Everything is a Freaking DNS problem

Devops Needs Sushi

Converting KVM to VirtualBox

I have had most of my test environment, aka puppetmasters, test mysql setups etc running in KVM for the past couple of years .. (yes I`m still using a lot of Xen in production environments, but we’ve also been using KVM for a while already .. it’s a good mix) , Virtual box has always been the lesser loved Virtualization platform , however while playing more and more with Vagrant Up I realized I needed to convirt some boxen (e.g my PuppetMaster) to Virtualbox, and google was really no good help(most people seem to go the other way , or want to use some proprietary tools )

Ensure Running

Has anyone noticed that pretty much every puppet module one finds on the internet by default enables the service they try to configure in the module

When looking at it from a single machine point of view it makes sense to include the module , have it configure your service and directly enable it by default.

So I started wondering .. isn’t there anybody out there who is building clusters ? Where services have to configured on multiple nodes but should NOT be running acitvely on all nodes by default because there is an external tool which manages that for you (Pacemaker framework eg.)

At Fosdem

  • on Friday evening , apparently having a confirmed reservation in a resto is not enough to actually be welcome at that restaurant.
  • at DrupalDevdays, only 2 laptops were open during our presentation
  • at DrupalDevdays, almost nobody in the room was already using CI
  • at Fosdem , the parking lot is full before 11:30 on a saturday
  • at Fosdem , much less Macs than last years .
  • at Fosdem , way too much rooms are already at full capacity so you need to have 2-3 backup alternatives ..
  • at Fosdem , people expect me to be in certain rooms, at the same time
  • at Fosdem , even with too much rooms already full one still misses a bunch of interresting talks
  • at Fosdem , one doesn’t even realize friends are speaking there too ..
  • at Fosdem , Android is the standard …
  • at Fosdem , you are confronted with the fact you probably forgot more names of people than you remember ;(
  • at Fosdem , you are surrounded by famous open source people, that aren’t even on the schedule
  • at the MySQL Meetup Dinner, Monty brings Salmiakki
  • at Fosdem , you wonder how many other people have survived their 11th edition
  • at Fosdem , you can’t get into any devroom on sunday morning
  • at Fosdem , begging on Twitter to get in to a devroom from the other side of the door works (at least for me :))
  • at Fosdem , netbooks are much less popular as opposed to 2-3 years ago ..
  • after fosdem … you crash ..\

Reservation Confirmed

Apparently I don’t understand french :(

Copied from my inbox …

1. From: 	Info Falstaff <info@lefalstaff.be>
2. To: 	'Kris Buytaert' <Kris.Buytaert@youalreadyknowmyaddy.be>
3. Subject: 	RE: Reservation Next Friday 4/2/2011
4. Date: 	Fri, 28 Jan 2011 16:55:45 +0100

6. je confirme votre  reservation pour le vendredi 04 02 2011

8. vous trouverez ci-joint nos differentes formules

10. bien à vous

12. guy Lommen chef de cuisine

Upcoming 2011 Speaking Engagements

Lenz gave the good example so I`ll follow :)

Next weekend saturday I`ll be giving a talk about devops at StartUp Weekend Brussels, from what I’ve read so far it promises to be an audience that needs the talk,

The week after I`ll be speaking at the DrupalDevDays, again about devops , however this time with a touch of Drupal , giving a devops talk at Devoxx last year to a Java audience learned me that the devops evangelist need to go outside of their usual conference audiences and als talk to the people that are usually in the other silos.

Devops Meetups before Fosdem , 2011 Edition

Just last last year we’ll have a Devops meetup just before Fosdem,
I’ve setup a page for registrations , that way we’ll know how many people to make reservations for.

If possible we’ll go to the same place as last year .. walking distance from the Fosdem Beer event.

Feel free to spread the news !

Appliance or Not Appliance

That’s the question Xavier asks in his blog entry titled
Security: DIY or Plug’n’Play

To me the answer is simple, most of the appliances I ran into so far have no way of configuring them apart from the ugly webgui they ship with their device. That means that I can’t integrate them with the configuration management framework I have in place for the rest of the infrastructure. There is no way to automatically modify e.g firewall rules together with the relocation of a service which does happen automatically, and there is always some kind of manual interaction required. Applicances tend to sit on a island, either stay un managed ( be honest when’s the last time you upgraded the firmware of that terminal server ? ) , or take a lot of additional efort to manage manually. They require yet another set of tools than the set you are already using to manage your network.
They don’t integrate with your backup strategy, and don’t tell me they all come with perfect MIB’s.

The New devops Audience, Drupalistas !

When I first started out giving talks about devops , I realized that I was preaching to the choir, some Barcamps, the Keynote at Loadays , the Dutch Unix Usergroup etc .. lots of people in the audiences knew about the pains we were trying to solve, lots of them already knew some of the tools we use and lots of them already talk a lot with their developers or are part of the deveoplment teams