University and Sun Reach for the Sun

On wednesday the 7th of May we are lucky enough to have Chris Gerhard form Sun coming up to talk us through ZFS the revolutionary  open source file system from Sun. This talk will be taking place in Physics A at 2pm  and there will be more freebies there for you as well.

 I know that a few people have been interested in training available from Sun that I have talked about previously and a few of you have spoken to me about it so i thought that i would plug it again. There is something called the Sun Academic Initiative where you can get access to free online training courses and then upon completion of this and a practice exam you can get a free certification - something that will look amazing on your CV when you are looking for jobs - this is a great chance to add an extra dimension to your experience so come and find me and talk about it - or give me an email and i will arrange to meet you to talk you through it.

Firstly an apology for the delay in writing this up!!

 A couple of weeks ago now we held the first meeting of the Aber Open Solaris Users Group and tied this in with a talk from Clive King on using DTrace in OpenSolaris.

Clive started by giving us a background s to what constitutes a performance issue and then how he goes about dealing with them followed by an introduction to the sorts of things that you can use DTrace to look at within the OS. The Demo was carried out on one of the production servers within Sun to show what happens on a machine that is under load.

We had a good turn out and from the feedback that I have recieved people found it informative and useful. 

The next talk will be happening soon after we get back in April - exact date to follow and will centre around Suns revolutionary Filesystem ZFS. Chris Gerhard will be travelling up to give this talk. Chris is one of the Principal Engineers within Sun and a general guru when it comes to Solaris (he can regularly be found up to his armpits in Source Code :-P).

Check Chris' blog out here - he has some great ZFS entries!

I will see what I can do to sort some more cakes out for this one as well.

I can finally reveal the time and place of the Aber Open Solaris Users Group meeting.

It will take place on Wed 27th Feb in Physics A at 2pm and as an added bonus there will be Free Cake for those who attend - blatent bribery but meh you are all starved students - and what self respecting student will say no to free food. 

Clive King from Sun will be coming along to give a talk entitled "Debugging for Big Children" which will be an introduction to DTrace and how it can be used to debug your programs and also to improve program performance, so it is unmissable for you Software Developers out there especially as it is being given by Clive - he really knows what he is talking about!!!

I will also have a box of goodies that I shall be bringing with me to dish out - another very good reason to attend as there will be T-Shirts, pens and key rings to name just some of it.

 I hope to see as many faces there as possible.

 *footnote

Here is an abstract written by the big man himself!!

Time for a little shameless plugging :D

Some of you may know that during my time with Sun Microsystems I decided that cycling was a very good way for me to lose weight and get fit.

A year down the line and I still enjoy it very much so much so that i am taking part in a sponsored ride from London to Reims in France - a total journey of about 300 miles over 4 days.

This is for the British Heart Foundation and I hope to raise a substatial amount of money for them so any donations that you can manage will be gratefully recieved.

You can sponsor me at http://www.bhf.org.uk/sponsor/ctalbot84.

Right that is the end of the shamless plugging - and thanks in advance.

I guess that it is about time that I introduced myself, for those of you who dont know me my name is Chris Talbot and I am a final year student here in Aberystwyth having completed my Industrial Year at Sun Microsystems where I got the opportunity to learn about a lot of really cool technologies and improve my skills with Solaris.

My Current job with Sun is as a Campus Ambassador which means that I get to demonstrate some of these cool things to you and answer any questions that you may have regarding them so feel free to email me with them or you can find me in B57 or the Sunlounge - I kinda envisage this becomming my second home :P.

 As part of this post I will be setting up an Open Solaris users group here in Aber where members can come and discuss any issues that you have and meet with people like Clive King from Sun who can also help you with any problems that you have and show you new techniques for dealing with issues such as performance or filesystems such as Sun's ZFS.

 And just so that you can find me:

The first meeting will be sometime towards the end of Febuary and for those of you who are on Facebook there is a group to join where details of the meetings can be found and you can register yoru attendance.

Another way Sun is trying to get you guys to try Solaris and their other technologies is to offer you FREE web based courses with the option of a discounted certification at the end of the course.

These qualifications are highly regarded in Industry and well worth considering if you have any interest in system administration at all - this is an offer that is too good to refuse - especially as it is FREE - something that any student wants.

 Watch this space for more news and announcements from me in my new role.

Chris