Everything is a Freaking DNS problem

One presentation done, one to go (and still some work to write it.)

I've just finished my "openQRM is not dead" talk at the Virtualization Miniconf at OLS.

The slides are here

As Tom and I will be heading to Ottawa for OLS Tomorrow you can expect some active blogging here this week..

That is if we can manage to find quality Wifi and our batteries last long enough..
before we find power :)

Anyway .. I`ll be heading to the Virtualization Mini Summit on tuesday, and then of to the big conference.

I`ll be presenting twice, once on the miniconf about openQRM4 and Tom and I will be presenting our findings comparing different monitoring tools such as Nagios, Hyperic, Zabbix , Zenoss and others at OLS itselve.

But don't hesitate to talk to me about other interresting topics such as MySQL or Drupal :)

Now first we have to cross a couple of borders, and an ocean :)

As I just mentioned on Virtualization.com and Matt just posted , openQRM is reaching 4.0 Beta state. Lots of new stuff , lots of changes.

From the things I've seen a couple of weeks ago it really looks a lot better, lightweight than the previous openQRM

Guess feeding Matt some Sushi helps :) You should try it too..

On Wednesday Gent hosted the IBBT Brokerage event, some usual crowd, lots of unusual crowd .. but mostly trying to figure out what's the difference between the startups I usually run into and the ones I saw at the IBBT event. The weirdest part .. the language .. Dutch...

Thursday was the Fireside chat with Seth , again some usual suspects , but also some unexpected people .. Seth gave an interesting overview of the current Java Content management platforms , Daisy, Magnolia,

Obviously the language debate came up , I really need to finish that blog post :)

The format, 1 presentation followed by 2 shorter group brainstorm sessions where one member of the group presented the findings was really interesting, you ended up speaking to people you don't always run into. Altough the 25 minute brainstorm sessions migyt be a bit longer. Definitely worth another version. Just the food afterwards... 3 times spare Ribs at Amadeus in 4 months time is just too much .. next time Gekroonde Hoofden please :)

Then Friday, Matt and I spent the day in Gent brainstorming about that undead project :)

A bit short notice but I`ll be giving a Xen talk tomorrow evening at the OSBC event in Eindhoven

Next week I`ll be talking to the interrested crowd about using openQRM to Manage your Datacenter at Linux World Expo Brussel

At LinuxWorld expo there are also other talks about OpenDoc Society, Drupal, Centos etc. The event is free .. so drop by if you are in the neighborhood.

Fosdem is over .. and it was ... overcrowded :(

Honestly trying to squeeze into an overcrowded bar, then on saturday overcrowded rooms, or even not being able to enter that room (Mozilla and Embedded) , Fosdem is starting to become the victim of it's own success.

Some people are suggesting Fosdem to move to the Arenberg campus in "Brussels-East" dunnow if Leuven can actually host enough beds for Fosdem :)
However the Beer event problem would be solved but Philip will have to make arrangements with 'The greatest bar of Western Europe"

The talk about Xen on ARM was interresting however the grande finale missed, the MiniOS just didn't boot :( Kettle was interresting and I should start spending time with it :) But then again .. so are a zillion other things Too bad the SWOT analysis between Postgress and MySQL got cancelled.
but it left me some breathing space :)

The evening ended with a mixed crowd of local Linux geeks and Drupal folks in the restaurant on walking distance.

On sunday morning I realized it must be the Fosdem weekend when you are on the E19 direction Brussels around 0900 and there is no traffic :)

I was right on time for the Drupal 6 and 7 talks from Gabor and Dries , which off course meant I was going to be too late for Ian's talk. Luckily I catched the important parts. The virtualbox talk disappointed me .. this was a marketing talk for endusers, not a talk suitable for Fosdem :(

Pascal learned that integration Amazon basically is a fine dns problem :) Then after some chatter with the MySQL crowd I headed into the Conary talk.. I was expecting a bit more information around their rbuilder system
I wondered into too much talks on sunday afternoon . the MySQL Proxy talk , the end of atogs talk which he didn't want to repeat :) Karan's talk .. etc.

I had to miss Simon's talk about Posgtress HA on sunday for the obvious reason , but luckily I could catch him on saturday to get a short sneak preview..

But more about those obvious reasons in a separate post :)

My Pics are over here. You'll be recognising Jan Kneschke, LVB , Thomas Bonte , Geert Vanderkelen, Dries, Gabor,Matt Casters and others.

Over at Virtualization.com my good friend Matt Rechenburg of openQRM fame got interviewed. Enjoy his insights..

This February I`ll be heading to my 8th Fosdem in row.

I went to every single Fosdem so far, some years only one day because of other obligations but I was a round most of the time
During the first couple of years I was pretty active in the FIT team, helping out people to find the right rooms , keeping the fosdem contributions safe with Sven, funding different social events and devroom dinners ,
Later I was in charge of the HPC and Cluster devroom in which we also held the openMosix summits.
And back in 2004 I replaced Moshe at the openMosix Summit standing in front of a great audience at the Janson room.

As Wim just pointed out the Drupal Devroom schedule is out
and it seems like 2008 will be the year that I have to rush my talk in order for the Drupal Devroom to close its doors on Sunday evening. I'll be sharing my knowledge on MySQL cluster with the Drupal crowd for them to learn and benefit from.

Henning Sprang seems to have a different view on the concept of a Vendor LockIn than I do

On his blog The daily laziness: OpenQRM vs. vendor lock in??? , he describes how openQRM Locks into using .. openQRM.

Well, not really .. at least not in my opinion, although openQRM still has a long way to go and the proposals for a meaner and leaner Henning gives are certainly valid,

openQRM however does not force you to do anything you don't like. The source is available and free, you can modify its behaviour , you yourselve can spend time on in, learn and modify the platform no one .
(given the complexity I agree you won't dive into it in just 5 minutes but you nothing (b)locks you)

Certainly in the virtualization field openQRM gives you the freedom to migrate your machines from one virtualization technology to another, Today VMWare, tomorrow KVM, the week after Xen
or all 3 or them from one management console (can come handy after a merger) all with the same interface. None of the commercial products out there will even think about giving you a GUI to manage their competition.

On top of that when you go out and buy VMWare , you can only manage VMWare instances and you get a framework that will also force you to work in a way you can't change. You have only one company to talk to, VMWare, (maybe via its integrators but they can't fix issues , they don't have the source) with openQRM you can hire other people besides Qlusters , you can change to another organisation to support you.

Try that with VMWare , I fear you are Locked In

Lots of people are commenting on VMWare's vision on Open Source
With statements like
What we want to do is fund ourselves to be able to build new stuff. If you're purely open source, there is no way you can do new stuff.
you'll lose credibility pretty fast.
It's clear that proprietary software companies can't keep up with the speed of open source development so they need to spread more FUD on a daily base.

Half a decade ago Open Source indeed was catching up on proprietary software and trying to implement features that the other side already had. We have long passed that moment .. Xen and KVM are the technology leaders of the pack. The rest is trying to keep up. (And it's not only in the Virtualisation area that we see this evolution)

Yes VMWare does similar things under the hood with a more fancy GUI as Tarry notes but in a way indeed they are heading the way Microsoft showed them they way. Or aren't they..? Apple did nothing really new with the iPod, apart from its slick interface. But today Apple is feeling the heath from people not wanting their DRM, wanting to play OGG , and people wanting to use their device from non Apple platforms.
So people clearly want something more open, not one tool that locks them in with a vendor. If you really are looking for a GUI to manage your platforms you'd better choose for one that can manage them all