Everything is a Freaking DNS problem

Funny how different experiences lead to different evaluations of tools. The MySQL HA solutions the MySQL Performanceblog list, are almost listed in the complete opposited order of what my impressions are.

Ok agreed, I should probably not put my MySQL NDB experiences from 2-3 years ago with multiple Query of deaths and more problems than you into account anymore , but back then went in the list Less stable than a single node. I've had NDB POC setups going down for much more than 05:16 minutes
Ndb comes with a lot of restrictions, there are

As for MySQL on DRBD, I've said this before , I love DRBD, but having to wait for a long InnoDB recovery after a failover just kills your uptime ,
I remember being called by a customer during Fred last holiday who was waiting over 20 minutes for recovery , twice, so putting the DRBD/San setup second would not be my preference. But agreed .. it's only listed at 99.9% meaning almost 9 hours of downtime per year are allowed.

On the other hand we've seen database uptime of MySQL MultiMaster setups with Heartbeat reaching better figures than 99.99% Heck I've seen single nodes achieve better than 99.99% :)

So what does this teach us ... there is no golden rule for HA, lots of situations are different, it's the preferences of the customer, the size of the database, the kind of application , and much
more .. you always need to think and evaluate the environment ...

For those who wonder why my blogging is so low these days (apart from today) .. I`m actually writing more Lines of Code than Blog Entries the last couple of weeks:)

And when I`m not writing code I`m reading :) Either proofreading an upcoming book on Zabbix or reading some of the other books Packt sent me.

Next to that I`m busy preparing my T-Dose presentation

Oh and did I mention a 40 something questions questionnaire about some merger ?

There is once again a lot of fuzz going on about Open Source Business models,

First on my eyballs was the article that Customers don't seem to like openCore what a big surprise ..

So that's not the one that makes the customers happy ,

Then there is the other side of the coin, the people that create open source
Authors realize the dual licensing model comes hunting back at you after a merger or a hostile acquisition, yes they still have the source code to build on but they can't sell commercial licenses to their customers anymore they way they used to.

So that's not the one that eventually makes the authors happy,

Then there is the RedHat model, which tends to please a lot of people, which tends to be something traditional IT resellers can take in their portofolio, but partnering with a RedHat style company as an open source expert consultancy company isn't easy , as the expert consultancy companies have the knowledge themselves and won't push reselling subscriptions.

So that doesn't make the Distribution Vendors happy

Back when XenSource came on the market we asked them if they could help us supporting some of our customers with Xen deployments, they didn't care they wanted to build a product and a fast exit ..

That didn't make us as an integrator nor the customer happy.

You'd think us opensource folks are really unhappy wouldn't you ?
Wrong.. as we are all in it .. Just for Fun

and the money!

Dear MySQL and Drupal , Plone and other Open Source folks, you might want to be interrested in giving a talk at T-Dose 2009 ,

Jean Paul pinged me with the following mail :

Maybe it escaped your attention that the Call For Papers for T-DOSE 2009 is already out. It has been announced on 12th of June 2009. Below you will find the original announcement.

Call for Papers and Projects
Fri, 06/12/2009 - 13:57 — jpsaman

T­-DOSE is a free and yearly event held in The Netherlands to promote use and development of Open Source Software. During this event Open Source projects, developers and visitors can exchange ideas and knowledge. It is held at the Fontys University of Applied Science on 3 and 4 October 2009.

Speakers can send ideas and abstracts to the organisation at abstracts _AT_ t-dose.org. The e­mail should contain a short biography of the speaker and description of the talk. All talks will be held in English and last ~50 minutes. The deadline for abstracts ends on 31st of August 2009.

At the event location there is room for Open Source market. Stands and rooms are free of charge. Applications for stands are handled in order.
More information is here; http://www.t-dose.org/t-dose/files/t-dose-2009.pdf

I hope to see you all at this years T-DOSE.

Kind greetings,

Jean-Paul Saman

T-DOSE Foundation
www.t-dose.org

Jan Wildeboer pointed us to the Mayflower post about their letter from the European Commission.

It seems like the the European Commision , more specifically the Directorate General for Competition , really is interested in our input regarding the matter, I mailed them and also got a questionnaire to fill in.

So if you have something interesting to tell them don't hesitate to contact them too.

There seem to be different repeating topics within the Open Source and Geek community.

Koen did a good job explaining how the Great Belgian Firewall reall can't be solved using DNS tricks.

And Giuseppe tackles the ever recurring Sushi. It has to be said ... Geeks love Sushi and not just the MySQl geeks , every conference we go to we try to squeeze in at least 1 Sushi visit.. sometimes more ..... Nurenberg, Manchester, Cambridge, Ottawa , ... and there's more to come .. :)

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post titled Dear IBM , I was too late .. I was on holliday last week when people started sending me text messages , such as .. "Game Over MySQL , Long live Ingress" or "No Eclipse for IBM", etc ...

I had ideas regarding the future of certain Sun products at IBM, now the game has changed .. it'ss how they will live on at Oracle :)

Similar Questions arise .. like indeed the future of MySQL, the future of Solaris etc ...

So regarding the future of MySQL , I don't worry at all, on the contrary ..
Oracle tried buying mysql before they already have Innodb .. they didn't kill it .. the MySQL offering is complementary to the Oracle offering, now they can tackle both markets.
And as already mentionned when writing my IBM letter ..

As for MySQL, Jeremey has some good insights.. the fact that different prominent MySQL folks have left Sun will only push the MySQL development model towards more openness.
And towards an even more Redder RedHat alike model, we already have the first CentOS alike rebuilds of MySQL , so a distribution model based on the same kernel with different feature sets or focus indeed might be the future.

Further there's what Monty Said ... hang on ... nobody mentions the fact that some core PostgreSQL people are on Sun's payroll how's that going to turn out ?

A more interresting discussion is the future of Solaris one.. Oracle has always had an eye for Solaris.. one day it is their most important platform, the other day they tell the world Linux is their prime development platform, it often was a matter of who was quoted.

As for Unbreakable Oracle did a smart thing.. they learned that they should build a full operating system themselves but , so why should they want to do that with Solaris ?

LinuxWorld has an article where oracle states their idea about Linux :
"
What we are working to do in the data center ... is to make Linux the default for the data center OS," Screven said in a speech at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit in San Francisco. "We want there to be no question"

They suggest a merger between Solaris and Linux is a potential alternative .. so what do we need to merge .. you'd say ZFS and DTrace ..,but do we really need ZFS ?
There has been a lot of writing already about BTRFS being the next big filesystem, maybe it could make ZFS obsolete, maybe it couldn't ..

I got no clue on what's going to happen with OO.org .. so I`m really going to keep an eye on that one ..

In my opinion the real loser in this deal .. HP .. they don't have a full stack to play with .. They have the hardware, some management and monitoring software soon to be obsolete but no Operating System, no Database, no Appserver, no Apps. So what's their next move going to be ?

Oh and if you really want to talk figures Larry Augustin has a good take on it ... the idea that Oracle could sell off some parts to Hitachi EMC etc, get MySQL and Sun for Free ... then quietly wait for RedHat .. to get Jboss who knows :)

PS. I already blogged about the impact of the acquistion on the Virtualization area over at Virtualization.com

When you eventually will buy Sun ..

Oh nooos.. I started this post last week and now it al seems in vain :(

Steven has some clues on what could have happened, I think he is right on the spot on with his Solaris prediction ..

He wonders why IBM would spend even another dime on Solaris, actually even today I can't even see why Sun is spending any more money on developing Solaris. But even with no acquisition his prediction of the future of Open Solaris imvho is spot on:

OpenSolaris will likely live on as a purely community-based operating system. After failing to gain any real traction against Linux, I expect it to become like the BSD operating systems: useful in niches and with a strong, core group of developers, but never to become a major operating system power.

As for Sparc, well I told it before.. and given the Siemens- Fujitsu split, given that Fujitsu has the money (which is where I have no clue) and given 2 Sparc companies with completing markets , both geographically as on hardware and software level.. merging Fujitsu and Sun would make sense ...

Looking around me .. I think Netbeans has already been Eclipsed ages ago .. I once used to work with NetBeans, but today I don't know a lot of people who still use it.

As for MySQL, Jeremey has some good insights.. the fact that different prominent MySQL folks have left Sun will only push the MySQL development model towards more openness.
And towards an even more Redder RedHat alike model, we already have the first CentOS alike rebuilds of MySQL , so a distribution model based on the same kernel with different feature sets or focus indeed might be the future.

Steven has a nice follow up on what can happen with Sun now. But the obvious problem would have been be the culture clash , at least for the MySQL folks.. , I can hardly imagine al that nice code being written with no Liquor :)

So the cat is out of the bag,

As of today Inuits is rebranding to Pinuits,
The press release is here

We've had good feedback on the new name so far. Different people told me the name matched better to what we are doing . Actually my wife thinks our new name is much better as at least the Pin in Pinuits refers to our favourite Tux again ..

Finding an appropriate name for an Open Source consultancy company, with focus on Linux, Open Source Monitoring, MySQL, Open Source Virtualization , Large Scale Deployments , High Availability and Drupal, isn't easy .. you want to show both community involvement and professionality. And find a domain that's still available.

Grab your calendars and mark the following dates :

• T-Dose 2009 will be held on 3 and 4 october in Eindhoven again.

  Last year we had a nice Drupal track, some great MySQL talks and , a great unplanned Cloud talk , and different other interesting talks, so this year promises also to be very interesting.
  (PS. Drupal Themers.. you might want to propose a new theme for the T-Dose site, who knows you'll even win something)

• For the first time , 2009 will be the year that Belgium will have it's own Security Conference, BruCon has just announced Christofer Hoff as a KeyNote speaker , BruCon will take place on 18 and 19 september... obviously in Brussels ;)
• While we mention VirtSec I obviously should plug my own upcoming VirtSec talk at the LSec Secure Virtualization seminar on next Friday 13th