http://www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/ O'Reilly Sysadmin Blog en Copyright 2008 Thu, 08 May 2008 14:29:03 -0800 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=3.21 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Following the new "tradition" of posting a security tip of the week (mentioned here, here ; SANS jumped in as well), I decided to follow along and join the initiative. One of the bloggers called it "pay it forward" to... http://www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/2008/05/anton_logging_tip_of_the_week.html http://www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/2008/05/anton_logging_tip_of_the_week.html 2008-05-08T14:29:03-08:00 Anton Chuvakin So, my next poll is up - and it is fun: Which of the types of information are most useful when trying to make sense of a log entry? Vote here! Past polls: Poll #7 "What tools do you use... http://www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/2008/05/post_1.html http://www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/2008/05/post_1.html 2008-05-05T14:02:39-08:00 Anton Chuvakin This doesn't look good, right? Most open source monitoring tools do filesystem health checking by comparing the current percentage of used space against a set value. If it's is 90% full, send out a warning page; if it's 89%, send... http://www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/2008/05/filesystem_monitoring_youre_do.html http://www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/2008/05/filesystem_monitoring_youre_do.html Opinion 2008-05-02T07:05:46-08:00 Chris Josephes This is just one case in a million where knowledge and use of lvm has proved immensely powerful. Another case (and the topic of this article) is a situation where the combination of lvm and software raid will allow me to convert a raid1 array into a raid5 array without any downtime on my critical apps. And for those of you that think you'll take a performance hit when using software raid over hardware raid, I ask "which can calculate parody faster. a 486 processor in the card or one of the xeon processors in your box that isn't on the card". Go ahead, run the test yourself. http://www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/2008/04/lvm_and_software_raid_a_powerf.html http://www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/2008/04/lvm_and_software_raid_a_powerf.html Technical 2008-04-21T15:13:33-08:00 Mike McGrath I'm working with a product that includes this disclaimer in their support documentation: "Virtual environments, such as VMWare (and others) are not recommended, and thus not supported." I can almost see their point. It'd be pretty daunting to gauge a... http://www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/2008/04/virtualization_kicking_and_scr.html http://www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/2008/04/virtualization_kicking_and_scr.html Opinion 2008-04-03T05:30:48-08:00 Chris Josephes Last week I attended a virtualization seminar. I did not expect a lot from the event at first, but I was surprised by the qualities of the guest speakers. Both had strong backgrounds with VM environments, and they did a... http://www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/2008/03/is_hardware_still_commoditized.html http://www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/2008/03/is_hardware_still_commoditized.html Technical 2008-03-21T05:58:22-08:00 Chris Josephes Following the tradition of posting a tip of the week (mentioned here, here ; SANS jumped in as well), I decided to follow along and join the initiative. One of the bloggers called it "pay it forward" to the... http://www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/2008/03/anton_security_tip_of_the_week_7.html http://www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/2008/03/anton_security_tip_of_the_week_7.html Technical 2008-03-12T13:45:29-08:00 Anton Chuvakin My next fun logging poll is here - please vote! It is about tools for centralized collection of Windows Event Log from servers and other systems. One of the somewhat surprising discoveries from my previous poll was that few people... http://www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/2008/03/poll_7_what_tools_do_you_use_f.html http://www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/2008/03/poll_7_what_tools_do_you_use_f.html Technical 2008-03-07T12:54:17-08:00 Anton Chuvakin I just bought a new MacBook. A co-worker of mine just bought a new MacBook Pro. To put it another way, we both bought new Apple Laptops....one week before the new models came out. After Tuesday's announcement I looked... http://www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/2008/03/bitten_by_the_new_mac_bug.html http://www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/2008/03/bitten_by_the_new_mac_bug.html Opinion 2008-03-03T06:23:22-08:00 Chris Josephes As promised, here is another "Top 11 Reasons" which is about log analysis. Don't just read your logs (definitely don't just collect them); analyze them. Why? Here are the reasons: Seen an obscure log message lately? Me too - in... http://www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/2008/02/top_11_reasons_to_analyze_your.html http://www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/2008/02/top_11_reasons_to_analyze_your.html Articles 2008-02-22T09:55:47-08:00 Anton Chuvakin This is my 6th logging poll (vote here now!)- links to the previous five polls below. This one is deceptively similar to the #1 below, but it is not. This poll is What logs do you actually LOOK at? and... http://www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/2008/02/poll_what_logs_do_you_actually.html http://www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/2008/02/poll_what_logs_do_you_actually.html Technical 2008-02-13T18:34:54-08:00 Anton Chuvakin A podcasting friend of mine ran into the problem of always having to send the new episodes to his co-hosts for review. Once everyone agreed that it was okay, the show was put live on the RSS feed. Their method... http://www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/2008/02/private_podcast_feeds.html http://www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/2008/02/private_podcast_feeds.html Technical 2008-02-08T08:58:26-08:00 Chris Josephes Years ago I visited Danga back before the Six Apart acquisition, when the company had its headquarters a couple of miles away and when Brad lived a block and a half down the street. Brad showed me some of their... http://www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/2008/02/operations_mantras.html http://www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/2008/02/operations_mantras.html Technical 2008-02-04T14:15:08-08:00 chromatic Sam wrote a blog post about the cost of SMS messages. I admire the effort, but I'm not in 100% agreement with his conclusion. I think the goal the author was trying to make is that SMS messages are overpriced,... http://www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/2008/01/what_is_the_cost_of_sms.html http://www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/2008/01/what_is_the_cost_of_sms.html Opinion 2008-01-29T10:21:00-08:00 Chris Josephes This poll is especially fun: What are your top challenges with logs and logging? Vote here. Past polls were: Poll #4 "Who looks at logs in your organization?" (analysis) Poll #3 "What Do You Do With Logs?" (analysis) Poll #2... http://www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/2008/01/poll_what_are_your_top_challen.html http://www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/2008/01/poll_what_are_your_top_challen.html Technical 2008-01-21T15:27:10-08:00 Anton Chuvakin