I have a stack of old laptops sitting here from work (I occasionally get the old ones back when they are retired). It occurred to me that laptops would make a very good “home server stack” environment. Here is my reasoning…
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Yesterday I wrote a post extolling a view of where I think the world of technology is heading. You can read it here: A Brave New World – Truly Technology Agnostic

One of my colleagues quickly pointed out that I currently work in an environment that is counter to everything I laid out. Namely, our network is mostly technologically monolithic (Microsoft from top to bottom).

While it is true that we only have a few Linux servers in our environment, I wouldn’t quite call our environment monolithic… rather I would point out that we have a lot of extended functionality via other software solutions/platforms and all of that is built around a Microsoft backbone… which actually goes to support my prior thesis.

In our case though, it is my impression that this has happened haphazardly, rather than being part of a larger IT strategy. I.E. we need a backup solution, so we vet three different enterprise solutions, try out two of them, settle on one. It runs on Windows, but it isn’t built by Microsoft and has its own proprietary way of doing things. We are also using third party VPN solutions, third-party system monitoring, etc. etc. All pursued and bought with the same mentality… i.e. here is an issue, lets investigate and find something to fix it. I think this is how many departments operate… and not even in just IT. I don’t even know if it is necessarily wrong, however it does tend to lead to some fragmentation.

This all got me thinking though, is there an inherit value in being as “monolithic” as possible in your approach? I.E. sticking with one vendor from top to bottom as much as is absolutely possible, what can be gained from this? I think there is actually quite a bit to be said for this methodology. Some of the things that came to mind:
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I am (perhaps overly ambitious…) going to start a series of posts titled “For the Linux Server Noob…”

If you have been a Windows guy or gal your entire life, and have started dipping your toes into the wild and exciting world of Linux… well, it can be a bit overwhelming. I know, I was that person… (and often still am as I am learning all the time.)

First, I commend you. In the words of Obi-Wan, “You have taken your first step into a larger world.”

Many (dark forces…) have divided the tech world into factions…

  • Windows versus Mac
  • Open versus Closed
  • Symantec versus Trend
  • Apache versus IIS
  • iOS versus Android
  • SQL versus NoSQL
  • Quake versus Unreal Tournament

And on and on and on…

I have seen this personally in several areas. Here is who I have most often personally observed creating such distinctions…

1. People that have been doing something the same way for years… often think that their way is the best and don’t like to change
2. Folks that consume/play with technology usually are rife with strong opinions (ex. Xbox is > PS because… Apple owns all… etc.)
3. Tech Sales Guys that sell solutions professionally for a particular company… oh this is by far most common…
4. CIO’s and other decision makers that bought from the Tech Sales Guys at XYZ company and now live with those solutions

However, I believe there is a growing movement (the forces of light…?) comprised of people that have to actually work with all of this stuff on an ongoing basis. It is a growing phenomenon. More folks are starting to just not care about the label. They just care that the bloody thing works. Or perhaps more positively speaking… those who think critically are starting to see the possibilities of merging worlds and not ham-stringing their creativity by only focusing on one vein of technology.
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Heartbleed was a major vulnerability in the SSL protocol used by many many sites and services. Folks have been scrambling to patch it up quickly since it was announced a few days prior.

If you are in the process of doing just that for yourself or your organization, you might be so busy fixing websites and webservers that you forget about other services that also make use of the OpenSSL protocol.

One such service, OpenVPN. Particularly “Access Server” as it has a client-facing Web front-end. Luckily, there is already a new version of access server released and updating your existing servers is quite simple on most Linux distributions.
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So we are all probably familiar with the Heartbleed bug at this point. Remediating this issue on a couple of servers that I admin required moving from Ubuntu 13.04 to 13.10. I am going to go into a few of the problems I ran into when I made the jump…
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