Tag: System Administration

Categories
Technology

Silver Linings

On Novell’s Cool Solutions there was a recent post titled Turning Data Breaches into Positives. The best paragraph for me is the following:

Another way to use a breach is in communications to your customers. You don’t have to sell security software to offer value. The first thing you can do is spread the news. It’s often important for affected parties to act quickly after a data breach, so notifying your customer base in the hope of reaching any who might be affected is an important service.

That is true not just for data breaches, but for when anything goes “not right” within an IT department. Anytime you have the opportunity to speak with your users/customers/people, do so in a way to make it as positive an experience as you can.

Making a bad experience good can pay off hugely in the future.

Categories
Technology

MacPass for OS X

We use KeePass for storing needed passwords at work and I’ve always wanted a good, native OS X application to use. Today, with just a random Google search, I found such an application: MacPass.

So far it fits my modest needs perfectly and looks good doing it. I’d recommend you take a look if you need a KeePass app for OS X.

Categories
Technology

The Hard Way

On Friday, May 9, I went through the most rigorous training exercise I have had to go through while learning about the art of systems administration. By “training exercise” I mean that our entire VM storage back-end fell over and start convulsing on the server room floor and I had no clue what to do or even where to start.

It wasn’t one server, but all four of the servers falling over and failing to come back up. Ultimately, I believe it was caused by an update by Ubuntu which caused the drive mappings for our DRDB system to disappear and never return where we were expecting them.

I’m not going to get into the details of what happened, how long it took (too long), or what we ultimately ended up doing (a band-aid which is working quite well) … but I am going to more generically talk about what I have learned through that experience.

  1. Always apply updates to one server at a time. Always. No exceptions. I had become complacent over the months of periodically running the updates on the storage servers and always having the system survive unscathed. All it took was one bad update and now I am more paranoid of updates than ever. Especially when you have a cluster, apply to one server at a time and verify that it is working before moving all resources back over and then applying the updates to the next one. It is common sense, I knew better, and now I’ll learn from my mistake of ignoring it.
  2. Be conservative with your infrastructure. I might change my tune on this one again, but you’ll want to push ahead with the client-side of things and be as conservative as possible with whatever is backing the client. Being of the cutting edge is going to make you bleed, and trying to do things that others are not is a recipe for a lot of pain and suffering. You want the infrastructure services to be working all of the time and then pushing ahead on what the clients are using around that infrastructure. That means you need to be conservative in the face of many bells-and-whistles being tossed around.
  3. Always know ore about your infrastructure than you think you need to. I had not spent the time I needed to learning about how our storage system worked on the very lowest level and we paid the price of a day of lost productivity because of it. If you are going to do something in-house, then you need to be willing to spend the time learning about what you are doing so that you can be comfortable putting your own eggs in your own hands at any time.
  4. The Linux community is diverse … and the DRDB/HA community is amazing! I have to give credit to two people for walking me through what to do on that day. My former co-worker, @acspike, came up and helped as much as he could (which was a ton), and ultimately helped me get the system back up and running. However, @digimer, in the DRDB IRC channel, was the one willing to spend a good two hours walking me through testing what systems were causing the issues and calming me down. Before that I was sick to my stomach and after I could at least keep down my lunch. Without those two people I’d probably still be up there trying to get things back up and running.

The main idea is that it was a good learning experience, even if some of it was stuff I knew already and should have remembered to be doing. Hopefully I don’t do it again.

Categories
Life Technology

Why Certifications

I’m not usually one to champion certifications of any sort. However, I am working through my first professional certification program right now (SUSE’s Certified Linux Administrator) and while it can be a slog (especially at this level), I have come up with some justifications for why certifications exist and why a person might find them beneficial.

TrainingI’m hoping this is what happens when I’m on the higher certifications. Sadly, I probably don’t even consider myself good yet. I just wanted to get an image in there.

Alright, back to what I was talking about:

  • For one thing, a certification can mean more money. I consider this maybe the least of the reasons for myself, but I can’t deny that it is a reason … and sometimes a really good one.
  • It sets a baseline for terminology and understanding within a group of people. This is mainly a benefit when working with others. That could be in the larger community, for support, or just in your own job (if you have coworkers doing the same thing). This one might be primary for me. Getting immersed in the terminology of a community is one benefit.
  • You might just learn something. It might not always be what you expect, but so far I’ve learned some rationale for decisions made within Linux (and SUSE/openSUSE specifically). This is the secondary reason in my case.
  • To set yourself apart … maybe. You’re willing to do the work to get a piece of paper. Essentially this is the “get a college education” reason as well. I’m not sold on it, but it is there.

Those are the four I have right now. It is going to be different for each person, and I have labeled the two which are most important for me, but there are reasons. What other reasons can you think of?

Leave a comment and let’s keep the discussion going!

 

Categories
Business Technology

Changing Focus

I have many interests, too many to be certain. As I try to satiate my innate desire to know everything that I can, I end up knowing nothing because I can’t commit my mind to working on a single things for more than an even, or maybe (just maybe) a week.

So, starting April 1, 2014, I am going to take the next quarter of the year to focus on sysadmin stuff. I’m setting aside my iOS books and picking up system and network administration material instead.

This will also include working through my SUSE CLA material as well. If that goes well, I’ll start planning on the next step of my certification journey by looking at CLP and CLE certifications as well. By the time I get to that step I’m hoping that the training resources will be rewritten for the upcoming SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 (currently in private beta) and not be tied to Flash either (which makes using an iPad particularly difficult).

The change is really pushed by professional needs at the moment. Linux and system administration is something I do every day and I want to be able to do that better. It helps that I also tend to enjoy doing it quite a bit as well.

I’m sure I’ll have more to write about this in the future.