Ahmed El Gamil

Assalamu Alykom Everybody,

I know that this blog has almost been dead and you can only see my twitter updates laying around (seen this line before ?! well, it is the most famous line that bloggers write when they stop writing for some time, — Back to the topic chatty !! –)

So i have been working in the Egyptian market for quite some time now in the field of UNIX-like/Linux Systems administration, dealt with a lot of technologies like: web operations/scalability, Infrastructure management, web farms,VoIP, Security systems and whole bunch of stuff, which gave me some idea on how do sysadmins (or systems engineers whatever you like ) do and achieve their goals.

The point is, I DON’T LIKE IT, WE ARE BEING KILLED BY OUR JOBS, Systems are evolving and we are not ?! ..

Virtualization and Cloud Computing brought a whole lot of machines, and we still manage them using “almost” the same technologies ?! ..

If you are like me and have been searching for a solution for the past year or two, You will see around the internet that people are talking about “Agile Systems Administration”, “Infrastructure As Code” , “Command and Control”, “Configuration Management”, “Server Orchestration” and “DevOps”.

So I started asking people working on our industry, and there is almost NOBODY individually or an enterprise in Egypt that started working with those technologies, just some tiny trials and i just cannot stand the time/power we are wasting on managing our servers “Old School”. (If your Enterprise is using some of the technologies mentioned above, please tell us in the comments or mail me personally, I would love to have a chat about that.)

So within the next days isA, i will start doing some steps to get us out of the misery , may be creating some collaboration channels, contacting key professionals on that topic, who knows may be even making and event/sessions about it ..

But first I need your trusty comments, What do you think of the technologies mentioned ? Do you see it applicable at your employer ? Did you start using it ?

رسالة هارون الرشيد الى إمبراطور الروم

اضطرت دولة الروم أمام ضربات الرشيد المتلاحقة إلى طلب الهدنة والمصالحة، فعقدت “إيريني” ملكة الروم صلحًا مع الرشيد، مقابل دفع الجزية السنوية له في سنة (181هـ= 797م)، وظلت المعاهدة سارية حتى نقضها إمبراطور الروم، الذي خلف إيريني في سنة (186هـ = 802م)، وكتب إلى هارون: “من نقفور ملك الروم إلى ملك العرب، أما بعد فإن الملكة إيريني التي كانت قبلي أقامتك مقام الأخ، فحملت إليك من أموالها، لكن ذاك ضعف النساء وحمقهن، فإذا قرأت كتابي فاردد ما حصل قبلك من أموالها، وافتد نفسك، وإلا فالحرب بيننا وبينك”.

فلما قرأ هارون هذه الرسالة ثارت ثائرته، وغضب غضبًا شديدًا، وكتب على ظهر رسالة الإمبراطور: “من هارون أمير المؤمنين إلى نقفور كلب الروم، قد قرأت كتابك يا ابن الكافرة، والجواب ما تراه دون أن تسمعه، والسلام“.

وخرج هارون بنفسه في (187 هـ= 803م)، حتى وصل “هرقلة” وهي مدينة بالقرب من القسطنطينية، واضطر نقفور إلى الصلح والموادعة، وحمل مال الجزية إلى الخليفة كما كانت تفعل “إيريني” من قبل، ولكنه نقض المعاهدة بعد عودة الرشيد، فعاد الرشيد إلى قتاله في عام (188هـ= 804م) وهزمه هزيمة منكرة، وقتل من جيشه أربعين ألفا، وجُرح نقفور نفسه، وقبل الموادعة، وفي العام التالي (189هـ=805م) حدث الفداء بين المسلمين والروم، ولم يبق مسلم في الأسر، فابتهج الناس لذلك.

• SourceTree by Atlassian – Mac client for Git & Mercurial Distributed Version Control http://t.co/SRt3KhpY #Mac #
• Egypt Numbers is a FRE app that automatically updates all Egyptian mobile phone numbers in your mobile address book http://t.co/NIzZoTqi #
• hehe RT @DEVOPS_BORAT: In startup we hire devops only if they are prove mastery over 12 of existing 75 cloud APIs. #
• Confirmed: working with shoes off is a winner .. #
• Remember Enlightenment ? that desktop thingy ? http://t.co/GnAv6rxM #

• Playing lots-o-monkeys on Asterisk gets never old #Asterisk #
• RT @solarce: OH: "Automation is a great way to distribute failure across the system" #surgecon #
• haha RT @modsaid: "EGP 5 Instead of EGP 10 for a Deluxe Koshary Dish from Legendary Abou Tarek" ARE YOU KIDDING?? #
• ده قلش رخيص ده ولا ايه ؟!RT @MohamedASalem: على مدار 17 عام لم نتدخل أبداً في اختيار المتقدمين للالتحاق ببرامج المعهد #ITI #egypt #
• JIRA Kanban Board .. is just Magical #Atlassian #JIRA #Kanban #
• Kanban vs. JIRA http://t.co/DAHbqgf3 #
• RT @Cloud9ers: Meet Cloud Niners Ninjas in GITEX Technology Week http://t.co/5xlYG6GV #gitex #
• RT @ezmobius: i put forward that you cannot do PaaS without devops period #
• RT @amraldo: There is an app on android market called wife acceptance meter #funny #
• s3cmd is cool http://t.co/fwkpQISq #Amazon #Cloud #
• Wow, Red Hat to Acquire Gluster ? http://t.co/sn9XVtKL #GlusterFS #Redhat #
• RT @KhaledAdel: Marriage in 2011: "I now pronounce you husband and wife.. you may update your Facebook status" #
• Puppet and Chef Rock. Doh. What about all these shell scripts ?! http://t.co/8eiN5u3o #Puppet #Chef #CM #Cloud #

• البلاكبيري زي العربية النص نقل، شكلها وحش ومش مريحة بس عفية وتستحمل وتسعفك أكتر من المرسيدس via @hammady #
• RT @zehicle: uploaded latest 1.1 Alpha #crowbar ISOs to http://t.co/bDunqXWr #
• الرمم المتحدة .. #
• المستشار طارق البشرى بيقول كلام زى الفل على الجزيرة مباشر #
• من هي المرأة التي لم يراها احد و الكل يشتاق لرؤياها ؟؟… الخدامة اللي ف تــوم و جيــري عمرنا ما شفنا الا رجليـــها #
• عكس كلمة "سكاف" ايييييه يا حلوين ؟ #SCAF #Egypt #Jan25 #
• ذهاب بلا عودة .. #
• Did i just work in 5 projects in parallel :/ ! #
• mysql.com hacked, infecting visitors with malware http://t.co/M4Rnj8Jg #MySQL #Oracle #
• echo "yBs awppni gvere y 2hcracaetsru isgnd dwsba ,oy uac ncaiheva s milirae ffce totr to31" | dd conv=swab #
• lessfs – A high performance inline data deduplicating filesystem for Linux. http://t.co/JiRJzwUD #
• http://t.co/Hs3gTDGw #Andriod �اذا تشتري في حدود ميزانيتك الجزء الثاني – 1001 الى 1500 #
• RT @rbates: I think premature abstraction is often more dangerous than premature optimization. #
• 50,000 thousand years before the sky was introduced to the sea, Allah wrote down your name next to me ♥ #
• RT @SamehNour: كدة المشير لبس مدنى والمدنيين لبسوا المشير #
• RT @ajmmisr: عاجل: المجلس العسكري يؤكد أن 28 نوفمبر المقبل بداية إجراء انتخابات مجلس الشعب #
• Trying out zsh + Oh-my-zsh, looks interesting .. #
• RT @fadig: In case of fire http://t.co/bouvf3bI #
• RT @mntmn: it's 2011. we code bash in vim on dual full hd. #
• Love PaaS ? contribute to @montaro23 Python client for Cloud Foundry, http://t.co/0RbVGJ6G, Catch it while it's got #PaaS #CloudFoundry #

• Been using FPM lately, it's very easy to say "here's my install dir and here's some dependencies; please make a package", Thnx @jordansissel #
• RT @MU7MAD_7ASN: أنت.. نعم أنت.. من أجلك أنت!! صورة وتعليق http://t.co/i2I4QJLd #
• Twitter is the /dev/random of human beings ! #
• I NEED A LOOOOONG VACATION ! #Work #
• RT @google: We've launched the first Google+ APIs http://t.co/ytUVqtLd #
• Oh look !, @Cloud9ers logo is on @Graylog2 home page ! http://t.co/RssCVqYm #C9 #
• Total IP address range for AWS is now about 950K http://t.co/TNAwzTn4 #Cloud #
• Searching for an apartment to rent in Mansoura, ping me if you know any .. #Mansoura #
• Had a Hang out with @ak_kim0 and @bilal_akhtar96 today, nice meeting you guys #
• haha RT @ak_kim0: Just attempted to close a browser tab with :q! lol #
• Building VirtualBox on Mac OS X with VNC Support http://t.co/JmkI7hqE via @AhmedSoliman #
• Current status: Building my #DevOps team .. #
• Cloud Niners @Cloud9ers is now a supporter of Cloud Foundry http://t.co/pZshCOeP #
• A free white paper from @Cloud9ers: Cloud-Empowering Applications with Open Platform-as-a- Service (OPaaS) http://t.co/HnJ1smGE #Cloud #PaaS #
• Awesome session about virtualenv/pip by @AhmedSoliman @Cloud9ers .. #C9 #
• RT @kcunning: I am going to make a shirt. It will make me millions "The D is silent!" #django #
• Ever wondered how the Wikimedia servers are configured? #Puppet at #Wikimedia http://t.co/9LYuRPmG #
• Hilarious: #Linux The root is up http://t.co/zearXkcE #
• A day full of interruptions, 'just-do-it' decisions, this is just totally unproductive ! #

• RT @PoliticalAlsh: عمرو مصطفى : يعنى ايه تستدعى المشير و عمر سليمان يوم9/11 ؟ عايز تقولى ان ده اليوم اللى اتضرب فيه مركز التجارة… #
• RT @Karim_Allah: A short story about me on linux.com http://t.co/Z8KynS3 Next step : Runnig for presidency #
• RT @damonedwards: Classic… Chef and Puppet teams racing building cloud foundry deployment pipelines at #cfhackday http://t.co/LnogZwj #
• Mystifying Cloud Computing http://t.co/kjuzFym, Hilariously true #Cloud #
• RT @__Hamza23__: لقد جعل الله شباب مصر الاحرار جيل الصحوه الابرار هم سبب خروجى فاللهم لك الحمد ان جمعتنى بهم فى تلك الحياه أحبكم فى الله #
• If only people respected each other ! #
• Fault Tolerance and Protection http://t.co/pPlhHBO #
• MySQL Cluster is a brilliant NoSQL database ! http://t.co/VcYVuqm #MySQL #NoSQL #
• Information Security Is Not a Matter of Compliance http://t.co/w7dakRC #
• Explain “Event-Driven” Web Servers to Your Grandma http://t.co/9dAbqFV #
• Monitoring Sucks. Do Something About It. http://t.co/qXOGrz8 #
• Excellent SSH Productivity Tipshttp://blogs.perl.org/users/smylers/2011/08/ssh-productivity-tips.html #
• RT @sophto_92: xkcd: File Transfer http://t.co/GaWrp4g #
• Really need to upgrade my MacBook Pro RAM to 8G :/ #
• Hmm, ShowMedo Python training videos for $29 http://t.co/q5dSu20, What do you think ? #Python #PalGeeks #Help #
• Pretty soon RT @ImanNaguib: Waiting for the first start…………. http://t.co/3QyBzXO #
• Unbelievable !, one of my UNIX/Linux mentors has just joined twitter, Welcome in Sameh @smshaker #
• المجلس العسكري لديه خيارين لا ثالث لهما http://t.co/b5DlUlZ #
• Nice add about Oracle's ExaData http://t.co/NFCnncF #
• Reason why computer users seems to have spare time http://t.co/xCHl4BM #
• Okay, English monday at @Cloud9ers is starting to be Hilarious #
• In-line Mic on MacBook Pro has not been working for a while, only headset output, advises anyone ? #Mac #OSX #
• RT @l0gicpath: I'll document later. #TheMostCommonLies #Developers #
• Toothaches :/, I've been falling apart recently ! #
• RT @realdawah: There is nothing more beautiful than a woman who fears Allah! #
• HEADACHE, TOOTHACHE ! HEADACHE, TOOTHACHE ! HEADACHE, TOOTHACHE ! HEADACHE, TOOTHACHE ! HEADACHE, TOOTHACHE ! HEADACHE, TOOTHACHE ! #
• I eat pain killers for breakfast ! #
• OpenRHCE http://t.co/fsU5Ylm #Redhat #RHCE #
• RT @ripienaar: Behind-the-firewall dropbox startup http://t.co/vAiNWt3 #
• Neat, checkout @aerofs, sync/share unlimited amounts of data ! http://t.co/lj50oRf #
• RT @Dr_alqarnee: إن لربك عليك حقاً، ولنفسك عليك حقاً، ولعينك عليك حقاً، ولزوجك عليك حقاً، ولضيفك عليك حقاً، فأعط كل ذي حق حقه. #
• RT @roidrage: Note: I actually didn't change code on production servers. I'm not that guy. #