Tag Archive - consultant

Of ready-made solutions…

November 30, 2011 in , , , , with Comments Off

Weird bug here. I’ve been locked with one main client for about 2 years, I’m losing my edge.

I’ve been suggesting, going as far a setting a demo system, that their document revision system be migrated from Rational ClearCase to GIT. The current setup support code (developers) and documentation (infrastructure, products, management teams).

Change rational: I don’t have anything specific against ClearCase, but their licences are ending and, as a corporate decision, they are looking into cutting recurring costs. Going for a widely deployed & supported open-source/free software solution looked like a safe bet. While not involved in the decision process, I suggested GIT as an alternative to whatever they could be thinking of. I’m that kind of ‘consultant’, always with an opinion on everything, hmm… computer related.

The bug is: Why the hell did I suggest GIT ? I’ve entered a weird mental pattern. Through the years, I’ve convinced myself that peoples would be supported by an outdated system (ie: CVS), then upgrade to a more recent one (ie: SVN), then change their ways to a true developer friendly revision control system (ie: GIT).

GIT and SVN aren’t the same type of product.

Sometimes, you DO need a central repository – mainly if all you are doing hard-to-merge binary file commit. Sometimes, you DO need a locking mechanism. Think of 10 employees working on different part of the same Visio document. A project complete and you get 10 ‘branch’ merge request ? You’ll want to kill yourself. At least with locking, they will fight amongst themselves!

But the GIT vs SVN vs ‘whatever‘ isn’t the point here. The problem was that I took a ready-made solution (that I deployed long ago) and went as far as proposed it ‘to the outside world’. That would have never happen while I was leading the infrastructure decisions of 5+ startup (and maintaining a lot more). I’m losing my edge. It’s time to start posting a bit more (on this blog) and bouncing ideas off my entourage.

Still alive

November 7, 2010 in , , , , with 105 Comments

Still alive –

I’m now VSP (vmware sale specialist) certified, with the VTSP (vmware technical sale specialist) almost completed. Looking into completing the VCP (vmware certified professional) sometime in the next 3 months.
In the mean time, I’ve went overboard with shiny new stuff for myself (crazy spending spree) (been so long since I had a good read/game!):

Started with book:

  • In Your Dreams, Tom Holt
  • Bad Lands, Tony Wheeler’s
  • Je sais que vou mentez, Paul Ekman
  • and 3 more vmware/vsphere reference book.

    • Then with games:

  • Fallout 3: New Vegas, xbox 360
  • Fable 3, xbox 360
  • Alpha Protocol, PC
  • Black and White 2, PC [can't say NO to classic!]

    • Then with cloths:

  • There was a cool sale of Arc’terix / Merrell items [so i've bought about 5-7 items...]

    • And… There’s more coming! With Christmas I’ve got a cart of interesting items LabsPhoenix is going to buy for the ‘home’ lab. At the very least, a new mac-mini, a Razer mouse, a eSATA external enclosure (with the HD), 2 SSD drives, 2 Infiniband network card (with associated cables), OEM board (ie: Soekris, Wrap, …) with gigabytes connections and an ubiquity setup (3 antennas + router board). If I’m lucky, I might even buy this 24U enclosure I’ve been watching for a few months. There should also be a couple spending session for the LabsPhoenix own project (3x New Servers, vSphere licences, …) but thats another thing altogether.

    breathing space

    January 28, 2010 in , , , , , , , , , with 139 Comments

    Last couples of weeks been pretty crazy. The number of drafts I’ve got prepared for this blog keep growing while my time to edit/publish them seem to strangely dissolve in the event around me. I’ve done my share of ‘This blog will get the time it deserve’ quite enough to know not to do that anymore. I won’t apologize for having a full schedule, I’ll just outline why I got one so full:

    – Les Laboratoires Phoenix welcomes a new managed client, at the same time as I got my two first contractual employee (with enough job to drive them for years).
    – I’ll be giving a talk at ConFoo, March 12th, called ‘Massive Scalability’. Be there, its going to be a pretty good one.
    – I’ve been mandated to write another article for the European edition of Linux+DVD. Deadline is in a couples days.
    – I’ve started dancing classes. (No comments please ;-))
    – With the wedding happening soon, we are totally swamped with stuff to do. From food tasting to getting whatever I will wear, going through hotel reservation, decoration choices… By themself, each task is quite easy to manage, but add to that the fact we are doing most of it remotely and that Catherine schedule is just crazy.

    At least, this morning, I’ve got a 20 minutes break, waiting for the bus thats going to take me to Montreal – on yet another ‘business trip’.

    backup or restore?

    January 17, 2010 in , , , with 1 Comment

    Been away for 2 month (from this blog). This isn’t from the lack of thing to speak about – my life have been really busy. In fact, never been so interesting and full – I’ve got at least 10 posts drafted. From photography to sysadmin work, to writing. The problem : time was lacking – to be honest, it still is.

    But, beside everything that might be happening with my business (work log never been that full, started to get employees), I decided to take 2 minutes for a big fact of life (for sysadmin/management). Watch it, watch it: Nobody (especially YOU) care about backup. You care about successful restore. There! Now, I don’t want to hear about how great your backup are, if you don’t do regular restore (even as test), they’re not worth anything.

    Reread those last sentences. Important point in a sysadmin life.

    PHP MultiPart Form-Data Denial of Service proof of concept

    November 27, 2009 in , , , , , with 643 Comments

    PHP version 5.3.1 was just released. This release contains a patch for a denial of service condition we’ve reported on 27 October 2009. The problem is related with PHP’s handling of RFC 1867 (Form-based File upload in HTML).

    Source: http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/507982

    Exploit already on PacketStorm…

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