Community
- Command Central
- MVP Program
- Monthly Mission
- Blogs
- Groups
- Events
- Media Vault
Products
- Observability
- Network Management
- Application Management
- IT Security
- IT Service Management
- System Management
- Database Management
Content Exchange
- SolarWinds Platform
- Server & Application Monitor
- Database Performance Analyzer
- Server Configuration Monitor
- Network Performance Monitor
- Network Configuration Manager
- SQL Sentry
- Web Help Desk
Free Tools & Trials
Store

The Actuator – November 15th

I'm in Orlando this week attending SQL Server Live, part of the Live360 events. If you are attending, stop by the SolarWinds booth and say hello. I’m happy to talk data and databases with you.

As always, here are some links from the Intertubz that I hope will hold your interest. Enjoy!

Cray Supercomputers in Microsoft Azure

Remember when Microsoft announced at Ignite that they were going to offer quantum computing as a service in Azure? You need big computers for that. Looks like they found some.

An Opinion On Offense Against NAT

Every tech decision comes down to cost, benefit, and risk. NAT is no different. I’m not a network admin, but I find this discussion fascinating. It is also eerily similar to the myriad of debates I have with my data folk.

Munich IT chief slams city's decision to dump Linux for Windows

Munich is often hailed as a leader in how a city can operate without Microsoft software, but it has had enough of the dumpster fire they created by trying to switch to Linux. Somewhere,adatole is weeping.

YouTube to target disturbing videos masquerading as kids' shows

I’m trying to understand why this hasn’t been a focus for YouTube already. I’m guessing the answer is money.

Culture is the Behavior You Reward and Punish

Before you read this article, take five minutes to answer the question, “What makes people successful at your company?" Then, read this article.

Self-Operating Shuttle Bus Crashes After Las Vegas Launch

Classic PEBSWADS (Problem Exists Between Steering Wheel and Driver’s Seat). No robots were harmed as a result of this crash.

Someone Mapped Out Every Quantum Leap Scott Bakula Has Ever Done

Oh boy.

Sitting on top of the world, 1 billion users, and about to fall off a cliff. The world of tech changes quickly. Here's the cover of Forbes from 10 years ago:

Find more posts tagged with

the actuator

Comments

sparda963

An Opinion On Offense Against NAT

"So, with Mr. Huston taking up the shield, let me find my +5 Sword of NAT Slaying and try to point out a couple of issues in his defense."

I actually laughed out loud when I read that one.

Culture is the Behavior You Reward and Punish

These couple of lines struck me pretty solidly. I thought about this at my company, especially since they just changed all of this fluffy stuff, and it does not line up at all.

"If O’Reilly had asked us about culture, we’d certainly have said “customer oriented.” But he’d asked how to succeed at VMware, and so we gave the true answer of what our culture actually was, not what we thought it should be."

ScottRich

I liked Quantum Leap but would not care for a reboot. They never seem to live up to the original.

I don't like NAT but it is still a necessary evil (sigh).

Thanks for more great links!

petergwilson

Quantum Leap - I guess they put the names of the continents on the map in case someone hasn't any idea of what the world looks like (I'm assuming Amurkins here).

vinay.by

Good article

mtgilmore1

Quantum Leap what a show. Only if Scott Bakula was in it.

gfsutherland

Munich - Having some experience in municipal governement (as an elected official in a small town), the challenge is making all the niche players work well together. For good and for bad sometimes the answer is Microsoft. For this generation of decision makers it is much like the 60's and 70's when the mantra was "nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM". Sometime interoperability wins over preference and theory.

Quantum Leap - good show... the mapping looks like something out of a Norse attack map.....

Good article sqlrockstar thanks as always.

rschroeder

I can tell the work load's getting harder here when I can't even view The Actuator until late Thursday. Sigh. Anyone want to move to Minnesota and play with a pretty-cool Hospital Network, along with NPM/NCM/NTA/UDT/IPAM/VNQM? IM me.

Seymour Cray To The Rescue:

I had one of Seymour's coworkers as an electronics engineering instructor about 1979, and I loved the stories from Cray Research. Somehow I always felt a little proud of that company, even though I had no affiliation. I'm happy to read his name lives on and may benefit the cloud.

Unliking NAT:

NAT's a PITA when you're managing virtually the entire RFC 1918 and you have to create site-to-site tunnels with other organizations whose address space overlaps with yours. Setting it up, and trouble-shooting double-NAT, is when I break out the aspirin. I'm no fan of NAT, nor of the contortions my network management will have to experience by going to IPv6. But NAT is (IMHO) just a kluge for a lack of imagination that IPv4 space would become exhausted. Just force everyone to memorize their 128-bit IPv6 address and use it everywhere. That'll fix 'em!

Munchen On Windows:

Many times these decisions come down to finances or politics. In this case, it appears both. And it also appears non-facts are being used to justify decisions. That's a popular trend this year.

Youtube Sews And the World Weeps:

OK, so "As ye sew, so shall you reap" is a practical thought-inspiring idea. Sort of "DevOps-For-Every-Action-You'll-Ever-Take". And if you release socially-questionable things to the public for money, you risk creating a desensitized society that believes what was wrong before, is now normal. I don't want to live there. Youtube shouldn't either, no matter the money they make doing it. Maybe they should watch Soylent Green and find the lesson there.

What You Do Is Who You Are:

This article was thought-provoking for me, and I forwarded to my team. Being in the Health Care Industry, I'm certain virtually all of the items in our "list" would be customer-centric. But then we live that mantra every day because we see it in every healed patient, every grief-stricken parent, every child in dull shock at being left alone forever. Even we in I.T. cannot escape it. This is where a configuration change on a switch or router or firewall actually CAN BE LIFE IMPACTING.

Self-Driving Vehicles:

It seems this tech is promising, and inevitable. Can we help make it unhackable? Put on your paranoid hat and step into Batman World and imagine any script kiddy or disgruntled employee or person-with-some-axe-to-grind discovering a way to remotely manage & control these vehicles. They don't even have to be a Super Villain. It's one thing to see a manual truck driver accidentally bump a stopped autonomous bus whose top speed is 15 mph. It's another to imagine someone coordinating many autonomous vehicles to lock their passengers inside and drive off a cliff or a bridge . . . Paranoia? Perhaps. Remember: just because you're paranoid doesn't mean no one will impact your life negatively. Do a great job of isolating and protecting this tech from Day One. Please.

Leaping Bakulas!

I enjoyed it back in the '89 - '93, but I was driven to distraction by Dean Stockwell and his unreliable smartphone-prototype. I always envisioned a better version of this show, with reliable tech. I guess Star Trek set me up with expectations too high for this series.

Nokia:

Say what you want about those old Nokia cell phones, but they worked reliably, were remarkably durable, had a great vibrate option when put into "silent mode" that would wake you out of a coma, and were considerably less than $500 - $1000 each.

inkedgeekfreak

I am smack in the middle of a class on Organizational Behavior, the culture article couldn't be more timely for my studies. Great view on what cutlure actually is, not a dream desired end state, but the pulse of the organization as it stands today.

petergwilson

Munich. Why not just go for a hybrid solution like everyone else where you use the best tools for the job. Most places I have worked have this. When the Linux / iOS machines couldn't be supported in house we just paid an outside company to do it and got on with the Microsoft support ourselves. It really isn't rocket surgery.

petergwilson

Culture. I've worked in a lot of places where the culture has been incredibly toxic. The rudest most obnoxious, wasters get promotions, pay rises etc. and the people who actually do all the work get nothing. Those companies always seem to go downhill. The really good places to work are the ones where skills are valued and people are treated as valued assets. Pity there's not too many of those around.

byrona

Funny you point out that article about Cray in Azure when just earlier this morning I was reading THIS article about how Cray has picked Cavium processors for it's ARM based supercomputers.

cahunt

I was taken over by the Jump Map and stuck checking all of Bakula's jump to Texas. Naturally.

I bet Sam knows what really happened...

Sam leaps into various points in the life of Lee Harvey Oswald (played by Willie Garson) in an effort to seemingly prevent him from killing President John F. Kennedyor find the truth about the events that day. However, the objective is made more complex by the fact that their minds are merging. Sam starts to believe he is Oswald. If Al can't bring Sam back, it will be Sam Beckett who pulls the trigger on Kennedy that fateful day in Dallas.

michael.kent

I'd come across the quantum leap map already.

In reference to nokia, it's always best to keep an eye on the rear view mirror to see what's coming. On the same cover it mentions $60 oil. That's still the headline 10 years later Can $60 Oil Last? | OilPrice.com

vinay.by

cahunt

I remember when $20 a barrel meant things were good.

tinmann0715

Nice magazine cover. I saw a chart showing the Top 20 companies of 2000 and today and there were only 3, IBM being one of them, that is still on the list. A couple of them no longer exist. It goes to show that no empire is forever and that we ourselves have to be adaptable.

ecklerwr1

I liked the article about NAT. It's a two edged sword that one!

Quick Links

Cisco ASR Devices
Cisco ASR Devices.pollerCisco ASR Devices
Basic SWQL Syntax
SWQL is built on the framework of SQL and as such supports most of the standard clauses as part of a query. A very simple example query is: SELECT Caption, IPAddress, Vendor, ResponseTime FROM Orion.Nodes Dissecting this query is relatively straightforward: show some fields (Caption, IP address, Vendor, and Response Time)…
Cisco ASA SSL Tunnels
Active SSL Tunnels-ASA.UnDPThis poller *should* display the number of Active SSL VPN (Anyconnect) Tunnels currently connected to your box. However, I tried it with my 5520 running 8.0.4 and for some reason I get a OID Not Supported. Here's my post in the forum: *EDIT* This is confirmed working with at least Interm release…
HP ProCurve Switches Hardening check
HP ProCurve Switches Hardening check.xmlGeneral hardening for HP switches