Our CloudBolt 8.5 Botha release now supports a new resource handler for AWS China that was championed by one of our support engineers, Bryce Swarm. He worked with our development engineers to provide infrastructure provisioning for AWS in China for one of our customers.
I asked him what led him to getting this new resource handler in 8.5 and we discussed this as well as other aspects of his role at CloudBolt.
How did the AWS China resource handler come about?
Bryce: “One of our customers needed to expand their provisioning in China. Although we have complete coverage of AWS in the Americas and the EU, we did not have a resource handler for China on our roadmap.
Don’t already have support for AWS?
Bryce: There are a number of differences connecting to the China AWS cloud that are not the same as what we have in the US. I decided to help this customer and work with our developers to get this to them as a patch and then hopefully release with our next GA release.”
This seemed to eventually work out well for everyone. I then asked Bryce what’s it like on the support team at CloudBolt.
Bryce: “As engineers on the CloudBolt support team, we handle the day-to-day requests from customers who submit support tickets. We help them address configuration issues and troubleshoot scenarios with our software and their specific environments.
Next I asked him,” What are some good strategies you use for handling support cases?”
Bryce: “Being able to identify whether an issue is related to the customer’s specific environment or a software bug is a key factor in helping resolve issues quickly. In some cases, it’s a limitation on their side and in other cases it’s something that we can address with some customization of our software.”
With this recent of the AWS China resource handler, I asked him, “How is this collaboration possible at CloudBolt?”
Bryce: “As support engineers, we pride ourselves on actually being developers as well as support so we can contribute directly to the product when needed for faster delivery. CloudBolt has an extensible platform for customizing anything we ship and also provides a platform to develop new integrations with resource handlers and other elements of cloud delivery and management.”
From Support to Production at CloudBolt
Although releases for any modern agile delivery model are based on planning and a roadmap of priorities, they might not always capture the urgency of a particular need in the field. One such case was for connecting to AWS China as a priority for one of our customers. Instead of just adding a story to the backlog of feature requests, Bryce tackled the initial research and development for this resource handler to assist our customer and then make it easier for our developers to ship as a regular feature.
Here’s our list of technology resource handlers in CloudBolt with AWS China:
