Isilon Smart Connect and Linux DNS Servers
How to integrate Isilon Smart Connect load balancing with the Linux Dnsmasq DNS server package.
Category: Tech Notes
Why you should never build a backblaze pod
Sobriety time. Here are all the reasons why you SHOULD NOT roll your own backblaze storage pod.
The cloud is not always the answer
The moral of the story is that clever is not always smart.
Feb 23, 2011 | 3 comments | View Post
OpenVPN & Tunnelblick for small business
How BioTeam protects employees who need a safe harbor while working via increasingly hostile public networks.
Feb 22, 2011 | 2 comments | View Post
How to resize an Amazon EC2 AMI when boot disk is on EBS
Note Screwing around with the boot volume is part of our regular “explore around the edges” work before we get serious with how we are going to configure and orchestrate the new systems. The boot volume in this scenario does not have PV driver support and thus will perform slower than the actual ephemeral storage. [...]
Jul 14, 2010 | 4 comments | View Post
PGP Universal Server 3 and XenServer 5.5
Background BioTeam is a Massachusetts-based “virtual” company in that all of our employees work from home when not traveling on business. Being from Massachusetts is actually important because as of March 31st, 2010 the state has passed a fairly strict set of laws concerning how companies handle digital data. Without going into the details of [...]
Apr 13, 2010 | 4 comments | View Post
Cluster user training
On the same trip to India, I found myself in the position of delivering a training session to a room with incredibly varied backgrounds and skill levels. Some folks had never edited a file on the Unix command line before. Others just wanted to know where MPICH was installed. This set of slides goes from [...]
Dec 21, 2009 | 0 comments | View Post
Inquiry Cluster Admin Slides
I recently took a trip to Kolkata, India to train users and administrators of an Apple / Inquiry compute cluster there. The slides I developed for that trip may be of general interest, and so I’m sharing them here. The intent of these slides is to provide an overview of the administrative tools and systems [...]
Dec 21, 2009 | 0 comments | View Post
Setting up LOM on an Apple XServe from the command line
Apple provides a GUI for setting up the IP address and authentication information on the LOM. The problem, for me, with using a GUI for something like this is that it’s nearly impossible to script and automate. When I’m setting up a cluster of even a dozen nodes, going through a remote desktop to a GUI becomes intolerable in a hurry. This post shares my recipe for getting the LOM ports on the network and accessible, using only the command line.
Dec 03, 2009 | 0 comments | View Post
SSH tunnels part 3: Reverse tunnels
The problem addressed here is the same as the previous two, except that the remote administrator won’t open up *any* ports in their firewall. Machines on the customer’s network can connect out onto the internet, but there is no direct way to connect to them from out here. This post describes how to set up a pair of tunnels that meet in the middle, allowing me access to machines that don’t even have a public IP address.
Nov 04, 2009 | 0 comments | View Post
