New position takes 120% of my bandwidth

So, I started a new position as a Linux Admin back in August of last year. The company is a fortune 100 and the job is fantastic. The only down side is it literally consumes more time than I have available. By this I mean we are currently working on such a wide spectrum of technologies that it's hard to give attention to anything else.

That spectrum I mentioned spans from  Openstack / vSphere Admin'ing to international remote site infrastructure installations. There's a lot to do. Which keeps me busy and happy. The single caveat is that my available attention to things like certs has been greatly diminished. I had to drop last terms Sec+ and VCP classes as I just couldn't keep up with the ramp up from the new job and class work.

Needless to say the blog was set to the side and only lately have I begun to surface. However my current focus is spread a bit thin. I'm looking over widely distributed directory deployments, working on the Python Scripting Expert class, and reading Pro Puppet.

Things seem to move very fast in the company and if I'm not involved and actively working on the technology of interest the project moves on without me. Puppet is a good example of this. We are in a slow migration from CF Engine to Puppet, but if I don't jump in on configs, then the task will get picked up by another Admin. I loose out on the experience and knowledge. On the other side, I've got a full plate with Perl scripts, vSphere work, PM work for a Nagios deployment, Nagios reporting research, puppet manifests to write, plus more. Never a dull moment!

So, for the next while I'll be doing my best to drop my usual random notes and articles, but please bare with me. The timing may be more elongated between posts as I'm running fairly short on that these days.

Be well, grab your towel, and don't panic!

VMware Certification Roadmap And A Quick Update

I've been at the new position for about a month now. I'm one of the Admins for a global Linux based network. There's no shortage of oddities to deal with around the globe. I'm enjoying it and it's really nice to be with like minded folks (nerds!). I've had to adjust to a larger environment moving from a 2 man team to a 6-7 man team in a rather large company. It's going to be fun.

I've started some classes as well. A second Network Security course which is very Windows centric. I suppose when you're trying to patch holes you go for the most breakable OS.  I plan to sit for the Security+ exam after this class and will hopefully end up with a voucher from the course. Of course this means I'll be giving some more money to Darril Gibson for his audio material and ebook covering the SY-301. This will finish up my security courses for a while until I start work on the CCNA:Security sometime in the next year or two.

My second class is the VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, and Manage V5. It's being offered at my local community college for a fraction of the normal 1-3K cost. It does however come with the caveat of being 16 weeks long. You do most of the labbing in a "Pod" which is a virtual setup of a small vSphere installation. It's a not huge difference from deploying Openstack locally and having a private cloud at your disposal. As I understand it though, the VCP5 exam (VMware Certified Professional) requires a good amount of studying in order to pass the exam. That said, it's not just the VCP anymore.

Thc VCP exam has been broken out into 4 different flavors (and I might be late to this game), VCP IaaS, VCP Cloud, and VCP desktop, and VCP datacenter virtualization. 

VMware's new certification roadmap:

and of course, links to all the exams:
http://mylearn.vmware.com/portals/certification/?ui=www

RHCSA Labs and Shuttle trouble - Just Getting Started.

I began studies on the RHCSA last week. If you look at my last post, I have my usual month of study plan laid out with labs, reading, CBTs, etc. Although this time I'm a bit behind.

My home VM server is a Shuttle SH67H3 with an Intel Core i7 2600 (non K version as it doesn't support vt-d), 16Gb RAM, and a couple of corsair SSDs. I was running VMware ESXi 5 on it and it was stable with a few Linux VMs. However it did not support the on board RAID as it was seen as a software or fake raid.

With the RHCSA studies, I need to lab, a lot.  Although I do a lot of the work daily in my current position, we use Xen while RHEL 6 uses KVM as default. This means the RHCSA is based on KVM, not Xen. Thus I had to reformat the Shuttle. Now, the fun part.

For install media, I usually go for a USB stick first, then if thta doesn't work, I'll  attach a SATA blu-ray burner (I don't keep a CD attached to the server). Initially, I tried the USB drives and loaded Scientific Linux 6 on the drive using dd on my Mac Pro (here's some instruction, although block size should be 256k for a quicker copy "bs=256k"). It was a no-go. Then I tried burning an ISO. Still a no-go. I removed all devices sans the DVD-Rom, tried both media again, no-go. Ok, whats happening here?

 I did some googling and found a  few notes about issues coming up with Intel's UEFI (new kind of bios). The UEFI is supposed to bring all sorts of magic, but I didn't see any in the SH67H3's BIOS. It seems UEFI can grab a list of boot devices and store it in NVRAM of which it somehow cannot be recovered with out a bios flash (don't quote me on this). Great. I'm 2 days behind in studies now and still no booting from media, old HDDs, yes. Odd.

The next few steps are the same as usual, reset the bios, switch USB ports, verify USB media on other computers, Verify DVD media, switch SATA ports, switch SATA mode, etc. By luck and good troubleshooting I ended up with the DVD drive on one of the Intel RAID SATA ports and the BIOS SATA setting set to "IDE." Bam! It worked. Ok, put everything back, SSDs on the Intel RAID, host drive on the other SATA ports, and try it again. It's a no-go! Turns out the only way to boot from the DVD was to have the drive on the Intel RAID ports. So, I got Scientific Linux 6 installed on the host drive and went to work doing the basic configs, finally.

Now to play catch-up.

FCC's broadband access map and proposed broadband build-out

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released the nation's broadband access map yesterday. It's an interesting look at what areas are connected via broadband. It is in line with population density.  As you can see, broadband is most prevalent on the East Coast and rolling into the Mid-West (which incidentally is still very, very east if your on the West Coast). This report goes along with a proposal to increase broadband access through the Connect America Fund.

An older (cir. 2000) population map of the US via visualizingeconomics.com originally created by Joe Lertola for Time Magazine.

Studying being bogged down.

I'll be the first to admit, sometimes I can be a slow learner. If I'm uninterested or widely distracted I just don't simply retain the information I'm tasked with learning the way I'd like to. On the other hand, I have been taking classes and reading technical documents for some 14 years now. So, there is no shortage on the desire to constantly learn and grow. Sometimes though, things simply get bogged down.

Take this weekend for instance. I had planned to bang out some 8-12 hours over two days of studying. What did I actually get? Maybe 7 hours, tops. The distractions,my older daughter, her friend, my younger daughter, cooking, dishes, etc. It was just too much to balance. I let the focus escape, except for a few hours a day after everyone was asleep.

There was a post on TechExams.net that went as follows,

"you can go around and look at someone's house, and get a good idea if they're going to pass the CCNA or not ... dishes not washed, clothes piling up, not going out, etc. ... that was me. I did a thorough house cleaning yesterday after the test, and today, too."

 That's been me for the past month, however tihs past weekend, I lost sight and left the books for dishes and food prep. It has to be done sometimes, I know. I just need to make sure I keep my eyes on the goal. I think next weekend I'm going to head over to the local library. Then I can put in 2-4 hours there, plus my normal 3 hours when everyone is asleep. Really, I wish there were more hours in a day as 24 only goes so far. As the Japanese say "Keep up!"