Saving Face and Customer Service

Tags

humor

Not too long ago, there was a posting in Sharky’s Column, a column of the dumb things that can happen in IT, about an IT person’s experience with a very cheerful and helpful strong man.

I don’t want spoil the story too much, but the response by the IT person helped the “gentle giant” save face and he didn’t even know it. This story is a good example of how we can offer excellent service to our customers while keeping them out of trouble at the same time.

When we can keep our customer happy we should – even if it means that the “cable was faulty”…

SUSE Studio: Build Your Own Distro

Tags

novell, suse, suse studio

Novell created and put up something called SUSE Studio, a web site dedicated to helping you create your own Novell SUSE-based Linux distribution. SUSE Studio is extensively documented over at the OpenSUSE wiki.

SUSE studio takes you through all the possibilities, and allows you to extensively customize the resulting distribution, including wallpaper, scripts, software, and more.

You can choose what form (or forms) the ending result takes: a VMware image, a Xen virtual image, a Live CD/DVD, and others. You can even run the image live over the web using a Flash-based console or VNC.

Over at ComputerWorld, they reviewed the updated SUSE Studio extensively; I plan to give it a try in the upcoming weeks. Should be interesting.

Is Oracle killing Sun Solaris support?

Tags

oracle, patches, sun microsystems, support

Recently, Oracle has made several changes in Solaris support that have people wondering if Solaris just got too expensive to run.

The first change was to move to a pay-for-security model which some have already compared to extortion. Patches for Solaris would only be available to paying support customers, leaving others to be insecure and without recourse.

The other change that Oracle has made is to force its paying support customers into an “all or nothing” support model: either all Solaris systems are under a support contract or Oracle will not enter into a support agreement. This means that in any environment that all Solaris systems must be accounted for and under Oracle support.

With this latter change, it may be that this pay-for-security model, while still unseemly, will have less of an effect than previously suggested. It may also convince many smaller businesses to scale back their Solaris installations and to get rid of older machines instead of holding on to them.

At its worst, it may mean that support for software on older Sun machines may wither faster, and that older machines will become obsolete – and useless – faster, increasing “churn” in the data center and (perhaps) making the data center more energy-efficient, while costing companies more and making Oracle more money.

However, one thing Oracle has not done is to clarify the future of OpenSolaris. The community is waiting for a definitive statement from Oracle; even former Sun employees working with OpenSolaris have no signs from Oracle in any direction.

UPDATE: Ben Rockwood over at the Cuddletech blog has excellent coverage, with detailed analysis of the relevant licenses and what it means for Solaris end-users. On the 26th he discusses the “all-or-nothing” support model, and on the 28th he writes about Oracle’s choice to remove the ability to use Solaris for free.

Creating the Perfect Time Management System

Tags

time management

Over at the Clutter Diet blog, there was recently an article that should resonate with a lot of folks – especially those that are endlessly tinkering with a new time management system.

There’s nothing wrong with getting your time management system in order – but getting the “perfect” time management system can take the place of actually getting work done, which is what it’s all about in the first place.

The best thing to do is find an acceptable system, then use it – no matter what – for several weeks or more. If after that time something needs to be changed, make the change and run with it for several weeks more.

By following this system, you can prevent the system becoming its own time waster, and find the system that actually works for you as well.

Sony to kill PS3 Linux Installations on Thursday

Tags

aibo, cell, fixstars, playstation 3, ps3, sony, sony entertainment, terra soft solutions, ydl

Recently, Sony announced that update 3.21 (being released on Thursday 1 April) to the Playstation 3 would remove the “Other OS” option – which means that not only would it become impossible to install Linux on the Playstation 3, but any installation will be inaccessible. According to Sony, this is to make the gaming console more reliable.

When the Playstation 3 was introduced, the company Terra Soft Solutions released Yellow Dog Linux for the PS3 and sold PS3 consoles with Yellow Dog pre-installed – including PS3 clusters. Groups at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (with the Playstation 3 Gravity Grid), the University of California Berkeley, and North Carolina State University have all been using PS3 clusters to do computing. Sony Entertainment Spain assisted the Computational Biochemistry and Biophysics Lab in Barcelona, Spain, to create the PS3Grid (now rebranded GPUGrid).

As recently as January 2010, the United States Air Force Research Laboratory in Rome, NY, just announced that they are adding 1700 PS3s to go with the 300+ that they already have clustered (called the TeraFLOPS Heterogenous Cluster).

The PS3 was supposed to be an open platform, even supported by Sony. I wonder what happened. I can’t imagine that the USAF will be happy about this, and I can only hope that cluster administrators see this one coming and can stop it – or there will be some dead clusters.

I’ve been waiting for the prices on old PS3s to come down and my budget to go up just to run Linux on it – now the next update is to kill it. Not nice.

I suspect there will be some lawsuits if this update truly comes to pass.

UPDATE: The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a nice expansive writeup on this. One thing that they note is that a hacker recently discovered a way to crack the security on the PS3 hypervisor (using the OtherOS feature and some soldering), permitting full unrestricted access to the entire PS3 hardware environment. Secondly, the article also notes that Sony pulled something like this with the Aibo robot dog some years back.

A Lawyer Follows His Passion for LEGOs

Tags

legos, mindstorm, nathan sawaya, nxt

Over at Above the Law, as well as the New York Daily News they are talking about Nathan Sawaya, who gave up a lucrative career as a New York lawyer to become a LEGO Master Model Builder.

The folks at Above the Law (and perhaps elsewhere) can’t understand the passion that would lead someone to give up a lucrative career to follow a dream. However, I’ve always felt that one should follow one’s passion – which I’ve done in my career. If you are in your chosen field just for the money, you won’t be able to do your best, and you won’t enjoy your work.

Follow your passion, wherever it goes: I’ve been fortunate to follow my passion into a lucrative field. Nathan, for his part, seems to have taken his passion to the next level and is now an independent artist.

I wish I could do more with Legos; the Mindstorms product is most fascinating – build and program your own robot!

UPDATE: Over at the always interesting hackaday.com, just a few days ago, there was an article about self-propelled Lego NXT projects; I especially liked the one inside the wheels.

Sat. March 27: No Tech Day

Tags

NoTechDay

A UK charity, Practical Action, is sponsoring No Tech Day. They have this interesting quote:

No Tech Day is a challenge for gadget addicts to go without their favourite tech toys for a day this Saturday, March 27th 2010, to raise awareness of how much we all rely on and use gadgets in our everyday life, and think what life is like for people in the developing world who do not have the same access to technology and energy.

Call me a skeptic, but there are thosethose who choose to go without technology, and do just fine. It is certainly possible to do well without technology: lack of technology does not equal poverty.

However, going without technology can also teach us how dependent we are on tech and show us what we are missing in The Real World.

Will I take part? Not sure yet… Maybe…

Backups: What You’d Rather Not Know

Tags

backup strategy, backups

Some time ago, Elizabeth Zwicky wrote an article for LISA V (1991) titled Torture-testing Backup and Archive Programs (PDF) – and followed it up in LISA 2003 with Further Torture: More Testing of Backup and Archive Programs. The articles describe the tests of backup clients and archive programs extensively, and finds that all come short in some way or another – though the programs improved significantly over time.

These articles are real eye-opener; they show why a restore test is a critical part of any backup solution. Without testing a restore, there is no guarantee that an actual restore will be successful.

There are lots of stories about otherwise brilliant backup solutions that failed when a restore was necessary. My favorite was of a fellow who took the magnetic tape backups home as an offsite measure – except that he kept a massive magnet in the passenger seat of his car. The offsite backups were great – except he erased them (unknowingly) every time he took them home… Guess what happened when the offsite backups were needed during a critical restore?

To create a successful backup strategy, you must first choose how to make the backups:

• Gauge how critical the resource is. Do the backups need to be restored in minutes? Or is a restore in hours suitable?
• What kinds of backups will be taken? Full backups nightly? Incremental?
• Gauge the time and space available to take backups. Will the backup put a strain on the network? Is there enough space?
• Choose a program or programs to fulfill your needs and install.

After the infrastructure is in place, a successful backup strategy must:

• Perform a test backup, and measure the time and space taken.
• Perform a test restore (of a portion of the backup). How easy is it? Is it easy to use under pressure? Was it an accurate restore?
• Do a bare metal restore. How long did it take? Is it accurate?
• Perform a restore test from time to time to make sure that backups are good: once is not enough.

Only through diligent testing of both backup and restore can you be sure that everything is working properly, and your data safe.

Mac Mini… Server?

Tags

mac mini, mac os x, mac os x server, mac os x snow leopard

I don’t know how I missed this, but it is quite intriguing. Apple introduced a Mac Mini Server in October – running Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server.

This is fascinating – and makes it just that much more affordable to run Mac OS X Server.

ComputerWorld discussed the Mac Mini Server at the time, but also had an article just this week about how the Mac Mini Server is an excellent choice for the home office.

There is also macminicolo.com, which has provided Mac OS X Server on Mac Minis for a long time. The really nice thing about macminicolo.com is that you can purchase the system over time and they keep it on the net for you. I still want to sign up with them… some day… sigh.

Munich’s Migration to Linux: Troubles

Tags

LiMux, linux migration, migration, Munich

The city of Munich chose to migrate to Linux in 2003 because Microsoft would not support the software they were using. Recently the head of the project (called LiMux), Florian Schießl, reported on why the project was taking longer than previously expected. An article on H Online describes the situation well.

The problems were, perhaps, avoidable. Suitable planning and incremental testing would have avoided the problems that Munich has experienced so far.

One problem was with proprietary servers that do not work well with open source clients; one in particular that Florian mentioned was DHCP. A proprietary DHCP server would hand out leases that were incompatible with the Linux clients.

Another problem was with applications that needed to run on the client. For example, some applications required ActiveX which is unavailable on Linux. Another example was the dependence on many Visual Basic macros (VBA) in Microsoft Word.

With a revised plan since 2007, the migration has gone much more smoothly and rapidly. Departmental migrations are now begun with a pilot project, and the Munich’s computing infrastructure is being overhauled as well.

Munich’s experience can be a lesson to the rest of us. What can we learn?

• Test with infrastructure before rolling out.
• Test with internal applications before rolling out.
• Update or migrate infrastructure if needed.
• Use a pilot migration to work bugs out before a full migration.

UPDATE: USA Today had an excellent article in 2003 describing the initial process whereby Linux was chosen for Munich – and Microsoft’s drastic measures to try to beat out Linux.