Hosting again

[Edmund von der Burg]

On 29/10/2007, Lyle - CosmicPerl.com <perl at cosmicperl.com> wrote:
> I've been running dedicated Linux box's for over 5 years. Dealt with all
> kind of hack attacks, mailing issues, software issues, hardware issues,
> you name it. Taught my self Linux remotely, never used it first hand
> until I built my Supermicro dual opteron colo server. Compiled and setup
> xen, my colo is now running xen host and 3 virtual private servers.
> Setup BIND, sendmail, Apache, Tomcat, ruby, tcl, lua, python, Perl (of
> course) and a lot more. Secured my scripts and sendmail (after learning
> the hard way). Created monitoring scripts so that my US and UK servers
> monitor each other and fix each others common problems when they occur.
> Made scripts to deal with the mail queue, setup IPTABLES, WebMail,
> Webmin, Mono... Documented everything for future reference (learnt how
> important this is from my first server experience).
>
> I have proved to myself time and time again that I can understand and do
> anything on a computer, I just need to push myself to do it. I HATE
> being dependant on other people and other people tend to be a total let
> down. The idea of paying someone to setup something that I don't know
> how to replicate, where they might not do it properly, might bog off
> when I have problems, might not have documented it properly so that I
> can get someone else in... AGHHHH, sod em all! I'll learn it and do it
> myself!

Interestingly I can say that I've done that sort of thing as well.
However instead of deciding that everyone else sucks I now really
appreciate decent sys admins who buffer me (a mere developer) from the
nitty gritty of keeping things going.

If you've never spent time with someone who really gets 'ops' then you
should - it is pretty humbling. Just for starters think about backups
and restoring from them. Or the seemingly simple task of replacing old
code with new code on running servers with minimal downtime.

Running big setups is a team game for lots of reasons, one of which is
that there is simply no way for one guy to get _real_ experience with
all the pieces needed. Get used to sharing the responsibility with
others sooner rather than later.

> Don't worry about me. Worry about my hair line :(

Screw up your ops and it is your bottom line that will get toasted :)

Edmund.