1. President's Corner - Internships, Co-ops and Tech Assistants
2. LOPSA-East - Register now!
3. LOPSA Board Elections Approach
4. Recent Sysadmin News tied to blogs.lopsa.org
5. LinuxFest Northwest
6. Locals
7. Thank you to our sponsors
8. Comments or suggestions?
At the end of last months column, I mentioned the idea of hiring college students who are aspiring to be system admins as a way to increase short staffed IT departments. In this column I will cover a few of the ways this can done and some of the other benefits with hiring them.
First a few definitions. A Tech Assistant is where you hire someone at a low rate. An internship is the same, but you as the employer has to do extra paperwork because the student gets college credit for the work they do for you. They have to have a specific project and you have to track the student's work toward the project goal. In both of these cases the student typically works part time and continues their schooling while they are working for you. The final case is a co-op where the student leaves college for 3 - 6 months and works full time for you and you pay them an entry level salary. Drexel University's educational program is based on the co-op model.
So, what can a college student do for you? Think of all the lower priority projects that you have that you will never have time to get done. College students are perfect for these projects. For your first one, pick one that is not 'customer facing' but where the results will only be used by your technology department. Start with the easier projects - the low hanging fruit and then work up to the more difficult ones. For example, I needed to write a script that would read an excel file and update an application via an API. It would only take me a few hours, but it was so low on the priority list, I would never get to it. Instead I gave it to a Tech Assistant and they were able to do the work. Sure it took longer, but this way the project was actually done and they learned a lot about scripting - a win - win solution.
I also have the students work on tasks such as:
When you bring a college student on, you need to set clear expectations of what they will and will not be doing. In my case there are certain systems (email, payroll, student records) that they cannot get near. I also tell them ask lots of questions and give them a list of skills they need to work on. I usually start them with a review of our system documentation or backups as that will have them touch the majority of our systems so they get a good idea of our environment. I typically have them agree to stay at least a year with 2 years preferred for them and for me. After 2 years of part time work, they have enough experience to get the Junior System Admin job. The one downside with part time college students is that they will miss days for finals and large projects.
So I encourage you to reach out to your local community college or 4 year college and talk with them about hiring some their students. It will be a win-win situation for you and for the students.
http://lopsaeast.org/2016/register-for-lopsa-east-16/
Get trained top caliber trainers, and hear our amazing keynote speaker:
Tanya Reilly on
Traps and Cookies
Does technical debt turn your small changes into minefields? Does your production environment expect perfect humans? This talk highlights tools, configuration and documentation that set us up for failure. It advocates for removing traps, so that you don’t have to waste brain cycles on remembering where they are. And it offers practical advice for sending your future self (and future coworkers!) gifts, instead of post mortems that just say “human error :-(”.
Includes stories of preventable outages. Bring your schadenfreude.
Tanya Reilly has been a Site Reliability Engineer at Google since 2005, working on low level infrastructure like distributed locking, load balancing, bootstrapping and monitoring systems. Before Google, she worked as a Systems Administrator at eircom.net, Ireland’s largest ISP, and before that she was the entire IT Department for a small software house. She likes writing Go, building Lego spaceships, and predicting how things will break.
Thanks to member Adam Boulware, members can post URL's to their LOPSA blogs about interesting system admin news and have it show up on the front page of https://lopsa.org. All you have to do is to log into https://blogs.lopsa.org, choose sysadmin-news as the category, then enter a title and URL.
So anytime you see read something interesting on the web, please take a minute or two to share it with the rest of LOPSA by doing a quick blog post.
http://www.signupgenius.com/go/30e044ca5a72aa5fd0-lopsa
The topic this month is "A Practical Introduction to Cloud Services" by Ahmed El-Shimi, and we'll be at the usual location, the Altius Institute for Biomedical Sciences / Stam Lab: 2211 Elliot Ave, 1st Floor, Seattle WA
Dinner will be sponsored by Silicon Mechanics.
We'd like to thank our sponsors. We're deeply grateful for their continuing support of LOPSA. More information on how to become a sponsor.
Thanks to our individual sponsors:
Platinum: Jennine Townsend, Dan Rich Gold: Ski KacoroskiSilver: Matt Disney, Lee Damon, Scott Murphy, Ian ViemeisterBronze: Gary Studwell unique approach to trading in the financial markets. Our company designs, builds and runs a global trading software platform. We take pride in our software craftsmanship and use Python, Cython and C on Linux to run our global trading operations. We also use open-source tools as much as possible - Python, PostgreSQL, numpy, git, Cobbler, Puppet and Ansible are all crucial to our business.
Gold Sponsor Paessler AG
Bronze Sponsor Edgestream Partners is a small group of scientists and engineers with a unique approach to trading in the financial markets. Our company designs, builds and runs a global trading software platform. We take pride in our software craftsmanship and use Python, Cython and C on Linux to run our global trading operations. We also use open-source tools as much as possible - Python, PostgreSQL, numpy, git, Cobbler, Puppet and Ansible are all crucial to our business.
Bronze Sponsor O'Reilly Media spreads the knowledge of innovators through its books, online services, magazines, and conferences. Since 1978, O'Reilly Media has been a chronicler and catalyst of cutting-edge development, homing in on the technology trends that really matter and spurring their adoption by amplifying "faint signals" from the alpha geeks who are creating the future. An active participant in the technology community, the company has a long history of advocacy, meme-making, and evangelism. Check them out.
Some of LOPSA's web content is hosted by ServerBeach.
As we close out this month's LOPSAgram, we want to make sure we're giving you the information you want or need. If you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to send them to communications@lopsa.org
Office: +1 (202) 567-7201, Fax: 609-219-6787, Address: PO Box 5161, Trenton, NJ 08638-0161
Facebook • Twitter • LinkedIn • G+ • Reddit
Unsubscribe
1. President's Corner - Helping People Become System Admins
2. LOPSA-East - Registration Opens - register now!
3. LOPSA Cascadia - See you there
4. USENIX LISA SIG being retired at end of 2016
5. Job Opening - Wordpress / HTML Programmer
Last month I wrote about how LOPSA and its members help existing system admins by providing professional development opportunities via organizing and speaking at conferences, chapter meetings, and being active in online communities. This month the focus is on how we can help out people who want to become system admins. Imagine you just finished secondary school and are interested in computers. You like playing with them and figuring out how they work. You are the person your family and friends come to when they are having computer and technology problems. You would love to do this for a career, but am not sure what that career is called. Does this sound familiar? Most of us did not start out to become system admins, but instead fell into the career. We played with technology and overtime became known as the person who makes technology work. So the first thing that LOPSA members can do is to go out to secondary schools and tell the kids about system administration as a career. I feel that many kids would start sooner in system administration if they knew it existed. If you are interested in doing this, contact your local secondary school career center and offer to give a talk about system administration. To get you started, check out the presentation at https://lopsa.org/resources/Documents/SystemAdminsWS.pdf. Now once a person has decided to become a system admin, they need to get training. There are many places in the US to get trained as a database or network admin, but very few that provide system admin training. See https://lopsa.org/System-Admin-Colleges for a start of list of colleges with system admin degrees. Many schools offer 1 or possibly 2 courses as part of some other curriculum. If you know of a school in your area that offers degrees in system administration please email them to board@lopsa.org so we can add them to the list. The other option if you cannot go to school is to try and leverage your experience helping friends and family toward getting a system admin job. While possible, this is very difficult as companies these days want 2 or more years of experience as a full time system admin. One route to getting the experience is to work for a non-profit that needs computer help. LOPSA's Mentorship program is how LOPSA helps out students or people who are looking to gain experience and get a start as a system admin. One part of the Mentorship program matches up experienced system admins with people who want to become system admins. From personal experience, I can say it is very rewarding to help a person realize their dreams of becoming a system admin. I encourage you to help out the community by becoming a mentor. Seehttps://lopsa.org/become-lopsa-mentor for more details. Finally, we can help out at our own workplace, but hiring aspiring system admins as technical assistants or providing internships so they can gain more experience. For the last 8 years at my job we have been hiring technical assistants to leverage our short staffed IT department. For the 12 - 24 months they spend with us, they gain valuable experience in system administration and I get inexpensive labor ($10 - $12/hr) that helps out with my chronically understaffed department. If your job is in an area with a local college and you need more help, I encourage you to look into this solution. It is a win - win for your employeer, the student, and you.
The “please fasten you seatbelt sign” is on and LOPSA-NJ is happy to announce that registration for the 2016 LOPSA-East conference is OPEN. Early Bird pricing is a great deal and will be available till March 25th. We have some great classes and talks this year and we hope you all can joinus. There are discounts that you can find out about at http://lopsaeast.org/2016/lopsa-east-costs/#dis We are in talks with a great Keynote speaker for the Friday Night Keynote given before we release you to the wilds of New Brunswick, New Jersey for dinner so stay tuned for that. We will be announcing some new things going on later as the conference gets closer. One of the things that was brought up in the feed back from the past few years is a get together on Thursday night for those in the area or arriving early so we will be opening up the bag stuffing party to all. More details on this will be added to the website as the time gets closer. Friday night we will have the Birds-Of-a-Feathers again this year as well as a Cards Against Humanity game for anyone who wants to join and a few more fun things that make LOPSA-East different from other area conferences. We are still looking for volunteers to help with promotion, manning the registration desk, and being room monitors on Saturday to help speakers get set up and to make sure they stay on time as well as some other duties. So to volunteer please fill out the questionnaire athttp://lopsaeast.org/2016/lopsa-east-16-volunteer-interest/ or send me an email with LOPSA-East volunteer in the subject line to wbilancio@lopsanj.org. We can’t wait to see you all in May at the LOPSA-East Conference. Remember to reserve your room at the Hyatt Regency New Brunswick at the group rate of $129 single/double plus tax. When the rooms in the LOPSA-East block are sold out, requests will be handled on a space-available basis at the hotel’s standard rate. Make your reservations early! To reserve your room on the web go to https://aws.passkey.com/g/51094713 If you have any questions or ideas you would like to ask or discuses please email me atwbilancio@lopsanj.org.
LOPSA-EAST ’16 aims to bring together IT professionals from all walks of life in the Mid-Atlantic region and beyond to share war stories, learn for each other’s experiences, and network with industry peers. The conference includes acclaimed speakers and keynotes, expert-lead training designed to build the skillsets and confidence of attendees, lightning talks, and a “Birds of a Feather” track where attendees propose and host their own topics during the event.
If you're down to the last minute, you can still register at:http://casitconf.org/casitconf16/register-now/
Instead of our usual monthly SASAG meeting, there will be a free Meetup at the Hotel Deca on Thursday March 10. RSVP: http://www.meetup.com/Seattle-Area-Systems-Administrators-Guild-SASAG/events/228073381/
An introduction to no-sql databases April 7th 7pm RSVP: http://www.meetup.com/LOPSA-NJ/events/229343508/ While many folks are familiar with relational databases, there are many exotic cousins that fall under the moniker of NoSql. This talk will give a overview of the concepts behind these unusual databases and explain the trade-offs that give these databases their unusual characteristics, flexibility and performance. Key-value databases, columnar databases, document databases and graph databases will be covered.
LOPSA Cascadia IT Conference Thursday Evening meetup will also be our monthly meeting at the Hotel Deca, instead of our usual location. Meet and chat with instructors and speakers from the conference! This event is free of charge.
RSVP for Thurs, March 10, 7pm-9pm: http://www.meetup.com/Seattle-Area-Systems-Administrators-Guild-SASAG/events/228073381/
At the end of 2015, we collaborated with nearly 20 other local user groups. Our event sold out with 250 RSVPs. It was a social event with limited agenda and charity collection. Finally, we had quick pitches for community leaders and music from DJ Bobsan. An amazing party with an exceptional community!
In 2016, we resumed presentations. Beginning in January, David Mortman presented about Docker security. In February, JP O'Donnell presented about collaboration between database and development teams. We've stuck to our home base at CoverMyMeds and they've continued to be a gracious host!
On March 2, LOPSA Cbus collaborated with Pair Columbus and several other user groups to host a special event with Michael Feathers. Mike flew in from Miami and presented about technical debt. Warner Moore acted as MC.
Our next meeting will be on March 24 and be related to DevOps practices. Register here:https://lopsacbus201603.eventbrite.com
1. President's Corner - Professional Development
2. LOPSA-East - Schedule & Registration Soon
3. LOPSA Cascadia Registration Opens!
4. 2016 Budget Completed
5. Thank you to our sponsors
6. Comments or suggestions?
At the SCALE 14x conference a weekend ago, I was able to talk with over 100 people who either were system admins or are thinking about becoming system admins. While talking with them, it became clear to me that LOPSA currently has two separate areas where it helps the system admin community. This month I will talk about how LOPSA helps out current system admins by providing several opportunities for professional development. LOPSA runs two well regarded conferences for system admins - Cascadia on March 11th - 12th (http://casitconf.org) and LOPSA-East May 6th - 7th (http://lopsaeast.org). At these conferences, system admins can improve their professional skills in a variety of areas. For example at Cascadia you can improve your skills in Time Management, Automation, Git, Network Troubleshooting, Wireshark, Vi, and more. LOPSA-East will have a similar type of schedule. If you are in the Pacific Northwest or the Northeast, I encourage you to attend these conferences. In addition LOPSA members are speakers at or help to organize other conferences providing professional development opportunities. For example at LISA last year, 9 of our members were speaking or chairing workshops and another 9 members were involved in organizing the conference. I know of members speaking at or involved with SCALE, LinuxfestNW, OLF. If you are involved in a conference, please let board@lopsa.org know so we can help to advertise it. LOPSA members spend time organizing and speaking at chapter meetings where members can come together to learn about new technologies, ideas, and from each other. A chapter meeting is also a great way to move your career forward as you will meet local system admins and make the connections that can lead to your next position. Check if there is a chapter close to you at https://lopsa.org/Chapters. If there is not one in your area, contact board@lopsa.org and we can help you to start one. The final way LOPSA offers professional development is via our online community of IRC and mail lists. It is here that you can often learn about new ideas on how to solve a problem, of opportunities for classes or training in your area, and what other people have done to solve the problem you are having. For example, recent maillist threads covered the best way to layout a network with VLAN's and using 10GB copper in a data center. I encourage you to help with professional development for our system admin community by sharing what you have learned, helping to organize an event such as a conference or chapter meeting, and/or participating in our online IRC and mail lists. Next month I will talk about how LOPSA helps out people wanting to become system admins.
3. LOPSA Cascadia - Registration is open! Please retweet..
...or mention it to your co-workers, boss and local MeetUps, or upvote our post on https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/
Register at: http://casitconf.org/casitconf16/register-now/
Your contact at your vendor is probably a sales person. Let them know that sponsoring events like LOPSA Cascadia gives them far more credibility than the much larger amounts they are spending on other advertising, and that sysadmins will favor their products and services. Ask for a strong positive referral to their marketing department, and send both sales and marketing our sponsor prospectus:
http://casitconf.org/casitconf16/sponsorships/
Any questions can be referred to: sponsorship@casitconf.org
LOPSA welcomes Paessler AG as a new Gold Sponsor. Paessler AG’s award winning PRTG Network Monitor is a powerful, affordable and easy-to-use Unified Monitoring solution. It is a highly flexible software for monitoring IT infrastructure, already in use at enterprises and organizations of all sizes and industries. Over 150,000 IT administrators in more than 170 countries rely on PRTG and gain peace of mind, confidence and convenience. Founded in 1997 and based in Nuremberg, Germany, Paessler AG remains a privately held company that is recognized as both a member of the Cisco Solution Partner Program and a VMware Technology Alliance Partner. Learn more about Paessler and PRTG at www.paessler.com.
1. President's Corner - 2016 - A New Year and a New LOPSA
2. LOPSA-East - Call for Proposals
3. LOPSA Cascadia IT Conference - Call for Proposals
4. Mentorship - New Student LOPSA members need mentors
Welcome to 2016. A new year and a new LOPSA. Now that LOPSA's new website is up and running, we are working on cleaning up our backend processes and providing improved training and educational opportunities for you, our members. We have a blogs site up at https://blogs.lopsa.org where you can blog about your system admin experiences. If you are interested, please email board@lopsa.org with the username you would like and we will get you set up on it.
I will be at SCALE 14x in Pasadena, CA from Jan 22 - 24th and would love to see you there. If you are planning to attend SCALE, please consider signing up at http://www.signupgenius.com/go/60B0B4FADAD2CA02-scale/6622545 to help out in the booth. It is a great way to meet people and learn more about LOPSA. In addition, the first 8 people that sign up get a free pass to SCALE 14x.
Cascadia IT Conference is happening on March 11th - 12th in Seattle, WA. The conference schedule will be up soon. If you can make it this is a great way to improve your system admin skills, network with your peers, learn about new technologies, and even look for a new job. Registration will be open this month at http://casitconf.org.
On May 6th - 7th, the LOPSA-East conference will take front stage in New Brunswick, NJ. Like Cascadia, this is a great way to improve your system admin skills, network with your peers, learn about new technologies, and look for a new job. Check out http://lopsaeast.org for the latest information on this conference.
If you have ideas about ways LOPSA can provide more educational and training opportunities to its members and to the system admin community as a whole, please contact me at ski@lopsa.org
The organizers of the LOPSA-East Professional IT Community Conference invite you to submit proposals for presentations at LOPSA-EAST ’16.
Attendance for this year’s conference is expected to be between 200 and 250 IT professionals from companies large and small, local government, and academia. Our attendees are primarily from the Mid-Atlantic region including New Jersey, New York, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Maryland, Virginia, and Washington DC. As IT professionals we go by many titles but everyone is invited: system administrators, network administrators, network engineers, Windows, Linux, Unix, DBAs, security professionals, technical managers, and beyond.
This year’s conference is going to be focused on developing scalable infrastructures through industry best practices, the implementation of cutting edge technologies, a deeper level understanding of the core concepts that enable our work, and ensuring continued operational efficiencies. LOPSA-EAST is OS-agnostic and welcomes presentations on any operating systems whether it be Windows, Linux, Unix, etc.
All presentations should be focused on issues important to our technical community and speakers should assume that members of the audience have at least some industry experience.
Dates and Deadlines
For the full CFP go to http://lopsaeast.org/2016/call-for-participation/
3. LOPSA Cascadia - Call for sponsors: your vendors
Proposals are being reviewed and registration will open soon. In order to have a successful conference, both this year and in the future we need sponsors.
Sponsoring LOPSA Cascadia (or LOPSA-East, or LOPSA itself) is unique value to your vendors. They get direct exposure to an extremely savvy technical audience, who more often than not directly make purchase decisions.
We've had a large influx of new student members. Many of them are very excited about our Mentorship program, which is one of our most successful endeavors, providing great value to both mentors and protégés alike. Signing up couldn't be easier, and you manage the amount of time and energy you put into the program. Sign up to be a mentor and/or protégé here:
https://lopsa.org/become-lopsa-protege
https://lopsa.org/become-lopsa-mentor
Bronze Sponsor Edgestream Partners is a small group of scientists and engineers with a
1. President's Corner - What I learned at LISA 2015
2. New Website - https://lopsa.org
3. LOPSA-East - Call for Proposals
4. LOPSA Cascadia IT Conference - Call for Proposals
LISA 2015 was my first LISA as LOPSA's president. I took the opportunity to talk with many of the past presidents to learn more about LOPSA's history and to talk with members about their experiences with LOPSA.
LOPSA was founded in 2005 after close to 10 years of discussions about creating an organization that was more focused on the practical aspects of system administration. In the late 1990s and early 2000's, USENIX and SAGE (the precursor to LISA) were more focused on academic aspects of system administration. LOPSA expected to start with thousands of members and lots of momentum. Unfortunately this did not happen and LOPSA ended up with a significant amount of debt. I cannot thank all you enough who hung in there over the years to help LOPSA pay off its debt last year.
I also learned that many people are burned out on LOPSA after supporting it for many years and not seeing much happening. I completely understand where they are coming from and hope that over the next year we can show you that LOPSA has cleaned up its internal issues and is still relevant to system administration. When LOPSA was founded, membership based organizations like ACM, IEEE, and SAGE were doing well with robust membership bases. Unfortunately, fast forward 10 years, and almost all membership based organizations are shrinking because of local, specialized meetups; sites like ServerFault for help; specialization of system administration and the decline of the generalist; and vendor supported organizations such as VMUG or Spiceworks. So given that, what can LOPSA do that will benefit the community and keep LOPSA healthy?
LOPSA's most successful activities over the past few years have been the Cascadia IT and LOPSA-East conferences; its Mentorship program; and its scholarships for students and Women in Advanced Computing. One thing that all these activities have in common is that they help members of our community improve their skills and when one person improves their skills we all benefit. I feel that LOPSA can build upon these strengths and be relevant by focusing on ways to improve the skills of system administrators.
LOPSA can support small 1 - 2 day conferences where system admins who cannot afford to go to LISA or vendor training can improve their skills. If you are interested in holding one in your area, please contact board@lopsa.org and we will help you get started and make it a success. If you know of a local conference in your area that is good for system admins please contact us and we will work to partner with them for possible scholarships for attendees and providing speakers and tutorial instructors. Finally, I would like to see our Mentorship program expand to match up students in system admin degree programs with experienced system admins willing to help them out.
If you can think of any other ways that LOPSA can help system admins to improve their skills, please send your ideas to board@lopsa.org. Together we can make a difference.
Cheers,
Ski
As you know, LOPSA's website was a wee bit outdated (actually very outdated). After looking at our options, the board decided to go with a hosting provider (Wild Apricot) that specializes in hosting websites for non-profits like LOPSA. This will enable us to focus on providing services to the community instead of trying to figure out what to do about the website. After much work, LOPSA's new website went live at LISA 2015. After several startup issues with our cert, it is now completely secure. The new site has much better member management tools, is supported on phones, and is much easier to maintain. If you have not already checked it out, please go to https://lopsa.org and login to see all the content. Please email board@lopsa.org with any idea you have to improve the website.
MARCH 11-12, 2016, SEATTLE, WA
We invite you to present a talk or Training at the 2016 LOPSA Cascadia IT Conference in Seattle.
LOPSA Cascadia is a gathering of professionals from the diverse IT community in the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia. We gather to learn from each other, share ideas, and meet new friends. Whether you are paid to work with computers or just like to experiment with technology, your time is well spent at LOPSA Cascadia.
The conference includes presentations, invited speakers and keynote talks, as well as Trainings by top-notch experts. We expect attendance of 100-125 people from the IT community, businesses, and academic institutions in and around Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and British Columbia.
PRESENTATION TOPICS
Presentations must relate to using and managing computers, information infrastructure, and/or supporting people who use computer infrastructure. This can be anything from describing how to setup an enterprise quality web service infrastructure to how to manage your relationship with your Internet service provider.
You may submit as many proposals as you like. The conference committee will select proposals which are submitted with full information and those that we think will most benefit the IT community as a whole. EXAMPLE TOPICS:
* Description of a problem solved and how you worked through it. * Demonstration of a specific technology stack and how it works for your environment. * Show how non-technical skills were to solve technical problems. * How you developed your career and how others can benefit from your experience. * Expert tips on how to use an application or tool such as vim, tmux, or PowerShell.
TOPICS EXPLICITLY DISCOURAGED:
* Sales Presentations * Vendor Product Demonstrations * Proposals or Vaporware (Although works in progress are appropriate for lightning talks)
EXAMPLES OF GOOD PROPOSALS AND TOPICS:
* An author of an open-source package explains the project, the benefits and how it works. * A system administrator presents about a new technique, software system, or device he or she created. * Someone with recent experience in particular technology presents "10 things I wish I knew before I started with [name of product]". * A Windows engineer describes how they manage their fleet of desktops/laptops. * "How we manage [Linux/Mac OS X/BeOS] in an Active Directory domain." * "How to Make Wireless Work in a Conference Setting." * "Incident Command for IT: What We Can Learn from the Fire Department." * "Deploying your Application to Cloud: Lessons Learned from Five Different Applications." * "What System Administrators Can Learn From [other industry]." * "A Few Thoughts on Uptime: Resisting Entropy."
PRESENTATION FORMAT
We are actively seeking proposals for talks and Trainings at LOPSA Cascadia.
* Talks: 45 minute presentation including Q&A. * Trainings: half-day, 4-hour sessions. ("Full day" Trainings may be submitted as two half-day Trainings without the assumption that they will both be accepted.) * Lightning Talk signups will be available during the conference.
SUBMIT YOUR PROPOSAL
Everyone is welcome to present! Public speaking experience is not required. Complete the Proposal form.
TALK PROPOSALS:
Talks are a relatively short 45 minute presentations that are designed to inform participants about a specific topic or subject. Presenters will have access to an overhead projector and may not require participants to bring any materials.
TRAINING PROPOSALS:
Trainings are half-day deep technical presentations that are designed to teach participants somthing. Presenters will have access to an overhead projector and may require participants to bring laptops, notepads, or other equipment.
LIGHTNING TALKS
Lightning talks are very short, 5 minute, presentations designed to spark interest or call to action. Lightning talks do not have access to overhead projectors or any other equipment.
Lightning talk registration will be available at the welcome desk during the reception.
DATES AND DEADLINES
* 15 December - Proposals due * 1 January - Schedule Published * 11-12 March - Conference
CONTACT AND QUESTIONS
Please see: more information on LOPSA Cascadia and presenting at this great event.
If you have any questions, please feel free to email the organizers at: submissions@casitconf.org
Platinum: Jennine Townsend, Dan Rich Gold: Ski Kacoroski Silver: Matt Disney, Lee Damon, Scott Murphy, Ian Viemeister Bronze: Gary Studwell unique approach to trading in the financial markets. Our company designs, builds and runs a global trading software platform. We take pride in our software craftsmanship and use Python, Cython and C on Linux to run our global trading operations. We also use open-source tools as much as possible - Python, PostgreSQL, numpy, git, Cobbler, Puppet and Ansible are all crucial to our business.
LOPSA's website is hosted by ServerBeach.
------------------ ------------------ ------------------ ------------------
In this memo:
* President's Corner: Traits of a good System Admin? * Job Openings * LOPSA's 10th Anniversary at LISA 2015 * Coming to LISA - Please help at the LOPSA table * Cascadia IT Conference * LOPSA-East * Chapter News * LOPSA Board Candidates in 2016 * Thank you to our sponsors! * Comments or suggestions?
01. President's Corner: Traits of a good System Admin?
I have been interested for years in what makes a good system admin - both from the viewpoint of trying to pick between candidates as a hiring manager and as an educator/mentor to people interested in entering the field. This is the list of traits that I have come up with.
1. Adaptable
The environment that system admins work in is continually changing and at a faster pace each year. Good system admins need to be flexible to adapt to and take advantage of technological changes such as virtualization of servers and networks, configuration management, and the move to the hosted services. System admins have adapted to these changes by creating fewer handcrafted systems and more creating systems programmatically - yes we are becoming programmers. System admins do not know what technology will be in 5 - 10 years, but they do know that it will be very different from today.
2. Passionate Learner
Good System admins are very curious about how and why something works - blackboxes are the bane of their existence. System admins get a device and open it up to understand it or they look at the code of the software they are supporting. Sometimes this means a system admin may break systems in order to understand them - preferably on a test bed. System admins do this because in order to fix problems they have to understand how the system works. System admins not afraid to admit and learn from their mistakes so to avoid repeating them. They are open to new ideas and consider all of them (even if just in passing).
3. Helpful
Good system admins are generous with their time in helping people with their technology problems. System admins are very aware of the limitations of technology and do their best to make it work for people (although there are some problems that cannot be worked around). As change is hard for many people, a good system admin takes time to explain why changes are necessary and the benefits of the changes.
4. Problem Solver
Good system admins are compulsive, obsessive problem solvers who take ownership of a problem and work at it until a fix is in place. While system admins prefer to fix things right as they know that 'temporary fixes' tend to become permanent, they can Macgyver up solutions to work around fires in a time crunch. System admins dislike single points of failure as they cause sleepless nights. A good system admin has the belief that they can figure out a fix to any technology problem.
5. Communicator
A good system admin can communicate to customers and management the benefits and limitations of technology. It is their job to make recommendations on technology to the organizational decision makers so that good decisions are made. A good system admin shares what they have learned with others to help out the community via mentoring, blogs, presentations, and answering questions in person or online.
6. Ethical
System admins often maintain systems that have sensitive data. Their customers depend on the system admin to be discrete and ethical about allowing people to access sensitive data. They maintain confidentially of any data they can access and are careful about allowing others access to the data..
This is my list, what are the traits you feel a good system admin should have?
02. Job Openings
These are a few of the recent postings to our sajobs mail list...
Linux Systems Administrator at the University of Michigan
Network Analyst - Vancouver, BC
Junior System Administrator Opening in Atlanta Area
For details on these jobs please check out the jobs list archives.
03. LOPSA's 10th Anniversary at LISA 2015
This is LOPSA's 10 Anniversary and we are having a LOPSA After Dark party at LISA 2015 to celebrate on Wednesday night at 8pm. The party is sponsored by Qumulo, and there will be a special business card raffle for an Apple TV.
Stop by or volunteer at our table in the registration area to see the great raffle gifts donated by our supporters.
Come to our annual meeting on Weds night to hear about LOPSA's plans for the next year and enter the raffle. After the meeting come to our party for cake and more. Check out our new website going live during LISA, renew your membership, and ask your friends to join up. It is a new LOPSA for the next 10 years.
When you attend you will get a Raffle ticket for one of these great prizes:
* Books donated by No Start Press * A Resilience Cellular Gateway donated by OpenGear * (4) passes to SCALE 14x donated by SCALE * A UDI drone donated by Minima * A 960GB SSD drive donated by IXSystems * A Lego Deathstar donated by CoverMyMeds and ScriptScribe.org * (5) Tshirts and (2) SSD drives donated by AC&NC/Jetstor
04. Coming to LISA - Please help at the LOPSA table
LOPSA can use your help in staffing a table in the registration area again this year at the LISA conference on Tues, Wed, Thur, and Fri morning. If you are at the conference and can spare a bit of your time, this is a great opportunity to meet people, tell them about LOPSA, and talk to the board about LOPSA. The time slots match up with the conference schedule so they are not all the same length of time. We most need help during the 'before the sessions start' and 'break' times (time slots with comments), but can use help at any time. Sign up.
05. Cascadia IT Conference
_MARCH 11-12, 2016, SEATTLE, WA_
You may submit as many proposals as you like. The conference committee will select proposals which are submitted with full information and those that we think will most benefit the IT community as a whole. EXAMPLES TOPICS:
If you have any questions, please feel free to email the organizers at: SUBMISSIONS@CASITCONF.ORG
06. LOPSA-East '16
The organizers of the LOPSA-East Professional IT Community Conference invite you to submit proposals for presentations at LOPSA-EAST '16.
LOPSA-EAST '16 aims to bring together IT professionals from all walks of life in the Mid-Atlantic region and beyond to share war stories, learn for each other's experiences, and network with industry peers. The conference includes acclaimed speakers and keynotes, expert-lead training designed to build the skillsets and confidence of attendees, lightning talks, and a "Birds of a Feather" track where attendees propose and host their own topics during the event.
Attendance for this year's conference is expected to be between 200 and 250 IT professionals from companies large and small, local government, and academia. Our attendees are primarily from the Mid-Atlantic region including New Jersey, New York, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Maryland, Virginia, and Washington DC. As IT professionals we go by many titles but everyone is invited: system administrators, network administrators, network engineers, Windows, Linux, Unix, DBAs, security professionals, technical managers, and beyond.
This year's conference is going to be focused on developing scalable infrastructures through industry best practices, the implementation of cutting edge technologies, a deeper level understanding of the core concepts that enable our work, and ensuring continued operational efficiencies. LOPSA-EAST is OS-agnostic and welcomes presentations on any operating systems whether it be Windows, Linux, Unix, etc.
Potential Presentation Topic Ideas
* Cloud Management (public and private) * Virtualization Strategies * Backup Strategies and Solutions * Security Principles and Best Practices * Configuration Management * Deep Dive into Technologies Core to our Industry * Scripting Techniques * Enterprise Monitoring and Management * Email Architecture and Implementation * Technical Leadership * Network Design * Log Aggregation * Engineering Concepts - Thinking like an Engineer * VoIP Solutions * Collaboration Techniques * Designing Highly Available Infrastructures * Centralized Management Systems
The following will NOT be accepted:
* Sales presentations * Proposals or vaporware * Vendor product demonstrations
Previously Accepted Presentations
* 2014 * 2013 * 2012 * 2011 * 2010
We are actively seeking proposals for presentations at LOPSA-EAST '16. We have openings for:
* Talks: A 20-minute presentation (with slides) followed by ten minutes of Q&A * Tutorials: Instructor-led sessions, half a day in length, with slides and notes (both distributed electronically to all attendees) * Panels: 45-minute panel discussion (2 - 5 panelists plus a moderator) * Lightning Talks: A 5-minute talk (hard limit!) with no Q&A in a shared session
SUBMIT YOUR PRESENTATION
Submissions and questions should be sent to: submissions2016@lopsaeast.org
Tutorial instructors will receive one free admission, travel expenses, and an honorarium; speakers (for talks), panelists, and panel moderators will receive a registration discount. Lightning Talk presenters receive no discount.
Each presentation is only entitled to a single discount so if there are multiple presenters you will need to determine how you'd like to split this.
* Deadline for all Submissions - January 13, 2016 * Decisions and Notifications to All Submitters - January 27, 2016 * Schedule Published - February 1, 2016 * Registration Opens - February 15, 2016 * LOPSA-East '16 Conference - May 6 -7, 2016
Please see our website at www.lopsa-east.org/ for more information on LOPSA-East '16. If you still have additional questions, we can be reached via submissions2016@lopsaeast.org
07. Chapter News
Seattle:
The November meeting of SASAG will be one week later than normal on Thursday November 19th as many of us will be at LISA. The topic will be "LISA Wrap up" - be sure and take good notes, notice highlights and trends to talk about.
LOPSA-LA:
Come for #sysadmin RamenOps social dinner in Burbank on Tuesday night, Nov 17th.
08. LOPSA Board Candidates in 2016
Our next election is coming up in Spring 2016.
Meanwhile, the Leadership Committee is looking for volunteers and candidate nominations. The Leadership Committee is the guiding organization for the board. We nominate board candidates and provide coaching to the board as a neutral third party.
Do you have an opinion on the direction of the organization and are ready to execute? Is another member demonstrating great leadership for the organization? Nominate yourself or your fellow member! If all else fails, step up and help the Leadership Committee. Reach out to use at leadership@lopsa.org.
09. Thank you to our sponsors!
Thanks to our individual sponsors: Platinum: Jennine Townsend, Dan Rich Gold: Ski Kacoroski Silver: Matt Disney, Lee Damon, Scott Murphy, Ian Viemeister Bronze: Gary Studwell
10. Comments or suggestions? As we close out this month's LOPSAgram, we want to make sure we're giving you the information you want or need. If you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to send them to communications@lopsa.org
* President's Corner: Education & Training * Job Openings * LOPSA Discount Code for LISA and 10th Anniversary Celebration * Coming to LISA - Please help at the LOPSA table * SCALE Call for Papers * Cascadia IT Conference * LOPSA-East * Chapter News * LOPSA Board Candidates in 2016 * Thank you to our sponsors! * Comments or suggestions?
01. President's Corner: Education & Training
Last month I mentioned how I feel that LOPSA can help system admins make the transition from hand crafted systems to writing code that creates systems by facilitating and offering training and educational services. All of us as members need to think about how we can share what we have learned with other system admins. By sharing and learning from each other, we all benefit. LOPSA can help this happen in several ways.
First is via conferences run by our local chapters. Currently the Seattle Cascadia IT Conference) and the New Jersey (LOPSA East Conference) chapters run conferences once a year. After several years, we now have the experience and understanding for what it takes to put on a successful, 1 - 2 day, regional conference. I encourage any of you who are in another chapter to consider running a conference. LOPSA can help you with logistics, finding speakers, locating sponsors, and assuring that it is a successful conference. While it is a lot of work, it is also very rewarding.
Second, we can share our knowledge with others via presenting at conferences and meetings. For example, there are 9 LOPSA members speaking or chairing workshops at LISA 2015 and another 9 members involved in organizing the conference. Personally, I give around 4 - 6 presentations a year sharing what I have learned with others and I find it very rewarding. You can too. LOPSA is starting up a Speakers Bureau and would love to have you participate. If you are interested in participating or have never given a presentation before contact board@lopsa.org and we will help you.
Other LOPSA members share their knowledge via the mentorship program. In this program, protegees describe what they need help with and if you have the knowledge, you sign up to help them out. If you are interested as a mentor or protegee, check it out at https://lopsa.org/mentor
Finally, LOPSA members share their knowledge via writing about their experiences in chat forums, IRC, blogs, mail lists, Q&A sites like Serverfault, and books. If you have not written down your experiences I encourage you to start on the LOPSA blogs. Just log into https://lopsa.org/ and click on MY BLOG on the left side menu. This is not only a great way to share information, but also to document your solutions to problems you have experienced.
Splunk/Linux Engineer - New York City, NY Research Engineer in High Performance Computing - Milwaukee, WI DevOps Engineer - Bothell, WA
For details on these jobs please check out the jobs list archives at: https://lists.lopsa.org/pipermail/sajobs/
03. LOPSA Discount Code for LISA and 10th Anniversary Celebration
Summer is winding down and we are moving into Fall which means it is time to make your plans to attend the premier system administration conference. Yes the LISA'15 website is live at https://www.usenix.org/conference/lisa15 and as a member of LOPSA you get a $45 discount to attend. Please login to https://lopsa.org and then go to https://lopsa.org/Member-Discounts to see the discount code (please do not share with one else). LOPSA will be holding its Annual Meeting at LOPSA and celebrating our 10th Anniversary.
Looking forward to seeing you at LISA'15.
LOPSA can use your help in staffing a table in the registration area again this year at the LISA conference on Tues, Wed, Thur, and Fri morning. If you are at the conference and can spare a bit of your time, this is a great opportunity to meet people, tell them about LOPSA, and talk to the board about LOPSA. The time slots match up with the conference schedule so they are not all the same length of time. We most need help during the 'before the sessions start' and 'break' times (time slots with comments), but can use help at any time. Sign up at:
http://www.signupgenius.com/go/60b0b4fadad2ca02-lisa4
05. SCALE Call for Papers
The 14th annual Southern California Linux Expo will take place January 21st - 24th, 2016. SCALE 14x will be at the Pasadena Convention Center.
The call for papers is now open until Oct 30 at: https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/cfp/
06. Cascadia IT Conference
The Seattle Cascadia IT Conference is gearing up for our next conference. We are looking for volunteers to help with organization, marketing, and sponsorships. This is an easy and fun way to help the community and pad your resume. You can be a volunteer for as little as an hour a month or as much as a few hours a week. Would you like to know more? Contact casitconf-chairs@casitconf.org
07. LOPSA-East '16
LOPSA-East '16 is coming up. As we are an entirely volunteer-organized event, we could use your help! We are looking for volunteers http://lopsaeast.org/2016/lopsa-east-16-volunteer-interest/ who can assist our teams in the areas of registration, A/V, graphics design, room monitoring, speaker introductions and more.
If any of these sound interesting to you, and you would like to help make LOPSA-East '16 our biggest and best year yet please get in touch http://lopsaeast.org/2016/lopsa-east-16-volunteer-interest/.
LOPSA-East '16 will be held May 6-7, 2016 at the Hyatt Regency, New Brunswick NJ http://lopsaeast.org/2016/hotel-travel/.
Welcome to the team!
08. Chapter News
ProfitBricks has a blog posting listing their 47 top SysAdmin Events and Conferences in 2015-2016 at: https://blog.profitbricks.com/top-sysadmin-events-in-2015-2016/ LOPSA's Seattle chapter meetings came in at number #7 and the LOPSA Cascadia IT Conference clocked in at number 20. Congratulations to the folks in Seattle to get listed. There are also many other events that may interest you on the list.
Columbus:
The LOPSA Columbus August meeting went very well with Ben Stillman presenting about Galera, which is an Open Source High Availability tech for MySQL. He did a presentation and performed a live demo where he took down a database that runs and the site continued to work without interruption! Attendees confirmed while refreshing on their mobile phones. Big thanks to CoverMyMeds for space and food!
September is coming up tomorrow (September 30) at Old North Arcade. We're celebrating our fourth anniversary! Join us: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/lopsa-cbus-anniversary-arcade-social-tickets-18567186956
09. LOPSA Board Candidates in 2016
10. Thank you to our sponsors!
We'd like to thank our sponsors. We're deeply grateful for their continuing support of LOPSA. For more information on how to become a sponsor visit Become a Sponsor.
Thanks to our individual sponsors: Platinum: Jennine Townsend, Dan Rich, Ski Kacoroski Silver: Matt Disney, Lee Damon, Scott Murphy, Ian Viemeister Bronze: Gary Studwell Sponsor: John Boris
Bronze Sponsor O'Reilly Media spreads the knowledge of innovators through its books, online services, magazines, and conferences. Since 1978, O'Reilly Media has been a chronicler and catalyst of cutting-edge development, homing in on the technology trends that really matter and spurring their adoption by amplifying "faint signals" from the alpha geeks who are creating the future. An active participant in the technology community, the company has a long history of advocacy, meme-making, and evangelism. Check them out at http://www.oreilly.com/
LOPSA's website is hosted by ServerBeach, check them out at http://www.serverbeach.com/.
11. Comments or suggestions? As we close out this month's LOPSAgram, we want to make sure we're giving you the information you want or need. If you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to send them to communications@lopsa.org
01. President's Corner: Transitions 02. Taglines 03. Job Openings 04. LOPSA Discount Code for LISA and 10th Anniversary Celebration 05. Looking for LISA'15 Help 06. Cascadia IT Conference 07. LOPSA-East 08. Chapter News 09. Thank you to our sponsors! 10. Comments or suggestions?
01. Thoughts from our President
In the last year both my Dad and my Mom have passed away. This marks a major transition for my myself that has left a big gap in my life. I cannot ask my parents for their wisdom and my family's central gathering place does not exist any more. This transition has not been easy, there is a sense of loss with them gone, and we do not know what the future holds for us. I mention this because the System Administration profession and LOPSA are also undergoing major transitions.
System Administration is changing from an profession of hand crafted machines, systems, and services to one where the focus is on writing code to create the machines, systems, and services. Where we used to learn our craft from more senior system admins, reading books, exploring existing systems, and trial and error; we can now learn by reading code that sets up a machine, system or service. Instead of working with physical hardware many of us are transitioning to work with virtual hardware while a few of us work at the level of the hypervisor. In the world we are moving toward, we write code that isr repeatable, hopefully maintainable, and ideally shareable with other system admins and organizations.
Like in my personal life, this transition will not be easy. This transition is both exciting and scary for many system admins as we do not know what he profession will be like in the future - just that it will be very different. Many of us will have a very difficult time changing from hand crafting systems to writing to code to create systems. These people may feel a sense of loss as the profession seems to be passing them by. Others will wonder why a person would ever create a system by hand.
Where does LOPSA fit into this transition? LOPSA can help a lot with continuing education and training of system admins to help them through this transition. LOPSA can do this via conferences, webinars, mentorship, local meetings and members helping each other on IRC and mail lists. We can be sensitive to people who are having a more difficult time with the transition and help them along. Members who have made the transition to coding systems can offer their expertise by giving talks, tutorials, or mentoring which will help the profession as a whole.
02. Taglines
Over the years LOPSA has searched for a tagline that describes LOPSA without much success. I think this is because system admins do so many different things that just one tagline will not work. So this time we are looking for a small set of taglines that wecan put on new tshirts. Some ideas are:
"Makes things work" "We makes systems work" "Professionals making systems work" "When IT needs to be done right"
Please email your ideas to board@lopsa.org. Once we get a set of taglines, you can vote on them and we will make up new shirts with the most popular ones.
03. Job Openings
04. LOPSA Discount Code for LISA and 10th Anniversary Celebration
05. Looking for LISA'15 Help
LISA'15 is just around the corner and LOPSA is looking for volunteers to help before the conference with planning and at the conference with the table and the After Dark festivities. If you can help, please send an email to board@lopsa.org.
LOPSA-East '16 is coming up. As we are an entirely volunteer-organized event, we could use your help! We are looking for volunteers [5] http://lopsaeast.org/2016/lopsa-east-16-volunteer-interest/ who can assist our teams in the areas of registration, A/V, graphics design, room monitoring, speaker introductions and more.
SASAG has a new location, meeting regularly at the Stamatatos Lab 2211 Elliot Ave, 1st Floor, Seattle WA. During the August SASAG meeting, LOPSA Board member and SASAG organizer Ski Kacoroski presented on "How to pick your next SAN". In September SASAG will hear from Lee Fisher, local infosec expert on "Defending Intel UEFI systems from firmware attackers"
09. Thank you to our sponsors! We'd like to thank our sponsors. We're deeply grateful for their continuing support of LOPSA. For more information on how to become a sponsor visit Become a Sponsor
Thanks to our individual sponsors: Platinum: Jennine Townsend, Dan Rich, Ski Kacoroski Gold: Steve VanDevender Silver: Matt Disney, Lee Damon, Scott Murphy, Ian Viemeister Bronze: Gary Studwell Sponsor: John Boris
Please email board@lopsa.org with any questions, comments, or ideas. We always want to hear from our membership.
In this memo: 01. Thoughts from our President 02. Transition to new Board this Weekend 03. SysAdmin Day Contest Results 04. SysAdmin Day Parties 05. Job Openings 06. From the Mailing Lists 07. Cascadia IT Conference 08. Chapter News 09. Thank you to our sponsors! 10. Comments or suggestions?
01. Thoughts from our President I was reading the submissions for LOPSA's SysAdminDay contest earlier this morning, and it got me to thinking. Each of the entries has a slightly different viewpoint on what being a systems administrator is. This might, in a nutshell, be a microcosm of LOPSA's biggest problem -- I'm not sure we really know what a sysadmin is or we as an organization want to be when we grow up. Being a systems administrator can mean many different things depending on your position and your experience. You might be working with hardware, managing applications or even writing code. The operating system you use and whether you work with systems, storage or networking isn't what makes you a sysadmin; those are just the tools of the trade. It's the way you approach the work that makes you a sysadmin. At its heart being a sysadmin comes down to creating an environment where the people you work with and the company you work for can all do their work without needing to know you exist. Anyone who knows me has heard me say some variation of the following: I believe that the best sysadmins are people who are both curious and lazy. The person who logs into a system and runs the same script every days isn't a syadmin. A sysadmin would be curious enough(and lazy enough) to find a way to automate that task so they never had to do it a second time. When we need to change the root password on 200 servers we aren't going to log into each one, we are going to find a solution that does it for us. The thing that most amazes me about the system administrator community is the variety our skills and backgrounds. We have approached the field from many different background and career paths, but we all have the same goal -- to make things work and to keep them working. As this is my last column as LOPSA's President I want to leave you with some parting thoughts on what I believe LOPSA could become. With enough effort, LOPSA could (and should) be the organization that answers the question implied above -- "What is a systems administrator?" It should be the "go to" place to not only find the answer to that question, but also to find resources to learn how to become one and if you already are one to become a better one. I would love to see some of the following available from LOPSA's web site:: recommendations on best practices in the industry peer-reviews of sysadmin-related tools and solutions educational resources for learning about systems administration and advancing systems administration skills a place to foster communication and community among sysadmins
LOPSA needs to take the lead to fulfil its mission to "advance the practice of system administration." It cannot survive without becoming the leader in defining the profession and providing valuable resources to its members.
02. Transition to new Board this Weekend The new Board will take over at the Face to Face meeting in Seattle this weekend. The new Board will start work immediately on setting priorities for the coming year. Look for more on this next week and over the next several months.
03. SysAdmin Day Contest Results LOPSA's SysAdmin Day contest winners include Maya Karp, Jennine Townsend, Patrick C, and Peter Ferriola. Check out https://lopsa.wildapricot.org/blog/3625461to see their winning entries. Thanks very much to our sponsors Opengear, Silicon Mechanics, Druva, and Ansible for the contest prizes.
04. SysAdmin Day Parties Several LOPSA members took advantage of LOPSA's offer for TShirts and books for their SysAdmin Day parties. There were parties held in Columbus OH, Ottawa CA, Bethany CT, Fayetteville NC, and Fort Lupton CO. For more about about SysAdminDay check out http://sysadminday.com/.
05. Job Openings These are a few of the recent postings to our sajobs mail list...
IT Director - Moorestown, NJ Data Infrastructure Engineern - Remote work Windows DevOps Engineer - Knoxville, TN
06. From the Mailing Lists There was a large dicussion about Slack that changed into a discussion about different types of communications (chat, email) and the benefits of each method. Also discussed was other new technologies that people are using for communicating. Email and chat have been around for a very long time and there are many other options now, but none of them seem to be getting as ubiquitious as email or chat.
07. Cascadia IT Conference The Seattle Cascadia IT Conference is gearing up for our next conference. We are looking for volunteers to help with organization, marketing, and sponsorships. This is an easy and fun way to help the community and pad your resume. You can be a volunteer for as little as an hour a month or as much as a few hours a week. Would you like to know more? Contact casitconf-chairs@casitconf.org
08. Chapter News On August 13th, Seattle LOPSA members will be hearing from Ski Kacoroski on how to pick a Storage Area Network (SAN). SAN's have become much more critical as folks move to virtualization and their are so many different types to choose from these days.
LOPSA Columbus threw a party on Sysadmin Day at CoverMyMeds in a collaboration with the Central Ohio Linux User Group and DevOps Columbus. This is one of the larger events of the year and over 50 folks RSVP'd. Sponsor, CoverMyMeds, talked briefly about their open positions. Warner Moore and Bill Schwanitz shared community updates and announced the DevOpsDays Ohio conference on November 18 and 19. The CFP for DevOpsDays Ohio is open now. After hanging out over some craft beer and great conversation, we shared Sysadmin stories from the past year. Folks who presented were awarded either a LOPSA T-shirt or O'Reilly Book. LOPSA Columbus will be announcing their August meeting soon.
PSA LA chapter organized two meetups to celebrate Sys Admin Day across the megapolis: on the West Side for LunchOps (http://www.meetup.com/lopsala/events/224177085/) and in the Valley for BeerOps (http://www.meetup.com/lopsala/events/224177122/). We are up to 269 members in our meetup.com group (http://www.meetup.com/lopsala/)
In this memo: 01. Election Results (Warner) 02. SysAdmin Day Contest 03. SysAdmin Day Coming Soon 04. Conference Speakers 05. Job Openings 06. From the Mailing Lists 07. A Lesson Learned (Ski) 08. Chapter News 09. Thank you to our sponsors! 10. Comments or suggestions?
01. Election Results (Warner)
I'm pleased to announce our new board members! Our independent monitor Andrew Hume compiled the results of the election and the report. Welcome our new and returning board members:
William Bilancio Paul English Chris 'Ski' Kacoroski Atom Powers
The new board members will assume their positions at the next annual in-person board meeting, which will be scheduled within the next few months. This is also when the officers will be elected. Until then, Dan Rich and Mark Honomichl will be serving the remainder of their terms.
I want to thank our board members who are leaving for their time and contribution to LOPSA. Dan Rich, our exiting President, has been a board member since 2009. Mark Honomichl stepped up earlier this year after a board member resigned. I also want to thank Nicholas Brenckle and other candidates for running.
The elections were conducted by the Leadership Committee. Without their hard work, we would not have an election this year. Thank you Andrew Hume, Lee Damon, Matt Okeson-Harlow, and Scott Murphy!
Meanwhile, if anyone would like to nominate a candidate for the 2016 election or volunteer for LOPSA in any capacity, please contact the Leadership Committee.
02. SysAdmin Day Contest This year LOPSA is having a SysAdmin Day Content to celebrate SysAdmin Day on July 31st. The contest rules are:
"Describe what being a sysadmin means to you. What do you do that makes your job a profession and a career and not just a job. How do sysadmins help their companies in unseen ways everyday. What are some of the things that sets sysadmins apart from other technology roles. Alternatively, send us your description of what a sysadmin is in haiku form. "
The contest runs from now until July 25th with winners announced on July 31st. Prizes for the contest are:
$100 Apple gift card and TShirt from OpenGear. Raspberry PI 2 Ultimate Kit from Silicon Mechanics. Anisble Prize Pack and Tshirt from Ansible.
For more on SysAdmin day check out SysAdminDay.com. Many thanks to our sponsors for the prizes.
03. SysAdmin Day Coming Soon SysAdmin will be held on July 31st this year so start planning your party now. If you set up a meetup and 10 or more people sign up, send an email to communications@lopsa.org with the meetup link and LOPSA will send you (3) t-shirts to help celebrate SysAdmin day.
04. Conference Speakers Brian Vianzon gave a talk at Cal Poly Swift Tech Symposium about scaling Docker on May 16th.
Thomas Uphill gave a talk at PuppetCamp Seattle on June 4th.
If you are speaking at a conference and would like to help spread the word about LOPSA, send an email to communications@lopsa.org with a link to your talk and LOPSA will send you a t-shirt you can wear at the conference.
WAN Technician - Philadelphia Sr Linux Admin - Los Angeles Puppet/DevOps - New York City
06. From the Mailing Lists Tim Kirby started off a discussion on IT Roles within a company that touched on IT and how to relate to the business and executive mgmt of the company. Some good ideas in this thread if you are trying to make IT more than just a cost center at your organization. There were also good discussions on the professionalization of system admins and the future of LOPSA.
07. A Lesson Learned (Ski) I recently moved from an 10 year old DNS/DHCP/IPAM roll my own setup to a new integrated vendor supported product. The old system was a non-split master-slave setup for DNS while the new system was a split multi-master with views. We cut over the the internal DNS/DHCP with no problems, but when we tried to cut over the external DNS (different view) nothing worked. In the course of debugging the problem we went back and forth a few times between the old and new setups and somehow our one of our old servers ended up serving internal IPs to external users which took several of our external sites off the internet for 24 hours.
What happened was that the multimaster setup was missing an ACL on the external view that was blocking access from any IP to it. While we were debugging this, we accidentally brought up the old external slave server before the old external master server. The external slave did a query for its zones and because it was on the internal network, it got the internal zones from the new system. It then proceeded to serve up internal IPs to external users.
Lessons Learned: * As usual it is a chain of events that causes the problem. In this case it was changing from non-split to split DNS where the servers are operating under different assumptions, the ACL problem, not having a good rollback process, and having all servers on the same network. * Once you get bad DNS data on the internet, there is very little you can do about it. OpenDNS and Google have ways to flush their server caches but no one else did. Figure at least 24 hours for it to get corrected. * Bad DNS data can seem to be random because people use pools of servers. When I hit 8.8.8.8, I would get 25% correct data, 75% bad data. If folks hit the servers from other parts of the country they would get almost all good data. It was totally dependent if a person had tried ot access our external sites while we were serving up bad data. * The above item makes testing very difficult. We initially tested with two different ISPs and they worked ok as they had previously cached good data. It was only a few hours later that people started complaining and I started testing other DNS servers and found the problem.
08. Chapter News On July 9th, Seattle LOPSA members will be hearing from Jason Gifford of Fortinet on "Breaking the Kill Chain: Prevent, Detect, and Mitigate Threats to your Organization".
LOPSA Columbus met on June 25 and CJ Estel presented about the database change and tracking tool that he's about to open source. The presentation was titled Managing and Tracking Database Deployments. What's even cooler is that his presentation was a preview of the presentation that he's giving at LISA later this year!
Watch LOPSA Columbus for an announcement soon for the July event. LOPSA Columbus, DevOps Columbus, and the Central Ohio Linux User Group will be holding a joint social on July 31 for System Administrator's Appreciation Day at CoverMyMeds.
09. Thank you to our sponsors! We'd like to thank our sponsors. We're deeply grateful for their continuing support of LOPSA. More information is available on how to become a sponsor. Thanks to our individual sponsors: Platinum: Jennine Townsend, Dan Rich, Ski Kacoroski Gold: Steve VanDevender Silver: Matt Disney, Lee Damon, Scott Murphy, Ian Viemeister Bronze: Gary Studwell Sponsor: John Boris Bronze Sponsor O'Reilly Media spreads the knowledge of innovators through its books, online services, magazines, and conferences. Since 1978, O'Reilly Media has been a chronicler and catalyst of cutting-edge development, homing in on the technology trends that really matter and spurring their adoption by amplifying "faint signals" from the alpha geeks who are creating the future. An active participant in the technology community, the company has a long history of advocacy, meme-making, and evangelism.
The League of Professional System Administrators 1200 Route 22 East, Suite 200 Bridgewater, NJ, 08807 USA Email: info@lopsa.org
