Faster Than Grep
February 26th, 2008 by James HicksYou know the guano is hitting the fan when your boss’s boss comes up to your desk and says: “What’s faster than grep?”
It was looking like a boring day. I got in late, almost 11 (B-A-D, I usually work 10:30-18:30), and by 11:30 had nailed all the daily maintenance stuff and was looking at a series of deadlocked and waiting-for-other-guys jobs. And a few epic jobs that couldn’t really be furthered today. Then the ops manager walked up to me…
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Posted in Systems Administration | 30 Comments »
Linux Server Survives Total RAID Failure
November 7th, 2007 by James HicksIt looks like a perfectly normal day, until I hear the screaming RAID failure alarm blaring out of the server room as I walk past. My pace picks up considerably…
“Hey, who’s screaming in the server room?” I shout as I get to our office area.
“Ah that’s Strawberry - Joan thinks its RAID controller died so she’s building a replacement from backups now.”
My brain begins to race. Joan thinks the RAID controller is dead? It’s dead. I’ve worked with Joan for over a year and I don’t bother questioning her diagnosis anymore - I can safely assume she’s correct. She’s rebuilding it from backups? Ok fine - I can’t make that go faster than the tape drive, leave her to it. How can I help her? Log in, see if I can retrieve anything.
Cos here’s the twist folks. A linux server can totally lose all access to its storage - and keep going. Today though, even I am in for some surprises.
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Posted in Systems Administration | 4 Comments »
The Ultimate Systems Administrator (So you want to be a Systems Administrator? Part 4)
November 3rd, 2007 by James HicksThe Ultimate Systems Administrator doesn’t exist. There’s always someone better than you at something - or some aspect of it. But don’t ever let that stop you trying.
I wont let it stop me from trying to paint a portrait of this fictional server-ninja.
I’ll take the best traits from the best SA’s I’ve ever worked with, from myself if I have to, and where that falls short… I’ll put down what I wish we had - with the full benefit of hindsight. Strap in - we’re gonna do a little genetic engineering, a little personality engineering, a little training and a lot of building the ultimate career.
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Posted in Systems Administration | 7 Comments »
3Ware 24 Disk 600MB/sec RAID6: An affordable mini-SAN?
November 1st, 2007 by James HicksThe last time I worked with a 3Ware RAID controller it was 2004, and it was a 9000 series SATA. It lived up to its marketing hype - I personally benchmarked it exceeding 100MB/sec on RAID5 writes - an impressive result for the time. The largest controller available was a 12-port job, so the largest array you could build was an 11 disk RAID5 - if you wanted a hot spare. Still, the combined seek performance of 11 drives was significant.
3Ware have built on this performance. Their 9500 series card claimed approximately 500MB/sec RAID5 writes, and a 16 port model. Now, with their 9650SE series, 3Ware are claiming 600MB/sec RAID6 writes (800MB/sec reads) and 24 disks in an array.
What does this mean?
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Posted in Storage, Technology Choice | 1 Comment »
So you want to be a Systems Administrator? Part 3
October 29th, 2007 by James HicksPart 3 - Breaking Down the Door
So you’re faced with a paradox.
For a Systems Administrator, the most valuable thing on his or her resume is experience. People without experience simply cannot compete for a job against people who have it. This field is completely hands-on and practical - most of the skills and knowledge you use, you will learn on the job.
So how the hell do you break in?
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Posted in Systems Administration | 9 Comments »
So you want to be a Systems Administrator? Part 2
October 28th, 2007 by James HicksSo I got pretty well to the top of my field - without going overboard and becoming a super-specialist / cranky old 20 year veteran, before I got promoted out of the field a few weeks ago.
Before the memories fade too far I wanted to write down what led to my success - and mistakes I made that others could avoid - so that aspiring sysadmins could take advantage of my past few years work too. Especially aspiring sysadmins who have what it takes (See part 1 of this series to find out if you have what it takes) because in my new job, I need more of you guys around!
Part 2 - What course to do?
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Posted in Systems Administration | 5 Comments »
So you want to be a Systems Administrator? Part 1
October 27th, 2007 by James HicksWho am I?
So I’ve been a systems administrator in varying capacities for ten years. Things got really serious in 1999 when I became the main linux guy for an ISP, and went on from there into a small and medium business consulting/outsourced IT dept style business, on into a startup (yucky!), then to a large local government, then a large telco/ISP, and now a small/medium internet infrastructure company. I’ve worked on a range of operating systems in a number of different environments, but I ended up specialising heavily on Linux, obtaining an RHCE in 2004 and using it to leverage myself into big business.
Except as of a few weeks ago, I’m not a Systems Administrator anymore. I’ve been promoted to production support manager at my current workplace, and on reflection I better write down some of my knowledge and attitudes fast, before I forget it all. I’ve also been hiring them lately, so the quality of applicants - and the qualities I look for - have been on my mind.
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Posted in Systems Administration | 3 Comments »
New Site
October 27th, 2007 by James HicksI wrote three articles on my old blog about ‘So You Want To Be A Systems Administrator’ - and the flood of incoming hits brought my old webserver down - twice. An athlon 500 with 384meg of RAM is fine for this stuff right up until you get a few hundred hits in a few seconds. The poor baby ran into swap, then ran out of swap and locked up.
So I’ve decided to relaunch those articles at a new site - with professional hosting. I didn’t want to mess around with mediocrity and el-cheapo servers, so I went directly to pair.
To anyone who’s put out or feels spammed by my relaunching the three articles - I’m sorry; but there were literally hundreds of people who tried to read them and couldn’t because of my crap old server.
After years of random topics on my old blog, I also realised I was going to be posting a fair few purely tech-related articles, and I realised I needed a new site to keep the signal to noise ratio down for my readers. I’ll still continue to update the old site - but I’ll post my ramblings and personal news there. This site is for the geek stuff alone.
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Posted in Site News | No Comments »