USENIX Tips for Admins: Virtualization and HPC Don't Go Together
At the USENIX LISA conference in San Diego, Lee Damon and Mike Ciavarella presented a foundation workship as a tutorial for admins with tips and tricks for working efficiently. The presentors didn't agree on all points, but one commonality was that they advised against running High Performance Computing (HPC) together with virtualization.
Virtualization was one of the main themes at the California conference, where workshops on the subject ranged from the open source Hypervisor Xen and virtualization with VMware ESX Server to a training session for programming virtual infrastructures. All this information prompted Damon and Ciavarella to warn against making rash decisions without first thoroughly testing a solution. Damon came up with a study in point. As sysadmin at the University of Washington, he has been maintaining huge clusters with HPC. Although he doesn't doubt the usefulness of virtualized systems, he feels that combining them with HPC can be problematic. His Australian colleague Ciavarella concurs in that he has had similar experience at the University of Melbourne.
In their often entertaining presentation, the two colleagues waxed skeptical in general about some of the new fashions in IT. One example is the iPod, which they observed some sysadmins using even as a backup solution. Damon cited another example where a sysadmin asked him for advice how he could reduce his workload, admitting that he often put in 120-hour weeks. This overtime was mainly because of downloads and patch updates for the countless open source applications he needed to administer. The response from Damon and Ciavarella was "Think of it, free software isn't necessarily free, even with no licensing fees. It costs labor hours!" On the one hand not all updates make sense. On the other, it might be best to calculate whether commercial support contracts easily offset working time best used otherwise. In the experience of the two presentors, many sysadmins forgo this calculation in favor of existing support contracts.
The overall consensus was that working time is a major issue among sysadmins, who even during the conference were incessantly juggling laptops, beepers and cell phones. Many of the tips that came out of this tutorial revolved around this issue and documentation was presented as one major bit of help. In fact, Ciavarella is dedicating another tutorial Wednesday on the subject with the title "Documentation Techniques for Sysadmins."
The streaming video of the LISA'08 conference is available at a cost from here.
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Fedora 40 Beta Released Soon
With the official release of Fedora 40 coming in April, it's almost time to download the beta and see what's new.
-
New Pentesting Distribution to Compete with Kali Linux
SnoopGod is now available for your testing needs
-
Juno Computers Launches Another Linux Laptop
If you're looking for a powerhouse laptop that runs Ubuntu, the Juno Computers Neptune 17 v6 should be on your radar.
-
ZorinOS 17.1 Released, Includes Improved Windows App Support
If you need or desire to run Windows applications on Linux, there's one distribution intent on making that easier for you and its new release further improves that feature.
-
Linux Market Share Surpasses 4% for the First Time
Look out Windows and macOS, Linux is on the rise and has even topped ChromeOS to become the fourth most widely used OS around the globe.
-
KDE’s Plasma 6 Officially Available
KDE’s Plasma 6.0 "Megarelease" has happened, and it's brimming with new features, polish, and performance.
-
Latest Version of Tails Unleashed
Tails 6.0 is based on Debian 12 and includes GNOME 43.
-
KDE Announces New Slimbook V with Plenty of Power and KDE’s Plasma 6
If you're a fan of KDE Plasma, you'll be thrilled to hear they've announced a new Slimbook with an AMD CPU and the latest version of KDE Plasma desktop.
-
Monthly Sponsorship Includes Early Access to elementary OS 8
If you want to get a glimpse of what's in the pipeline for elementary OS 8, just set up a monthly sponsorship to help fund its continued existence.
-
DebConf24 to be Held in South Korea
Busan will be the location of the latest DebConf running July 28 through August 4