DevCentral Weekly Roundup Episode 52 - The Road to 100

DevCentral Weekly Roundup Episode 14 - Acopia Networks

This last week Joe implemented the audio transcripts on Tech Tips, wrote a tech tip on iControl Marketing dissected, a forum post on how to detect DOS attempts. Jeff is recovering from a cold and comment on our plan to increase the flood of tech tips as well as Deb's tech tip on on iRules based on External Information that caused a nice banter between "the dueling Mac Vitties". Colin wrote a tech tip on "Avoiding Path Traversal" and is in the process of encoding some video from his recent trip to the UK. Deb points to some codeshare entries regarding Caching POSTS, Pool picking based on Cipher Strength, and a Super HTTP Monitor, SQL Monitor, and DHCP Monitor, as well as a short timeout HTTP monitor. Aside from being "Mr. Negative" this week, Don wrote a tech tip on using kSOAP2 and has his app running on a Blackberry!
Next, Nigel Burmeister, a Senior Product Manager with Acopia Networks, was kind enough to sit in for the rest of the podcast answering our questions on the newest member of F5's family of products.
Acopia is primarily about File Virtualization (a logical representation of physical resources). They break the bonds between the physical file storage systems (file servers and NAS devices) and the users and applications. It's hard to allow for growth when users increase or more storage is needed. Digital content creation is one of the biggest drivers of growth requirements. According to IDC, by 2010, we will be creating 988 Exabytes (That's 988 Billion Gigabytes) of digital content a year! He then talks about Storage Tiering and how it can be used to save storage and backup costs. Jeff asks what's a "WOW" feature and Nigel points to the architecture and how what they've done can't be replicated in stock software, and Colin attests to that fact....

DevCentral Weekly Roundup Episode 13 - The DataCenter 2010

Jeff introduces the gang. Colin points out how folks have been excited about new iRule Editor with support of Admin Partitions. Jeff talks about the new Open Performance Testing Initiative section of DevCentral. The team calls out for vendors to participate and for users to submit their comments and ideas about the performance test setup. Joe plugs his video tutorial on the admin partition support and his blog post about using FirePass to help publish it. Just alludes to an upcoming release of the FirePass Client API SDK. Colin recaps his use of FirePass from a train. Just talks about the new iTunes Podcasts for Video based Tech Tips as well as how this podcast got someone to come work for F5. If there are any iPhone users out there listening to this on their iPhone, let us know. Jeff comments awesome an iPhone can be for wardriving. Don says Lori's latest blog post is good reading.
Then the group talks about challenges with the DataCenter of 2010 (3 years may seem like a short time, but it's a long time in tech years). Jeff points that power usage by DataCenters is larger than all of TV's in the US. Colin points out that Power and Energy consumption will be a primary factor and things that companies are physically locating closer to power sources like dams due to lower costs.

DevCentral Weekly Roundup Episode 11 - The Long Weekend

Joe and Colin discuss how quiet it is in the office heading into this Labor Day weekend with the rest of the team taking an extended vacation.
Colin discusses his whirlwind gallivanting trip around Europe. He met with a lot of f5 folks and customers and partners on his 2.5 week trip. He went to London/Redding/Chertsey England, Edinburgh Scottland, London England, Paris France, Helsinki Finland, London England, and back to Seattle Wa- whew... The one lesson he learned was to not talk to a cab driver in English next time. Joe is looking for any Maui customers/partners needing a good DevCentral overview. Joe thanks Colin for saving him from riding solo on this podcast.
Joe talks way too long but covers some interesting things including a couple of major customer visits (including the DevCentral Japan Team). Joe notices a uprising of iControl based solutions mainly targeted at making the network more dynamic in real-time including both LTM and GTM. He mentions an upcoming release of the iRule Editor (with Partition support!) - even Joe doesn't know all the iControl methods. He gives an overview of his iRule Ninja tech tip series. He points to some forum posts on "How to install iControl", why newbie posts are perfectly welcome, how the CACHE::priority command works, how to do a wildcard cache eviction with iControl, how to get the VPN Tray client working in Vista.
Joe talks about seeing Young Frankenstein at the Paramount in Seattle. Colin is still looking for Stevie Wonder tickets - anyone have an extra one?
Joe will be attending Seattle Lunch 2.0 events at CarDomain.com and Adobe in September here in Seattle. Register now at Upcoming.org.

DevCentral Weekly Roundup Episode 6 - Best Practices

Colin recaps our meeting with a DevCentral users on Thursday and discusses feedback on how we should work on "Best Practices" documents and the team talks about how we can help in that area.
Jeff points to some "Must Read Content" that Colin recently wrote. He throws a shoutout to DC user Citizen Elah for his recent contributions. He then talks about the realities and disappointment of app and network teams not communicating.
Joe throws some kudos to DC user aherrman for contributing source changes for the iRule Editor. He discusses some new possible features with the Editor such as profiling enhancements and VIP Gauge reporting. Jeff notes that he wants this feature added. He finishes with his iRule Editor tip of the week.
Don is finishing up the Java wrappers for iControl and discusses his "Best Practices" regarding documenting development projects. He also wonders about the millions of users who are reading our latest newsletter and how they are being conjured up.
Deb discusses using EM Templates to deploy multiple instances of the same iRule and specifically about a slick solution to global variable name collision. Citizen Elah receives his second shoutout for his contribution of the GTM Deployment Prescriptive Architecture.
Jeff finishes up referencing Dan's post about "Where have you used an SSL VPN" and alludes to an new "Question of the Week" feature of DC.

DevCentral Weekly Roundup Episode 2 - SPAM

Jeff talks about SPAM and how F5 is helping with it's MSM module for BIG-IP (with a little help from Colin). He also points out that he's "No Legal Expert".
Deb highlights some recent CodeShare contributions. Socks5, A Persistence Cookie Logger, HTTP Refresh to Redirect, Firepass client on a Mac.
Colin talks about upcoming content on Troubleshooting iRules.
Joe talks about the latest PowerShell labs project addition as well as giving a plug for PowerGadgets.
Jeff finishes up talking about "community".

DevCentral Weekly Roundup Episode 1 - The start of something fun.

Introductions by Jeff Joe talks about TechEd, his presentation at the VSIP vendor lunch, and gaming systems. Colin goes over and iRule he's been working on with a customer implementing syslog inspection. Deb gives the dirt on the Profile::exists iRule command.