I have to become a Solaris and Cisco guru.

[CougTek]

Ok, I'm starting to have a small panic attack. I'll probably get a contract with a relatively big firm in which I'll have to maintain Solaris servers and program Cisco switches. I'm not familiar with either of those. I have two days to look good in an interview and about a week to become a guru. And I also have to sleep, eat and complete three other time-consuming jobs for other customers in the meanwhile. Thinking about it, I don't feel too well. The worst thing that can happen is simply not to get the contract, but this one would give me a decent income and much needed experience in those demanded fields.

I'll hit Google for a Solaris for dummies online book or something.

 

[ddrueding]

Best of luck. I have no experience with either, but have occasionally desired some Cisco knowledge.

 

[LunarMist]

That seems like a good way to ruin future chances, if there are any. Is that company run incompetently so as not to check your resume and references?

 

[BingBangBop]

From novice to guru status ain't going to happen in a week. I don't care how smart you are.

P.S. Cisco switches (unlike their routers) are not that hard to deal with but you will undoubtedly need some time with one. Solaris is much more difficult to become a guru in.

 

[Mercutio]

That

That seems like a good way to ruin future chances, if there are any. Is that company run incompetently so as not to check your resume and references?

Sometimes an outfit needs a person at a location and their actual skill set is less important. I know I got work because I was a "techie in Northern Indiana" a few times. Sometimes an outfit needs somebody at a site or to be a first responder to cover contractual obligations or something.

 

[time]

You should be PMing Chewy ASAP - he's a Solaris guru.

 

[CougTek]

Is that company run incompetently so as not to check your resume and references?

They have, but they don't have anyone else more competent and I'm a notoriously fast learner (or at least I used to). To make matters worse, I don't have as many computers as I use to this week and I'm short of hard drive capacity to store my stuff, so I'll either have to write a pile of DVDs or lose semi-important data.

I'll check Solaris' hardware compatibility list to verify if I can install it on at least one of the two computers I can spare for this.

 

[CougTek]

I know about Chewy's skills and he offered me help on Solaris a while ago. But before disturbing him about this, I'll start to install Solaris on a system and when the questions will start popping, I'll call for help with more specific details. Volumes management and network sharing are probably the two most important things I'll have to learn about Solaris.

 

[Chewy509]

Hi Coug,

Re: Cisco - if it's just Catalyst based switches, most of them now have GUIs to assist in addtion to CLI. Don't worry too much about the switches.

Re: Solaris - Oracle has really good documentation, so don't be afraid to use it. http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/documentation/solaris-10-192992.html

If you're an IEEE member, the IEEE online school has the complete Solaris 10 administrators course ware available (equivalent to the complete MCSE course). But will take about 4 weeks to get through if doing it full time and doesn't cover LDAP (Sun One) and a few other technologies.

As for the job you'll need to know the following:
1. What versions of Solaris are they using? (Solaris 10, Solaris 11, OpenSolaris).
2. Do they have current and valid support contracts with Oracle. (These are essential, otherwise you can't get patches for the OS).
3. Is all the hardware running Solaris under warranty, and what are the warranty conditions? (24/7 - 4hr response, 8/5 - next day response, etc).
4. How is the Solaris authentication environment setup? LDAP (Sun One Services), NIS+, LDAP w/Active Directory Integration?
5. File serving? NFS, CIFS (either SAMBA on S10, or native CIFS service on OS/S11).
6. What other applications are running on the boxes. (This is critical, as you'll be supporting those as well).

Solaris 10 can run on both UFS and ZFS - there are huge differences in volume management (not to mention if they are if they are using SVM (Sun Volume Management) for soft-raid).

So if you know the above you can tailor your learning, and if they are missing items 2 and 3 - my advise is WALK AWAY. You don't want to become the fall guy. Also try to find out why the old company/staff left?

Some quick tips on Solaris:
1. Solaris servers traditionally do NOT have a GUI installed, learn to love the CLI and SSH.
2. The default shell is NOT bash, and for the love of the world do NOT change it from what it is. You'll break the OS if you do.
3. Solaris doesn't use start-up scripts, instead has SMF (Sun Management Framework). Learn to use it.
4. Sol 10 and Sol 11 use different package management technologies. Learn package management and especially how to apply and remove patches, especially on Sol10.
5. Learn the basics of ZFS, snapshoting and boot environments. (This will save your arse if you f**k up).
6. Make sure you know vi, there is no nano, emacs or anything else.
7. Read: http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/ and get the LKSF book here: http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/pages/lksfbook.html
8. The Oracle online support forums are community based, and it's rare to see a response from someone who works at Oracle on a support request.

Otherwise just PM with any questions.

 

[Chewy509]

You should be PMing Chewy ASAP - he's a Solaris guru.

I wouldn't call myself a guru, just someone who's come up against a lot of problems with it and learned how to solve them. There's still some stuff that I don't know, simply because I haven't had to deal with it. (Like the Veritas Volume Management Services).

 

[Chewy509]

I'll check Solaris' hardware compatibility list to verify if I can install it on at least one of the two computers I can spare for this.

Short HCL for Solaris 10:
Intel CPU
Intel Chipset (up to X58)
Intel LAN adapter or some Broadcom LAN Adapters (those specifically found in HP or Dell servers).
nVidia Gfx PCIe. (GF8000 based or newer)

Otherwise just run it in Virtual Box.

 

[Chewy509]

Another tip for Solaris 10 - it's like running a Linux distro from '05. (CDE or GNOME 2.6, gcc 3.4.4, 'make' is Sun make not GNU make, and it can be painful to install modern software on it).

Also, Coug, if you get the job, you'll need to figure out if 3rd party tools from SunFreeware, Blastwave or OpenCSW has been installed, as this is something else that will need to be considered. Also ask if they are using 'Sun Ray's' as well. (Sun Rays are thin clients for Solaris - that'll be another thing to learn if they are using them).

Also try to find out what disaster recovery/backup software they are using, as you'll need to learn how to recover a lost/down system.

PS. Sorry for all the posts, I'm just rattling things off as I think of them.

 

[Chewy509]

Intel Chipset (up to X58)

Should be: Intel Chipset (up to X58 )

(f**king smilies).

You can use AMD hardware, but you're choices are limited unless you have some spare dual/quad socket AMD boards and Opterons lying around. (PS, there are NO ATI/AMD gfx drivers for Solaris 10, so it's nVidia gfx only on Solaris 10).

 

[CougTek]

Wow, thanks for all the tips. I only have a Core i7 2600 on an H61-based motherboard and an aging Celeron 2.6GHz Dell Inspiron laptop. I also have two X58 motherboards without CPUs to put on them, so I guess I'll finally buy one to put on one of them. That will have to wait untill wednesday because I won't have the cash before. I print everything you mentioned here and I'll try to get answeres Thursday when I'll be meeting them. In the meanwhile, I registered at Oracle and downloaded Solaris 11 X86. I don't know if I'll have the time to play with it before wednesday either. I doubt they have Solaris 11 and believe it is probable they use Solaris 10 instead. I'll see.

I've also downloaded the pdf documentation you linked and I'll browse through it when I'll have some time.

Thanks again.

 

[Chewy509]

Cool, no problem.

Be aware that Solaris 11 is very different to Solaris 10 from an administrative point of view. Don't get used to the nice things that Solaris 11 has, but Solaris 10 doesn't.

 

[Bozo]

Good luck Coug :thumbright:

 

[mubs]

+1 !

 

[CougTek]

I have the job. I'll know Monday morning how poorly prepared I trully am. The few black hair I still have might turn white soon.

 

[Mercutio]

You're unlikely to run into an administrative emergency on day 1. Ages ago when I had Sun machines to take care of my biggest problem usually came down to something or other hitting a disk quota or a random failed backup. The configurations were all scripted and thoroughly automated by a couple neckbearded *nix admins so the boxes were pretty much all the same and just sat there doing their thing unless hardware failed.

 

[CougTek]

Rationally, it's true, but my entire life has been an example of Murphy's law.

 

[MaxBurn]

I have the job. I'll know Monday morning how poorly prepared I trully am. The few black hair I still have might turn white soon.

Congratulations for gaining employment!

 

[Chewy509]

I have the job. I'll know Monday morning how poorly prepared I trully am. The few black hair I still have might turn white soon.

Congratulations on the job.

 

[CougTek]

Thanks guys.

 

[Bozo]

Congratulations on getting the job! :grin:

 

[Howell]

Congrats and good luck!

 

[Chewy509]

Oh, I forgot to mention, Welcome to the Dark Side... 8)

 

[Handruin]

Congrats on the job.

 

[Stereodude]

Congrats!

 

[time]

Before the interview, I was going to say "break a leg", but felt that might be an unwise suggestion in your case ...

Congratulations, but to scale this mountain, you'll need to reintroduce sleep into your life.

 

[Mercutio]

Yes. Caffeine, while useful in the short term, does not constitute a long-term treatment for one's need to slumber.

 

[DrunkenBastard]

Before the interview, I was going to say "break a leg", but felt that might be an unwise suggestion in your case ...

Congratulations, but to scale this mountain, you'll need to reintroduce sleep into your life.

Yes, I was just picturing the guy doing the interview being wheeled out to the ambulance as Coug "breaks a leg"

Congrats Coug you crazy bastich.

 

[LiamC]

Congrats Coug. What Chewy said +1

 

[CougTek]

I've just found out that Solaris can't read UDF disks higher than 1.5, which is dated back to 1997...

 

[timwhit]

I've just found out that Solaris can't read UDF disks higher than 1.5, which is dated back to 1997...

Mount it using a Linux box and share via NFS.

 

[CougTek]

Not elegant and doesn't make Solaris any less retarded on that aspect. I don't want to have to perform a rain dance just to get basic functionality. Besides, I'm trying to redesign the configuration of their main program, which actually runs on several Solaris 10 boxes and I just don't see myself putting a Linux VM on the systems map which only purpose is to read disks that Solaris is too retarded to read itself.

Thanks for the tip though. I don't think I'll try it, but it's good to know it's an available option.

Anyone knows what kind of performance drop I can expect from moving from a direct installation to a Solaris VM running on Xen Server for what basicly is a very busy file server? Will it be significant?

 

[Chewy509]

Hi Coug,

While I agree being limited to UDF 1.5 is crap, what are you doing with UDF? (eg why not use USB keys).

Re: Why move to a VM on top of Xen, when Solaris has Zones (like FreeBSD Jails, but some say more powerful) to that allow you to partition the server into VMs much more easily, and allows saving on drive space with unionised read-only root partitions shared between all Zones?

As for performance drop, Xen has about the same overhead as ESXi or HyperV, so you shouldn't see too much drop as long as the drives are not shared between VMs.

Trust me, there are a lot of things in Solaris 10, which are WTF, but Solaris 10 maintains a lot of backward compatibility and unfortunately this is a symptom of that. (My biggest issue is lack of NTFS support in Solaris). One of the good things about Solaris 11, was they broke some backwards compatiblity to bring the OS into the modern world.

 

[CougTek]

I have no problem using zones instead of Xen Server if the performance is similar or better and if I can shuffle my VMs like cards in a deck of cards. I just have to learn how to do it and I'll be in business. I'll re-check the pdf you linked above about it.

And the UDF was because I only have an iso of the main program they use. The machine I use to store it has Windows 7 and I did not want to break things by extracting stuff from the iso and then copying then on a USB key. It seemed simpler and safer just to burn the iso on a CD than extracting the content on a USB key.

 

[Chewy509]

Zones will certainly let shuffle your VMs around as needed. (There are a heap of documentation and blogs on how to do Zone migration), however the only requirement is that a new Zone must be of the same Solaris version as the host. (No big deal if you're consolidating a heap of Solaris servers into 2-3 servers, and there are tools for migration of Sol8/9/10 into a Zone as well). Most benchmarks report less than a 1% drop (in worst case) in performance in both CPU and IO in regards to utlisation of Zones. And the other nice thing with Zones, if you patch the global zone (which has it's root shared with the other zones), the patch is applied to all zones immediately. Oracle also has some very nice P2V support tools for moving physical Sol8, Sol9 and Sol10 systems into a Container as well, reducing migration time between physcial and VM instances.

The big advantage of Xen, is that your VMs can be any OS (like ESXi, HyperV), but Xen does have some noticeable performance drops when the underlying storage pool is shared amongst VM guests.

@UDF, fair enough.

PS. Oracle documentation to get you started with Zones/Containers: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solaris/containers-169727.html

 

[CougTek]

Short HCL for Solaris 10:
Intel CPU
Intel Chipset (up to X58)
Intel LAN adapter or some Broadcom LAN Adapters (those specifically found in HP or Dell servers).
nVidia Gfx PCIe. (GF8000 based or newer)

Otherwise just run it in Virtual Box.

I was about to call you a fat liar after seeing this page, then I realized that it was Solaris 11 that ran on those Xeon E5-2690-based servers. Support for Intel's latest Xeon makes me happy and it will greatly ease my life in the upcoming months. Besides, according to Oracle's documentation, I won't be able to shuffle the zones as seemlessly as I wishes I could. You apparently cannot "hot-swap" a Solaris zone. And LDOMs, which does the real trick, only runs on SPARC hardware (thanks, but no thanks).

I still have a lot of reading to do. Still far from guru standing. I'll have to put a hold on my projects of publishing books and giving fatly-paid conferences on Solaris management...for now.

 

[Chewy509]

IIRC, The latest Solaris 10 release supports all E3's, E5's and E7's, except those built on Ivy Bridge. (No official HCL listing, but they are reported to work).