need to paint some crosswalks and fix some curb radiuses and narrow up some lanes? I mean, we're talking about pennies instead of, you know, tens of dollars in comparison of what like needs to be done to get that first step. It's really hard to impose a transit culture on a community that doesn't have respect for, you know, the current systems that it has or, you know, a biking culture or a walking culture. To me, there's a certain progression that we need to start with. The other thing that I think is really important and this goes to how we finance transit and how we make it viable over time. If you want transit, you have to have a place. Remember when we talked about roads during a street great transit connects productive places. It functions like a road. It gets you from one productive place to another productive place. So if you want functional viable transit, build productive places and connect them. That's what like a really viable transit system looks like. A lot of what we do today for transit is we take the mentality of the highway engineer and transfer it over to the transit where we say, well, we're going to serve a corridor and what you wind up with is the same low productivity development pattern that doesn't pay for itself. And when we do it with transit, we actually do some type of accounting that we don't do with highways, build productive places and connect them. So if you're an advocate for transit by default, you're an advocate for great productive places and if you put your energies there, the transit will follow. Let me also say that... Thank you. I'm not running for office or anything. It hurts a little to hear someone from the outside come in and say, your bus stops are horrible. The walk from the hotel to the campus is really terrible. But in fact, it reminds us of the truth. And I was talking with a UTSA student this morning who put together the five points poster. And that's the way I come and go to work every day on my bike. And I ride past the bus stop at five points at the intersection of Flores and Fredericksburg. And it's got to be one of the bus stops in town. There's always about 20 people there. And it's just ugly and horrible and it could be beautiful because it's actually kind of a vacant corner. There's nothing there except for about three gigantic beautiful trees that are just being choked by this massive ugly nothing around it. And it wouldn't take much to make it a decent inviting place. The other comment I would make about mass transit in general and how do we get a better mass transit system in San Antonio is I was about 10 years ago the director of public health in Salt Lake City and we were having the same argument there and lots of opposition to mass transit in the Salt Lake City area from the usual suspects of people who sell cars and build highways, et cetera. And I went back there last year to go skiing at Alta and I noticed there is light rail from the airport and there's various other amenities that go up and down and that were very, very nice. Really beautiful done. Beautifully done. They had an advantage though in Salt Lake City. They have terrible air quality there because they're right up against the mountains and they have these horrible inversions. It's kind of like Mexico City so I think it was easier for them to make the case the last thing we need are more cars driving up and down the Wasatch Mountains because we're killing ourselves. We have better air quality here in San Antonio however and one of the last big cities in the United States to still be in attainment of air quality standards up until now but we will soon be falling out of attainment to those standards and especially with all the development going on south of us along the Eagle Ford Shale oil development and perhaps doubling of the growth of the population of San Antonio the writing is on the wall. Our air quality is going to be more and more challenged here and so I think maybe we can use that as sort of the wedge to get this done because we're going to have to or else we're going to have Mexico City quality that we are here in the future. Do we have time for more questions? Do I see anybody else? You know you can even take a stab at answering the question yourself. You know what single most important thing most significant way in which San Antonio can move forward to continue to improve its health outcomes through the built environment. Maybe you have an idea. Would you like to share it? Anybody out there? If you want to respond to Dr. Schlanker's comment about the five points bus stop I feel obligated to respond. Via actually has had a design for that site on the boards for no less than three to four years and part of the issue with bus stops around the city is getting easements from property owners and in that particular case having a willing seller for that property has been a difficult issue and it is actually on our agendas currently as we speak so we are trying very hard to get that because we do have a design to greatly improve that stop because it is one of our highest ridership stops in the city so you're absolutely right there. And along that line trying to improve what you asked, what could we do maybe for the next bond election which is probably going to be in 2017 that a grassroots effort to demand improvements in our pedestrian network and how each project is evaluated when it goes to scoping that communities, neighborhoods look to their political leaders to say that what good is a large scale project if nobody can walk. So I would suggest that you talk to your council people and look at the different types of projects that are being suggested in your districts for these bond projects and really demand that pedestrian network because we can't have just pockets. I look at it similar to what if we had just major intersection connections at our freeways but we didn't have the connection in between the intersections. Where would we be? It's the same thing with the pedestrian network. You know there's one thing that I like to do when we're done here and this just crossed my mind. When we're done I'm going to walk off the stage. I'm going to walk out the door.  This is a university right? Where do you walk more than when you go to a university? You can't walk to the parking lot across the street right? And I just want to go out and just like show you because I think sometimes in an environment where really walking is not just an afterthought but it's a distant far far you know thing down the list of priorities. I think sometimes we just forget like all the simple things. And to me I think that even just in front of the school we could be leaders here in making this block and the block on the other side more walkable if we just like could visualize what a different thing would look like. So when we're done here I'm going to walk out the stage. I'm going to walk out the door.  I lost my mic but we're out of time and I really want to thank this panel for such insightful responses to our question of participation today and all of you. And so there is no finale until we all do a standing applause for all of you and for this panel. Thank you for coming.


The Center for Public Accountability's CPA is an organization that is focused on ensuring that public office holders and process are accountable and can be trusted. To this end, they are consistently monitoring all government processes and engagement. It is on this basis of their core value at the CPA that they are writing to the office of the President to demand an immediate stoppage of the recruitment process of the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation and ordering a review of the process before a final decision is made or taken. Their calling for this stoppage because they are aware that they have obtained documents that have shown that the current process that is planned to be concluded on the first day, the 11th of May, that's today, is filled with irregularities and that the outcome cannot be trusted. We're joining us to speak on this. He's Olufemi Lawson, he's a development expert, a media entrepreneur and a pro-democracy activist. Thank you so much for joining us. He's also the national auditor of the Campaign for Democracy and Convenience, your robust stakeholder summit. Thank you for joining us. Good evening. Good evening. Thank you for having me. Yes, walk us through how you got these so-called information that is showing that this process of recruiting the Auditor-General, which is a civil service procedure, is not done properly. Thank you once again. The problem here is that most times as Nigerians, we find it difficult to show an interest in what happened around us, despite the implications that some of the policies and decisions of government have on us as citizens. The process of recruitment in the public service is not a secret process, ordinarily it should be as transparent as possible because it is a public sector and Nigerians must be interested at all times in what happens in recruitment process and promotions because as people move upward in the civil service, windows are open for younger people to come into the process for people to get promoted, and of course, increasing productivity as the case may be in the civil service. But we have a situation whereby virtually everything in the country today has become so politicized to the extent that merit is becoming daily thrown into the dustbin. And as Nigerians, we should be concerned, concerned in the current recruitment process of the new Auditor General of the Federation is such that we are really bothered with the procedures that have been undertaken. This has been on for almost two years and you see it's the question of what is obtainable, what is the ethic as far as the civil service rule is concerned. But then we have a situation where people are trying to rewrite illegally the procedures for promotion in the civil service. We have a situation whereby people are trying to politicize what ordinarily should be positions where you are qualified to occupy by the virtue of your years in service. But today, every due process has been negated, particularly in the recruitment process of the Office of the Auditor General. The most worrisome aspect of this is the tendency for corruption in this recruitment process because the anti-graft agencies in the country are involved whenever these kind of, you know, very crucial or strategic offices are to be occupied by anyone. But today, you find people in authority who are trying to even undermine the position of the anti-corruption agencies, particularly the ICPC, in appointing, you know, a new Auditor General for the Federation. And that's where we are raising this alarm that we should allow every institution to become so politicized to the extent that we can no longer have people in position on the basis of merit, on the basis of their qualification, on the basis of the ethics and of course the later rule of the civil service or whatever profession as the case may be. When you talk about politicizing the process, it makes me really wonder because right before me, I can see the procedure in which these people are being recruited, as at, I think, 2022, the President had approved the recruitment of a new Auditor General. And I also know, it is public knowledge that officers who were undergoing disciplinary measures were excluded from the process. But I'm most interested in you saying that you're pushing for merits because there are people who are trying to reinvent the wheel. What are you combating for? Are you combating for merits here or do you have a personal interest? No personal interest in this. Merits is an issue and due process, like I said earlier, the process of selection has been honed. What you saw, what you referred to as the event of today May 11th, is another attempt at implying to shortcuts or by cutting the earlier stated rules, the earlier taking procedures in the appointment of the new Auditor General. Before now, there have been no candidates who have been shortlisted on the basis of seniority. You cannot undermine the role, the place of seniority as far as the civil service is concerned. It is not enough to go and bring somebody from behind to occupy a position when people who are years ahead of such a person in the service are still very actively involved in the service. The process had been earlier conducted. People were shortlisted, five persons precisely. The first, you know, all sort of, the panel, the road exams, the ad interviews, they even went through screening properly by the anti-corruption agency. And it is also in the public that ICPC made recommendations as to who is qualified on the basis of their integrity and, of course, the assessment for this position. But suddenly, because some people within the service are uncomfortable, most likely would be people who are deemed to have been qualified, who have been recommended. But the virtue of the original screening, which was really, you know, undertaken by the same civil service commission, have not come up. Why do those people are still in active service? To initiate another process of recruitment for the same position, while nothing as a decision has been taken on the outcome of the previous assessment, which remains valid today, not a statement from the Office of Data Service of the Civil Service Commission and can suit the earlier process undertaken. Then what is the basis for this new process, bringing 11 people to come and undertake the same process that we're undertaking by those five earlier shortlisted? And these people we are bringing, while many of them really have up to two years, you know, in service, as we speak, to occupy such position. So these are issues of people trying to sideline the rule, you know, and probably bringing favoritism into the whole process of selection of an office that should be occupied by people who have only merited it. Looking at this letter that was written and sent addressed to the Office of the President, I see that you have indicted the head of service, you have indicted certain people who work in the service. You've also given a report by the ICPC. And I see here the names of the five people that you've made reference to, Mr. Issu Kuku, Julius Michael, Mrs. Ogun Dowo, Adiritya Lusheyi. I also see Mrs. Ugun Ngozi-Ukeria, Mrs. Ongodili, Ogochuku, and Mr. Guayanshu Gabriel. These are the five that you make mention of initially, but now you're accusing the head of service of 11 new people who were being auditioned or rather interviewed for the same office. So the people say that Abela has been undertaken. So what is the basis for this new, you know, procedure when there has not been any decision taken on the previous, you know, well-conducted process that has given, you know, best to a recommendation like you could see in our letter, you know, by the ICPC recommending, you know, restating its findings about new cases, you know, that were earlier nominated. You don't just make a system go through such process, screening or writing tests, you know, going through computer-based tests and all sort of exercises, only for you to get to a point and now initiate a new process, especially bringing people who in most cases are not even qualified to come and undergo a new process for the same procedure where institutions that are concerned are taking decision and you have refused to act upon it. Again, as the CPA, have you gone to the office of the head of service, this same letter that you have sent to Mr. President, have you gone asking all of these questions, have you inquired as to why these new 11 people have been brought for the same interview that five people had already been interviewed for and shortlisted for that office? I mean, of course, like you said, it's an issue of merit and whoever is picked would be picked from those five. But like I said earlier on, those who, according to Mr. President's report or rather statement, those who were undergoing disciplinary measures were left out of this. Could any of these five have been one of those or linked to the scam that had happened before the Auditor General, the S-Y Auditor General, was taken out of office? Could they have been linked to it? What groundwork have you done in terms of asking all of these questions as opposed to being here? Well, first and foremost, we have, of course, copied the office of the head of service, with the letter submitted to the President. We have sent to the National Assembly because even on this same issue, the National Assembly has directed a suspension of that process. But as we speak, some persons within the Federal Service Commission and the office of the head of service, as the case may be, have been deviant and unconsciously disobeying the position of the National Assembly, asking that the process be put on hold and are going ahead with what you saw today in that letter. And beyond that, we have also copied other stakeholders who may be interested in ensuring that the law and order are followed, as far as the equipment process is concerned. So we have not only received the President, we have sent this letter to every Necessary Court and the National Assembly, of course, and every institutions that are concerned. And on the basis of the merits, just like you said, we are not particularly interested in any individual coming to be the Auditor General of the Federation. But we must, as a country, be sincere with ourselves for months that when people are taking through a process, when people are recommended or when positions are taken on the integrity and character of people who want to occupy public positions, such ones are taken seriously, especially if such are recommendations coming from institutions like the Independent Corporations and Order Related Offenses Commission, ICPC, which has made its recommendation clear on this process. This is not enough for some people to sit in the comfort of their offices and begin to undermine this kind of the positions already taken by qualified institutions of our country because of selfish ambition of individuals. I see some of the recommendations that you have made here, asking for a current recruitment process of the office to be put on hold. But as we speak, today is the last day for that recruitment process. Today is the 11th. So what exactly do you think can be done and with Mr. President not being in the country as we all know, how do you expect that something would take a turn? If, as you have said, there are people in certain positions that are trying to skew the process, what are you hoping for? Even in the absence of the President in the country, the President is very much active as the President of the country. It can work from wherever he is anywhere in the world, just like we have been made to know. And it is not only the President that is concerned or that is involved in this. Like we said, the National Assembly has taken a position on this which was respected. The other institutions that are concerned have made recommendations on this. This must be respected and we are also using this opportunity to cut on the presidency, not only President Muhammad but also to ensure that this illegality that is going on in the recruitment of the new Otto General of the Federation is quickly addressed so that we don't begin to set landmine for the incoming administration whenever they come because if this becomes the norm, we have seen so many institutions today where people are overstaying their time in office just because someone somewhere is giving them this level of confidence and disregarding the procedure disregarding the rules of civil service as the case may be and this is not only going to be counterproductive to us as a nation is that for the morale of people who are younger officers who are in the lower cadres of the civil service you cannot continue to use individual selfish ambitions to undermine the institutions of our democracy and the interests of our country. Okay, let me because there are those who would say that this is something that mostly happens or goes unnoticed in the civil service being that there are people who are have powers just as you said why does this case why is this case so interesting to the CPA as opposed to other people who have I mean for example in the army and in the force we see people who are not supposed to be holding certain positions holding it but then we don't see the CPA screaming blue murder on their behalf why now why this that's not totally correct if you have followed our activities only recently we have led series of protest and agitation over the continued stay of the acting controller general of the new immigration service who stand out and aspire April 22nd last year President Muhammad who had very graciously extended it for another one year which expired again on the 24th of April you know this year but the manners continue to stay in office so we have raised a lot not only on this but on several other institutions where people are fragmented abusing our laws and will not stop at this this is just one of the many cases as I speak to you we approve we are already caught over some of these issues so where this agitation is not limited to what is probably happening in this recruitment process but rather holistically we take a look at what happens across the institution of government most importantly most importantly because of our concern as Nigerians because of our interests in our democracy we cannot continue to allow a very few very very few people to continue to undermine our institutions for purely selfish you know political interests or whatever the case may be like we are currently witnessing Well I want to say thank you Ulufa Milocin for speaking with us on this issue we're going to keep our eyes on this story and see what the outcome is and thank you for doing what you do thank you for coming on the show You're welcome All right and that's the show tonight we want to thank you all for watching now if you want to play catch up on all of our different episodes of the program please go to Plus TV Africa on YouTube's Like Subscribe and follow all of our programs I'm Mary Annico and do have a good evening