Had to skip out on Linuxworld today - my team at work had to ramp up a project to completion today, and meeting the business objectives gotta come first Anyways, here I am at our big analytics datacenter, putting a few HBAs back into the storage cabinets. I come across the data center emergency box - a small box in the cabinet, where we keep extra keys, first aid kit, and some emergency food and drink in the event of the all night run (rare, but it happens). Of course, the food I have back there is predictable - a couple of bags of beef jerky and some cans of Red Bull. Bachelor level protein and caffeine.

I enjoy wearing suits these days. I manage a team of engineers located on both ends of the country. I negotiate contracts, maintain vendor relationships. I love the business side of the industry. Still, some things never change I’m still a network geek at heart, and proud of it.

Today was a day spent mostly in the NGDC side of the conference hall. There is a marked cultural difference between the Linuxworld side and the NGDC side - over at the NGDC side of things, you tend to find a lot more senior people - directors, VP, CIO/CTO, etc. At Linuxworld, you tend to find more non-management engineers and programmers. The conferences and tracks on each side refect this split. For certain, there are many exceptions to this, but it seems to be true for the most part. It’s too bad, as both “groups” of folks depend on each other.

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I am currently attending the Linuxworld Expo in San Francisco - a relatively easy conference to attend, as it happens in my own back yard. The first day of the event was mostly good. I spent the morning in the Linux Performance Monitoring and Troubleshooting session, which was very skillfully done. As it was the first day of the conference, attendance was not huge yet, so the tutorial session had a small group feel, allowing for more questions and follow up from the audience. The presenter of the tutorial was excellent, having given the session several times in the past. He was honest enough to talk about the reality of real time processing in Linux - it’s horrible, and for apps that may require this, Open Solaris is a much better fit. While the 2.6 kernel has the beginnings of real time capabilities, it’s not even close for prime time.

At aCerno, we do Linux hugely - it is currently our universal development and production platform. We all love it, and all of engineering has been using Linux for a long, long time. Still, one must let the requirements of the task be the primary concern for the tools and platforms used, and I can certainly see systems within our clusters that would benefit from real time and interruptible execution capabilities. My team may have an investigative project brewing as a result.

I’ll be spending the next three days at the NGDC component of the conference for the next three days - really looking forward to those sessions.

Welcome to the Quantum Concepts blog. QC is a place where I discuss my experiences and observations around networks - networks of systems, networks of ideas, and most importantly, networks of people.

Welcome to my roller coaster of thought. Keep your arms and legs inside the ride at all times, and have fun!