<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet href="http://feeds.runyourownserver.org/~d/styles/rss2full.xsl" type="text/xsl" media="screen"?><?xml-stylesheet href="http://feeds.runyourownserver.org/~d/styles/itemcontent.css" type="text/css" media="screen"?><rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/" xmlns:admin="http://webns.net/mvcb/" xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd" xmlns:feedburner="http://rssnamespace.org/feedburner/ext/1.0" version="2.0">
	<channel>
<title>RunYourOwnServer.org</title><link>http://runyourownserver.org/index.html</link><description>RunYourOwnServer.org</description><dc:language>en</dc:language><dc:creator>thud314</dc:creator><dc:rights>Copyright 2008 RunYourOwnServer.org</dc:rights><dc:date>2008-09-01T13:59:27-04:00</dc:date><admin:generatorAgent rdf:resource="http://www.realmacsoftware.com/" />
<admin:errorReportsTo rdf:resource="mailto:thud314" /><sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod>
<sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency>
<sy:updateBase>2000-01-01T12:00+00:00</sy:updateBase>
<lastBuildDate>Mon, 01 Sep 2008 14:01:30 -0400</lastBuildDate><image><link>http://runyourownserver.org</link><url>http://runyourownserver.org/podcast.jpg</url><title>run your own server</title></image><atom10:link xmlns:atom10="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" rel="self" href="http://feeds.runyourownserver.org/runyourownserver/site" type="application/rss+xml" /><item><title>Episode 23, Taking Notes, Partitioning, Choosing a CoLo</title><dc:creator>thud314</dc:creator><category>Podcast</category><dc:date>2008-09-01T13:59:27-04:00</dc:date><link>http://feeds.runyourownserver.org/~r/runyourownserver/site/~3/380668766/Episode0023.html</link><guid isPermaLink="false">http://runyourownserver.org/files/Episode0023.html#unique-entry-id-24</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[<center><a href="http://feeds.runyourownserver.org/runyourownserver" target="_blank">PodCast Feed</a></center>


<b>Links:</b>
<img src="http://feeds.runyourownserver.org/~r/runyourownserver/site/~4/380668766" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded><feedburner:origLink>http://runyourownserver.org/files/Episode0023.html#unique-entry-id-24</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Episode 22, Fires, VLANs, and Firewalls</title><dc:creator>thud314</dc:creator><category>Podcast</category><dc:date>2008-07-25T22:24:09-04:00</dc:date><link>http://feeds.runyourownserver.org/~r/runyourownserver/site/~3/345946426/Episode22.html</link><guid isPermaLink="false">http://runyourownserver.org/files/Episode22.html#unique-entry-id-23</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[<center><a href="http://feeds.runyourownserver.org/runyourownserver" target="_blank">PodCast Feed</a></center>


...<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firewall">Firewalls</a>


...<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipfw">IPFW</a>


<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PF_(firewall)">PF</a>


<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharepoint'>SharePoint </a>


<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_machine">VMs</a>


<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snort_(software)">Snort </a>


<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prelude_Hybrid_IDS">Prelude-IDS </a>


<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_80486"> 486</a>


...<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nessus_(software)">Nessus</a><img src="http://feeds.runyourownserver.org/~r/runyourownserver/site/~4/345946426" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded><feedburner:origLink>http://runyourownserver.org/files/Episode22.html#unique-entry-id-23</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Episode 21, PXE Boot, OSX, and Windows</title><dc:creator>thud314</dc:creator><category>Podcast</category><dc:date>2008-07-11T22:34:49-04:00</dc:date><link>http://feeds.runyourownserver.org/~r/runyourownserver/site/~3/332844748/Episode21.html</link><guid isPermaLink="false">http://runyourownserver.org/files/Episode21.html#unique-entry-id-22</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[<center><a href="http://feeds.runyourownserver.org/runyourownserver" target="_blank">PodCast Feed</a></center>


<b>Links:</b>


<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preboot_Execution_Environment">PXE</a>


<a href="http://www.kegel.com/linux/pxe.html">Remote Network Boot via PXE</a>


<a href="http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/">OSX Server</a>


<a href="http://www.apple.com/xsan/">XSAN</a>


<a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/default.aspx">Windows Server</a><img src="http://feeds.runyourownserver.org/~r/runyourownserver/site/~4/332844748" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded><feedburner:origLink>http://runyourownserver.org/files/Episode21.html#unique-entry-id-22</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Episode 20, File Servers</title><dc:creator>thud314</dc:creator><category>Podcast</category><dc:date>2007-11-14T07:46:42-05:00</dc:date><link>http://feeds.runyourownserver.org/~r/runyourownserver/site/~3/303317450/Episode20.html</link><guid isPermaLink="false">http://runyourownserver.org/files/Episode20.html#unique-entry-id-21</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[<center><a href="http://feeds.runyourownserver.org/runyourownserver" target="_blank">PodCast Feed</a></center>


<b>Links:</b>


<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_File_System_%28protocol%29">NFS</a>


<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebDAV">WebDAV</a>


<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Message_Block">SMB</a>
<img src="http://feeds.runyourownserver.org/~r/runyourownserver/site/~4/303317450" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded><feedburner:origLink>http://runyourownserver.org/files/Episode20.html#unique-entry-id-21</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Episode 19, Shell Account Hosting</title><dc:creator>thud314</dc:creator><category>Podcast</category><dc:date>2007-09-23T21:04:50-04:00</dc:date><link>http://feeds.runyourownserver.org/~r/runyourownserver/site/~3/160420673/Episode19.html</link><guid isPermaLink="false">http://runyourownserver.org/files/Episode19.html#unique-entry-id-20</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[<center><a href="http://feeds.runyourownserver.org/runyourownserver" target="_blank">PodCast Feed</a></center>


<b>Links:</b>


<a href="http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_account">Shell Account</a>
<img src="http://feeds.runyourownserver.org/~r/runyourownserver/site/~4/160420673" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded><feedburner:origLink>http://runyourownserver.org/files/Episode19.html#unique-entry-id-20</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Episode 18, Listener Questions #1</title><dc:creator>thud314</dc:creator><category>Podcast</category><dc:date>2007-07-15T01:21:13-04:00</dc:date><link>http://feeds.runyourownserver.org/~r/runyourownserver/site/~3/134561191/Episode0018.html</link><guid isPermaLink="false">http://runyourownserver.org/files/Episode0018.html#unique-entry-id-19</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[A little bit more investigation later, we find out, "Hey look, you can really only do this from the OK Prompt, which is ironic because any Solaris admin worth his salt would say that, when you're at the OK prompt, usually things are not OK.


...In fact, a couple of our T2000s went through the process such that even though they paid for the LSI RAID card, and they paid through the nose for it, and the server can do hardware RAID, and we recommend a hardware RAID on these, they're not using them. 

...A good example is, right now, a problem we constantly have with new Intel servers in my data center is they come with RAID cards that, when you first boot up the system, the RAID BIOS comes up and it tells you that it's a beta version and that it should not be used in production. 

...But all I know, I wasn't around him a lot when he was doing this, it was like five weeks where this guy was just livid every single day, trying to get this thing to work, and finally, finally got the damn thing to build and boot up. 

...If you go and buy V240, which has been out for a long time -- but it's not end of life yet -- you're going to pay something like two to three times as much as if you buy a T2000. 

...For me the two most important things were, one my office was the hottest room in the house, because of all the heat put off by these machines, and I could stand to use a little less electric bill every month. [laughs] So by doing VMWare it solved a couple of my problems.


...So I got the hard drives from there, but especially for a home lab system or a multiple systems in a home lab, a lot of times eBay is really hard to beat because you can get...you can use almost any hardware you want for a desk server, it doesn't have to be a server, it can be a desktop, and there's always someone out there who just upgraded their system and wants to get rid of their desktop for a couple hundred bucks.


...But I want there to be a better understanding that I can juggle 300 servers every day and just keep them up and barely working, but if you want me to do a really good job, you've got to let me focus on one (or two tops) of these projects, because there's so much going on on the Internet that I need to be up to date. 

...In the real world, you're always going to end up with one guy who's the top admin for that project, but you definitely have to have people that can fill in behind him so that if he were to get hit by a bus or have a meteor land on him, at least your systems can be up and running.


I think if more companies realized that it's a bad idea to have one admin in charge of five or six different things with no kind of backup, there'd be a lot more admin jobs out there but it would also be a lot less stressful job. <img src="http://feeds.runyourownserver.org/~r/runyourownserver/site/~4/134561191" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded><feedburner:origLink>http://runyourownserver.org/files/Episode0018.html#unique-entry-id-19</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Episode 17, Solaris</title><dc:creator>thud314</dc:creator><category>Podcast</category><dc:date>2007-04-19T17:47:06-04:00</dc:date><link>http://feeds.runyourownserver.org/~r/runyourownserver/site/~3/110552562/Episode0017.html</link><guid isPermaLink="false">http://runyourownserver.org/files/Episode0017.html#unique-entry-id-18</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[What you might not know, even if you are a Solaris admin, is that most of the applications that run on Solaris 10 in the 64-bit kernel are, in fact, 32-bit apps, and they run very well, actually. 

...If you're using FreeBSD, for example, and you can't figure out how to change your password, well, there's a million different sites out there that run forums, newsgroups, and mailing lists, where you can ask questions and get a lot of support. 

...I'm going back and forth with them right now over something so I don't have a lot of faith in it, but I'm sure once it's all resolved, I'll be able to say yes, they're fantastic.


...This can cause some headaches for a new Solaris admin, finding all the little utilities that are Sun version, and they don't have all the nice bells and whistles that you're probably used to that you get with the GNU versions.


...If you're familiar with patch at all, one of the functions of patch, really the only thing I've ever used it for, is you have an application that comes in source code, you're supposed to compile that source code to install it. 

...But I've had to work with a lot of customers who have, for whatever reason, done some really, really weird stuff to their system, and the changes that they've made, they didn't seem to be too bad when they made them, but just one bit in one file somewhere deep in the architecture got changed, and it just totally hoses the box after you run a patch cluster.


...If you plug a 240 into a power socket, but you don't power it on, and you connect something to its console--you can do a straight CO connection to a laptop, or you want to run it through a Cyclades switch, however--if you connect to its console while it's powered off but has power connected to it, you can access the ALOM: the Advanced Lights Out Manager. 

...You can pass certain command switches: you could say, "Well, I want to boot from the network or from the CD-ROM, and I want to do it in single user mode, " or, "I want to boot from a disk and reference this file, instead of booting normally."   You can also change things like the banners: you can put a logo on there. [laughs] And these are all really kind of interesting and kind of neat--I know they're not huge system changes--but there is a lot of fun stuff in the OBP that you can change.


...From there, if the system's not responding, if something at the application level is borking the system and you can't get a login prompt or anything, you can still get into the ALOM, and either you can force the power off, you can force it to reset, you can also send a Break to the system. <img src="http://feeds.runyourownserver.org/~r/runyourownserver/site/~4/110552562" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded><feedburner:origLink>http://runyourownserver.org/files/Episode0017.html#unique-entry-id-18</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Episode 16, One Admin, One Server</title><dc:creator>thud314</dc:creator><category>Podcast</category><dc:date>2007-04-03T10:38:09-04:00</dc:date><link>http://feeds.runyourownserver.org/~r/runyourownserver/site/~3/106555815/Episode0016.html</link><guid isPermaLink="false">http://runyourownserver.org/files/Episode0016.html#unique-entry-id-17</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[Under our best case scenario, I would have separate servers for mail, separate servers for web, separate servers for SQL databases, and then additional servers for anything else I would have run, such as monitoring or any other custom applications that needed to be on other boxes.


...If I was one admin administrating four servers, and each server had its own function, and it was for only one website, that would be the best possible scenario. 

...The people who are out there doing it every day, they know that this is going on, that people are not taking care of their OS. 

...This guy had a really hard time just with keeping up with the Microsoft updates, keeping ISS in line, making sure that - even though they were fully patched - that they were on top of the latest security trends, that they were blocking suspicious activity and things like that. 

...And when you really understand how vulnerable everything is on the Internet, how flawed everything is, you realize that if you just have one person managing five servers, or five people managing 20 or 50 servers, then it's mind-boggling. 

...Not everyone agrees with me, and of course there are plenty of managers and suits and salespeople out there who are going to tell me, "Well, we really just can't afford to have a hundred sysadmins for our hundred servers." 

...If you've got a web developer who doesn't know anything about systems administration, and he's the only person in charge of the server, it's not going to work that long.


Now, in the case of one of my favorite data centers that I worked for, we had one web developers working on a project that was spread across five different servers, six different servers. 

...And so even though this one customer was paying through the nose for their support, when it came down to it, it still wasn't going to be enough. 

...If you're running a website and you've got maybe one or two servers out of a data center, maybe you're even paying for a little bit of management, maybe you're co-location and you're not paying for any management at all.
<img src="http://feeds.runyourownserver.org/~r/runyourownserver/site/~4/106555815" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded><feedburner:origLink>http://runyourownserver.org/files/Episode0016.html#unique-entry-id-17</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Episode 15, Monitoring</title><dc:creator>thud314</dc:creator><category>Podcast</category><dc:date>2007-03-24T01:15:34-04:00</dc:date><link>http://feeds.runyourownserver.org/~r/runyourownserver/site/~3/104098982/Episode0015.html</link><guid isPermaLink="false">http://runyourownserver.org/files/Episode0015.html#unique-entry-id-16</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[                    the tools that we can use to do network or system monitoring?


...                    Some of the other tools that we can use to monitor stuff, with


...                    far as trending goes, which is kind of what we want to get into


...                    If I can go back and look at my mail traffic, and see the trending


...                    The way, you basically set it up is you have an SNMP agent on your


...  Seg:              One example is that you can set up a trap to act on reboot. 

...                    that, that you wouldn't be able to get from the logs, and so you're


...                    have one or two Windows boxes that you need to monitor as well.


...                    as soon as it happens you get the trap, you know what's going on.


...                    just good to know that you can use it to monitor not only your
<img src="http://feeds.runyourownserver.org/~r/runyourownserver/site/~4/104098982" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded><feedburner:origLink>http://runyourownserver.org/files/Episode0015.html#unique-entry-id-16</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Episode 14, Jobs</title><dc:creator>thud314</dc:creator><category>Podcast</category><dc:date>2007-02-04T20:09:22-05:00</dc:date><link>http://feeds.runyourownserver.org/~r/runyourownserver/site/~3/88504652/Episode0014.html</link><guid isPermaLink="false">http://runyourownserver.org/files/Episode0014.html#unique-entry-id-15</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[One email we got was from August 4th and he asked us specifically about things he can do to develop his skills, obviously with the idea of having a better resume`, and places to find jobs as a sys admin. 

...If you know a lot about, let's say Solaris Volume Manager, then you can put Solaris Volume Manager on your resume and if they see that and they think enough to ask you a question on it, then it's very important that you are able to answer those questions.   So although you might not be able to put a lot of stuff on your resume about Solaris Volume Manager, like I rebuilt this many of raids, and I've done this kind of raid, and I've invented a whole new type of raid, if you're up on SVM and people ask you about it then that's fantastic. 

...It's one thing to have a resume for all the resume websites that have all the acronyms that are very attractive and that people often search for but the resume that you actually send in when you're setting up an interview, you have to know all that stuff really well because there's been lots of people I interview that know TCP and UDP and TCPIP on their resume as well and you start hitting them with stuff and they don't really know it. 

...I've heard a lot of people in interviews say, well I just don't have the time to play with that, or I don't have the hardware, and a good sys admin is somebody who's going to find a way past that problem. 

...If you can show from your experience or on your resume or just during general discussion during the interview that you are somebody who is willing to go out and train themselves and really enjoys that, you're going to get so many points, especially in a tech company. ...  And you're going to run into things you don't know and from somebody who does interviews, it is very very important that they people we end up hiring can figure stuff out on their own and can train themselves. 

...To look at your job as a Systems Administrator as, "wow, I really am being looked to for answers and I'm trusted that the work I do is going to be to the best of my abilities and it's not going to be malicious behavior." ...  If you're going to go into a system and you're going to be jaded or you're going to be bitter about something and say, "well you know, this customer was angry at me for something that wasn't my fault, so I'm just going to shut down his application." 

...But there are plenty of other people that can access that system and do that part of the job, I try to shy away from it and just tell them, "look I don't necessarily have to have that level of access." <img src="http://feeds.runyourownserver.org/~r/runyourownserver/site/~4/88504652"/>]]></content:encoded><feedburner:origLink>http://runyourownserver.org/files/Episode0014.html#unique-entry-id-15</feedburner:origLink></item></channel>
</rss>
