DevCentral Top5 10/16/2009
After some much needed vacation I'm back at the helm this week to deliver your Top5. I'm sure you've managed to find some tasty morsels on DevCentral while I was away, but hopefully I'll be able to help out and point you in the direction of some more DC goodness now that I'm back. The past couple weeks have been busy and I have only 5 slots to fill with my picks, so make sure to keep checking out DevCentral if you're looking for more, but here is this week's Top5: DevCentral Weekly Roundup Episode 107 - The F5 Guy http://devcentral.f5.com/s/weblogs/dcpodcast/archive/2009/10/15/devcentral-weekly-roundup-episode-107-the-f5-guy.aspx The Weekly Roundup is no stranger to the Top5. Indeed I find it's often a valuable entry as it gives some perspective on what the team and community are up to, cool things you should see, etc. It's kind of my way of fitting more than 5 entries into the Top5, but shhh, don’t' tell anyone. This week, however, there's even more reason than normal to check it out. Blogger and F5 expert The F5 Guy graced us with his presence on the cast this week, and it was filled with hawesomeness as was expected when I heard he was joining us. We talked about what he's been up to, how he came to work with F5 gear, what kinds of products and technologies he works with, how and why he started his blog, www.thef5guy.com, and how the team should all have iPhones. Okay, that last part was an inside joke, but it's in there too. In any event, there was some awesome F5 and DevCentral talk going on and if you missed the live stream, you should definitely check out the podcast if you get a chance. OOW Coverage on DevCentral http://devcentral.f5.com/s/weblogs/dmacvittie/archive/2009/10/15/oow-coverage-on-devcentral.aspx Don made a smart move this week and made a blog post rounding up and listing all the awesome videos that Pete Silva took while attending Oracle's Open World event. So while I'm linking to Don's blog, I think he'll agree that Pete is the one that did the leg work and deserves the credit along with his assorted cast of guests ranging from Calvin Rowland to Andy Ohler to Ron Carovano and beyond. Pete shot a series of short, easily consumed clips interviewing different F5ers at Open World about the event, F5's work with Oracle, what was new and exciting, and their take on the show. It was pretty cool to get a feel for the happenings without actually being there and Pete's classic style and enthusiasm shone through as always. These vids are worth a gander if you're interested to hear about F5 and Oracle. I know I was, and I'm glad I got a chance to watch them. F5 Management Pack v1.4.1.93 Released: Globalization Support! http://devcentral.f5.com/s/weblogs/druddell/archive/2009/09/30/f5-management-pack-v1.4.1.93-released-globalization-support.aspx The post itself may be short, but the implications and impact are…long? Regardless of my grammatical failings, another new version of the F5 Management Pack has been dropped courtesy of the ever busy MPack team here at F5. If you haven't gotten your hands on the Management Pack yet, you should. There are way too many cool things that you can do to not have at least taken a look yet. With new versions dropping frequently and a steady stream of tutorial content coming straight from the Devs, it's not hard to get started. With this newest release the Management Pack now boasts globalization support to support localized versions of Windows Server 2003 and 2008 R2. This is good news for those worldwide audiences looking to dig further into the world of monitoring and management with the F5 Management Pack. Very cool stuff. Using Network-Side Scripting to Implement Mock API Endpoints http://devcentral.f5.com/s/weblogs/macvittie/archive/2009/10/05/using-network-side-scripting-to-implement-mock-api-endpoints.aspx It's a shame, really, to try and distill Lori's ever expanding army of posts down to just a single entry for the time I was out, but such is my lot in life. Using the tried and true "throw a dart at the dart-board" method seemed out of the question, so I just picked the one that talked about iRules and had code in it. What…you're surprised? Have you read my stuff before? In this post Lori delves into mocking up an API endpoint in iRules, our very own brand of network-side scripting. It's built to inspect an API call, determine what call it is, then return canned responses based on that call. Pretty cool stuff, right? What's even more cool is that this can end up saving time and resources for plenty of people that happen to have F5's ADC devices already deployed and could use it to test against. I'll admit it, I'm a sucker for a good iRules post, and Lori's got my attention straight away. Good stuff for anyone interested in network-side scripting, APIs, or SOA-ish type stuff. Creating Cacti Templates for BIG-IP CPU Utilization http://devcentral.f5.com/s/Default.aspx?tabid=63&articleType=ArticleView&articleId=4324 Taking you step by step through the process of creating these Cacti templates, all the way from the data collection Perl script to the Cacti configuration, is our resident Cacti expert, Jason. This very cool Tech Tip goes into stellar detail to get you from point A to B without losing you along the way. Complete with big animal pictures and the actual code you'll need to get started, Jason leads you down the path towards a state of Cacti zen. I'm not a huge SNMP or Cacti guy experience-wise, but it's some pretty cool stuff in the right hands and Jason makes it plenty interesting. It's cool to see what he's up to. Take a look for yourself. There you have it, the Top5 for the week. I'm glad to be back and hope you found this helpful. As always, feedback is appreciated, and you can check out previous Top5s here - http://devcentral.f5.com/s/Default.aspx?tabid=101 #ColinDevCentral Top5 04/03/2009
Having failed to coerce the calendar to allow the Top5 to fall on April 1 st , I'll have to leave you without any gag comments, Rick Roll links, or otherwise. That's just as well though, since there's plenty of goodness on DevCentral to cover this week. We've been busy, and that's usually a good thing. Hopefully you'll agree when I say it's reflected by more and more cool content. Here's your DevCentral Top5 for the week: iRules Event Order http://devcentral.f5.com/s/Default.aspx?tabid=63&articleType=ArticleView&articleId=344 I'm very pleased to present the definitive document of event order within iRules. It's been requested many times and has been a long time in the making, but it's finally here. This walks you through each of the current events usable in your iRules and details in what order they occur in inside a given connection. Many thanks to those that helped with this. I think it's going to be a huge benefit to people writing iRules, and I'm excited to have it available. If you're even marginally involved or interested with iRules, take a look at this one. Reason #5 That You Need File Virtualization http://devcentral.f5.com/s/weblogs/dmacvittie/archive/2009/04/02/reason-5-that-you-need-file-virtualization.aspx Don continues his awesome File Virtualization series with reason #5 - disk savings. Going into detail he discusses the ways in which you can make use of this kind of virtualization to produce some pretty huge cost savings within your deployment or your organization as a whole. Not only do you get to better utilize current storage, but you get to change your purchasing plans for future storage as well. He explains it far better than I can, so follow the link and read on. Creating A Graph Template in Cacti http://devcentral.f5.com/s/Default.aspx?tabid=63&articleType=ArticleView&articleId=346 Following on to his extremely popular article on Cacti working with LTM, Jason saw fit to produce a tutorial in screen capture form that walks you through creating a template for graphing Web Accelerator info. Not only is graphing with Cacti and other such software a popular topic on DevCentral and elsewhere, but this kind of detailed walkthrough makes it even more cool. Jason's definitely the group expert on this stuff within the DC team, so when he talks about it I'm inclined to listen. This time is no different, and it's worth the time to listen up. If you're going to try to follow along I recommend downloading the full screen version so you can read his screen. Real IT Interview - Nojan talks CDNs with Jeff http://devcentral.f5.com/s/weblogs/realit_extras/archive/2009/04/01/real-it-interview---nojan-talks-cdns-with-jeff.aspx With Real IT at full steam ahead the content is flowing out, fast and furious. This interview is one of the many tidbits that I thought was very cool, and my favorite of the bunch this week. Jeff sat down with Nojan for an extended discussion about delivering content worldwide. They talk about some different options, pros and cons, and experiences with some of the possible solutions. It's an interesting look at a topic that garners prime real-estate just amongst most IT news sites thanks to the prevalence of the issue. This one's got some good stuff in it. Take a look for yourself. How to recoup the costs associated with long URLs and variable names http://devcentral.f5.com/s/weblogs/macvittie/archive/2009/03/31/how-to-recoup-the-costs-associated-with-long-urls-and.aspx In her typical fashion Lori brings up a very interesting topic that made me stop and think. Long variable names and more specifically long URLs can, in the right situations, contribute to a pretty hefty chunk of used bandwidth for a given application. I honestly wouldn't have thought they could be that much of a problem, transfer wise, but 74Mb/sec? That's outlandish, and very possible given the right scenario. Sure it's an extreme case, but it's used to illustrate a very valid point. There are savings to be had by saving space over the wire - big savings. This is a great read and a very thought-provoking topic, at least for me. Big kudos as well to the commenter that brought up the idea of network layer cookie jar type functionality to cut down on unnecessary transfer even more than URL shortening. Very cool stuff. Looks like it's time for an iRule … There's your Top5 for the week. Feedback and comments are more than welcome, as always. Also, drop me your ideas for what should be featured and you just might see your favorite article of the week show up here. #Colin
