Category: Sysadmin

System administration is a special are of IT. It also has a special place in my heart. It is an interesting mixture of all the other disciplines, both common across the whole industry, and at the same time unique for each person, company, and geographical location. When I have something to say or share about system administration, I use this category.

Checking out Ansible. Sorry Puppet

It’s Thursday evening of a particularly difficult week at work.  Tomorrow is a public holiday, effectively making this – a Friday.  My brain is blank and exhausted, so I can’t do anything productive.  And I’m too tired to go out.  But I can still learn a thing or two.

First things first – cancel the external noise.  I want something loud, but not too intensive, and with no words in it.  So this 2 hour blues instrumental collection comes in handy.  Start the playback, put the headphones on, and push the volume up.

Now.  Here’s something I wanted to look into for quite some time – Ansible configuration manager.

Continue reading Checking out Ansible. Sorry Puppet

Cipherli.st – strong ciphers for Apache, Nginx and Lighttpd

Cipherli.st – provides ready to use cipher configurations for a variety of applications, such as Apache, Nginx, Lighttpd, HAProxy, Exim, Postfix, Dovecot, OpenSSH, and others.  This is a huge time-saver for those of us not well versed in cryptography and security.

Don’t forget to use Qyalis SSL Labs SSL Server Test tool for the complete analysis of where you went wrong.

Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results 2016

Stack Overflow published the results of their developer survey for 2016.  Over 50,000 participants from more than 170 countries answered the questions this time around.  Some of the results are quite predictable, while others less so.

education

AWS Database Migration Service

AWS Database Migration Service

AWS Database Migration Service is yet another one of those tools that you always wished that somebody created, but never actually got to checking if it exists.  Here is a recent blog post showcasing the functionality.

Do you currently store relational data in an on-premises Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, MariaDB, or PostgreSQL database? Would you like to move it to the AWS cloud with virtually no downtime so that you can take advantage of the scale, operational efficiency, and the multitude of data storage options that are available to you?

If so, the new AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) is for you! First announced last fall at AWS re:Invent, our customers have already used it to migrate over 1,000 on-premises databases to AWS. You can move live, terabyte-scale databases to the cloud, with options to stick with your existing database platform or to upgrade to a new one that better matches your requirements.  If you are migrating to a new database platform as part of your move to the cloud, the AWS Schema Conversion Tool will convert your schemas and stored procedures for use on the new platform.