Switched to Jekyll
Nov 26, 2017
As yoy may have noticed I’ve migrated my blog from Ghost to Jekyll. Please do not be alarmed! As I am not able to put significant time into keeping a server running nginx and Ghost up to date with security updates.
So why choose Jekyll? It’s still markdown, it can be pretty and the output is static HTML. I no longer have a node.js application and database to worry about, at the moment all I have is the nginx webserver to keep on top of which can be automatically updated.
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UNIX-ing as a Linux Geek
Sep 23, 2017
So my background is mostly in GNU/Linux, I’ve ditched Windows long ago and I still dabble with Mac OS X (though an older version). Since February I have been doing a bit of work on IBM AIX systems, particularly with PowerHA (HACMP) clusters. I’m not going to pretend to be an expert but I have found using UNIX almost like speaking a strange dialect or creole. Everything is so similar and yet so very different.
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Clean up old Docker images
Sep 16, 2017
Sorry for not posting in a while, I have been a bit busy. Here’s a quick tip.
The Problem Ideally when running in the cloud we want to be able to ditch our VMs when they misbehave rather than trying to fix them. Reincarnate, don’t resurrect.
For me, however, I am running a single VM (Digital Ocean Droplet) with Docker. I want to be able to recreate my droplet very quickly should things go wrong, but I don’t care much about 100% uptime on my personal server.
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Best Practice for Mounting an LVM Logical Volume with /etc/fstab
May 29, 2017
If you’ve been using Linux for a bit you will be familiar with the file systems table (fstab(5): /etc/fstab). You will also be fairly familiar with the contents of this file and it’s structure:
<device> <mount-point> <filesystem-type> <options> <dump> <pass> So a typical entry may possibly look like the following:
/dev/sda1 / ext4 defaults 0 0 This would mount /dev/sda1, the device file for the first partition on the first disk as the root (/) on your Linux system.
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Azure, an AWS guy dipping his toes.
May 22, 2017
I am not going to lie, I am a big fan of AWS. I have been using AWS on and off for nearly 2 years now. I’ve done the training for both the AWS Solutions Architect Associate and SysOps Associate (although not got a certification yet). Shout out to acloud.guru.
Whilst there are no shortage of AWS jobs out there, depending on your industry it potentially pays to become cloud agnostic - having a finger in each of the cloud provider’s pies (AWS, Azure, DigitalOcean, Google Cloud).
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SaltStack at Home, Initial Thoughs
May 21, 2017
“Cloud servers are cattle, not pets!"
So I have been working with configuration management for a while, recently I have been switching between Ansilble and Salt Stack. After creating a Salt Stack for a previous employer in AWS (see below diagram), I have fallen for this configuration management system. As you may have noted, I am using Python based, YAML configured systems because this is where I am comfortable. These systems are easily extendable, the configuration files are easy to read for anyone and they are both awesome.
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Silence
Apr 03, 2017
Back soon, just escaped a sticky situation…
Two node Redis cluster in Vagrant
Feb 12, 2017
So, I am wanting to learn a bit more about Redis. To get me started, and to run Redis as close to how it would run in production, I have created a Vagrantfile for creating a Redis Cluster.
I thought I’d share. Feel free to clone. It’s a fairly simple Vagrantfile that simply creates a Master-Slave replica for Redis.
To get started:
$ git clone https://github.com/xanmanning/vagrant-redis-cluster $ cd vagrant-redis-cluster $ vagrant up Master node: 10.
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Throwback Thursday: Hacktrix*
Jan 26, 2017
It’s Thursday again, and I’m looking back on another project from days gone by.
Following on from a decision not to renew our QueueMetrics license to monitor our call volume over Asterisk, we were left in a bit of a pickle. Numerous calls were coming in but managers could not gauge the volume and in times of an outage this was a serious problem when it came to breaks and assigning overtime.
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SaltStack Lab in Vagrant
Jan 19, 2017
Today I have published a really simplistic SaltStack lab for Vagrant to GitHub:
https://github.com/xanmanning/vagrant-salt-example
Since being subjected to CFEngine (shudder), I have been very keen to try out other configuration management offerings. I had previously tried Ansible, that’s great and all, however there are advantages to agent based systems, particularly the scalability.
Salt stands out for me, because like Ansible, configuration is done in YAML - this is fantastically easy to use!
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