9 – 13 January our development team took the lead, with a staff introduction and surprising JavaScript lessons learned.
Jannis discovered why native browser methods don’t necessarily guarantee better JavaScript performance. While testing his new Java array features to benchmark against native methods in V8 (Chrome) and Spider Monkey (Firefox) he was met with a surprise. In V8 his code was just a little slower or sometimes a little faster, but in Spider Monkey it was significantly better. He put this down to Mozilla’s tracing engine, and noted the best performance came with methods that take arguments as functions eg. Array.map(), Array.filter(), Array.forEach(). Jannis shared his simulation for others to test against, and in spite of his surprising find – he cautioned web developers to consider the compatibility of new language features before implementing them in a productive environment.
Following on, our Application Developer Gunnar, introduced himself and his work at NETWAYS. This has included work on a robust, distributed “single sign on” application for a customer, the inGraph addon for Icinga/Nagios, as well as on IcingaMQ. Away from the office, Gunnar plays with new technologies – most recently SIP and video-streaming via IP multicast.
NETWAYS Blog
Weekly Snap: Gude Starter Kit & Postfix Email Archiving
8 – 12 August introduced a new hardware starter kit, senior consultant Philipp and two ways to archive emails in Postfix.
With a couple simple changes to the mail transfer agent (MTA) in the main.cf, Lennart showed how to archive emails in Postfix . Using ‘recipient_bcc_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/bcc_maps’ he specified the map file for emails which are assigned to a particular user on the MTA and then directed it to forward emails by copying the mails sent by the user with ‘sender_bcc_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/bcc_maps’. Alternatively, to simply archive all emails in the mail server, he suggested always_bcc = archiv@example.org also in the main.cf.
As part of our staff series, Philipp a senior consultant in our monitoring and systems management wing, introduced himself, his work and his life beyond the office. Involved in customer projects from pre-sales and conception to onsite implementation, he is also a trainer in our NETWAYS courses and workshops. Phillip reflected on his recent projects at large German automotive and financial corporations, and the trend towards open source in the corporate world.
Our hardware storeman introduced a new starter kit for temperature and humidity monitoring in small server rooms. The kit consists of the “Gude Expert Net Control 2101” meter, a 2m cable combination temperature/humidity sensor and matching power adapter. The Gude meters are all SNMP compatible and can send alerts via email. They come equipped with a web based user interface, a second sensor port and digital output with watchdog functionality (PING). Plugins for Nagios / Icinga are available at www.netways.org
