Everything is a Freaking DNS problem

A couple of weeks a go Brian Profitt pinged me for a chat about Devops , the result of that chat , his article can now be found on the Zenoss blog, it's titled Datacenter Barometer: Better days arrive when dev meets ops

It's a very nice read with some pointers to places regular readers of my blog should already know ;)
So with lots of leading Open Source infrastructure companies on different levels, such as config management (OpsCode and Reductive Labs) , monitoring (Zenoss) , deployment (openQRM, RPath, and obviously Consultancy companies , the upcoming Devops conferences around the planet promise to be a lot of fun ! ;)

Oh, and apparently there is some more on the story on /.

Technorati Tags: devops ha krisbuytaert monitoring opensource zenoss

I would like to point the crowd to the Call For Presentaions of Loadays. , the Linux Open Administration Days .

The Linux Open Administration days 2010 will be the first edition of a new conference focusing on Linux and Open Administration, we are trying to fill a gap for System Engineers and Administrators using Open Source technologies"

More details on the Linux Open Administration Days site

I'll probably be there .. given the fact that the event will be 5 minutes from where I live .

Technorati Tags: antwerpen cfp conference drupal mysql opensource presentation talk tstad wilrijk

I know the biggest part of my fanclub already booked tickets for my upcoming presentations, but the other 2 might want to check their calendars to see if they aren't missing out on the good stuff :)

Next Sunday I`ll giving a shortish overview of MySQL HA alternatives in the MySQL and Friends devroom at Fosdem.

March will bring me to Manchester again for the UKUUG Spring conference where I`ll be giving a longer version of that presentation with a strong focus on integrating with PaceMaker, and automating the whole boostrap procedure of a HA setup.

Early may will bring me to Ede in the Netherlands where I`ll be telling the crowds at the NLUUG spring conference, about their new fancy jobtitles, as all the Systeembeheerders there will have to become Devministrators, or Devops if you prefer ...

Apart from my talks also watch out for LoadAys , PuppetCamp Europe, OpsCamp Europe and maybe a Real CloudCamp in Belgium :)

And I`m not the only Inuit on Tour,

Technorati Tags: conference devops devopsdays fanclubsarcasm mysql nluug opensource opscamp puppetcamp ukuug

When you pull out a disk from your Raid setup it shows a warning in syslog

Jan 27 10:18:22 EL860 kernel: 3w-9xxx: scsi0: AEN: WARNING (0x04:0x0019): Drive 
removed:port=1.
Jan 27 10:18:22 EL860 kernel: 3w-9xxx: scsi0: AEN: ERROR (0x04:0x0002): Degraded
 unit:unit=0, port=1.

However if no one is looking at syslog that won't really be helpfull.

3Ware provides a tool from their site called tw_cli which can be used to manage
the raid setup from the command line.

[EL860-root@EL860 admin]# tw_cli /c0 show 
 
Unit  UnitType  Status         %RCmpl  %V/I/M  Stripe  Size(GB)  Cache  AVrfy
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
u0    RAID-1    REBUILDING     41%     -       -       232.82    RiW    ON     
 
VPort Status         Unit Size      Type  Phy Encl-Slot    Model
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
p0    OK             u0   232.88 GB SATA  0   -            ST3250310NS         
p1    DEGRADED       u0   232.88 GB SATA  1   -            ST3250310NS         

I'd figure I'd either have to write wrapper script around that or find some other way of integrating it.
Asking the question on ##infra-talk on irc.freenode.net gave me the following link to a check script on github

koollman: sdog: something like http://github.com/stanaka/check_tw should work.

With that in your snmpd.conf you can get the info via snmp

[root snmp]#  snmpwalk  localhost   -v 2c  -c public  .1.3.6.1.4.1.2
021   | grep ext 
UCD-SNMP-MIB::extIndex.1 = INTEGER: 1
UCD-SNMP-MIB::extNames.1 = STRING: TW_RAID
UCD-SNMP-MIB::extCommand.1 = STRING: /usr/local/sbin/check_tw
UCD-SNMP-MIB::extResult.1 = INTEGER: 2
UCD-SNMP-MIB::extOutput.1 = STRING: CRITICAL: Unit: u0, Type: RAID-1, Status: RE
BUILDING
UCD-SNMP-MIB::extErrFix.1 = INTEGER: 0
UCD-SNMP-MIB::extErrFixCmd.1 = STRING: 
UCD-SNMP-MIB::ssSysContext.0 = INTEGER: 2073
UCD-SNMP-MIB::ssRawContexts.0 = Counter32: 11781783
UCD-DLMOD-MIB::dlmodNextIndex.0 = INTEGER: 1

Technorati Tags: 3w-9xxx 3ware didimentionihateraid linux monitoring opensource raid snmp

Fosdem is coming up again .. It's going to be the 10th edition already So it's going to be 2 days and nights of fun, tech and geek stuff

Lenz already posted the announcement , but allow me to recapitulate.

The MySQL & Friends meetup is on saturday evening , we'll meet around 1900 in front of the under the big tree in front of the AW building...

As with the Devops Meetup you can once again vote for your preferred food

The crowd voted and Favoured an Italian place , so I've made reservations for a 15+ persons group at Sogno d'Italia which is walking distance from the conference location, so there'wont be any hassle with cars and transport

The schedule for the Devroom is also already available

See u there :)

Technorati Tags: drupal fosdem mysql opensource

The Devops crowd does not have it's own devroom at Fosdem but will be meeting on Friday evening for food in a location close to the BeerEvent.

If you want to join us please let us know by voting on your favourite choice of Food. Using this doodle.

There's already about 15 people that are voting for the food selection ....

Plan is to meet outside of the BeerEvent around 2000 and
then move to a preferred food location.

Apparently the crowd wants plain Belgian food, so I've made reservations at Le Falstaff which is walking distance from the BeerEvent.
We should be there around 20:15

Don't hesitate to join us if you like DevOps talk

Technorati Tags: devops fosdem meeting opensource

Here's how it started :

So I used to be a software developer, writing perl for the web, then C, then Java, then PHP, till I realized nobody ever configured my servers correctly and I changed trades becoming a system engineer, while teaching new developers the basics of their trade, whom grew into doing Infrastructure Architecture .. familiar story for much of the crowd at DevopsDays ... a crowd that wants to stopping the war between developers and system engineering , a crowd that wants to automate builds, integrate testing, deploy, deploy on very large scale, deploy in the cloud and much more.

So what do you get when you put together some of the experts on building software, organizing development teams , Agile geeks, Cloud infrastructure projects, and Automating guru's in 1 location for 2 days in Gent ? Exactly .. DevopsDays ..

The format was 2 days .. 3 kickass formal talks in the morning.. Open Space sessions in the afternoon. ... Friday featured talks on Non Functional Requirements, CucumberNagios and Monitoring in the Cloud with FlapJack and Building Agile Infrastructures with Puppet while discussing the James White Manifesto ..

which I had never heard of, but which apparently comes down to this

== Rules ==
 On Infrastructure
 -----------------
 There is one system, not a collection of systems.
 The desired state of the system should be a known quantity.
 The "known quantity" must be machine parseable.
 The actual state of the system must self-correct to the desired state.
 The only authoritative source for the actual state of the system is the system.
 The entire system must be deployable using source media and text files.
 
 On Buying Software
 -------------------
 Keep the components in the infrastructure simple so it will be better understood.
 All products must authenticate and authorize from external, configurable sources.
 Use small tools that interoperate well, not one "do everything poorly" product.
 Do not implement any product that no one in your organization has administered.
 "Administered" does not mean saw it in a rigged demo, online or otherwise.
 If you must deploy the product, hire someone who has implemented it before to do so.
 
 On Automation
 -------------
 Do not author any code you would not buy.
 Do not implement any product that does not provide an API.
 The provided API must have all functionality that the application provides.
 The provided API must be tailored to more than one language and platform.
 Source code counts as an API, and may be restricted to one language or platform.
 The API must include functional examples and not requre someone to be an expert on the product to use.
 Do not use any product with configurations that are not machine parseable and machine writeable.
 All data stored in the product must be machine readable and writeable by applications other than the product itself.
 Writing hacks around the deficiencies in a product should be less work than writing the product's functionality.
 
 In general 
 ----------
 Keep the disparity in your architecture to an absolute minimum.
 Use [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_theory Set Theory] to accomplish this.
 Do not improve manual processes if you can automate them instead.
 Do not buy software that requires bare-metal.
 Manual data transfers and datastores maintained manually are to be avoided.

Much unlike the FAIL Manifesto

The openspaces tackled how to migrate from a totally unreproducable environment too a correctly bootstrapped infreaastructure, over the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud , then dinner and off for beers to the Vooruit . The OpenQRM "crowd" stayed at my place so I didn't stay around too late ..

Saturday morning came early ... sadly I missed the first 10 minutes of a very interresting talk about Kanban in operations ... let's ee if we can convince some more people to try it out ...

The talk on Continuous integration, Build Pipelines and Continuous deployment was also really interresting with lots of stories from the real world.. . after the openqRM talk it was time again for OpenSpaces with e.g discussions on svn vs git and building a feature matrix of Cloud , with @botchagalupe, @openqrm and @maesjoch in the room and @diegomarino online .

Devopsdays ended too soon , with way to much interresting ideas to build on .. Let's hope we can all work them out !

Technorati Tags: botchagalupe cloud dev devops devopsdays eucalyptus gent IBBT openqr opensource ops puppet

James Dixon has some polls on his blog, they let you choose between being a free software junkie, an open source hacker or what I'd call a an incompetent moron ;)

I had mostly 2's , no 3 in case you'd wonder.

Technorati Tags: free software freesoftware hacker junkie open source opensource

With the fresh launch of inuits.be this long overdue post popped up again , Earlier this year we got this very nice letter from the BSA That's right the Business Software Alliance.

The letter pictured below is in dutch, so allow me to translate
some parts :) (Although I`m pretty sure you've seen variations of this letter in different languages before..)

In short they are warning us about using software with no licenses.

They warn us, that in the next couple of weeks they will specifically focus on our sector, that is the Linux and Open Source Consultancy sector,

Obviously they are pointing out the potential legal risks we are taking if we would be using illegal software. What illegal software ? What on earth makes them think we are violating licenses ?

Now sending us that letter is just plain stupid, but sending that letter to a lot of other companies might get them all terrified , and that's just racketeering isn't it.

Anyhow feel free to have a good laugh with the letter below

Technorati Tags: bsa inuits opensource racketeering

I mean, we are heading towards 2010 , some of us have been using Open Source for decades, the Open Source vs Free Software discussion was like last millenium, and we've been doing open source consultancy for over a decade, yet today companies still think their customers are stupid,

Fancy this story on ZDNet today .. there's actually companies out there claiming that "Bind" because of it's FreeWare nature , yes that's right you've Read FREEWARE , (hadn't heard that word for over 5 years..) , is less secure than their proprietary offering in the Cloud. So the very nature of their Secure product is offering Security by Obscurity in an insecure environment .

The sad part is that they probably get customers that believe their story, afterall it's hosted in the Cloud .. so it must be good not ?

Oh well... James McGovern had a nice comment on that earlier today "

"The goal of the security market is to make money, not to ensure the customer's security"

I'll keep my security infrastructure Open, thank you very much

But afterall everything is a fine DNS Problem ...

Technorati Tags: bind dnsproblem morons obscurity opensource security