Walter Bentley is a Rackspace Private Cloud Technical Marketing Engineer and author with a diverse background in production systems administration and solutions architecture. He has more than 15 years of experience in sectors such as online marketing, financial, insurance, aviation, the food industry, education, and now in technology. In the past, he was typically the requestor, consumer, and advisor to companies in the use of technologies such as OpenStack. Today, he’s an OpenStack promoter and cloud educator. In his current role, Walter helps customers build, design, and deploy private clouds built on OpenStack. That includes professional services engagements around operating OpenStack clouds and DevOps engagements creating playbooks/roles with Ansible. He presents and speaks regularly at OpenStack Summits, AnsibleFest, and other technology conferences, plus webinars, blog posts and technical reviews. His first book, OpenStack Administration with Ansible, was released in 2016.
I would like to thank my wife and best friend Tasha for allowing me to take on this life changing opportunity for the second time around. Without her understanding and support I do not think it could have all happened. She is truly my life’s motivation. Also, wish to thank my wonderful daughters, London and Rio, for bringing so much joy to our lives. Thank you to my mother and father for cultivating the technical spirit within me from a very early age (that Commodore 64 was definitely my springboard…LOL).
I would also like to thank my coworker and fellow architect Kevin Jackson for providing me with the courage to take on this project. I also wish to give deep thanks and gratitude to all of my mentors over the years I have had the privilege to work for and with. Those individuals include David Bartlett, Tyrone Paige, Steve Contrabasso, and Mike Childress. Their multitude of great advice has allowed me to be where I am today.