Category: Business

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Business Technology

SUSE Linux Days 2013

I had the pleasure of attending SUSE Linux Days 2013 today at the Marriott at the Minneapolis City Center. I like being able to attend “techie things” in the Twins Cities.

SUSE Linux Days 2013 1

It was a lot of fun. Sadly, traffic was a little crazy on the way up from the south so I ended up changing my plans and riding the light rail into the heart of Minneapolis and walking the rest of the way. The few blocks were a pleasure, even if I forgot my jacket for that early in the morning.

The day revolved around three topics.

  1. SUSE Linux Enterprise Update
  2. SUSE Manager
  3. SUSE Cloud

SUSE Linux Days 2013 2

Each topic melded into each other, and the two presenters did an excellent job of covering a good number of topics, answering a good number of questions, and keeping everyone engaged with what was going on.

The impressive things I took away from the morning about SUSE Linux Enterprise included:

  • How many companies actually use SUSE Linux Enterprise. General Motors and Ford were called out specifically for using SLES as the backbone of their IT transformation and standardization projects. That’s pretty cool.
  • How many partnerships SUSE keeps up with. Not just hardware, but software partners as well. I’ve never really kept up with SUSE that much, but they are in more places than I would have thought.
  • SUSE offers up-to 10 years of support. Crazy. The support windows are very regular, very knowable, and very standardized. That’s rather nice when making decisions.
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 is on track for a mid-2014 release. While a roadmap and more information is on the way for SUSECon, one thing called out was the possible use of Btrfs as the default file system. A bold move for sure, but kind of cool to hear about.
  • The High Availability stuff is cool and useful and SUSE has done a lot of the “thinking” for you. Many of the components are freely available as open source, but having someone pull it all together and support it could be really useful.

I’m most excited to see  what is going to be coming with SLE 12 in mid-2014. It is supposed to be based on openSUSE 13.1, which is currently in development, and one thing I will be watching is the inclusion of the new Ruby-fied YaST and an upgrade of the default Ruby installation to 2.0 … please?

I know another interesting development will be whether SLED 12 will move away from the Gnome default of SLED 11 and before and move to KDE. At the moment KDE is the default desktop for openSUSE, but whether the SLE release will move to that is yet to be seen.

SUSE Linux Days 2013 3The rest of the day was dedicated to SUSE Manager, SUSE Studio, and SUSE Cloud … well, it was actually dedicated to how those three products work together in their private cloud platform. What I was able to see was really good and I want to be able to play with the whole thing because I think that the ability to provision hardware as a part of SUSE Cloud, to build standard images with SUSE Studio, and manager it all from SUSE Manager looks like a really strong combination.

Is it too much for a small IT department at a private college in New Ulm? Maybe. It IS fun to dream.

I’m installing openSUSE 12.3 with the default KDE desktop while I write this so that I can try to keep up with what the future might be bringing. I don’t know if we are ever going to be able to standardize on a single platform at Martin Luther College, but I do think that I will see if there is a more prominent place for SUSE within the organization. What I was able to see looked good, but now I need to actually play with it myself to see how good it actually is.

SUSE Linux Days 2013 4

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Business Technology

How I Use Request Tracker

We just went public with our Request Tracker (RT) instance here at Martin Luther College this past week and so I thought I’d do a little post on how I am currently using it to try to help me get stuff done … and more importantly, make sure I get the right stuff done.

We have a support email address which feeds directly into Request Tracker every five minutes and I’m trying to get into the habit of asking people to submit requests themselves so that I can better track what is getting done and what needs to be completed.

From there, a ticket is automatically created in the General queue and then an email is sent off to myself and our support supervisor so that we can triage and assign the tickets to whomever it might need to be. We keep a number of other queues for internal purposes and to easily see where our time is needed.

I then use RT to handle almost all communication between myself and the requestor so that I can easily look into the history to find what has been said. I have custom searches organizing my tickets first by status (open on top), then priority (higher number higher up), and then finally by most recently updated (via a reply). This gives me, at a glade, a look at what I am working on, which are the most important, and then which have been replied to most recently as well. It works for now but there will be tweaks.

I use one queue, Server, to keep track of the changes needed at the next maintenance period. Right now I have seven updates queued up which range from updating our XenServer stack to replacing the batteries in our network rack UPS. I can then pull those tickets together to plan for what we are going to try to accomplish at the next maintenance period. It also lightens my cognitive load by allowing me to dump things into RT where I can refer back when there is a need.

I also just setup an Outage queue where our intense of Icinga will dump its emails and then RT will create a ticket for each outage. Then I can track what was done to fix the issue and refer back if there is a question in the future. I need to look into automatically closing tickets or not sending the final online notice so that there isn’t TOO much noise in the queue.

The next issue will be reporting, but that is for another time. For now, it is “good enough” to have a place to put down our needs and keep track of what is being done. Having that has been a huge help and allowing people to send in their support requests and have a ticket automatically generated has been good PR for the department too.

There is always room for tweaking, and I’ll report on that in the future as well.

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Business Technology

IT Misunderstandings

Information and Technology (IT) services routinely has a bad name. We’re grumpy, grouchy, keep people from doing their jobs, inflexible … you get the idea.

Having been working as a sysadmin for all of a month (and working closely with our former sysadmin for many years, including sharing some duties), I think that many times there are base misunderstandings.

The main thing is this: we’re all on the same side. We all just want technology to work and work for us and not break and … you get the idea. IT doesn’t want to have to come down and fix things or to come and tell you how you should be using your technology.

Those are not the parts of the job I enjoy.

I DO enjoy talking with people about how technology might be able to better facilitate their work. I DO enjoy helping people if they have an issue with the technology they are using. I DO enjoy working on the “hard problems” of technology … like what the future might look like and how we might be able to better help people get there.

I DO like playing with technology, especially the new stuff, but even the older stuff I didn’t get to look at the first time. I DO like seeing people using technology to get their work done. That even includes those inventive ways they use the existing technology in ways we were not even expecting.

See, we are very much on the same side with this so let’s put down the battle standards, send the troops home, and get together to talk more about how technology might better serve everyone because that is where IT is positioned.

We are positioned in the middle of everyone and everything. Today, there is not much that IT does not touch in some way or one of our systems is not involved in … even if it is only for storing important files for that next presentation that needs to happen.

With that in mind, I do apologize. Sometimes I might seem to be dismissive because I know of another group with other needs where we can’t accommodate everyone so I need to make a decision … and sometimes it isn’t the best one for you. Ask me. Talk to me. Sit down and have a chat with me. I like talking about technology and the reason things are the way they are.

So, let’s get together so that we can get stuff done … together!

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Business Technology

The Paralysis of Choice in Linux

One thing I’ve often said is that choosing to go with the Apple ecosystem affords me the ability to narrow down my technology choices. Many times people see this as a problem instead of a solution.

However, the flip side of that is the Linux ecosystem where choice is not just the name of the game, it is what you have to be aware of and prepared for from the onset of even trying to play.

Alright, done with that metaphor.

Recently I’ve changed roles at work from being primarily a webmaster and technician to systems administrator and network engineer. While I used Linux extensively before, now I am administering all of the servers on campus which puts me in contact with Linux every single day … often for multiple hours at a time.

It is fun, but at the same time quite harrowing. Here is a list of the Linux distributions currently being used here:

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4
  • Red hat Enterprise Linux 5
  • CentOS 6
  • Ubuntu Server 8.04 LTS
  • Ubuntu Server 11.04
  • Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS
  • Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS
  • Ubuntu Server 13.04
  • Ubuntu Desktop 10.04 LTS

That’s a good number. Granted, there are many similarities between them, each version brings just a small changes which can easily accumulate with time. The difference between administering an Ubuntu Server 8.04 LTS and Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS is quite drastic … and I’m already looking forward to April of 2014 for the next LTS release.

The thing is that you have a lot of choice and your skills can transfer quite easily to each distribution that you sometimes can over think things. I know I do. I spend too much time thinking about what I could be using instead of just moving ahead with working on what needs to be done.

For me, that’s the real takeaway. Adding choice in for the same of choice sometimes can cause cognitive overhead that we are not even aware of. Making a decision, as arbitrary as it can seem, can sometimes be refreshing because it allows you to narrow down your choices so that you spend less time thinking about what could be used and more time thinking about what needs to be done.

What’s the downside?

Obviously, you don’t want to limit your choices to the point where you won’t even consider another possibility in the future if the needs dictate you do so. Closing off choices when they are obviously better isn’t going to do you any good. That’s the negative end of what I am talking about.

However, lightening the cognitive load and speeding up the process of “getting things done” by narrowing down your choices might not be such a bad thing.

On my end, I’m going to be taking a hard look at trying to standardize around as few Linux distributions as possible (SUSE Linux Enterprise is also in the mix because of our relationship with Novell). How successful will I be? I’m not sure, but it will be fun to try.

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Business Technology

Not Being Seen

Invisible IT is the title of a post put up by Nate Beran. It pretty clearly defines what is sometimes the hardest part about working in IT: improvements not being seen or noticed.

Many times improvements can be made, and even noticed, but the first thought isn’t to seek out those who made the improvements, but to actually continue to get work done. I think that is an issue for almost any department outside of those who scream the loudest about every little thing.

I think part of it is even perpetuated by IT departments themselves. We strive to have the least amount of downtime, the fewest number of people noticing, automate as much as possible … you get the idea. We are always tossing about the idea of “making technology invisible” so people can get their work done, and that is a valiant goal, but this is part of what comes along with it.

Sadly, the things that excite IT don’t always excite everyone else. Most of the time that means we are the ones who need to adapt … or make some more noise.