I’m trying to make a concerted effort to first of all blog a little more, and secondly blog more about sysadmin type stuff. Hopefully that’ll give me a little bit more direction.
We’ve been a big NAS shop for a number of years, actually well before I come on board. We are starting to use SAN more and more nowadays. We have a much more stable SAN fabric (the network side of fiber channel storage for those of you keeping score at home). So I spend several days before the break fighting with various SAN issues. Most of them were my lack of particular experience with our SAN implementation as well as host level tools. The pain of SAN comes largely from the host end. Your SAN device (even in our case with NetAPP) is probably pretty good at doing it’s end and is well documented. But on the linux side SAN is very vendor specific, which always leads to problems. For example if you are using an EMC you have to get supported HBAs then in some cases run a custom kernel to support that HBA and then you probably end up needed vendor specific tools for handling things. In my setup I don’t need a custom kernel, but we do have to support a small vendor package of tools. NetApp is actually pretty good when it comes linux supoprt, they package RPMs in most cases and stay current with versions as far as support.
It’s a few days before Christmas and I’m here in TN enjoying spending some time with my in-laws. It’s always nice to visit Bristol even if it’s bitter cold (16degrees currently). Having family around is always relaxing (or distracting when all the kids, 4, are running around). I’m away from work long enough at this point that I’m very relaxed. Yesterday I took a nap for the first time in I don’t know how long. Not a fall asleep watching the game nap, but a honest to goodness nap. It was everything that I dreamed it could be. My son is enamored (more than usual) with his Grandmother and wants not much to do with Mommy and Daddy. This gives us even more time to relax. So this evening I’m watching a bit of hockey, a bit of football and playing on the computer. The only things missing is a glass of scotch and a warm cat on my lap (and a dog at my feet). I think of all my friends and hope they are as happy, warm and content as I am right now. Holidays are a time to be thankful and I certainly am.
Recently I just got back from LISA (Large Install System Administrators) Conference in San Diego. Overall I really enjoy this conference. My employer generally doesn’t spend very much on conferences, at least not for people in my position, so it’s nice that I get to go to this one. There are very few Sysadmin specific conferences out there. Velocity seems to have some potential despite it being very Web (2.0) centric. I haven’t been to Velocity so I really can’t comment.
So I’ve been a horrible slacker with regards to this blog. I’ve been terribly busy recently, but that’s not much of an excuse. It seems that everytime I go to update wordpress I end up redoing my theme. So once again I’m updated it and hopefully that will keep me from going months between posts. It’s been a busy couple of months. The Disc Golf season is pretty much over. Since we’re here in the south you can pretty much play year rounds but at my age being out in 30 degree weather isn’t my idea of a good time. I am planning on going to Mytle Beach for a tournament in December.
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