Technologies That No Longer Matter to Systems Administrators

First off, before the flames start (if anybody actually reads this), this article is from the perspective of a consultant currently working with roughly two dozen web start-ups. Based on what I’ve observed with numerous customers over the past five years, and the current reality, in my world, these tools don’t matter. Most of them are relegated to academic operations, the kind of people who keep Usenix going but just aren’t part of my world.

• Any Linux Distribution that is not RedHat CentOS, or Ubuntu
• CFENGINE
• Itanium or any non x86-64 processing architectures
  
• BCFG2
• FreeBSD
• OS X Server (It never really was relevant, to anybody, anywhere, but it’s fun to
• CVSup
• Windows Server
• Solaris (Sorry Tim, I’ve got nothing but love for you, but Sun has long since lost it’s relevance for web start-ups)
• Oracle
• SQL Server
• Cold Fusion (wtf is that anyways?)
• Andrew File System

I make this pledge. If you’re using more than two of these technologies in a vc-funded start-up newly founded in the past two years, I owe you a scotch.

OSCON Running a Successful User Group with Selena Deckelmann and Gabrielle Roth

OSCON Running a Successful User Group with Selena Deckelmann and Gabrielle Roth

My OSCON schedule for the week.

Since I don’t really cover software here, I had to cherry pick the sessions I’ll be going to this week. I only expect to make about half of the sessions that on my personal schedule. The rest of the time I hope to be doing interviews and milling about the hallway track.

Here’s my OSCON schedule if you’d like to have a chat.

Photos from OSCON 2008 Expo Hall

I just posted my photos from the expo hall on DatacenterJunkie.

IBM making a Canadian datacenter with a new 150,000 square ft facility in BC

Introductions, and Confessions of a Datacenter Junkie.

Introductions, and Confessions of a Datacenter Junkie.