lca2011 – Wed Session 3 – Rolling your own cloud

Florian Haas & Tim Serong

  • Not using slides, instead 1 talking and other drawing cartoons in real time
  • Centralized backups and storage – snapshots
  • over provision of resources, better utilisation
  • pre-packages virtual images
  • building blocks of a system:
  • virtualisation
  • central storage
  • storage replication, increase reliability
  • “If you live in Queensland you’ll agree not everything that comes out a cloud is necessary good”
  • high availability
  • Existing commercial solutions, vendor lock-in
  • SAN stack: commodity boxes for storage -> drbd -> iscsi target -> pacemaker cluster
  • Virt Stack: Commodity Box -> Open Iscsi -> KVM
  • pacemake looks very nice interface for clustering, Will have to look at it.
Share

lca2011 – Wed session 2 – Conference Video

Making great conference video on a budget – Ryan Verner and Ben Hutchens

  • Guys from team doing lca2011 conference video
  • BOF on this later in conference
  • 2004 used tapes, hard to scale
  • Volunteer AV very different from using pros, skillset limited
  • common chellenges from conferences, not LCA specific
  • each component relatively simple, very easy to underestimate, many components, many rooms
  • incomplete AV workflow, focus primary on tech
  • Volunteers – limited manpower, expeience, training
  • unforseen tech issues – Small varience in hardware
  • workflow – automate as much as possible
  • workflow – manage schedule , feedback loop (recording sheets) , rapid post editing, distribute tasks, automate transcoding/.uploading
  • mistakes – LCA 400 hours of video, too much to do ANY manual editing, combining vga,main,audio feeds
  • vga capture – twinpact 100 – $600
  • Basic mixer – mike, usb sound – $300
  • Firewire camera – $300
  • Laptops running linux, DVDSwitch software mixes into single DV file
  • Audio quality – often neglected
  • Get a VGA capture device
  • 100% test befoe conference, impossible to solve once things start
  • Train volenteers
  • Managment important, clear roles, delegation of specific tasks
  • Clear Documentation
  • Examples http://pythin.mirocommunity.org
  • http://videokollektiv.org – example of best practices
  • DVswitch software – video mixing, recording, streaming
  • Designed for free software confs, limited budget
  • Ofter used, sometimes without streaming
Share

lca2011 – Session 2 – Behavioural driven development

  • Like “test driven development”
  • Initially unit test focussed
  • business doesn’t care about underlying implementation, just the functional results
  • “executable specification” – written in spoken language
  • “infrastructure as code”
  • code without tests is “bad”
  • Taking BDD and adapting to infrastructure development
  • Tools – cucumber – write specs, execute/test specs
  • cucumber-nagios
  • DEMO of cucumber and cucumber-nagios
  • example – continuous server builds as you update you config manager
  • migration to config management. – Use BDI to test existing, test CM env with same tests to make sure it replicates
  • Monitoring System : notify -> test -> repeat
  • Current monitoring systems miss many things
  • cucumber provides a common specification format that dev and ops can share
  • removes duplication of tests
  • Libraries being built of commons test (some already in cucumber nagios)
Share

lca2011 – day3 – keynote

Geoff Huston

  • New technologies from the 70s – Unix and Packet switching (TCP/IP)
  • Open technologies – anyone can implement
  • TCP/IP not better than competing technologies but it’s openness greatly helped it win
  • One thing to “be open” , another to “stay open”
  • Useful technologies are rarely static
  • Technology evolves, uses change (eg growth of wireless), exploitation models change
  • Challenges – net neutrality, next generation networks, mobility and mobil service evolution, Triple/Quad play schemes
  • The really important thing is “We are running out of addresses”
  • 190 m addresses given out in 2009, 248m in 2010
  • 300million new things on the network
  • 9 million new addresses just in Australia
  • 7 /8s left, rate of 1/month
  • plan that IPv6 transition would happen before ipv4 ran out
  • Only 0.3% hitting google IPv6
  • IPv4 will run out during 2011/2012
  • Need to transition to ipv6 in 200 days
  • Won’t happen, have to muddle thing with ipv4
  • NATs are an externalized problem
  • ISP NATs, multi-level, within ISP network
  • aperture through through which the Internet can be seen and used. Reduced port space
  • transition to ipv6. Dual stack requires everybody to have a ipv4 address
  • If you run 6to4 15% of connections don’t connect.
  • Transition could take 5-40 years
  • Making ipv4 addresses last longer, they will cost
  • TCP/IP is the network monoculture
  • Will openness be lost in the transition?
  • Telcos being asking to make big investment in ipv6. No really in their interests to have an open network.
  • Similar for large Internet companies like google and amazon
  • Delays help the incumbents, open network infrastructure is at risk
  • Need to figure out how to motivate big companies to goto ipv6 and open infrastructure
Share

lca2011 – Day 2 – Keynote

Re-imagining the Internet – Vint Cerf

  • 768 million machines and 1966 million users in mid-2010
  • Already more chinese on the Internet than americans
  • No particular applications in Internet design
  • non-national IP address structure
  • Open standards, No IP attached to TCP/IP
  • Anybody can build a piece of the Internet and connect to it
  • Recent developments: ipv6, int domains names, dnssec, rpki, sensor nets, smart grid, mobile devices
  • Two factor authentication really needed by everybody
  • Security problems on OS, Browser, Interpreter boundaries
  • We privacy laws, lax user behavior
  • Invasive devices
  • Cloud to cloud missing, data between them has to go via user
  • List of unsolved, research problems
  • Buffer bloat problem might have to mean reduction in buffers
Share

lca2011 – Haecksen Miniconf – session 3

Finding you feet without losing your head – Alison Young

  • Tech writer at redhat
  • starting a new job
  • make sure people know your name, spelling and what you prefer to be called
  • drop nickname you don’t like when switch jobs
  • find out dress policy
  • hopefully have a buddy to get you going
  • preferred communication ways at company ( talk vs email vs IRC vs skype ), need to allign with this
  • management style. hands off vs micromanagement
  • work from home. at Redhat be qualified
  • transitions at workplace (dinners, cake days)
  • breaks, present-ism, how intently are you expected to work.

We are here, have always been here – Donna Benjamin

  • 5 minute history of feminism
  • $7000 to digitise “The Dawn” , fund-raising effort
  • In past women more common in computing, cheaper to hire skilled workers
  • Less common today since women get less computers when young
  • examples of Women in Australian computing she uncovered
  • “we are not fucking unicorns”
  • Challenge to find women for Ada Lovelace day

Roleplaying Session – Val Aurora

  • Roleplaying sessions of people doing sexist activity and options for replying
Share

lca2011 – Business of Open source miniconf – session 2

Arjin Lentz – creating the business you want

  • – ex mysql
  • – left when 500 people
  • – growth in company revenue doesn’t always mean good elsewhere in business
  • – remote services for mysql
  • – no emergencies – time with daughter, sanity
  • – started pre-GFC, prices reasonable, published, stuck to.
  • – no emergencies = no worries after hours, do oncall infrastructure
  • = Pool of people who won’t work weekends
  • – biz processes = some cases no *real* reason why it’s done that way, but hard to change if other
  • things depend on it.
  • – hard to disrupt yourself
  • – no borrowing, external funding etc.- big affect on how run. See rules
  • – big growth , floating, being bought doesn’t always benifit customers
  • – lives below the big companies, keep pricing below them
  • – total value of biz-space is too small for “china” to enter
  • – value curve, invest in different balance of value for your product than your competitors, feature set
  • – nintendo wii, amazon
  • – list of cool books
  • – bigger clients require different sort of company to service

13 years of LWN – Johnathon Corbet

  • – most audience lwn subscribers
  • – establish 1998, 3 emplyees, x000 subscrbers, >100 company subs
  • – Programmed Cray 1 – #3
  • – drifted up to mid-level management in 96/97
  • – little correlation between work and reward
  • – Starting off “Linux Consulting” company ( eklektix.com ), start website to show how smart we are – not many $
  • – we’ll do linux support – became linux support partner – program went away
  • – linux training company – crowded market – didn’t work out
  • – Maybe online news company
  • – lesson – business skills matter
  • – lesson where money coming from – pay attention to what customers want
  • – be ready and will to change plans
  • – acquired by tucows. went for mainly cash
  • – seemed like good people, money over pure stock.
  • – after dotcom crash, tucows handed back.
  • – advertising revenue big drop from pre-crash
  • – business very cyclical
  • – real customers are the advertisers. Other sites did articles for advertising spend
  • – Blocked microsoft.com, hard to block all the other variations for the name
  • – other ads for dodgy products, soft core porn, political ads
  • – ruins customer experience, javascript, flash, popups
  • – hard audience to advertise to
  • – donations didn’t work
  • – July 2002 put up message that calling it quits
  • – $35,000 in tip jar over 1 week. “why don’t you try subscriptions”
  • – Nobody pays, Linux users less likely to pay.
  • – listen to customers, especially when they are offering money
  • – credit card company, reverted donation surge
  • – credit cards,; extra feels for: discount rate, transaction fees, “international charges”, affinity charges, some arbitrarily
  • – banks nervous about extending long to credit to merchants
  • – chargebacks. customer always wins. 5 chargebacks over 10 years
  • – credit card security, big dangers, huge potential downsides, pci compliance
  • – credit card lessons, keep money from somewhere else
  • – alternatives to Cc – 5% of stream, works okay, cost 4%
  • – Checks – pain to deal with internationally
  • – Corp PO cycle – big pain to deal with, Be patient
  • – other services, amazon. Haven’t investigated heavily
  • – lesson – have 6 months in the bank
  • – where are we now
  • – subscribers get access to feature content
  • – free after 1-2 weeks
  • – ability to disable advertising
  • – other features
  • – Basic cost $7/month , higher and lower cost alternatives, group subscriptions
  • – aligns interests with our readers
  • – people want to support us
  • – subscriptions are a business expense for most people
  • – non-cyclical
  • – 2008
  • – subs steady
  • – adverting dies
  • – many competitors die, freelancers writers more avaibale
  • – amazon affiliate , not good results and then amazon pulled plug on all of Colorado
  • – lots of revenue sources good. biggest business is 5% of revenue
  • – why doesn’t it work. audience is too small
  • – people don’t want to pay
  • – we are terrible at selling
  • – pricing is really hard, raised prices by 40%, minimal loss of subscribers
  • – “design the business as a functioning system” – hard to do with periodical
Share

lca2011 – Cloud Miniconf – Session 1

Lindsay Holmwood – Devops

Consistency

  • config managemnt – puppet
  • puppet workflow – write->apply->debug
  • testing via snapshots, apply,test, keep/revert
  • puppet roles

Repeatability

  • capistrano – cap-sub for config management
  • railess-deploy (capistrano, externsion)

Visability

  • Collectd
  • git hub newsfeed
  • mk-query-digest (slow sql queries)

Lots of ideas in his talk, far to quickly said for me to type them in a all in.

Deltaclound – David Jorm & Stephen Gordon

  • Redhat project
  • deploy workloads to multiple clouds (some, internal, some external, multiple vendors )
  • free and open standards
  • REST API that abstracts other cloud APIs. Drivers for different clouds.
  • Support EC2 and Cloundfiles, others being worked on
  • Build images, store, push to cloud provider and then deploy instances

Cloud Computing in Govt – Pia Waugh

  • Cloud vendors vs govt people – Vendor gtee’d no personal data in their cloud
  • SOA buzzwords drop straight in Cloud Buzzwords
  • http://soafacts.com/
  • Govt + cloud = $$$$ for vendors
  • Lots of vendor hype, have to ask the hard questions
  • Jurisdiction – govt data can’t go overseas
  • standards – avoid vendors, technology lock-in
  • data – reliability, what if vendor goes out of business
  • AGIMO – official govt cloud strategy doc
  • private vs public clouds
  • Govt needs good advice
  • To influence Govt – “be helpful”
  • More consultation events planned in near future
  • AGIMO actually using cloud for some things
Share

Wikileaks cables Illegal in NZ?

Today the Sunday Staff Times obtained early copies of 8 wikileaks cables from the US Embassy in New Zealand and has put a copy of them online on it’s website.

Usual frank stuff but I notice that the 08WELLINGTON356 explicitly names the “Deputy Director of New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (NZSIS)” which is illegal as explained by the Ministry of Justice site:

Apart from the name of the Director of Security, it is an offence to publish certain information regarding the identity of members of the NZSIS or that a person is connected in any way with a member of the NZSIS

It will be interesting to see if the SST gets prosecuted.

UPDATE : Philip Lyth points towards the 1969 legislation which specifies a $1000 fine for publishing the name. Possible this has increased in later amendments.

Share