Book signing at LISA: Taming Information Technology
In the past I've said good things a few different times about "Taming Information Technology: Lessons from Studies of System Administrators" by Eser Kandogan, Paul Maglio, Eben Haber and John Bailey....
View ArticleBook signing at LISA: Taming Information Technology
In the past I've said good things a few different times about "Taming Information Technology: Lessons from Studies of System Administrators" by Eser Kandogan, Paul Maglio, Eben Haber and John Bailey....
View ArticleWhat's your "LISA '12 moment"?
Every year at Usenix LISA it seems that there is a moment where someone says something that makes me want to jump up and shout, "OMG! Learning that just paid for my entire conference!" It may be...
View ArticleVint Cerf's keynote at LISA '12
Did you miss the Usenix LISA live stream of Vint Cerf's keynote? Video is online: http://ow.ly/g38p7
View ArticleReview of my LISA '12 half-day tutorial on Time Management for Sysadmins
Ben Cotton write an excellent summary of my half-day tutorial from LISA this year: https://www.usenix.org/blog/time-management-system-administrators-0
View ArticleAll outages are due to a failure to plan
I can't take credit for this, as a co-worker recently introduced me to this point. All outages are, at their core, a failure to plan. If a dead component (for example, a hard drive) failed, then there...
View ArticleJan 1 reminder:
If you use "The Cycle", today is the day you review your "long term goals" list. Cross out obsolete items or items that you now realize only seemed like a good idea at the time. Pick the 1-2 most...
View ArticleWent to Epcot
Mission: Space is still the best ride ever invented. Here's a postcard: from spaaaaace How was your December break?
View ArticleCascadia IT Conference 2013 schedule announced!
Cascadia IT Conference 2013 has announced their tutorial lineup and it looks great! If you are in the Seattle area, or can travel there, this is a can't miss conference! Here are some of the tutorial...
View ArticleBug of the day: getent's surprise
What's wrong with this as a way to turn a hostname into a FQDN? FQDN=$(getent hosts "$SHORT" | awk '{ print $2 }') Answer: getent can return multiple lines of results. This only happens if the system...
View ArticleLOPSA-NJ February 7 meeting is a "Cluster Meeting"
This month the NJ chapter of LOPSA's meeting will be something special. Rather than meeting at a library near Princeton, there will be two meetings on the same day: one north and one south. Each...
View ArticleLabeling Machines Is A Safety Precaution
Something happened at home today that reminded me of something I used to do when I worked at Bell Labs. My rule was simple. If a machine in the computer room wasn't labeled, I was allowed to power it...
View ArticleGaneti "list" subcommand tips: list output and filtering
If you use the Ganeti command line you probably have used gnt-instance list and gnt-node list. In fact, most of the gnt-* commands have a list subcommand. Here's some things you probably didn't know....
View ArticleRegistration is now open for Cascadia IT Conference 2013!
You do not want to miss this conference! http://casitconf.org/ You will learn how to automate the configuration of all your systems when Nathen Harvey teaches you Chef or Garrett Honeycutt teaches you...
View ArticleOperational aspects of a system
Users tend to be concerned with what a system does (features, functionality) and sysadmins tend to be concerned with the operational aspects of a system. I just noticed this great Wikipedia page that...
View ArticleRegistration is now open for Cascadia IT Conference 2013!
You do not want to miss this conference! http://casitconf.org/ You will learn how to automate the configuration of all your systems when Nathen Harvey teaches you Chef or Garrett Honeycutt teaches you...
View ArticleBooks I've recommended in the last week:
Realizing that I've recommended a lot of books lately. I thought I'd list them here for others to benefit. I'm not saying I've read them all and these are the best, but these are the ones I've read and...
View Article"The Finer Art of Being a Senior Sysadmin"
Sheeri K. Cabral's talk from LCA2013 is now available online: "The Finer Art of Being a Senior Sysadmin" The video is 17 minutes long and makes a lot of references to a blog post I wrote last...
View ArticleLabel those datacenter cables!
Matt Simmons of the Standalone Sysadmin blog asked about labeling network cables in a datacenter on the LOPSA-Tech mailing list which brought up a number of issues. He wrote:So, my current situation is...
View ArticleMetcalfe's law
Metcalfe's law states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system (n^2). Robert M. Metcalfe, the inventor of Ethernet,...
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