Posts Tagged ‘IBM’

Luke Kanies on The Future of Puppet – What a Model-Driven Infrastructure Means to You

Friday, February 12th, 2010

Luke Kanies
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The Future of Puppet – What a Model-Driven Infrastructure Means to You
Wednesday, February 17, 2010 @ 6:30 -8:00 PM
** Please note important information about this meeting **

Please join us on February 17th, 2010 for a special guest, Luke Kaines, the founder of the Puppet Project.

This talk will have a general focus on the future of Puppet, and will
particularly delve into how Puppet’s model of the world will be used
to drive new tools and capabilities. While Puppet is obviously about
configuring your infrastructure, the fact that it uses declarative
models rather than merely relying on chunks of opaque code is critical to
both how we got here and where we go in the future.

This year will be the year of data for Puppet. For example, its most
recent major release provided the means to address a host’s compiled
configuration as a separate, manageable entity, meaning it can be
stored, controlled, and validated at will. The next full release will
have granular event reporting, with correspondingly greater ability to
correlate configurations to the resulting changes.

Each successive release thereafter will further expose the data that
lies at the heart of a Puppet infrastructure. This talk will discuss
some of the kinds of data we’ll be bringing to the forefront of your
Puppet infrastructure, along with how you can take advantage of it and
how it will change your view of the world.

More Information:

About Luke Kanies:
Luke is the founder and CEO of Reductive Labs and the founder of the
Puppet project. Previously, he was a consultant, open source
contributor, and article author. He has focused on tool development
since 2001, developing and publishing multiple simple sysadmin tools
and contributing to established products like Cfengine. He has
presented on Puppet and other tools around the world, including at
OSCON, LISA, Linux.Conf.au, and FOSS.in.

After the meeting … Join us around 8:30 PM or so at

TGI Friday’s
After the meeting … You may wish to join up with other NYLUGgers
for drinks and pub food. This month we’ll be over at TGI Friday’s
(677 Lexington Avenue & 56th Street, second floor, northeast corner), but we are also evaluating
other options for the future and welcome your suggestions.

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Meeting January 27th: Edward Capriolo on Hadoop – Computation clusters at Scale

Saturday, January 23rd, 2010

Edward Capriolo
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Hadoop – Computation clusters at Scale

** Please note important information about: this meeting **

This presentation gives a brief high level overview of Apache Hadoop. Hadoop is a Java software framework that supports data-intensive distributed applications under a free license. It enables applications to work with thousands of nodes and petabytes of data. Hadoop was inspired by Google’s MapReduce and Google File System (GFS) papers.

After the overview, we will delve into a with a practical example of Hadoop solving a “big data” problem.

Finally we will discuss how the demonstrated Hadoop processing model scales out to terabytes of data and hundreds or even thousands of computers.

More Information:

About Edward Capriolo:

Edward Capriolo does System Operations at About.com. He researches high/traffic high-availability and scalable solutions. Edward is a committer to the Apache Hadoop Hive sub project.

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Meeting November 18th: Larry Ludwig on Puppet: What it is and how can it make system administration less painful

Friday, November 13th, 2009

Larry Ludwig
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Puppet: What it is and how can it make system administration less painful

** Please note important information about: this meeting **

Please join us on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 for a discussion of Reductive Labs’ Centralized configuration management framework, Puppet.

Puppet is a model-driven open source framework designed to efficiently manage data center infrastructure. It’s the sysadmin’s best friend, reducing error counts and downtime, saving countless hours and providing significantly higher service quality. Puppet lets sysadmins spend less time on mundane tasks and instead focus on managing their infrastructure as a whole.

System administrators have long written custom scripts and tools to help automate common tasks such as configuration management and system updates. But as networks scale and reach outside the corporate firewall, custom tools become yet another management headache.

The benefits of automated infrastructure go beyond policy-enforced consistency and auditing. In conjunction with virtualizaton, the ability to reliably create new systems running consistent services creates auto-scaling applications as well as test systems identical to production environments.

Puppet abstracts the system from the system administration, providing developers and system administrators with a simple service-based policy framework that allows for more consistent, transparent and flexible systems.

Puppet is currently in use at many organizations, large and small, including: Google, Yahoo, and RedHat.

More Information:

About Larry Ludwig:

Larry Ludwig is a Solutions Architect at Brandorr Group LLC. Larry has been in the industry for over 15 years as a system administrator, DBA and system programmer. He`s had previous experience working for Fortune 500 corporations and holds a BS in CS from Clemson University. Larry has written over 120 puppet modules. Larry, along with Eric E. Moore and Brian Gupta are founding members of the NYC Puppet Usergroup.

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Meeting October 14th: Tobias Abdon & Matt Tavis on Cloud Computing with Amazon Web Services

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

Tobias Abdon & Matt Tavis
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Cloud Computing with Amazon Web Services

** Please note important information about: this meeting **

Everyone’s talking about “The Cloud”, but what exactly is it? Please join us Wednesday, October 14th 2009 at 6pm for a discussion about Cloud Computing with Amazon Web Services.

Since early 2006, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has provided users of all sizes with an infrastructure web services platform in the cloud. With AWS you can requisition compute power, storage, and other services-gaining access to a suite of elastic IT infrastructure services on demand. With AWS you have the flexibility to choose whichever development platform or programming model makes the most sense for the problems you’re trying to solve.

The first half of the presentation will start with an overview of AWS, exploring each individual service. Then the services will be pieced together to show how they work together with open source projects. After that the focus will shift to several open source projects that run on the cloud, including Linux and Hadoop.

The second half of the presentation will be a hands on demonstration of deploying a custom Linux server on the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service. A simple web application will be installed on the server, which will then be configured to auto-scale. To cap off the demonstration, a cloud based load generation tool will be used to trigger the auto-scaling configuration.

More Information:

About Tobias Abdon:
Tobias Abdon has a background in IT infrastructure implementation and management. In that role his primary focus was on deploying high speed data networks for enterprises in the US and Canada. He has moved away from being hands on inside the datacenter, to consulting clients on how to best leverage infrastructure based cloud computing services with Amazon.

About Matt Tavis:
Matt Tavis is the senior technical manager for Amazon ECS web service and Amazon Associates.

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Meeting June 17: Jorden R. Mauro on Distributed Revision Control Systems and Git

Monday, June 15th, 2009

Jorden R. Mauro
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Distributed Revision Control Systems and Git

** Please note important information about: this meeting **

Source Code Management or Version Control is an important aspect of software development. For over a decade, CVS, a centralized SCM, was the dominant player in software to manage a project’s code history and handle concurrent development by multiple programmers. In the past few years, new version control systems based on the idea of distributed systems.

This presentation will explain basic concepts in source code management, review the history and overall themes of centralized systems such as CVS and Subversion, and also introduce distributed SCMs and their benefits over the older systems. Git is used as a concrete example of a distributed SCM and a brief introduction to Git features not present in most SCMs will also be featured.

About Jorden Mauro:
Jorden is a student/grader/labbie at the Rochester Institute of Technology currently working for JP Morgan Chase & Co. in Manhattan.

Over the past couple of years, he’s worked on the Linux kernel with Greg Kroah-Hartman on the staging tree to get drivers into the kernel faster and get them patched up, worked with Plan 9 from Bell Labs on some userspace stuff, and he’s done a lot of things at RIT, including making Linux machines available for student use in one of the open labs and started a tech-talk series.

More Information:

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Meeting May 20: Russ Nelson on OpenStreetMap

Monday, May 11th, 2009

Russ Nelson
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OpenStreetMap

** Please note important information about: this meeting **

Russ is currently pitching Open Data. The left hand to Open Source’s right hand, Open Data is an essential part of many programs. You may think “Oh, but my program doesn’t use any data”. But what about fonts? What about configuration files? What about any files your program reads or writes?

OpenStreetMap is geodata, a collection of locations (intersections), connections between them (roads), and connections between the connections (bus routes). All of these can have arbitrary amounts of metadata stored with them, like names, speed limits, purpose of the road, etc. All of this is stored in a PostGres database and available through an API which presents a simpler interface than raw SQL queries.

With all of this data in hand, you can make a map. But maps aren’t new; why is OpenStreetMap (OSM) new? OpenStreetMap is licensed under a community reciprocal license, so that people who contribute to it are confident that the people who distribute it will reciprocate under the same license. Unlike public domain data like the Census’s TIGER data, OSM has a custodian who wants your contributions. Unlike proprietary data like Google Maps, or its underlying geodata provided by Navteq and/or TeleAtlas, OSM is freely copyable and open to all for editing.

About Russ Nelson:
Russ Nelson is an early Linux adopter; in fact an early adopter of all sorts of technology, including the first non-Compaq iPAQ reflashed to run Linux. He finally gave up on assembly language a few years ago and now programs in C and most languages beginning with P. He almost got a PhD from Clarkson University but managed to escape writing a dissertation. He lives in Potsdam, NY with his wife and two nearly-adult children, but was born in NYC and raised in Baldwin out in Nassau County.

More Information:

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Meeting April 15: Jon Stanley on Rolling Your Own Linux With Fedora

Monday, May 11th, 2009

Jon Stanley
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Rolling Your Own Linux With Fedora

** Please note important information about: this meeting **

Please join us for possibly the last NYLUG meeting any time soon*, and pizza, on Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 at 6:30 PM.

Have you ever wanted to make your own custom remix of Linux that suits your needs, rather what someone else decided your needs might be?

It’s easier to do this with Fedora Linux than you probably think.

First, we’ll talk about why you might want to roll your own customized distribution of Linux, and then all of the the Open Source tools you’ll use to do this with Fedora, (livecd-creator, pungi), and which tool to choose.

Then we’ll actually perform the process for a livecd, and use the USB creation tools to put that on a USB stick, and then give away that USB stick to a lucky audience member :)

Then, courtesy of Fedora, there will be pizza!

Jon will also have assorted Fedora swag (stickers, some buttons, a few shirts, media, etc).

About Jon Stanley:
Jon Stanley is a NYLUG member, and a Fedora Ambassador, and can be found at FUDcons, LUG meetings, and in various channels on IRC, and is on the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee. His blog can be seen on Planet NYLUG.

More Information:

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Meeting: Mar 26 @ 6:30 PM Ira Hyman on The Search for The Ultimate Linux Distro

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009

Ira Hyman
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The Search for The Ultimate Linux Distro

** Please note important information about: this meeting **

NYLUG welcomes back Ira Hyman, Director of the LinuxLoft.com development team and a long-time member of the New York Linux Users Group, to speak at our regular monthly meeting Thursday March 26th 2009. Ira spoke at our March 2008 and March 2007 meetings, so it’s no coincidence that his latest thoughts will be tapped again this year. If you attended either of his previous talks on PCLinuxOS or Open Source Multimedia you will enjoy his insights from a recent deep dive with the Fedora Linux distribution.

Fedora is an RPM-based, general purpose operating system built on top of the Linux kernel. Primarily developed by the community-supported Fedora Project, it is sponsored by Red Hat, Inc. and comprises the core technology of the commercially supported Red Hat Enterprise Linux (a.k.a. “RHEL”) operating system. Roughly every third version of Fedora forms the basis of a new version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

For example,

  • Fedora Core 3 –> Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4
  • Fedora Core 6 –> Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
  • Fedora 10 / Fedora 11 –> Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 (planned for release in 2010)

If you have a question, comment or criticism about Linux distributions, this is the meeting to attend. In addition to Fedora, Ira has installed, tested and reviewed dozens of distros including various Linux appliances.

In this meeting, Ira will explore the best features from a variety of Linux distributions and attempt to aggregrate them into the Ultimate Linux Distro – a business concept and no holds barred discussion about what most Linux users need, want and are buying today. Imagine fantasy football for the studious geek. If you know of a great app, plug-in or key feature that we all would benefit from, come on down and join what will surely be a vigorous dialogue.

About Ira Hyman:
Ira Hyman is the Director of the LinuxLoft.com development team, a longtime NYLUG member and believes in the power of Linux and FOSS to change the way we live for the better.

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Meeting: Feb 18 @ 6:30 PM Brian Gupta and Nathan Freitas on An Overview of the Android Mobile Platform

Tuesday, February 17th, 2009

Brian Gupta & Nathan Freitas
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An overview of the Android Mobile Platform

** Please note important information about: this meeting **

Please join us at the NYLUG February meeting on Wednesday, February 18th 2009 for a discussion on Google’s relatively new mobile-oriented Linux operating system, Android.

Android is a fully integrated and open source bundle of software significantly lowers the current costs of developing mobile devices (currently runs on a cellphone (the HTC Dream/T-Mobile G1), and a number of unofficial “ports”. It consists of an operating system, middleware, a user-friendly interface and powerful applications.

The talk will start with a review of the internal architecture of the Android platform, breaking down the various components, and examine how they work. Then we will review the latest status of the open source project, including how to get and build the source code, and how to get involved.

At this point there will be a short session introducing application development on the Android platform, walking through the open-source tool chain, including the command line tools and the Eclipse.org IDE based environment. The core application components will be broken down, including the XML-based formats for resources and user interface design. The required “Hello, World!” app will be shown, along with a more complex “Geo Report” app which utilizes more advanced features such as GPS location and the Camera. Finally, application deployment either via the Android Market or through direct web or physical distribution will be demonstrated.

Finally, we will cover hacking the phone. This will include how to “get root” on the phone, and how to build and/or install custom firmware. (And why you might want to do so). Also for those Debian fans in the audience we will touch on the status of Debian on the G1.

If there is time after the meeting Brian will be willing to help people “get root” their phones.

More Information:

About Brian Gupta:
Brian Gupta is an advocate of open source software and participates and contributes to a number of open source projects and communities in and outside of the New York area. Brian is also a big fan of the mobile computing. (Having owned over 20 PDA/smartphones/pocket computers in his lifetime.) Brian helps moderate and colaunched the #androidnyc channel on irc.freenode.net. Brian also lead creation of “the FAQ” and collected most of the questions and answers.
Brian is currently leading a five man consulting team that offers remote sysadmin and dba services. (http://www.brandorr.com)

About Nathan Freitas:
Nathan Freitas has been writing code since he was eight and hasn’t stopped looking for problems to solve ever since. A lifelong mobile technology enthusiast, his career has included work on DARPA-funded research projects, popular consumer products, award-winning digital art pieces and groundbreaking technology for activists and organizers.

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Meeting: Feb 3 @ 6:30 PM Zed A. Shaw on The Son of Sam Python SMTP Server

Saturday, January 31st, 2009

Zed A. Shaw
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The Son of Sam Python SMTP Server

Please join us at the NYLUG January meeting on Tuesday, February 3rd 2009 for a discussion on the Son of Sam Python SMTP Server.

The Son Of Sam (SoS) is an attempt at bringing the same basic design ideas from the world of web applications (and pretty much any application written after 1990) to the world of SMTP processing.

At its core SoS is just a Python based SMTP server that can receive emails, process them using handlers based on routing regex, and then relay results out again using templates. All of this is done without using alias files, m4 macros, pipes, weird protocols, or duplicate processing of the emails.

SoS just works like a flexible scripting language SMTP should operate.

First thing everyone asks is how does it perform? No idea, because it’s just been written. However, if you compare it to a postfix setup that’s using aliases off pipes to send email it’s already processed to a Perl process so that Perl can parse the email again in order to then send an email back to Postfix using SMTP.

Then, well, a single Python process parsing each email once and handing it to arbitrary handler classes with a method call should be way faster.

The short version: Classes and methods beats pipes and processes.

Features:

  • An entirely Python based email solution. No sendmail, postfix, m4, aliases files, etc.
  • But, sendmail and postfix are still way better at huge scale bulk, so it relays to them.
  • Uses SQLAlchemy to do real data models for your application.
  • Has actual Mako templates for handling replies and constructing emails.
  • Uses a routing system to match email addresses and then have handlers process them.
  • Has a typical handler processing system where classes do the work, just like in a web app.
  • Includes a nice Finite State Machine processing system for conversation management.
  • Incredibly small so far given all the stuff it does. Currently at about 500 lines of python.

More Information:

About Zed Shaw:
Zed Shaw is a prolific hacker from the Lower East Side who created the Mongrel web server, loves the guitar, and spawned the Freehackers Union.

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