IBM and SUSE Leftovers

This Blog is for both system administrators and application developers interested in learning how to deploy and manage Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage 4 (OCS). This Blog outlines how you will be using OpenShift Container Platform (OCP) 4.2.14+ and the OCS operator to deploy Ceph and the Multi-Cloud Object Gateway as a persistent storage solution for OCP workloads. If you do not have a current OpenShift test cluster, you can deploy OpenShift 4 by going to the OpenShift 4 Deployment page and then follow the instructions for AWS Installer-Provisioned Infrastructure (IPI).

We have all heard the age-old debate of what is the best operating system user prefer. Windows or Mac? Linux or nothing. The funny thing about this question is that in many places of business, the user does not get a choice. You are handed a laptop when you start and may be stuck with whatever is preloaded onto the machine. In some cases, you're not even allowed to run something else in a virtual machine.

I will not hold office hours next week due to travel, but if you’ll be at DevConf.CZ, you can catch me in person.

When you host your own website on a Virtual Private Server or on a DigitalOcean droplet, you want to know if your website is down (and receive a warning when that happens). Plus it’s fun to see the uptime graphs and the performance metrics. Did you know these services are available for free?

I will compare 3 SaaS vendors who offer uptime performance monitoring tools. Of course, you don’t get the full functionality for free. There are always limitations as these vendors like you to upgrade to a premium (paid) account. But for an enthousiast website, having access to these free basic options is already a big win!

I also need to address the elephant in the room: Pingdom. This is the golden standard of uptime performance monitoring tools. However, you will pay at least €440 per year for the privilege. That is a viable option for a small business. Not for an enthousiast like myself.

The chosen free alternatives are StatusCake, Freshping and UptimeRobot. There are many other options, but these ones are mentioned in multiple lists of ‘the best monitoring tools’. They also have user friendly dashboards. So let’s run with it.

Already in the beginning of 2019 I have been a candidate for the board of openSUSE. Since there are now two places open again, I am again available for the task and run for election.

A general overview of my ideas and goals can be found here.

In the run-up to the election all candidates of the community are of course open for questions. I have answered a catalogue of 5 questions from Gerald Pfeifer, currently chairman of the board, and would like to make it available here.

Our openSUSE Chairman has some questions for the candidates for the openSUSE Board. My answers are here: