My thoughts on life, the universe and beer

Howdy,

Just finished a small upgrade from VMWare Server 2.0 RC2 to the final build on a small setup i did earlier this summer. As always the upgrade went without any pain and it goes on to show that VMWare has yet again proven it self as the virtualization solution of choice for me (hey, Xen/KVM guys, sorry, but your windows virtualization simply sucks!). This setup runs 3 servers, 2 Windows machines and 1 Linux. Everything went without a hitch but what i feel is the only thing missing for VMWare solutions is a client for MacOSX to be able to use the virtual machine console.

I am sick, started on friday evening, but on saturday night there was a party at work so i had to go and have some fun. Left the party at 00:00 after feeling not so good and have been tied to my sofa since then…feeling awful.

Hopefully i get back to work tomorrow!

Well …off to watch some more Familiy Guy!

Bgrds,
Finnzi

Man …

Yesterday & today i have been preparing a IBM JS12 machine for a client. I got a JS20 machine few weeks ago to use in a test and was not extremly happy with the hardware, but the OS, AIX 5.3, has been a surprise. I find all patching and installation tasks to be very easy to perform. I have been a bit burned from my experience with HP-UX & Solaris (i do not consider my self a expert on the OS’s, but have done some HP-UX work for few clients and do run some MC/ServiceGuard clusters.

It is also quite nice to not have to go through hoops to install software like Oracle (Trying to find a consistent guide of what RPMS should be installed on a RHEL5 system for Oracle has not been very easy to find, but somehow i managed to create one). I had to install 2 packages to be able to install Oracle on my new install of AIX 5.3 TL8.

Now, i am not saying i loooove everything about AIX but IBM have made something really good here. Combined with Power6 (and soon, Power7) i am pretty sure i will start consider AIX for my projects at work where i find that i need more power, more stability & more maturity then Linux can offer. Again, i am not saying Linux is not mature enough for most of my projects, but there are places where i could really use AIX.

HACMP is one of the products which can replace MC/ServiceGuard, you do not need a license for basic things like mirroring your volume groups (in software) and you will probably never ever have a bug in a licensing code stopping you from forcing an unmount of a VXFS filesystem on your AIX system (HINT HINT, HP-UX anyone?).

Well ….I’m off….
Laters,

Finnzi

Howdy,

Bah, today i decided to reinstall Vista over Fedora 9 on my laptop. Why you might ask…..

I work for a shop that is EXTREMELY Microsoft centric. We use Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft AD, Microsoft SQL, Microsoft Whatever. I am not saying there is anything bad about that but with some of that 250 people there are ~8 of us (currently, more programmers are switching to Linux in the coming months as the platform of choice for Java programming) that like to use Linux on our laptops, desktops, whatever computer we have. Why do we want to use Linux? Because most of our work has something to do with Linux. My main job roles are: SAN, VMWare, Linux planning & administration…..and i can use a terminal server of most of the things i need to do on a Windows machine.

Sadly thought, we have Sharepoint for all internal forms, and know as a knowledge base, wiki & document storage.

Yea…sure, you can use Firefox on linux to work on MS Sharepoint ….but only in a limited way. You will never be able to edit documents online, you will not be able to edit any wiki entries that have any formatting and so on…..GREAT!

So, i gave up. You could do those things in a virtual machine, but sadly a lot of my work has to do with filling out forms, writing papers for internal use and more stuff. And all this is kept on a Microsoft Sharepoint server.

I am not saying Microsoft Sharepoint is a bad product, i am just saying that it does not make life easy for those who like to choose what browser they use, what office suite they use, what operating system they use……

It stinks, but i have to spend more of my time working then on finding ways to edit my documents, and no, please, if you do more then 30-50% of your work in a virtual machine then you can just as well run Windows on your work machine….

Personally i would have chosen MediaWiki as a knowledge base/Wiki….it is awesome and does what i think a KB/Wiki should do.

Well, back to finishing up my Vista install …i just wanted to rant about my love affair with Microsoft Sharepoint!

Bgrds,
Finnzi

Howdy,

I do not know what it is, but i have endless respect for Johnny Cash. This man has made some of the best country music of all time, and one of my favourite songs, Hurt.

Why am i blogging about this guy? I was just watching a show on the Biography Channel.

What most people do not know is that he toured with a band called Highwaymen. This band is what we could call legendary. Wille Nelson, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings & Kris Kristofferson. If you happen to like country music and have not heard of this band you might want to spend some minutes of your life experiencing some of the legends of the country music playing together.

Tomorrow i plan to start going to the gym ….I will have to eat all the bad things i have said about going to the gym….maaan…it sucks!

Well….just wanted to tell the world how much i love Johnny Cash’s music….respectah!

Bgrds,
Finnzi