Kriek's blog

In a previous article, Introduction to Veritas Cluster Server , I gave a general overview of the VCS product and how it's put together and what you can do with it.  In this article I'll give a general overview of how you go about configuring it. Before writing this, I have had no dealings with with product before, so hopefully what I cover here will help some lazy folk out there to quickly get an idea of what configuring this product is about.  I'm going to be looking at it from a Solaris perspective, since I believe most of the deployments of this product out in the field is on Solaris, and it's what I may have to support and perhaps you too.  I think it's very similar to the way it's done on Red Hat, so don't fear. Files The configuration files are normally in: /etc/VRTSvcs/conf/config There are two main configuration files: main.cf that defines the entire cluster. types.cf that defines the resource types.  There are more like the above, if mo...

Regardless of outages and platform problems Blackberry is experiencing, I believe the phone that always tends to win in the long run is the one that wins both with the user interface and durability.  Early on this was Nokia, the user interface was intuitive, steps were thought through to happen in the way people would actually use it.  You make a call, you get an SMS at the same time, the SMS won't stop you from using DTMF tones to navigate your voice mail, when deciding to read the SMS the default options enable you to reply or erase with the easiest to reach button.  This couldn't be said for Ericsson phones at the time, where the steps that I described on the Nokia phone was a pain on the Ericsson.  Durability wise Nokia also won.  I've never had a broken Nokia, I've only had one Ericsson phone and it broke a few times.  I suspect Nokia must have done something similar to what Apple is rumoured to do, have lots of internal designs and prototype...

I somehow managed to escape having to deal with Veritas products over the years. Now I have been tasked to deal with some of it, so I'm taking this opportunity to familiarise myself with it. The product I'm looking at more specifically is Veritas Cluster Server, which is a different product from their popular file system and backup products. Veritas is now also a Symantec product, but I'm looking specifically at the shape of the product before the Symantec acquisition, because it's the form I have to support. Hopefully the details I cover here will help others who also end up having to support a VCS installation. Description of VCS Veritas Cluster Server is software used to facilitate and manage application clusters. Examples of these would be to manage an Oracle database cluster, a web application stack, or handle the clustering of Veritas file system products, or various combinations of all of these in a global operation. I have been told it's a good pr...

Anyone who has children probably know a few other parents who claim their children are allergic to certain kinds of foods, including peanuts or nuts. It also seems this is becoming more common. Is this really so? I don't believe so, and I blame the media a bit for making it seem like that. Here are some interesting bits of trivia: 25% of families believe their children have food allergies. 4% of them actually do. Peanuts are legumes and the other tree nuts are dried fruits. Allergies to them are different, but it's not uncommon that a hypersensitive person is allergic to multiple things. About 3-4% of people have reported food allergies. Most of them to certain fruits, then vegetables, then milk, then seafood, then latex, then tree nuts and only 1% of them to peanuts. The most common reaction to a peanut allergy is eczema (40%) hoarseness (37%) , asthma (14%), anaphylaxis (6%), digestive problems (1.4%). According to current statistics about the same amount of people ge...

I'm noticing some interesting parallels between two very controversial topics normally supported by very different camps. The one is invading, or liberating Iraq, the other is action over climate change. The case for invading Iraq was put forward by politicians. They portrayed it as if they were acting based on information from the experts in intelligence and military employed by various government funded institutions. The threat was Saddam Hussein and the notion that he had weapons of mass destruction. This threat had been established by the experts based on evidence. The evidence wasn't open to the public eyes for various reasons. One reason was the fact that it's sensitive information that could compromise the security and intelligence sources of many nations. Another reason is that it's not necessary to release it, since various experts in the field of intelligence, military and politics have had a look at it and they are the experts who are better qualifi...

The E-numbers system is a European system to abbreviate various substances included in food products, and appears on the packaging. It seems like people are naturally suspicious of these codes, probably because they appear to indicate something very artificial and we would rather trust something that's more natural. For some, it's more than just a suspicion, which offers an opportunity to market products as being 'Free from E-numbers'. I suppose the original purpose of E-numbers was to actually allow product manufacturers to use less printing space on their packaging to list the ingredients, and to eliminate ambiguity. This is particularly useful when printing information on small or multi-lingual packaging. Unfortunately it seems like this effort to help the consumer be more informed has backfired. E-numbers are intended to be used to list any ingredient that has an E-number, but commonly used to list additives with long chemical names. Some of these can indeed b...

I got a bit of clay today, put it on a plate, and made the following little video.