With a properly setup configuration management system you can have it all.
One button, dummy-mode provisioning - os install, configuration files, daemons, monitoring and metrics, authentication and external NAS/SAN storage in one swoop.
I would recommend checking out cobbler/puppet/koan or a tuned cfengine/pxe+kickstart setup.
cfengine is great for what it does. It really just depends on your use case. The only downside is that I am not certain cfengine is still actively maintained.
If you want to customize cfengine you are going to use perl, if you are going to customize puppet you are going to use ruby.
Both are fine, you need to figure out your infrastructure and scalability needs - I have found puppet scales a bit better for large, complex stacks but cfengine is easier for more static, less changing environments.
We use a robust configuration management/provisioning system consisting of puppet, cobbler and koan.
Puppet is easily scaleable for just about any sort of server need, cobbler and koan take care of the heavy lifting for provisioning. It's also fairly easy to write your own puppet types and modules for various tasks.
With one command we are able to provision a server from bare metal (or vm) to a fully working server, complete with SAN/NAS storage, fully operational daemons and authentication.
I've been in this position a few times because in game development, there are lots of bad games out there that are rushed to completion to sync them up with the release of a film
with expensive upper management/executive types is they do rove from company to company, doing the exact same thing they did at their previous job.
The notion that it might not work at a different organization never comes up or is questioned, they want be seen making large, sweeping changes.
An example would be shoving some mandate down the pipe like an open floorplan for "collaboration" which in most cases turns into a noisy, distracting work environment that just ends up impeding efficiency rather than enhancing it.
Because this was "so successful" at their last job, the lack of effectiveness at the present can easily be blamed on staff, culture, etc.
For larger, more destructive mandates these guys are usually out the door, resume in hand before the full catastrophic effects have been fully felt or realized.
Don't do either. Just knock off an armored car and retire. It's totally out of style and hasn't been done since "Heat" with De Niro and Pacino. They will never see it coming.
The other day I was trying to explain this so someone with regards to dual booting Windows and Linux. If your windows machine gets infected and the attacker gets "root" access. Your Linux machines is also completely at risk.
This is not true for a dual boot setup using any standard Linux filesystem - Windows is not able to natively see/read/access ext2 and ext3 partitions.
Given the Microsoft-Red Hat deal in February, are we seeing Red Hat's 'Novell Moment?
Quite the contrary, At the time of Novell's "deal" Microsoft also came to Red Hat, who turned it down.
The "deal" you refer to above is simply an open agreement to validate each other's OS's in their respective virtualization environments.
The push for this seemed to come from Red Hat customers who wanted to run Windows Server variants virtualized inside of RHEL.
"Red Hat will validate Windows Server 2003 SP2, Windows 2000 Server SP42, and Windows Server 2008 guests on Red Hat Enterprise virtualization technologies.
Microsoft will validate Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 and 5.3 guests on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V (all editions) and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008."
One morning I came in and was looking at the logs. SMART was reporting that one of the disks in one of the servers was going to go bad soon. Not 15 minutes after i even noticed this in the logs, an IBM tech was there with a fresh one ready to replace it.
Netapp offers this too, they call it "Autosupport." Anytime a disk or piece of hardware is acting up a replacement gets automatically mailed to me - usually arrives in less than 4hrs.
So, I update my res and look at the listings on Monster.
That's your problem. Try Dice or one of the other sites that specialize in tech. Monster has lost all credibility it once had in my eyes due to their consistently irresponsible approach to the security of their customer's information.
update google to point to my (currently private) blog
Doesn't that defeat the purpose of a blog? If it's private I would instead call it a journal, you can put all of your innermost thoughts into it and hide it under your bed.
Personally, I've been keeping my eye on Apache Directory Server [apache.org]. It's modern, it's Java-based, it's easy to setup, it's open source, and it's made by Apache. What more could you want?;-)
In my mind Linux has one major problem - too many different subsystems for developers - KDE or GNOME, RPM or DEB etc.
Desktop Environments are really irrevelant, whether it's GTK+ or QT (KDE) based or something different, it will still run on your DE of choice.
Packagekit solves a lot of problems on the package management front-end, providing a one-stop abstraction for package management regardless of what format is underneath (deb,rpm,etc).
Slashdot Mirror
With a properly setup configuration management system you can have it all.
One button, dummy-mode provisioning - os install, configuration files, daemons, monitoring and metrics, authentication and external NAS/SAN storage in one swoop.
I would recommend checking out cobbler/puppet/koan or a tuned cfengine/pxe+kickstart setup.
cfengine is great for what it does. It really just depends on your use case. The only downside is that I am not certain cfengine is still actively maintained.
If you want to customize cfengine you are going to use perl, if you are going to customize puppet you are going to use ruby.
Both are fine, you need to figure out your infrastructure and scalability needs - I have found puppet scales a bit better for large, complex stacks but cfengine is easier for more static, less changing environments.
We use a robust configuration management/provisioning system consisting of puppet, cobbler and koan.
Puppet is easily scaleable for just about any sort of server need, cobbler and koan take care of the heavy lifting for provisioning. It's also fairly easy to write your own puppet types and modules for various tasks.
With one command we are able to provision a server from bare metal (or vm) to a fully working server, complete with SAN/NAS storage, fully operational daemons and authentication.
I've been in this position a few times because in game development, there are lots of bad games out there that are rushed to completion to sync them up with the release of a film
You mean like E.T. for Atari?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.T._the_Extra-Terrestrial_(video_game)
with expensive upper management/executive types is they do rove from company to company, doing the exact same thing they did at their previous job.
The notion that it might not work at a different organization never comes up or is questioned, they want be seen making large, sweeping changes.
An example would be shoving some mandate down the pipe like an open floorplan for "collaboration" which in most cases turns into a noisy, distracting work environment that just ends up impeding efficiency rather than enhancing it.
Because this was "so successful" at their last job, the lack of effectiveness at the present can easily be blamed on staff, culture, etc.
For larger, more destructive mandates these guys are usually out the door, resume in hand before the full catastrophic effects have been fully felt or realized.
Don't do either. Just knock off an armored car and retire. It's totally out of style and hasn't been done since "Heat" with De Niro and Pacino. They will never see it coming.
Personally if I left tech I'd head for business development, but that's just me. You still get to play with all the latest toys that way. :)
Personally if I left tech I'd head for business development, but that's just me. You still get to play with all the latest hookers that way. :)
There, fixed that for you.
The other day I was trying to explain this so someone with regards to dual booting Windows and Linux. If your windows machine gets infected and the attacker gets "root" access. Your Linux machines is also completely at risk.
This is not true for a dual boot setup using any standard Linux filesystem - Windows is not able to natively see/read/access ext2 and ext3 partitions.
Given the Microsoft-Red Hat deal in February, are we seeing Red Hat's 'Novell Moment?
Quite the contrary, At the time of Novell's "deal" Microsoft also came to Red Hat, who turned it down.
The "deal" you refer to above is simply an open agreement to validate each other's OS's in their respective virtualization environments.
The push for this seemed to come from Red Hat customers who wanted to run Windows Server variants virtualized inside of RHEL.
"Red Hat will validate Windows Server 2003 SP2, Windows 2000 Server SP42, and Windows Server 2008 guests on Red Hat Enterprise virtualization technologies.
Microsoft will validate Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 and 5.3 guests on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V (all editions) and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008."
source: http://truthhappens.redhat.com/2009/02/16/red-hat-and-microsoft-expand-server-virtualization-interoperability/
Where I work (3000+ employees) we make use of Request Tracker.
It's an OSS ticket tracking system written in OO Perl, has a SQL backend, plugs into kerberos and scales pretty well.
http://bestpractical.com/rt/
For bonus points, Gut a fish on your desk.
I've always wanted to do this.
He may be a talented web developer, but he appears to be a pretty terrible sysadmin.
This seems to be reoccurring theme.
One morning I came in and was looking at the logs. SMART was reporting that one of the disks in one of the servers was going to go bad soon. Not 15 minutes after i even noticed this in the logs, an IBM tech was there with a fresh one ready to replace it.
Netapp offers this too, they call it "Autosupport." Anytime a disk or piece of hardware is acting up a replacement gets automatically mailed to me - usually arrives in less than 4hrs.
So, I update my res and look at the listings on Monster.
That's your problem. Try Dice or one of the other sites that specialize in tech. Monster has lost all credibility it once had in my eyes due to their consistently irresponsible approach to the security of their customer's information.
update google to point to my (currently private) blog
Doesn't that defeat the purpose of a blog? If it's private I would instead call it a journal, you can put all of your innermost thoughts into it and hide it under your bed.
somehow I was not logged in when posting the previous comment
One of my biggest beefs with ext3 in the data center is the required fsck periodically.
And what keeps you from just running tune2fs and turning off the disk checking (or making the check interval ridiculously long) ?
Bandwidth is also practically irrelevant as even HD video can stream of 802.11g let alone 802.11n without a problem.
700-1.4gb sized avi movies sure, but you aren't going to be streaming 720p+ HD content over wifi.
You really need Gbit speeds to play seamless HD content over a network.
Personally, I've been keeping my eye on Apache Directory Server [apache.org]. It's modern, it's Java-based, it's easy to setup, it's open source, and it's made by Apache. What more could you want? ;-)
Make it not Java-based?
Where might this be?
and if I want to download a program and install it, it is not intuitive like it is in windows
Have you used a recent distribution with packagekit lately? (i.e. Fedora)
It's way easier than windows package management
http://www.packagekit.org/pk-screenshots.html
In my mind Linux has one major problem - too many different subsystems for developers - KDE or GNOME, RPM or DEB etc.
Desktop Environments are really irrevelant, whether it's GTK+ or QT (KDE) based or something different, it will still run on your DE of choice.
Packagekit solves a lot of problems on the package management front-end, providing a one-stop abstraction for package management regardless of what format is underneath (deb,rpm,etc).
http://www.packagekit.org/pk-intro.html
on my dell mini 9, boots much faster than f9
Minus some features of sharepoint, openoffice.org already offers a better experience for the average user for free than that of MS Office.
Where is the native x86_64 version they have promised for so long?