For a start whatever effects it will have are some way off. Chrome OS isn’t due to be released until the second half of next year. It is amazing how much fuss a company like Google can generate with a single press release. Chrome OS doesn’t exist yet, and won’t exist for another year and yet here we are all talking about it like we’ve never seen a Linux based NetBook OS before.

The main thrust of Google Chrome OS seems to be to strip everything out except the web browser. A kind of back to basics operating system predicated upon applications being in the cloud where all you need to play is a modern web browser and an internet connection.

From a sys admin point of view that sounds great, all I get to do is give everybody a dead simple laptop with a dead simple operating system running on it, hook it up to the internet and then let the users log into their cloud applications. I’m not responsible for the cloud apps, so my responsibility ends at the router. Somehow I doubt things will work out like that.

Until the manageability of all those nice cloud based applications is resolved I can’t see how NetBooks and their ilk, based upon Chrome OS or otherwise, are going to take off as workhorse PCs in even small/medium sized organisations never mind enterprise level.

Want to share your server uptime?

In the network management space, Nagios is a finalist in the Best Tool or Utility for SysAdmins and OpenNMS is a finalist in the Best Project for the Enterprise.

You have until 20th July to register your vote.

PolyMon is an open source network monitor written for the .NET environment. Steven Murawski has written PoSHMon, a series of PowerShell cmdlets for interacting with PolyMon dynamically. Whilst neither PolyMon or PoShMon are particularly full featured or mature, they do at least show what is possible.

If anybody knows of any commercial network management tools with PowerShell support for dynamic structured systems management, I’d love to hear about it.

One of the items that Michael says is essential for structuring your systems management is automation. As Matt Simmons says:

“Remember, if you can script it, script it. If you can’t script it, make a checklist”

In the Windows world automation has been a pretty tough ask until Windows PowerShell came onto the scene. Whilst it was possible to script Windows with VBScript, it wasn’t easy or quick. If it isn’t easy and quick it probably won’t happen.

I still haven’t noticed any network management tools supporting PowerShell yet. Shame. Given that nearly everything seems to be sprouting PowerShell support it is a shame that network and systems management vendors are slow supporting a technology designed to help sys admins do their job more easily.

The world is becoming a lot more dynamic with virtual & cloud computing coming to the fore. Management tools need to be equally dynamic and yet, so far, they’ve been pretty un-dynamic. If I have a script that provisions a new virtual machine it would be nice to tell the management platform to start monitoring its performance from the same script. If I have a script that takes down a service, it would be nice to tell the management platform to put that particular service into maintenance mode so I don’t get deluged with alerts.

If you can think of any other planet sites you would like to see, I’m all ears!

500 Comments

Thanks to everybody who has commented on the blog over the last two and a half years (yes, it really is that long!). Interacting with the people who read this blog is what keeps me going. Here’s to the next 500!

I’d like to tell you how I’ve sweated for days  deep into the night, depriving myself of sleep and sustenance, whilst I slaved over a blinking terminal to get it working… well, I can’t because it only took a few hours of not very hard work plus an inexpensive domain name.

The site uses the rather good planet software. The site is a bit stripped down at the moment, I will work on the look as things progress.

If you have any suggestions for blogs to be added, please get in touch. Alternatively, if you are the owner of a blog featured on the site and don’t wish to be, please get in touch as well.

Oops!