Posts Categorized: SysAdmin
The highlight today of probably every Linux-related mailing list and IRC channel was the announcement of CVE-2008-0166, affecting OpenSSL libraries on Debian-based Linux distributions, including the popular Ubuntu. The vulnerability has been present since September of 2006, and Debian strongly suggests throwing your old keys out completely.
Ah, the perils of working in a shared, client environment. One client has us using a login that is not exclusive to us. I prefer using bash; the client is set to use zsh. This is not a problem in and of itself. However, there is a section in the .profile that is causing me issues, let me show you.
I try to do a decent job of advocating for caring about good backups and business continuity strategies in my 7 Deadly Habits article. But this one beats them all, have a look for yourself, it too funny.
In the era of consolidation, storage has not been left out. The impact of backup on normal database activity . . . batch processing in one database impacting transactional processing — these are two real life examples of the consequences of storage consolidation known to almost every DBA. Virtualization puts a new twist in consolidation, but storage virtualization methods are very under-developed compared to computing resource virtualization. Storage QoS and storage virtualization must necessarily be very closely-related areas with a lot of overlap.
I gave this talk covering the different types of memory, how to monitor memory, and how to optimally use it with Oracle at the UKOUG, I have since received requests to post the slides online. Instead of just posting the PowerPoint I took some time to give the presentation again (internally here at Pythian) and this time we recorded the session and are posting it in a variety of formats. This is a bit of a departure from the typical Pythian Goodies, in that it is scripted, and there is a lot of content here in the whitepaper.
It recently came up that it would be helpful if we had a cheat sheet to find out the machine names for any given UNIX. I knew these off the top of my head but it would be great if people added more as comments.
Indeed, while the technique we discuss here is basic, it gives a good overview and is very easy to use. So let get focused… We will use iostat utility. There is much to say about IO monitoring and interpreting results. Perhaps this is only the first of a series of posts about IO statistics. At Pythian we often come across different environments with specific characteristics and various requirements that our clients have. So stay tune — more to come.
I tripped across this story about some new 750G disks @ 7200 RPM soon to be released by Seagate. This filled me with a sense of dread about having to, once again, go through the process of convincing purchasing managers at various customer sites that actually, no, they can not just buy three of these and RAID-5 them together into a huge storage area for their terabyte database. So now, tell me, what happens when you use very big disks for high-performance applications? You have way, way too many square feet to service with far, far too few loading docks (and usually only one access road!!!).
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