In you're in Vegas attending the DevConnections event at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center, look for us at booth #625. I'll also be presenting at OpenForce08 this afternoon about the role network infrastructure plays in successfully delivering DNN-based applications.

There are many dynamic things happening every day on DevCentral. While innovative, powerful technology (IMO) helps,it all starts with incredible people. Customers. Industry partners. Resellers and Consultants. F5 staff. And, the DevCentral Team. The work that Joe, Don, and Colin have done and continue to do amazes me. Based upon how many people are reading the Blogs and Tech Tips, posting to the forums, and more, I'm guessing you agree. They've set the bar pretty high.

However, it's just been kicked up another notch with the addition of a new member to the DevCentral Core Team. It's a honor to welcome Jason Rahm, new F5 Solution Developer, to the team. Now, the name may be new to you but his reputation preceeds him. If you spent ANY time in the forums, you've run across him - alias "citizen_elah" - and his over 1,100 posts! Over the years, Jason has spent many an hour configuring, testing, reconfiguring, writing iRules, and more with F5 products. Along the way, he won DevCentral's 1st iRule Contest. He even published a document that has become a top-5 hit with the community - "Graphing Your LTM Environment with Cacti".

Wasting no time jumping in, he's published his first Tech Tip as a team member today that digs into the guts of BIG-IP and it's TCP profile. Check out "Investigating the LTM TCP Profile: Nagle's Algorithm".

While I'm amazed at what the DevCentral Core team has done so far, I have a feeling that Jason's contributions are going make things even more interesting. Welcome Jason!

If you're running SAP software in your company, there's a good chance you've made a significant investment in making employees more productive. However, I've seen too many companies spend a ton of money on software and then forget that predictably secure application access and reasonable performance are instrumental in users getting value from the solution. It's like spending a bunch of cash on a speedy new PC and then... forgetting that you need power to run it. Or, a car with 600 horsepower and spellbinding looks... with no transmission. At some point, simply getting the app to the users can be a critical factor. (I say "simply" because to most, it is. But, there really are some tricks to doing it well.)

F5's work with SAP is significant because it addresses this need: to enable reliably secure, fast access to powerful applications based on SAP technology. While we invest significant time working closely with partners like SAP to build the most widely applicable solutions, there are bound to be countless other ways people do this. That's where the new Forum comes into play. Rarely are these types of solutions deployed identically. The new forum makes it easy for those of you in the community using SAP to connect with your peers and share best practices and ideas you've implemented.

Take a look, post your questions, answers, or even share what has worked well for you. And, check out what one of F5's experts - Nojan - has to say about it!

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You know what? You never know what you might find in the DevCentral Forums. Some pretty cool stuff happens in the Solutions Forums - a place to focus on doing interesting things with F5 gear from an application perspective (i.e. Microsoft app, Oracle App, etc.).

Here's an interesting one I found recently: load balancing resources protected by MS-AD-Kerberos. Not always two technologies you expect to see together... However, thanks to user "ravi.rajan", there's the solution. The trick is that you don't add the BIG-IP to the AD (you can't). Instead, you create a Microsoft Service Principal Name (SPN) for "the HTTP services mapping to a particular domain user ids." For more, go here.

For details about SPNs if you're not familiar with them, you can learn more from Microsoft TechNet (a team I worked on many, many years ago, BTW) or at MSDN if that's more your speed.

According to "ravi.rajan", it's not just the IIS folks that get to play:

 We have kerberos single sign on working for IIS, weblogic, SAP enterprise portal without any issues.

After talking about this with Colin, he made a good point: once you have this backend wired (and simply doing LB to distinct virtuals/URLs for the various services for IIS, webogic, etc.), why not bring the forms out to the front end and consolidate the process. Theoretically, you could use LTM's form-based auth on the front end. LTM can serve up a standard form and then pass auth through the various services on the backend. Here's a nice little sample (Client Auth Using HTML Forms) in the CodeShare to get you started.

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As Don mentioned earlier this week, we took the plunge and entered Forrester's Groundswell contest. To me, I believe this is the ultimate testament to what you, the community, are doing on DevCentral everyday (check out this page - it's pretty cool). Back when we started this thing, it was simply to help folks learn how to tap into F5's groundbreaking iControl API. After asking users, we learned that folks needed some assistance getting started. Surprise, surprise - understanding terms like WSDL, SOAP, and related things were a bit new to F5's traditional users! With backgrounds in software, where forums have been around a while, we thought this would be a good tool to enable us to assist and support users as they played with this cool technology.

Honestly? Selling management on un-moderated forums was not a slam-dunk. There were (reasonably) concerns that someone might say something nasty. That said, we made a philosophical choice... to trust our users. We wanted them be as involved and invested in this community as F5 is. So - trust matters. Along the way, something interesting happened: the community even started to protect it's own turf!

The same thing happened when we weighed the pros and cons of moving ALL of our technical documentation to a wiki. (what? let ANYONE edit it? seriously...?). Yes - like the forums, there was plenty of debate. Once again, the notions of trust and enablement - all with the desire of supporting users through more free-flowing, 24x7, worldwide contributions - won out. The result? Well - just one example is the over 100 iRule samples posted in the Codeshare today - the vast majority contributed by real users working on solving real challenges everyday.

When looking at this whole contest thing, I'm sure some of the other categories could have applied. But, the "supporting" category is the most obvious choice. However, it's not exactly why most might think... When I step back and look at what everyone is doing in the community, what strikes me most is how - in significant part because of the social media technologies we've embraced - users are supporting each other. Without a free-flowing community, ideas and solutions created in Auckland may have never been seen by users in Munich. Or, a cool iRule trick from someone in London may have never reached someone in Tokyo.

Further, I'll be the first to admit this: there are some protocols or technologies that we'll NEVER know as well as some of you. You're work, day in and day out, with a specific protocol or application server - and specifically it's subtle quirks that come from working with it daily - help you bring a completely different dimension to other users wrestling with a similar problem. Sure - we can research and understand something academically. However, members' tribal, hands-on knowledge makes all of the difference when providing real, useful solutions.

Candidly, there are times when I ask myself this: how do vendors that DON'T enable this free-flow of ideas survive? With the growth of cloud, SOA, virtualization, etc., the technology hairball and the knowledge required cannot be owned by one all-knowing company, right?

I go back to the beginning; it's this notion of trust, free-flowing ideas and dialog, that makes this community all about support. Not just F5 supporting our technology (as it should). But, helping end users help each other to just get more... value... ideas... inspiration... support. All from others working to solve similar problems.

BTW - some serious props go out to F5 leadership for trusting and embracing the community as partners and co-collaborators on this journey. If not for that trust, I don't think we would see the dynamic interaction that happens each day on DevCentral.

So, if you've read this far, thank you for your participation in and involvement with DevCentral. If you feel like it, maybe make a visit to our entry page and make a comment and vote for DevCentral. Also - we've set up a Forum here on DevCentral as well for you to post your comments, thoughts, likes, etc. about DevCentral.

Just back from my summer vacation with the family, I thought I would share a picture that reminded me of something: IT is not always a glamorous job. Yes - sure - I know most of you, when asked by friends, compare your jobs to the other exotic professions such as globetrotting spy, travel photographer, rock star, etc.

However, I know that some days... well, IT is simply not actually that glamorous. Not every day is a briefing for senior management highlighting how you have single-handedly done 3x more with 54.6% less. You don't always get to high-five your peers celebrating 23 consecutive months of ZERO support calls from your end users. Sometimes, there are simply tasks that preempt that uninterrupted 3 weeks of "think-time" designing a next generation strategy for your Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). And, yes, there are days when other budget demands withdraw that blank check book your boss gave you to build your own cloud computing environment with complete autonomy...

Some days, you just get stuck with the dirty work that life in IT brings.

I shot this picture (at right) last weekend with my Blackberry. It's from the annual Ketchum/Sun Valley Wagon Days Parade.  Touted as "the largest non-motorized parade in the West", it features a whole lot of horses. For those of you that have spent your entire life in the city, you may not realize this but... horses can make a mess. They aren't usually particular about where they do it either.

That's where the hockey players from the local Sun Valley Suns hockey team steps in to help out. They drop the ice blades in favor of their roller blades, grab a shovel, and literally do the dirty work of cleaning up. Kudos to them for doing their job with a smile on their faces!

I'll let you draw your own comparisons. Shoveling ... umm ... "stuff" or dealing with smelly IT tasks. Dirty work varies from job to job and I know that IT has more than it's fair share. But, just remember - at least your tool is usually a keyboard instead of a shovel, right?

I'm curious: What's the dirtiest job you've had to do in IT?

Another great clip featuring the folks at BlendTec and Forrester's Josh Bernoff! Nothing like blending ALL of the social media technologies, huh?

After many requests, we've just launched a new discussion area for folks that want to talk about the F5 Application Security Module (ASM). This is a new opportunity for the community - existing users or those just curious about ASM - to post questions, share ideas, and generally discuss the possibilities and solutions available with ASM.

To learn more about ASM, you can go here. When you combine ASM with other technologies from folks like our friends at White Hat Security, there are some interesting applications and scenarios that will surely spark some interesting dialog.

You know what I like most about this new Forum? Some of the most enthusiastic supporters were actually our own ASM team. They're already active in the other forums, passionate about this technology, and are excited to discuss ASM with the DevCentral community and you.

So, have at it and enjoy.

Filed under the "not necessarily new but cool" category for those that don't know it, you can keep tabs on DevCentral by following us on Twitter. If you're a Twitter fan, you know what to do. Follow us here.

As I was pleasantly reminded by this article, they sold some pretty funny t-shirts back in the day including one featuring "Loser" on the front and back as well as another boldly stating, "Going Out of Business Since 1988". Priceless.

Back to my first point - why I thought this was cool. Something I've always found fascinating about Seattle culture is that it is this blend of driven yet casual people focused on substance (over style, in many cases. See: plaid flannel shirts) and an understated sense of self. Musically, the grunge era was very contrarian, all about the music, not at all about glam, and produced some remarkable work that will withstand the test of time (IMO).  This small label that took a chance turned the music business on it's ear and it actually has a flag flying on the Spaceneedle!

Interestingly, this can-do, contrarian attitude permeates other business and industry here. Starbucks upended the coffee biz. No matter what you think about Microsoft, there's no disputing their role in our world today. Expedia broke new ground in travel. A new round of companies are serving the disintermediation papers to their respective markets - particularly folks like Zillow and Redfin. Waiting in the wings are some compelling startups like Blist and Wetpaint.

(Obviously, I like to include F5 in this mix but I'm pretty biased. We DID, however, pioneer things like load-balancing, Application Delivery Networking, and other patented technologies like cookie persistence. And, there's this thing called DevCentral that was a "first" in our market as well.)

Huh. Nirvana. Starbucks. Microsoft. DevCentral. All in the same blog post... wow. And I didn't even mean to do that.

At any rate, I'll try to get back to my original sentiment. Congrats Sub Pop. Thanks for blowing apart the industry and saving us from further nausea driven by big hair and glam-rock (sorry Don). Your contributions - including your continued inspiration - create the fabric that makes your community unique and impact global.

OK - here's the fun part: who was your favorite "grunge band" of all time? (share your comments below)

Gotta love it! A special shout out to our pal Adrian for sharing this. Thanks mate!

Listening to: "Staple it Together" / Jack Johnson

Today's Flips: My OluKai Kumus.

There was a nice little acronym we used around F5 a few years back (probably more than a few...). However, I was reminded of it today (thanks Annie and Joe!) while walking through the halls. It's simple. And, it's powerful. And, it deserves a "refresh" because there's no hiding from reality: there are more protocols, app flows, user distribution, and complexity challenging IT, not to mention shorter development cycles and performance demands challenging app teams.

The move to TMOS ushered in the opportunity to do this and well. Here's what it means (updated for 2008):

I = Intercept (as in intercept any part of the IP application stream... header, payload, etc.)

I = Inspect (look for cookies, values, variables... anything you want that designates the session)

T = Transform (rewrite to perform proxy functions or other things that fix bugs, simplify design, etc.)

D = Direct (route requests or responses to the best resource, under either LB or persistence, etc.)

Now, in today's world, more applies:

S = Secure (from the endpoint to core, using client checking to encryption and beyond...)

A = Accelerate (making sure that wherever the user is, however unique the application is, or other characteristics that compromise performance - apply intelligently for the best application experience)

Of course, all of these are done to optimize the user experience, server, storage, and application resources so that IT staff and application teams spend on flexible solutions that offer the right fit for today with graceful adaptation and scale as their needs change.

Seems pretty damn prudent and practical to me.

We're lucky. It's rare to find such a team of people like those on the DevCentral team (and F5, for that matter) that are very bright, like to work hard together, and genuinely care about making people's lives better. I've worked with enough people to know that this is special. For me, it's inspiring and I'm proud to be a part of such a dynamic group of people.

However, on a completely different level (and hopefully just a little inspired by the team), our community has become something incredibly special. We continue to be amazed (and frankly, humbled) by the daily contributions of others to the community. Whether it's helpful forum responses, interesting sample posts, or great comments that add perspective to technical articles, it's really very incredible how much the community at large gives back to it's peers.

So, it only makes sense to acknowledge and applaud individuals that make such contributions. Take a moment to check out our "DevCentral Contributors" page. If your name is listed amongst the top-50 - THANK YOU. (If not, don't worry. You can get there too! Read the FAQ to learn how).

Over the coming months, we'll be doing more to highlight the top contributors. We will also provide special opportunities for those that contribute as a humble "thank you" for your ongoing help to others.

A final note: to us, community has always been about you. While we may help keep the site running, provide answers and assistance , and continually innovate in the ways we publish new and interesting info, in the end, it's your community. Without you, there is no community. Thank you and don't be shy about letting us know what you want.

Keep your eyes open for more coming re: contributors...

While they're both round, I will probably prepare differently to catch either one if thrown at me. Wouldn't you? I might stand differently. I might even ponder, "do I need one hand or two?" I'll definitely consider what could happen if I fail to catch the ball and how it might bounce or even break something where it lands.

Mindless musings, you say? Maybe. But really? How is this any different from what most network teams deal with? Seriously.

Pretend you're the app guy and I'm the network guy. You know what you're going to throw. You've spent countless hours defining it, building it, making sure it makes the business folks happy, and even (I hope) testing it. You are closer to it - and know more about it - than anyone possibly could (or most would ever care to understand, frankly).

So - why won't you tell me about it? Really. Because I don't understand. It's not hard. It probably won't take much time. It certainly doesn't steal your thunder.

Here's the deal: I'm going to build for a bowling ball - guaranteed. It's safer. But, know this - I won't be as quick and nimble. It'll take two hands. And, the thought of that coming will certainly occupy more of my mind than a golfball might because I don't want to face the risk (and embarrassment not to mention damage) that dropping it might bring. So, I'll be pretty preoccupied. Forget those other things on my task list.

It eat more of IT's budget but be incredibly overbuilt when your golf ball comes my way. And, I won't have the time, budget, or option of help you optimize your app or provide additional security help. I spent it all preparing for a bowling ball (and I'm really quite stressed even about the thought of it.) So, you'll have to write that code. And test it. And update and maintain it. You have plenty of time, right?

It's not a pretty picture. But, it's all together too common. Just heard about it from someone - again - today.

When will IT groups learn that the good from sharing more information far outweighs any fear of bad that comes from sharing it?

During an interesting conversation yesterday, Jim Metzler made a very clear and insightful comment. There are [or should be] two distinct roles in IT: application development and application delivery. Pure and simple. In challenging times (or any time, really...), this clarity could be a powerful rallying point as well as a basis for collaboration and focus on results. Good advice. His recently released 2008 Handbook of Application Delivery also offers some excellent advice.

[Update: Kiwi Paul was kind enough to remind me that the handbook link above requires a free registration here. Thanks mate!]