Posts by wigginsix

Give in to data centre automation and change your life

Re: Puppet & Chef

Thanks for your comments Nate.

I have to agree with you. I personally loathe the term webscale, but unfortunately Gartner has started using it and it's steadily making its way into the everyday terminology of vendors in the IT world. Everyone wants to pretend that their offering is webscale. Like cloud it has little to no real meaning other than to be a buzzword category for vendors to pay Gartner to advertise them in.

For most of the clients I've ever worked with any installation with 3 physical servers and above IS webscale as far as they are concerned. In the real world most admins, myself very much included, won't ever see an implementation of sufficient size to be defined as webscale by the folks at Gartner. Does it mean then that we shouldn't use automation (or orchestration) to make things easier? For me that answer is absolutely not.

I'm sorry that I lost you when I mentioned webscale (and I hope I didn't just lose you again), but I tried to make the point near the end of the piece that there is no one size fits all equation when it comes to automation. It's purely subjective when and for what you should use it.

Personally, I use scripted automation to perform all the mindlessly repetitive tasks that need to be done everyday and then to email me the log files for those tasks. I also use runbook based orchestration (with a side order of scripted automation thrown in) to make build processes for virtual server instances (lab and production) simpler.

In total, automation probably frees up around 10-15 hrs a week of my time on a light week and anywhere from 45-60hrs when I've got heavy project work on. As a guideline I won't automate a task I wouldn't feel comfortable farming off to a PFY but if I would delegate it (and it can be automated without having to spend 6 months creating a runbook) then its fair game.

Re: My current tool

Thanks for the heads up Alistair.

I've had a quick look at the CFEngine website and I like what I see. I've added them to my must lab soon list of products.

Re: Puppet & Chef

I haven't yet come across Fabric in my travels, but I'm always looking into new solutions so I'll have to schedule some lab time with it in the coming months. Having the ability to execute everything over SSH from a single point is an interesting point of difference.

Thanks for the tip.

How Microsoft's cloud aims to cover the world

Re: what is the meaning of cloud?

Hi Sarge,

Thanks for taking the time to post a comment. Allow me to rebut.

"I think your definitions suck young man"

Yes. They probably do suck. Most of what I do sucks. I'm a terrible, terrible person for being incredibly bad at defining something that no two companies, let alone two professionals in the industry can agree on a solid definition for.

You are right about one thing though, using the term "cloud" without a definition is like using the word DevOps. It could literally mean anything. Was my definition an abject failure? Actually it wasn't because I was aware when writing it that it was a failure. What I gave you was a dig at the ludicrous meanings of cloud as deployed by vendors across the world. My sarcasm though, was apparently lost in translation. Mea Culpa.

So here's a definition of cloud you might be able to get behind.

"Cloud = "running workloads on $infrastrucutre in a HIGHLY AUTOMATED and ORCHESTRATED fashion" where $infrastructure's location and ownership dertermine the adjective used to describe the Cloud. (Public, Private, Service Provider, etc.)"

Then again you might not, because to use your very own examples, this means that your "single server with many virtual machines all managed and orchestrated by something like chef/ansible/puppet" qualifies as a cloud, while your "business network" does not. The business network might be managed, certainly, but they rarely meet level of orchestration that would qualify them as cloud environment. Then again you might have a network so supremely tuned and balanced with an unparalleled level of automation. If you do, then congratulations. I still won't ever refer to it as a cloud environment though.

So to sum up:

My definition sucked, you objected, but failed to add much of anything to the conversation. I rebutted, offering a different definition. Have I missed anything? Oh yes. Yes I have.

"(we are all dumber for having read your article, I award you no points and may god have mercy on your soul)"

Thanks for the parting shot. It must have been extremely difficult not to lead with it. I could take this criticism to heart. I could decide not to write any more articles. I could give it all up because apparently I will get not points for this effort. I could, but I won't. I won't because as you say at the start, I am a young man. I have at least 30-40 years left in this industry that I deeply love and because I care about the direction it's headed in I decided to get involved in the conversation. So I'll keep writing articles, learning, researching and getting better. One day I might write something you actually like. I sincerely hope not though, because no god I believe in would have mercy on my soul for that.

I am a recovering Superwoman wannabee

What does it profit a person if they gain the whole world but lose their family?

Its not worth the cost if at the end of the day you're a shattered hollow shell of the vibrant wonderful person you used to be. Giving up your family and time with your kids isn't sacrifice because sacrifice implies that we gain something more valuable by giving up the opportunity to spend quality time with our kids/partners. This is an outright fabrication that continues to be spread by industries that won't hesitate to use you up and move on to the next warm body.

The biggest secret of all is that there are no Super's. Just regular men and women doing the best they can to do the best they can. It's easy to mouth words about balance and harder to go out and find it. Well done for recognizing what was happening and taking the appropriate steps to right a listing ship. There are plenty of us workaholic males who could stand to take a page from your book.

WHY didn't Microsoft buy RIM? Us business blokes would have queued for THAT phone

Re: same old rubbish

Your comment is fail. Really. It nearly made my brain bleed out of my ears.

I sincerely hope that you were being sarcastic about the following:

>>> WP8 is more secure and performs better than Android with lower hardware requirements, so looking at >>>Android's market share that's not going to be a road block...

At exactly what point was any of this true? Performs better with lower requirements is like saying windows 3.1 performs better that Windows 7 with lower requirements. I'm sure it does. Also, no Malware =! more secure. Never has, never will.

And your next assertion:

>>> Microsoft will likely win out in the corporate space with windows Phone - primarily because it's much >>>more secure than Android, and easier to manage / lock down for corporates...

It makes me cry with laughter, and weep with terror, that you might actually believe it to be true. If Microsoft wins out in the corporate space with WP8 then we are screwed. WP8 brings nothing with it that is the least bit revolutionary, rather it is a substandard copy of what has come before. As for it being easier to manage / lock down...

[cue gales of canned laughter...]

Re: I'm impressed

If that's all it takes to impress you, I have this bridge I'd like to sell you. ;-)

In all seriousness, my use of the iPhone as that major part of my life grew inorganically. I'm most definitely not a linear person. If you're having issues making changes to your work then you probably aren't using the right software. I'm currently using a combination of iA writer and Apple's own iWork Suite. By themselves neither of them are perfect, but I've spent so much time with them now that I know their little quirks (and huge embarrassing bugs Apple) quite well by now.

As always, YMMV and I've always been an edge case. Sometimes even by choice.

Re: Windows Phone - it's great really!

10 weeks as my primary phone. Have no complaints about the HTC hardware it was running on, especially since the model I was trialing had been thoroughly thrashed and put through the wringer and was still an exceptionally good phone hardware-wise.

Except when the software let it down, which was a lot of the time. Most fo the time it was simply Win Phone 8 getting in its own way and making things that should be a simple task take longer then they need to.

Sadly, I'll probably end up with one as a dedicated business phone, because as much as the OS is crap, it does still tick a lot of the boxes.

Remind me again... you CAN still buy HTC Windows Phones right?

Re: If anyone, up to and including God...

You make some interesting points. I'm not entirely sure that most days my wife wouldn't agree with you about needing a few thousand volts to the testicles, but there you go.

>>Nokia have supported dual homescreen 'profiles' on the handset since at least 3rd ed. FP2, so circa >>2007/8 or so. Nokia handsets are STILL more capable than iPhone in hardware terms (and the older >>Symbian handsets are a step change better even than the WP stuff).

Refer to my somewhat pathological hatred for Nokia, reinforced again, and again, and again, by hardware that was barely if at all suitable for the job it did. Every single Nokia phone I have ever owned was dead within 6 months. Every single one. Nokia based windows phones? The two that I rolled out for initial testing with a client died within 3 months. Don't like em, have tried them again and again because everyone I know raves about them, but experience shows they are simply low end crap marketed as high end.

>>>Blackberry kit is highly impressive - QNX based BB 10 is perfectly capable - and more importantly >>>doesnt spaff personal information to anyone within a 5 mile radius. I also dont understand why you're >>>whining about apps when you can add Android apps to it - so they're crashy junk under a dalvik >>>emulator - thats no worse than they are when run natively.

Agree. Actually that was quite well said. Nothing to see here, moving along...

>>>If it came to me hiring a sysadmin I would search the person out who set up that VPN before I would >>>ever employ a iPhone fetishist in such a position of responsibility.

Fantastic. We're in the same boat. I'd absolutely hire someone competent over an iPhone fetishist any day. As I pointed out in the article, I haven't been one for some time. No version of this article was a love letter for the iPhone at any point. I don't just sysadmin, I do everything from system architecture to R&D for my clients. While I don't pay for each item that we test, I get to experience them and I stand by what I said in piece.

From a security and productivity standpoint, they are all dreck. All of them are rubbish to the core. They're rubbish to the core though because they aren't built with Corporate/SME/Enterprise as anything more than a passing afterthought. They are consumer phones and I wouldn't expect anything else. As much as we all bitch about BB's various products, myself included, they were at least built with those considerations in mind.

I don't want to use an iPhone anymore, it was simply the choice that, at the time at least, didn't make me want to smash it with a hammer. Which I did do to the Galaxy.

Re: I'm impressed

Thank-you. The initial draft of this article was produced on my phone. I now spend so much time typing on it that I can produce 1500 words on my phone about 3x faster than I can type it on a keyboard.

There are absolutely things involved in producing specifications that are distinctly easier with a mouse and a keyboard but you can't have everything.

The simplest response that I can give you is this: Everything.

In my duties as a sysadmin I don't have the luxury of operate in a single environment. I consult with multiple clients offering sysadmin services that they don't have the capacity to provide with their current staff or cannot afford.

I don't have any staff to do these things for me. I do my own paperwork, often producing documentation or invoicing on the fly. I've also been known to write entire specifications on my phone. Sitting at a desktop, notebook, even a tablet (to a certain extent) producing these would be preferable to doing this on a phone, but you work with what you have.

Re: Looking for a mid-range, business suitable phone that can run profiles? You’re shit out of luck.

That actually looks very promising. I'll definitely be keeping an eye on it.

Thanks for the link. Just a shame that its still in invite only alpha.

Re: Sorry?

It has been pointed out to me that this reference may have different connotations in the UK than it does here. In light of this, I offer an unreserved apology for any offence this may have caused.

In Australia, while there are prejudices against those of the redheaded persuasion, it does not extend to level of outright hatred that it may extend to there. Any form of discrimination is wrong and it is part of our duty to help stamp it out whatever form it may take. It was not my intention to cause offence, merely to use a figure of speech (as this statement is used here in Australia) to drive home my point.

Again, I offer my sincerest apologies. Should you wish to discuss this further, feel free to send an email to [e-mail].

Sysadmins: Keep YOUR data away from NSA spooks

Re: No, no, no, no and no - this is NOT a technical problem

This is the problem with Data Sovereignty. I simplified it immensely for this article but the topic is so very broad and has implications that are so far reaching we've only just scratched the surface. Every single piece of data we let loose online has the potential to be sovereign to a Foreign Power. Its not just the bytes we elect to store in massive data centers of the "Official" Cloud service providers that we need to be concerned with when we consider data sovereignty. We need to consider the pipes too, but that's another article altogether.

The law is notoriously slow to respond in cases like this. First it will attempt to press some law(s) already on the books into active service to solve, or at least provide a stopgap solution to, the problem at hand. Then, once all of the political posturing is over, they (may) eventually produce a law. It might even be a good law. It won't make a lick of difference.

One way or another a government is GOING to get their hands on your data. Chances are they already have the keys they need. Frankly I'd rather deal with the one who's jurisdiction I choose to live under than one who considers me an enemy combatant simply because I'm not a citizen.

Companies will always be sovereign first and foremost to the laws of the land in which they are headquartered. If you think that encryption will save you, I beg to differ. Give me a datacenter and your password hash and I'll have your data unencrypted in a jiffy. Oh you used a randomised 64 character password stored in a centralised cloud password service? Even better since they're located in the same jurisdiction as your data.

Welcome to the joys of the Internet era. We're entering an era of unprecedented interaction with companies sovereign to powers we have no rights with. If we want rights we're going to have to fight hard for them. The best, and safest, way we can fight is to do so with our wallets. Don't trust that multinational company with your data? Don't pay them money, or give them your business. Find a local cloud provider you can (and do) trust. It's really the only solution we have at the moment.

Asperger's and IT

Re: Ironic

I can vouch for the Dyspraxia. It exists, is real, and is at times, quite frustrating.

As for being a consultant (I loathe the term quite honestly) you would think that it would, in and of itself, be totally wrong for me. Sometimes I wonder that myself. If I was an Enterprise Consultant, where ego stroking is everything, well frankly I'd be S**T out of luck. But I work with SME's. One thing I've learn't about SME's is that they don't have the time, inclination or money to reject me simply because I'm a bit different. All of the clients that I have are willing to look past my quirks because, up until recently, all of my new business has come from word of mouth referrals.

We Aussie's have a peculiar tolerance for the (somewhat) brash, blunt and excruciatingly honest. I haven't had any complaints about that yet, at least not from clients. Dodgy IT firms on the other hand...

Re: Me Too

Everything about your post is win to me, but this struck such an intense chord:

"6: I don't take compliments well, but I do take the other thing... erm... not compliments, rather personally. For some reason I can remember these 'non compliments' for many many many years. I even remember some of them from my teachers from when I was about 5 years old (20 odd years ago) vividly."

My wife gives me compliments and wonders why I get embarrassed. She tells me that she's proud of me and I have to remind myself that she's being genuine not patronising. I wont remember a compliment after about 2minutes, but criticism will stay with me for years. I use it as the fuel for my fire and to help drive me to improve.

As far as arguing goes, most people don't realise how hard it is for us to form any kind of a social bond and when we argue we burn bridges. I refer to it as the scorched earth policy. Nobody wins in an argument with an Aspie. Ever. Everybody always loses, especially the Aspie.

Re: So how would one request you to cease speaking on a topic?

Thats usually that way yes. :-)

It sounds quite bizarre, but I've noticed while self-assessing that the more uncomfortable I feel in a given social situation, the worse the one-sided verbosity can be.

I'm getting better at recognising it which allows for some measure of controlling it, but everyday is different.

Re: Good article

Hi Jim,

Thanks for reading. Like most IT Professionals I've encountered situations where they have a bad experience with a particular piece of hardware or vendor. Unlike most IT professionals I have a tendency to hold a grudge. Fortunately I'm more self aware than most with Asperger's so I understand that this can happen.

For example: I loathe Sony. I don't have any reason to loather Sony, other than that I had a bad experience with a Sony Mobile phone in 2007. Unfortunately because of that I will never buy anything Sony produces. Ever. This is bad for my clients because it means that even if a Sony product was the best solution to a particular problem, I am highly unlikely to recommend that product because of personal issues. I don't forgive easily and I don't forget. The Sony issue is just an example though. They don't make hardware or offer services that my clients are likely to use so its one that I don't have to give up. ;-)

Having said that I have developed checks and balances that are designed to defeat my personal prejudices. So far it's always worked. I won't ever rule out a product, service or vendor simply because of my personal prejudices. Regardless of how I feel I will always do whats best for the client. After all, they are paying.

Prince of Persia: Baggy trousers and curvy swords

Re: Is it still playable?

DosBox is the way to go. I can indeed confirm that its playable.

I adored this game, though I came to it far later than many. I built myself a dedicated "early" PC gamer from castoffs in the late 90's and smashed many keyboards (and lost many weekends) to this masterpiece of a game.

Sadly I never did work out how to get past the fight with the reflection. Might have to go back and have another crack.