27 – 31 December closed the chapter on 2010 and Georg’s last round of his apprenticeship with us, and sent NETWAYS‘ best wishes for 2011.
Georg a.k.a. Schorsch reflected on his 2 years of learning with the Managed Services team. Completing tasks independently for which he’d previously seek guidance, taking on issues for customers and now even showing our new apprentice the ropes, George has come a long way. With just a month left of his studies, Georg plans to make a presentation for his final exam on the open source backup software, Bacula and his successful test environment. From what we have seen, we are sure he will do well.
Bidding 2010 farewell, Bernd wished all customers, partners, friends and blog readers the best and much success in 2011. He sign posted NETWAYS plans for the New Year, including the renowned OSDC, OSMC and CeBIT events, as well as improvements to Icinga and Nagios addons to be released in the first quarter. So keep your eyes peeled!
NETWAYS Blog
Weekly Snap: SOAP architecture, OSDC to OSMC and Schorsch’s latest
12 – 16 July looked at SOAP architecture, reflected on the OSDC and reported on apprenticeship happenings.
As promised, Bernd started his SOAP vs. REST series, with a look at the architecture of SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol). Unfortunately not so simple, the XML protocol deals with the structure of messages and not the transmission. Compared to REST it needs defined interfaces and namespaces to function properly in large environments with diverse services. This XML overhead makes transmitting large amounts of data particularly slow. On the other hand, SOAP’s advantage lies in the accuracy it demands, as services have to be designed to answer specific requests, eliminating inconsistencies. Its ability to aggregate complex transactions and structure in a message makes it best suited to highly complex needs.
Following on, our apprentice Schorsch gave us his latest update. In sponsorship of the Linux user group and Bernd Stroessenreuther, Schorsch had a chance to set up a new XEN –VM, its volume and network with VLANS and DNS, install FAI and of course integrate it into our Nagios monitoring.
Finally, Manuela made a formal farewell to the 2nd Open Source Data Center Conference, with a few thanks, reflections and images. In particular she noted contributions from Baron Schwartz (MySQL and InnoDB Performance) and Dr. Hendrik Schöttle (Legal Pitfalls in the Data Center), pointing to the presentation slides for all speakers and Linux Magazin Video Archive for participants to access. In the same breath, she invited all to the Open Source Monitoring Conference on Nagios coming up on 6 -7 October – this time with a new day long workshop, ‚Nagios SLA Reporting with Jasper‘ on the conference eve. We hope to see you there!
Weekly Snap: Monitoring Config Interfaces, Icinga & Schorsch over 1 year plus Web Monday coming up
May 3 – 7 celebrated two first year milestones – Icinga’s first birthday and Schorsch’s end of his first apprenticeship/internship year on board. It also kicked off a new blog series on monitoring config interfaces and invited web aficionados to the Web Monday get-together in June.
From the consulting team, Tobias introduced us to his new blog series on monitoring config interfaces, to tackle the chronic issue of graphic tools for Nagios or Icinga configuration. He’ll cover LConf, NConf, Lilac, NagiosQL, NagiosAdministrator and compare them on the basis of installation pre-requisites, handling/user friendliness, feature set, use in enterprise environments and data import capabilities. Drawing from his recent mammoth monitoring project for over 3,000 hosts, 45,000 services on 5 Icinga clusters in a master/slave environment, there could be no better man to write on this config interface challenge.
Our apprentice/intern aka Schorsch reflected on his year with NETWAYS and the many different tools and projects he’s come in contact with. From inventory management with i-doit and Bacula backup, to monitoring systems- OpenNMS, Nagios and Icinga and MonitoringExchange maintenance. Soon he’ll be sitting a few exams to show what he’s learnt in technical IT areas, business, English and social studies – so we wish him the best of luck.
Manuela invited all web enthusiasts – thinkers, builders, designers, founders or financiers to Web Monday, a casual, non-commercial gathering to be held this time at NETWAYS, 2nd Floor, 15 -19 Deutschherrnstraße on 7 June 2010, 7pm.
She also congratulated Icinga on its first birthday, whose team has since grown 16 members from Australia, Austria, Germany and South Africa. In just 12 months, they have managed to release Icinga Core Version 1.0, integrate MySQL, PostgreSQL and Oracle database support, as well as build an API and web interface to envy. A big cheer to all those who have supported the project!
Weekly Snap: Bacula, XEN and Windows updates with Puppet quakes
5 – 9 April was busy with Bacula, Xen and Windows news from the Managed Services team and a Puppet flash to boot.
Our Managed Services intern/apprentice affectionately known as Schorsch, shared his latest challenge conquered – to fit out a Windows server 2008 R2 Domain with Microsoft Exchange 2010. Accompanied by extensive Windows 7 tests in the domain, Exchange 2010 and Lexware, he got his hands dirty with all the new Windows technologies, DHCP, DNS, Exchange, Group Policy management and releases. The fruits of his labour will provide our Mac users Exchange direct, ensuring uninterrupted workflow.
Following on, Martin S updated us on the recent releases from Xen and Bacula. The new version of the free Xen Hypervisor officially uses the Linux kernel virtualization interface, supports pv_ops levelling up with KVM while offering Windows users a Microsoft certified driver for optimised disk and network access. On the Bacula front, we have now updated the Director and all clients to 5.0.1 complete with the latest plug-in support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2003/2007. Though individual mailboxes are still not possible, the Recovery Storage Group enables a backup recovery to run simultaneous to production and access to individual object with a pre-packed MMC plug-in.
Manuela gave us a list of reasons why we can’t miss the first Puppet training course in Germany on 20-22 April. From Puppet and Puppetmaster configuration, resource types and abstraction layer, to meta-parameters, dependencies and events, language patterns and best practices. Most importantly however, is the chance to get it all direct from the core Puppet development team, flown in from America. Snap up the last few places now on our training center page.
Schorsch erzählt: Meine ersten Wochen bei NETWAYS
Seit nun ein bisschen mehr als 3 Wochen bin ich nun der neue Azubi bei NETWAYS, in dieser Zeit habe ich mich sehr gut eingelebt, fühle mich richtig wohl und habe hier meinen neuen bayerntauglichen Namen -Schorsch- bekommen. Ich bin ein Quereinsteiger im wörtlichen Sinne, denn ich habe den Ausbildungsbetrieb während des laufenden Jahres auf eigenen Wunsch gewechselt und bin froh, NETWAYS entdeckt zu haben.
Von Anfang an wurde ich voll mit ins Team integriert und bekam auch gleich Aufgaben, bei denen ich meine Fertigkeiten unter Beweis stellen konnte. Mein Ausbilder ist Bernd, jedoch wenn ich Fragen und Anregungen habe, sind alle für mich da! 😉
Schon am ersten Tag bekam ich meinen Rechner hingestellt, 2 Ram-Riegel in die Hand gedrückt und eine DVD auf der ein Linux drauf war und musste so gleich anfangen. Das fand ich natürlich sehr gut, da ich von der ersten Minute mit praxistauglichen Aufgaben mein Wissen ausbauen konnte.
Schon ab der ersten Woche konnte ich beim Servereinbau mithelfen und fand mich schnell in die betriebsinternen Abläufe ein. Inzwischen behaupte ich alle Namen zu kennen und freue mich immer bei den interessantesten Abläufen mit eingebunden zu werden. Hier wird es scheinbar nie langweilig.
Letzte Woche war ich dann auch noch mit auf der OSDC im NH-Hotel Nürnberg, dort gab es viele interessante Vorträge zu hören, leider haben sich einige, die mich interessiert hätten, überschnitten. Dennoch muss ich sagen, dort ist das Eis zum NETWAYS-Team gebrochen und seither fühle ich mich bereits wie ein alter Hase bei den Kollegen. Mir hat es auf der OSDC sehr gut gefallen, ich habe viele nette Leute kennen gelernt und sehr viel vom Buffet gegessen. Abends gabs dann noch als Ausklang ein Ritteressen „im Keller“ nach dem Motto: „auf die Gesundheit.“ Ich freue mich schon jetzt auf die OSDC im nächsten Jahr!
Bisher habe ich den sichereren Umgang mit Linux gelernt, den einen oder anderen Server repariert oder eingebaut, mich in die betriebseigenen Tools eingearbeitet und mir meinen Arbeitsplatz, vorrangig den digitalen, individuell gestaltet.
Ich hoffe für die Zukunft weiterhin eine abwechslungsreiche Ausbildung zu machen und mich in Nürnberg gut einzuleben.
Der Schorsch
