USlacker

Stop the botnets

2008-04-10T07:09:00.000-07:00

I posted my call to action for Big IT to take up the charge to rid the world of botnets.

Thoughts?

\\Greg Martin

Is Linux on the desktop dead?

2008-03-19T21:30:00.000-07:00

I'm a linux user. I've had Linux on my home PC for 4-5 years. I run Slackware and love the hack-ability and hobby-est feel of using this OS. For 3-4 years now, the 'year of the desktop Linux' conversation has been happening with the David and Goliath battle for desktop being waged against Windows.

It hit me recently that Linux is not fighting MS for the desktop. They're fighting OSX. Well, everyone thinks the fight is against Windows, but I think Apple has quietly beat Linux on the desktop.

Seriously - if you were considering a non-Windows desktop for your organization and needed it easy to support, wouldn't you go to OSX over Linux? There's a real company to hit for support, real commercial apps and best of all - all the open source apps will compile against it.

Why would you consider anything else? (Oh, I've never used a MAC)

\\uSlacker

Virtualization Part 2

2006-03-14T09:53:00.000-08:00

So today we declared our bias towards vz. We've been using Microsoft Virtual Server for over a year and today's notice is nothing more than standardizing on something we already do. From now on, however, vz is assumed unless the project warrants something else.

Here is why we like vz:
- Less hardware/more isolation - we use 2-4 guests per host with none of the issues around multiple apps per server

- Easier backup/recovery. For many of these instances, we can backup the disk file and we're gold.

- Faster deployment/Simplified duplication. We define an OS image or an application image and when we decide we need another copy running, we copy the disk file, sysprep and we're ready to go.

- Portability. If we need to move an instance between physical servers, it's two files and we're done.

Why we might choose not to virtualize an app:

- I/O. Apps with high i/o, disk or network, might require us to stick with hardware. We're currently running a test to understand the performance hit on each i/o type.

- Lot's of local storage needs. We just haven't tackled this one yet.

Virtualization

2006-03-14T08:59:00.000-08:00

vz is on the radar screen again. We already use MS Virtual Server and run instances of XP, W2k & W2k3 for many of our production processes. We've decided to baseline the performance of our host servers as we believe that we should be able to increase memory and add guests. More on the results later.

I was reading a report on Vz from InfoTech and they mentioned a couple interesting things.

The Xen open source Vz project, which just announced support for Intel VT extensions
The Intel VT extension which are available on some Xeon processors

With the changes, we need to carefully consider our vz strategy. Do we want vz-over a guest OS. If so, MS-VS or VMWare GSX are great prices for us now that GSX is free!

Full text RSS

2006-02-23T05:52:00.000-08:00

There's been on-going conversation regarding whether RSS feeds should be full-text or partial text. Scoble likes to point out those feeds that are partial and believes full-text is goodness. Yesterday, Todd at GeekNews jumped in with Robert Scoble hits the nail on the head with RSS Full Text Feeds!

I want to add a simple point to the conversation. I listen to TWit and a few shows back Leo LaPorte was discussing how one of his sites ran up an incredible bandwidth fee one month due, in large part to RSS updates. One commentator characterized feed readers as "sitting on the edge of their seats - in an automated fashion".

Leo is lucky because he is friends with his ISP and got a break on the bandwidth charge.

The Achilles' heal of RSS are readers and their users' who find it necessary to poll every 10 minutes for updates. With that risk, many sites will have to continue to provide partial feeds so they can afford to stay on-line.

\\Greg