Just a reminder to everybody that April’s meeting is tomorrow, April 3rd, from 7-9pm.
This meeting is a make up of the March meeting that was cancelled. Full details are available below.
The March meeting promises to be an exciting one as we take a step outside the box and take a look at risk balance and what can be learned from failure. Anybody in IT Operations worth their weight has been involved with some sort of failure at at least one point in their career. However, what did you learn from it and how did you use that knowledge to balance risks in the future to maximize your probability of success? The insight gained from dealing with a failure has the potential to be far greater than anything learned from a success.
Our March speaker, Bryan Fafaul, is Project Manager of the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS), Flight Project at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Mr. Fafaul has worked at the Goddard Space Flight Center since 1986 in a wide variety of technical and management positions. Bryan started his career in the Parts Branch and then moved into project management. He has served as the Mission Manager for the Wide-Field Infrared Explorer (WIRE), the Instrument Systems Manager for Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Servicing Mission 3A, 3B and 4, the Deputy Project Manager for the NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP), and the Project Manager for Glory prior to his current position as the Project Manager for JPSS.
Date: 3/6/2013
Time: 7:00PM EST – 9:00PM EST
Where: OmniTI Office
11830 West Market Place, Suite G
Fulton, MD 20759
(entrance is in the back, between 11820 and 11830)
While flinging myself down the bunny hill on a snowboard for the first time in my life today, my thoughts (believe it or not) turned for a moment to this week’s Crabby Admins meeting. I am so happy with the turnout to hear Jason Dixon (@obfuscurity) speak about his ideas on the state of monitoring and what he thinks can be done to abstract the various components in the monitoring stream. Not only was his presentation evocative, it generated a lot of very engaging questions. Folks were genuinely interested in the subject and brought many good queries to the discussion.
To that point, the Crabby Admins have only been successful because of the attendance and contributions of fellow sysadmins in the area. My hope is that you continue to attend our meetings and bring your ideas and energy with you.
Thank you,
Ryan
Jason Dixon (@obfuscurity) is presenting at this month’s Crabby Admins meeting in @OmniTI offices.
Date: 2/6/2013
Time: 7:00PM EST – 9:00PM EST
Where: OmniTI Office
11830 West Market Place, Suites F
Fulton, MD 20759
Come one, come all!
See http://crabbyadmins.org/2013/01/27/february-meeting-the-state-of-monitoring-with-jason-dixon/ for more details.
In February, Jason Dixon (Twitter: @obfuscurity) will be discussing the state of monitoring in IT operations. This will be a recap of his presentation from DevOpsDays Rome:
https://speakerdeck.com/obfuscurity/the-state-of-open-source-monitoring
Jason currently works at Github and has worked on several projects including OmniTI‘s Reconnoiter. He’s also written the Graphite dashboards Tasseo and Descartes. Check out www.github.com/obfuscurity to learn more about his projects.
Date: 2/6/2013
Time: 7:00PM EST – 9:00PM EST
Where: OmniTI Office
11830 West Market Place, Suites F
Fulton, MD 20759
Several local groups are converging in to a super meet-up this February and the Crabby Admins will be there. We want YOU there too! On the agenda is a review of the Ops School project by Avleen Vig and Patrick McDonnell and a presentation from Theo Schlossnagle on career development. Nathen Harvey has a complete write-up on the event here:
http://www.meetup.com/DevOpsDC/events/97686352/
Sign up, show up, and (as Nathen writes), level up.
By way of Nathen Harvey (@nathenharvey), I’ve learned that Opscode will be in DC on January 15th offering an introductory Chef workshop.
Use the promotional code “meetup” to receive 10% discount off the cost of the class.
http://www.eventbrite.com/event/5091340336
This Chef Introductory Workshop is a hands on training class for getting familiar with Chef for performing common automation tasks. By the end of this workshop, you’ll be able to:
- Set up a local workstation with Chef and connect to a Chef Server.
- Describe the steps performed during a chef-client run
- Describe Chef’s Authentication Cycle
- Build Chef roles using the Ruby DSL
- Manipulate configuration through data in attributes
- Use Chef’s search API for dynamic configuration
- List a number of additional resources that are available
for help
Join them on Tuesday, January 15th for this one-day workshop and begin your journey towards automation with Chef. This class will be held at MicroTek, 1101 Vermont Avenue Northwest, Washington, DC.
Registration and other details for the class can be found online at the URL below:
http://www.eventbrite.com/event/5091340336
Don’t forget to use promotional code “meetup” to receive 10% off the cost of the class.
What follows is an almost verbatim re-posting of my original message to the group on the lopsa-us-baltimore-dc mailing list from last week.
Fellow Crabby Admins,
tl;dr
1. December Data Center Tour Recap: Edge Web Hosting
2. January Meeting: Do we even have one? (Looking for responses)
3. February Meeting: Jason Dixon and Monitoring Love
4. March and Beyond: Ideas?
I wanted to take a moment to follow up with you all about this past month’s meeting, and what to expect in the next two months, as well as get some feedback from each of you.
1. December Data Center Tour Recap: Edge Web Hosting
This month we visited Edge Web Hosting’s data center in downtown Baltimore. We had 6 group members in attendance and Edge Web had another 4. The tour was fun and Vlad Friedman had much to do with it as he brought his enthusiasm during his presentation of the facility. Afterward, Ben Liyanage gave a presentation on the InfoBlox DNS appliance. Finally, Vlad treated us to eats and drinks at Peter’s Pour House. That was a great way to cap off the night. Many thanks to Edge Web Hosting for their hospitality.
2. January Meeting: Do we even have one?
January’s meeting is scheduled for 1/2/2013. That’s the day after New Year’s. Also, I’ll be out of town (I’ve accepted a position at Etsy and will be in Brooklyn for 3 weeks). At this time, there are no speakers lined up for the meeting. We can do one of two things:
- Hold a round table discussion on any topic the attendees like.
- Cancel the meeting.
Send an email to lopsa-us-baltimore-dc@lists.lopsa.org with your opinion and we’ll decide democratically.
3. February Meeting: Jason Dixon and Monitoring Love
In February, Jason Dixon (Twitter: @obfuscurity) will be discussing monitoring in IT operations. This will be similar to his presentation at DevOpsDays Rome:
https://speakerdeck.com/obfuscurity/the-state-of-open-source-monitoring
Jason has worked on several projects including OmniTI’s Reconnoiter and Graphite dashboards such as Tasseo and Descartes. Check out www.github.com/obfuscurity to learn more about the last two!
I’ll get an official presentation synopsis from Jason and post it to crabbyadmins.org.
4. March and Beyond: Ideas?
I know that Evan is working on a presenter for the March time slot. We’ll here more about that in the near future. After that, we have an open slate. If you have any recommendations for topics/speakers, please submit your ideas and I’ll do what I can do line things up. If you’d like to present to the group, definitely send me a message and we’ll talk.
Finally, if I don’t hear from or see any of you before next week, have a /(Merry|Happy) (Christmas|Hanukkah|Kwanzaa|Festivus|New Year’s)!/
This month we’ll be touring another data center in Baltimore: Edge Web Hosting. The folks at Edge Web Hosting are looking to highlight several things, including:
- F5 Load Balancers
- IPS Systems
- arious Redundant Power things
- EMC, NetApp stuff
- Gear that our two clouds are made up of
- Infoblox Appliances
- Cisco Core Routers/Switches
- Lots of Cisco Firewalls, and blade severs
The tour will be different from last month in that it will also include a presentation comparing DNS appliances:
DNS Appliances Overview
Topics to be covered:
- DNS Appliance Comparison: BlueCat vs Infoblox
- Infoblox Appliance Details
- Appliance Architecture, and Architecture Options
- Appliance Perl API
- Our Custom Self Service Portal
- Our General Impression with their Support
- General Q&A
- Infoblox Related Stuff
- Networking related stuff
- VMWare Related stuff (maybe, not sure if our cloud guys will be around)
- Anything else as appropriate.
Directions to the data center, Edge Web Hosting’s offices (for the presentation), and Peter’s Pour House (for drinks and eats) are available here:
View Crabby Admins Meetup in a larger map
NOTE:I’ll work to get some information on the best option for parking and post that to the mailing list.
This month’s meeting will be a tour of BTP’s (http://www.baltimoretechnologypark.com/) data center in downtown Baltimore. This will be an interesting change from our standard venue as we’ll have the opportunity to review a co-location/managed services facility and learn how they provide for their customers’ needs.
Our host is Josh Hirsch and he’s provided the following directions to the data center:
Directions to the Baltimore Technology Park (BTP) Data Center
1401 Russell Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21230
Directions from Downtown Baltimore
- Head WEST on Lombard Street
- Turn LEFT onto South Greene Street
- Continue onto Russell Street/US MD 295 SOUTH
- LEFT at Bayard Street (the light after the elevated section of Russell past M&T Stadium)
- LEFT onto Warner Street
- LEFT onto Alluvion Street (past Public Storage)
- Baltimore Technology Park will be the cream-colored building on your RIGHT.
- Customer parking is gated and is on the right side as you turn onto Alluvion – look for the globe logo on the gate.
- For remote access into the lot call Stephanie Clarkson 410-500-4001 (office).
Directions from Washington, D.C. and South
- From I-95 NORTH, take Exit 52 to Russell Street NORTH. Or, from MD-295, highway becomes Russell Street
- Turn RIGHT at Worcester street (before large Public Storage building), this is the third right after Russell begins
- Turn LEFT at onto Warner Street
- Make next LEFT onto Alluvion Street
- Baltimore Technology Park will be the cream-colored building on your RIGHT.
- Customer parking is gated and is on the right side as you turn onto Alluvion – look for the globe logo on the gate.
- For remote access into the lot call Stephanie Clarkson at 410-500-4001 (office).
Directions from Philadelphia and North
- Take I-95 SOUTH toward Baltimore.
- Merge onto I-395 NORTH via EXIT 53 to Martin Luther King Boulevard – Downtown.
- Remain in the Right lane.
- Take Russell Street exit.
- Turn LEFT onto Lee Street.
- Turn LEFT onto Russell Street.
- Turn LEFT onto Bayard Street.
- Turn LEFT onto Warner
- Make a LEFT onto Alluvion Street. A blue antiques warehouse will be on the corner in front of you.
- Baltimore Technology Park will be the cream-colored building on your RIGHT.
- Customer parking is gated and is on the right side as you turn onto Alluvion – look for the globe logo on the gate.
- For remote access into the lot call Stephanie Clarkson at 410-500-4001 (office).