CentOS Rocks Good-Bye RHEL

Home Data Center saga

I upgraded my home “data center” recently with the addition of two used HP DL320s.  They both have 4GB of RAM and two 15k 36GB drives in a RAID1 configuration.  I build and buy hardware as a hobby to keep me close to the reality of managing corporate software systems and data centers.

From RHEL to CentOS

I decided to run CentOS 5.2 on these new home systems.  It is fantastic.  You have to love the GPL that makes this possible.  Some companies making their first foray into Linux might not feel comfortable using CentOS.  Mature companies that have been using some form of RHEL for a few years should feel very comfortable.  How many Linux OS support calls do you make in a year anyway?  Needless to say, we are migrating AOL from RHEL to CentOS at a significant annual savings.

I would have gone to Debian, as I needed a free alternative  to improve my company’s operating margins, but why not use CentOS when it is binary compatible with RHEL and FREE?  Easy decision.

Open Source Commoditization of Software

Similar to my decisions to move my previous companies off of BEA WebLogic to Tomcat and Sybase to MySQL.  It is almost hard to believe that companies payed for the Netscape Web Server now that Apache is ubiquitous.  Distant memories of companies paying for Alta Vista, Verity, or FAST search products now with Lucene and SOLR.  Thank you Open Source!

Ted Cahall

Home Data Center “Drudgery”

Managing my home data center takes more time lately. I now have a mac mini and a Fedora Core 3 box in my office.  This is in addition to the servers in my garage.

I enjoy the Fedora Core 3 box and am looking to upgrade an older AS2.1 box to Fedora.  First I need to  move the old applications off of it. I am keeping notes in a Wiki on one of my machines now to track all the stuff I am doing to these boxes. At least I have MRTG graphs for my PIX and my NICs on all the machines in the garage. I also have RRD graphs for all of the web servers on those machines as well.

Connecting my DSL and Cable Modem Networks

I plan on buying a PIX for the upstairs office.  This way I can make a site-to-site VPN that auto connects between the upstairs cable modem and the garage’s DSL line. Then I will instrument the upstairs machines with MRTG and RRD as well.

Maybe I will start my Harley some time in May. It has been so long the battery may be dead by now. 🙁 It is overcast and cold this morning up here in the hills – so no ride today.

Infineon Raceway and my 2001 Z06 Corvette

Wednesday night at the races at Infineon Raceway. Isn’t it great to live in the USA? Anyone with a license and mom’s station wagon can burn up the tires. For me it was 111 mph and 13.08 second quarter mile in my 2001 Z06 Corvette with street tires and my work clothes on. Kudos to Ross at work for actually dragging me away from the office!

Ted Cahall 2001 Z06 Corvette
Ted Cahall 2001 Z06 Corvette

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now I need to take my Harley Fatboy up there and see how the 96 ci motor I put in there runs. I doubt I am talented enough to go sub 13 seconds on it. Not even sure if a really good pilot could do it.  Maybe I will ask John Strickland to run it once.   He did a 12.25 on my old 1200 Sportster that I sold him…

Modifications to the 2001 Z06 Corvette?

Hmmm… Now I am thinking of buying a “second” set of rims and tires so I can see if I am capable of running in the low 12 second range with my Z06. Some kids there were telling me about a super-charger I could bolt on to take myself to 450 hp. Or I could just wait for the 2006 Z06 to come out – rumor has it that it will be 500 hp out of the box… That sounds nice – an ’06 Z06…

 

Fedora Core 3

Fedora Core 3 is really nice.  Running it on a P4 3GHz w/ 2GB RAM.  Now if I could just get the PPTP stuff from SourceForge to work I could see if the Ximian connector is worth using with  a corporate Exchange account.

I know – PPTP?  We also have an SSL VPN – so maybe I should use that…

“social” scribblings (sort of)

I guess you can’t scribble with a keyboard very well…

This post was mostly just to try out the system and get my feet wet – so to speak. Not that anyone should read this. I am just an obscure guy whacking away on some interesting technology in the community space. I recently had the pleasure of meeting Brad Fitzpatrick, founder of Live Journal, and decided to see what the buzz was all about.

The more I poke around, the more I realize that I need to get some hobbies that involve other humans! Maybe I should go and look up the Oakland chapter of HOG now that I have lived here for over 2 years. It should not be too much trouble to ride at 9AM on a weekend day.

My big event last weekend was replacing my ATA/100 RAID 1 setup in my desktop with a SATA setup (big 150MBps!!!). Not that I wanted the extra speed, the damn controller kept crashing and corrupting the drives, and I was tired of playing with them. Now I am back to more fun projects like connecting my cable modem to my DSL line through two Cisco PIX 501s…

Time to get a life…